From Software The Dark Souls Discussion Thread

[Zboj Lamignat]

Wait, so people who shit on Witcher 2 fellate Dark Souls? Witcher 2 was inspired by Grimdarkgloomy Souls games, the developers admitted it themselves and it fucking shows with the lock-on rolltastic combat. It's that retarded "oh boy I sure hate Fallout 3, but New Vegas is really swell" thing all over again. Codex really seems to be full of people suffering from severe mental disorders.

 

[Marsal]

Ah commie, a fan of shitty games. Hello there.

Sorry commie, my taste is impeccable.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8183

 

[Jasede]

I guess if you removed style, fun, atmosphere, love, music, writing and depth from Dark Souls you may be able to get something that resembles Witcher. Not sure. I couldn't say, I don't play generic action RPGs.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Thanks for proving my point, Marsal.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Yeah, people who base their perception of games on gameplay are sure missing the point.

 

[Niektory]

Wait, so people who shit on Witcher 2 fellate Dark Souls? Witcher 2 was inspired by Grimdarkgloomy Souls games, the developers admitted it themselves and it fucking shows with the lock-on rolltastic combat. It's that retarded "oh boy I sure hate Fallout 3, but New Vegas is really swell" thing all over again. Codex really seems to be full of people suffering from severe mental disorders.

Because "inspired by" = "totally the same thing", right? Witcher 2 combat is a mockery of DS combat at best.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

An who said that it's exactly the same thing? The point is that its combat is based on identically locking lock on and rolling all the time to avoid blows that can be easily mortal. And both are action rpgs with tons of combat encounters. Where's the mockery ffs? If I like Eye of the Beholder laughing at somebody liking Lands of Lore for having a shit taste makes me look a bit retarded, it's as simple as that.

 

[Niektory]

Unlike TW2, you can't "roll all the time" in DS because you'll run out of stamina.
In DS locking is optional, it's just there to help you aim. In TW2 you can't even hit things without having the locking marker on them, which is retarded.
In TW2, several different attacks can be executed by pressing the same key depending on the distance from the selected enemy, so you never know for sure what your character is going to do. In DS it's one key, one attack.

So, they may look similar, but they play very differently.

 

[Serious_Business]

This game is gonna be fucking sweet

edit : I love interrupting debates like a retarded 9 years old. It's my mission in life

 

[Ulminati]

I dunno. Like I said, I can look at all the parts of Dark Souls individually and go "yeah... this part is decently constructed". But somehow the gesamtkunstwerk fails to catch my interst. Maybe it's simply that I went into the game with way too high expactations from all the praise it's been getting. I mean, if you read through the Dark Souls threads around the codex it sounds like a bunch of polacks discussing the Ultra-Potato Witcher collection. When in reality it's a fairly linear hack-and-slasher that's nowhere near as difficult as people pretend it is. I'd go so far as to say Dragon's Dogma with no support pawns and skipping sidequests to keep enemies tough has more satisfying combat than Dark Souls. A lv 12-14 chimera fight with lizardmen backup can get pretty hectic.

The reason I remarked on it at all was that I was puzzled that a game could have passable graphics, a sort-of decent story, an interesting setting, mediocre sound, ok combat mechanics and horrible controls, yet still be less compelling than what on paper should be vastly inferior games. I mean, I finished Kingdom of Banalur for crying out loud! My console games don't have to be masterpieces. (I leave my quality gaming time for the PC or MAME). Gears was by no means memorable. It was random splosions to fill the screen while I finished a few brewskis.

I guess I'm just not wired to enjoy japanese shit. I got through Dragon's Dogma on 3 parts stubbornness to finish what I started and 1 part "this is sort-of good if I deliberately handicap myself to make it challenging". People keep praising Desu Souls and I can see where they're coming from. But if you're 2½ hours into a game and wondering "will this game start to be fun eventually?" it's time to find something else to do. Crusader Kings II was 30 minutes from start to fun. Heart of iron III and Vicky2 were about an hour each. Planescape: Torment was the time it took to GTFO the mortuary (so a little over an hour if it's your first time and you're thorough but not obsessively so).

