Dark Souls 3

Is parrying even fun? I see these parry god videos where all the player does is stand in front of a boss and cycle between L2 and R1 button presses. I think it's much more intense to perform the whole song and dance with a boss, running around the arena like a madman and rolling around like you're Sonic the friggin hedgehog.
 
TwistedMetalGear said:
Is parrying even fun? I see these parry god videos where all the player does is stand in front of a boss and cycle between L2 and R1 button presses. I think it's much more intense to perform the whole song and dance with a boss, running around the arena like a madman and rolling around like you're Sonic the friggin hedgehog.
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It is an available tactic to use. Fun really doesn't enter the equation. I just see it as one of the most effective ways to deal with enemies that are susceptible to it. The riposte after parry deals a significant amount of damage.
 
TwistedMetalGear said:
Is parrying even fun? I see these parry god videos where all the player does is stand in front of a boss and cycle between L2 and R1 button presses. I think it's much more intense to perform the whole song and dance with a boss, running around the arena like a madman and rolling around like you're Sonic the friggin hedgehog.
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I find it very satisfying. Especially when you do it to a really tough enemy type, because then you've just trivialized all its fearsome might with a single button press. It is definitely a risk vs reward kind of thing.

I can see how it might not be fun for someone not willing to put in the time to learn how to do it. Parrying in general can have a steep learning curve, even across Souls games. But I'd argue the payoff is worth it.

With exception to Elden Ring. Parrying in Elden Ring is for show. Probably the least efficient and effective way to fight anything with a large health bar. Elden Ring gives you so many tools and permutations to trivialize a fight. There's just an overwhelming amount of competition to parrying there.

My second playthrough of Dark Souls 3 was from start to finish with the Sellsword Twinblades, and I had a blast. I did that run from start to finish without parrying or using a shield in general. So you can definitely still have fun avoiding parrying altogether.
 
I beat the nameless king! Suck it Fromsoft.

Worst first phase of a boss ever. I was fighting the camera more than the boss.

Second phase was fun but not nearly as hard as the community made it out to be. He leaves you plenty of time to heal and doesn't seem to input read like other bosses. And unlike Gundyr, I'm actually able to get some hits in before he retaliates. There was even room to be a little greedy and take double swings with my claymore.
 
TwistedMetalGear said:
I beat the nameless king! Suck it Fromsoft.

Worst first phase of a boss ever. I was fighting the camera more than the boss.

Second phase was fun but not nearly as hard as the community made it out to be. He leaves you plenty of time to heal and doesn't seem to input read like other bosses. And unlike Gundyr, I'm actually able to get some hits in before he retaliates. There was even room to be a little greedy and take double swings with my claymore.
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Yeah, Nameless King's second phase is a fixed cycle of attack patterns, so you just need to be patient. My issue with the first phase isn't the camera, but how messed up the hitbox is on his wyvern.
 
As the ashen ones say after a long hard battle, "I did it!" Final boss down. Like Elden Ring, there wasn't much of an ending. But I guess you don't play Fromsoft games for their endings.

I managed to squeeze a hefty 50 hours out of the base game. Hardest boss for me by far was Gundyr (without parry). I found the rest of the bosses to be pretty manageable. Favorite boss was the dancer. That fight was just magical. Worst boss was wolnir and the first phase of nameless king.

Bring on the DLC! Can't wait to revisit this thread and rage when I can't beat sister friede. Or maybe I'll come into this thread saying "that wasn't so bad." Stay tuned.
 
TwistedMetalGear said:
Bring on the DLC! Can't wait to revisit this thread and rage when I can't beat sister friede. Or maybe I'll come into this thread saying "that wasn't so bad." Stay tuned.
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Sister Friede is an epic fight...right up there with Malenia from Elden Ring as the toughest Souls bosses for me...I can beat them pretty easily now but I don't look at difficulty based on today but instead when I first fought them
 
Painted world of Ariandel is so cool. I had no idea it would be so open. This feels more like Elden Ring than Dark Souls. I spoke to Friede. She seems innocent enough? How can this cute little nun be a tough boss? There's also a mini person painting a picture upstairs so that's kinda neat. I first tried the gravetender. Not sure that warranted being called a boss.
 
Ok, got up to Friede. I can see why this is a pain in the ass.

First two phases aren't bad at all IMO. They're more an exercise of patience than anything.

Third phase I can't figure out. And it's really annoying to keep wasting 10 minutes in the first two phases to get back to the third phase.
 
wtf I had no idea you could fight Father Ariandel instead of Friede in the second phase. This just became the easiest fight ever.

Once I figured that out I was going into the third phase with 12+ health flasks and I just R1 spammed her to death.

No ember, no shields, just pure R1 spam with some roll dodging thrown in.

I'm actually disappointed.
 
Sometimes you just find something that clicks. Doesn’t mean she’s not a total pita. I finally beat her eventually but hell, I even struggled with her first phase.
 
TwistedMetalGear said:
Ok, got up to Friede. I can see why this is a pain in the ass.

First two phases aren't bad at all IMO. They're more an exercise of patience than anything.

Third phase I can't figure out. And it's really annoying to keep wasting 10 minutes in the first two phases to get back to the third phase.
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I posted a video of my fight against Friede a few years back in this thread...was the hardest boss of any Souls game at the time...the key to her 3rd phase is tracking her once she goes invisible...easy backstabs...weird part about all these Souls bosses is that once you finally beat them they seem pretty easy and I don't understand why they were so tough to begin with :eek:

 
There should be some kind of punishment for button mashing though. At one point I hit her 5 times in a row and she's just standing there taking it. My ol' pal Gundy would never allow that.
 
Rant time.

Midir is quite possibly the worst boss fight in this entire game. I thought the camera was bad on nameless king, but this is a whole new level of trash. The only lock on point is his head? Why not his arms or legs which are on ground level? Sheesh I don't even know if I want to continue fighting him. But I guess I have to for sake of completeness.

Also, I don't know why people consider Ringed City better than Ashes of Ariandel. Ringed City is not so much a city as it is a big staircase leading to yet another swamp. Plus the enemies are terrible. Just endless projectiles being spammed at you from the angel, the archers, and those damn turtle things.

On the plus side, Gael was a top 10 boss.
 
TwistedMetalGear said:
The only lock on point is his head? Why not his arms or legs which are on ground level?
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Because the 'lock on' feature is optional, not mandatory, and many fights in Souls games (and Souls-likes) are way more manageable without using it. If you're using 'lock on' in every single big boss fight, you're making it tougher on yourself for some of them.

 
TwistedMetalGear said:
Midir is quite possibly the worst boss fight in this entire game. I thought the camera was bad on nameless king, but this is a whole new level of trash. The only lock on point is his head? Why not his arms or legs which are on ground level? Sheesh I don't even know if I want to continue fighting him. But I guess I have to for sake of completeness
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I liked Midir a lot...one of the better dragon bosses in a Souls game...I liked him better than the Sinh boss fight in DS2
 
I think I struggled more with Midir than I did Friede. At the very least both kicked my ass equally a ton of times. I lost to Gael a bunch of times, too. I think at that point of the game I was also burned out on tough bosses, so that didn't help. With Friede, I ran into the same situation as TMG's video. Sometimes you get lucky and an enemy will keep trying the same attack over and over. In the case of Friede, you can interrupt her melee attacks repeatedly if you're swinging the right weapon. The times I've beaten her solo were times I lucked into that pattern. Other times she'll spam stuff that's tough to counter or punish over and over. With Midir, I hated that there seemed to be no way to make that fight shorter or easier. I tried everything and I started looking for help videos, and they were all long and involved simply playing really well. Maybe there are better cheese strats now, but when the game was new, you just had to play really damn well for like 10 minutes.
 
with any Souls boss, once you recognize and memorize the patterns and movesets they become pretty easy (solo with no co-op or summons help)...it just takes awhile sometimes and many deaths to memorize it...Midir has a huge health bar so it is a long fight

I am curious about beating Melania in Elden Ring with something other than a melee build...with a tanky shield she's pretty easy now but I'm not sure I could beat her with any other type of build
 
polonyc2 said:
with any Souls boss, once you recognize and memorize the patterns and movesets they become pretty easy (solo with no co-op or summons help)...it just takes awhile sometimes and many deaths to memorize it...Midir has a huge health bar so it is a long fight
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There is some truth to this. I beat DS3 + DLC and fought all bosses with a lvl 56 cap and purposely didn't use cheese. This made most of the later bosses practically one-shot me. Why limit my level? I did it for the challenge. Because at some point you end up dumping so many points into stats that you trivialize the fight in question. And no