I guess the TL;DR version of it is that now I've given the western(ish) inspired japanese CRPGs a fair shot to impress me. I have found them technically and mechanically adequate. But they lack the je ne sais quoi, the soul if you will, that even horribly misguided western trainwrecks such as skyrim occasionally shows a glimmer of. Or more likely they have the soul, but it's written in kanji and you can't appreciate it unless you've been indoctrinated with a japanese mindset to begin with.

Also, gaudaost, I recommend you find youself a bag of ice or seek a doctor. Your butthurt has lingered so long it qualifies as a medical condition.

 

[Niektory]

They have the soul. You can't see it because it's dark.


Sorry.

 

[Ulminati]

I tried adjusting the gamma. No dice

Dragon's Dogma got tolerable after the resident 'dexians suggested dumping support pawns and skipping lots of content so you got opponents of a higher level than yourself. That changed it from a boring buttonmasher against HP bloat to an actually-pretty-decent dodge/parry/jab dance vs obscene HP bloat. Judging from the responses in this thread it appears the key to enjoying Dark Souls is submitting to your japanese overlords and all who haven't already done so are weird. I'm gonna chalk it down to weaboos gonna boo and get on with Arkham City (about halfway through main campaign, fun started as soon as you got the batsuit) then steel myself for the cutscene hell that's going to be Bayonetta. The fight sequences are supposedly pretty good, even if the protagonist seems to do all the really entertaining fighting in 0-interactivity cutscenes.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Hey bro, where were you and what class were you playing?

The game doesn't pick up until after the Undead Burg, when you go into the Parish/Darkroot and start having some real fun against a wide variety of nasty enemies, can really upgrade your weapons (and have some variety), and start fighting bosses where the credited strategy isn't just "lololololol jumping attack". And it just keeps getting better from there.

Class choice is sort of an important thing too. While clerical magic is easily available from the start and a vendor with sorcerer spells can be found about a minute after exiting the tutorial, pyromancer spells take a lot longer and can easily be missed. Pyromancers start with a spell and a Pyromancy Flame, and as an added bonus, they start with great light armor, which is actually pretty hard to find. What's also cool is how they start at level one, allowing for easier customization. One of my critiques of the game is that Pyros with a Master Key gift are pretty much the only build worth choosing, unless you're doing some hardcore PvP build, in which case they are only the best choice 80% of the time.

You're also probably boned on this front because of the modded FAGBOX, but the first patch is p. essential for making the game a lot more fun. Soul drop rates were doubled, item drops were increased, and the base weight limit was bumped up (I played without the patch and was baffled why my Wanderer in standard light equipment was so slow...turns out you are over 50% encumbrance in a lot of classes pre-patch, making the game seem really crappy and slow; very important fix).

 

[Crooked Bee]

But they lack the je ne sais quoi, the soul if you will, that even horribly misguided western trainwrecks such as skyrim occasionally shows a glimmer of.

 

[Ulminati]

Hey bro, where were you and what class were you playing?

I went wanderer. I've been through the asylum, wandered around a bit at the shrine thingie you end up in afterwards, been through the undead burg and I was a bit into the undead parish.
I didn't mind the movement speed all that much. Combat was pretty uninteresting, but maybe it's because everyone keeps yammering on about how hard it is. I came into it expecting something akin to master ninja in ninja gaiden black, sidestepped/blocked opponents long enough to get a feel for their attack animations and parry/riposted my way to victory thinking "Is that all?" Attack functions on shoulders except of XYAB really annoyed me though. Especially how the timing-dependant parry/heavy attack functions were on the analogue triggers that are least responsive twitch-wise.

I can probably patch the game if the patch adds so much to it. The chipped box doubles as ftp server, so if I can find a torrent of the patch somewhere it should be easy enough to deploy it to my games on demand folder. Undead Phoenix gave me the impression on steams that the classes were pretty much interchangable and only really affected starting gear. I considered rerolling but came to the conclusion that it wasn't really the gameplay that bothered me. In fact, every aspect of the game, be it sound, graphics, atmosphere etc seems mechanically sound. Exerything except the most important thing as it were; fun. I keep finding myself thinking "there's got to be something more entertaining than this" or "I wonder if this'll get good soon" when I play.

Maybe it's simply that I have too high expactations of the game. The key to enjoying gears of war after all was accepting that I was about to engage in a few hours of mindless popamole, not think too much about the "plot" (wait, if the "imulsion" vehicles use as fuel is a parasite, and your deux ex machina just killed off all the parasites, how come the helicopters still fly?) and enjoy the pretty 'splosions. Dark Souls, with it's actually pretty interesting premise (no, Shepard, YOU are the undeads), pretty neat atmosphere and hordes of critics and codexians both stumbling each over to fellate it is a bit like walking into a bistro and being served this starter:

Only, after your expactations are worked way up by the impressive presentation, you take a bite and discover it tastes like a whopper cheese from Burger King. Even if you'd happily chow down on a whopper on your way home from a night out drinking, it's not what you were expecting from everything you've heard and seen, so you can't help but be immensely dissapointed with what you got.

I know, I know. It upsets you if someone compares a jrpg unfavourably with a mediocre western rpg

 

[Crooked Bee]

I know, I know. It upsets you if someone compares a jrpg unfavourably with a mediocre western rpg

No, it's just that you're retarded. From Software's games aren't "jrpgs", so all your talks about "weaboo" vs "western" games is as retarded as it gets, especially given the kind of shitty games you apparently enjoy. In contrast to you, I don't judge games on a "eastern" vs "western" basis. In fact, all my favorite RPGs were always and remain western RPGs, that's how I found myself on the Codex in the first place. It's just that From Software's games are among the best oldschool dungeon crawlers to ever see the light of day, so the only thing that may explain your blather is your extremely obvious lack of taste. It's as if you were dissing on Wizardry for failing to "entertain" you. Don't try to project your own failings on the game.

 

[Jasede]

But they lack the je ne sais quoi, the soul if you will, that even horribly misguided western trainwrecks such as skyrim occasionally shows a glimmer of.

Gonna print this out and put it on my wall.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I'd just chip in my 2 cents that the part of DS I found most interesting was finding secrets and stuff on my own, or skipping ahead to more difficult areas. When I first played through I ended up going through darkroot before getting to the undead parish, and did lots of other cool things that were either well concealed or difficult. Actually, before I even went to undead burg I'd dicked around in New Londo Ruins go and got a rare drop dagger off one of the enemies (and died like 10 times).

If you've spent a few hours only fighting skeletons and zombies in the most boring part of the game... try doing the undead crypt early or something like that if you're dying for a challenge. So far the strongest opponent you could have fought is probably one of the black iron knights, assuming you fought them. Or Havel, but he's easier than them imo. The nasty enemies are things like the titanite demons or trying to fight the iron golem without that cheesy ass spear. If you're at the parish, try skipping the belltower and going down into darkroot garden and the places that leads to.

I'd say the game doesn't really pick up in difficulty until Anor Londo, but even before then, undead burg/parish is still basically the first area, where the game is designed using the assumption that you can't parry worth shit and dodge maybe half the attacks you should. And all the 'secrets' are really fucking obvious. I'm kind of surprised you haven't gotten farther in 3 hours if you really aren't having any trouble with the combat and took such a direct route through the easiest possible path.

 

[Ulminati]

But they lack the je ne sais quoi, the soul if you will, that even horribly misguided western trainwrecks such as skyrim occasionally shows a glimmer of.

Gonna print this out and put it on my wall.

Yeah. Bee makes some good points. My previous response to her was a misguided attempt at bad humor on my part. Taken in context with my previous couple of posts I can't deny it comes across as a continuation of the retarded shit in those posts. I'm not even going to try and defend my statements because reading over them again they're riddled with pompous idiocy that should probably haunt me for years. I could and should have phrased my main fustration - "BROs, you all seem to like this game. I tried to like it but I don't. But when I try to figure out what I didn't like about it everything's good. The hell am I doing wrong?" - in a less confrontational manner. I did something similar for dragon's dogma where after some shitflinging on my part a BROdexian suggested not playing the one class that for inexplicable reasons got shafted through 90% of the game, dumping the NPCs and skipping all sidequests until fights weren't winnable by mashing the same ability over and over. That turned my time with DD from "overhyped shit" to "pretty good for what it is", so I tried the same approach in this thread wihout really considering what I was doing.

But meh. I typed a bunch of retarded shit ITT. Will try to learn from it but there's probably nothing of value to salvage. I'm still baffled why I dislike Dark Souls and kind-of hoping it turns out there's something akin to the "dude, pick a hybrid class and skip past xyz asap to get the good parts" I got for DD. I came into Dark Souls with really high expactations from all the praise it's gotten. I remain pretty dissapointed with what I've seen so far, but the nationality of its developer wasn't really on my mind until I made misguided attempts at being witty at 2am. I did bad and I apologize to the braincells affected by those who read it.

Damned Registrations, Edward_R_Murrow thanks for the suggestions.
I'll sleep on it, finish up arkham city so my attention isn't divided between multiple games, sleep on it some more and give the game another shot on its own merits. With a patch if possible, a different class and rushing through the first couple of areas until it feels like I'm getting hammered. Hopefully the sweet spot in difficulty won't involve obscene HP bloat but time will tell. I think the main reason I didn't get much further DR was that I was getting pretty OCD on exploring every nook and cranny in the early areas. I'll try to give the game a fair shot to be good for what it is, without the mixture of hype and prejudce I gave it the first time around.

 

[Jasede]

I'll try to make a longer post explaining why I think this whole thing is so remarkable tomorrow, if you still want it by then.

 

[Niektory]

I'll sleep on it, finish up arkham city so my attention isn't divided between multiple games, sleep on it some more and give the game another shot on its own merits. With a patch if possible, a different class and rushing through the first couple of areas until it feels like I'm getting hammered. Hopefully the sweet spot in difficulty won't involve obscene HP bloat but time will tell. I think the main reason I didn't get much further DR was that I was getting pretty OCD on exploring every nook and cranny in the early areas. I'll try to give the game a fair shot to be good for what it is, without the mixture of hype and prejudce I gave it the first time around.

There is no HP bloat as long as you focus on offense instead on defense, which is the most fun way to play. Vitality and armor crafting are for pussies.

I was overleveled by the end of the game because of doing all the optional areas. I killed the final boss in 3 spell hits FFS. It's true that the game is easy if you explore everything. Though the nice thing is, leveling up is optional. If you feel it's too easy, just don't spend your souls.

Try doing areas out of order, they'll kick your ass hard. Get the master key at character creation, it'll give you some additional opportunities to get raped.

 

[MicoSelva]

So, I've decided to preorder this game, based on the praise that Crooked Bee faction has been spreading around the Codex for quite a few months already.

I very rarely buy games at release and almost never preorder (I can list all the games I have preordered in my life from memory*), usually prefering to play a pirate version before buying. I don't really know why I got so hyped for this one, but I did, so here's hoping it does not disappoint.

If it does, well, at least it only costs $25 here.

* Baldur's Gate 2, Arcanum**, Witcher 2, Diablo 3***
** even though my PC wasn't able to run it back then
*** a mistake

 

[made]

I'm hyped as well (because I WANT TO BELIEVE) - but that's no reason to betray your principles.

ISO demo first, maybe buy later to try the MP. Though I hear it requires Steam AND Gfwl, in which case - not bloody likely.

 

[Jaedar]

Yeah... demo it first I think, port will likely be so bad it might not even run on some computers.

 

[Dexter]

I'm hyped as well (because I WANT TO BELIEVE) - but that's no reason to betray your principles.

ISO demo first, maybe buy later to try the MP. Though I hear it requires Steam AND Gfwl, in which case - not bloody likely.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Souls-Prepare-Die-Edition/dp/B007X1458W/

Retail version "only" requires GFWL and comes with some additional shit, dno why someone would get the Steam version: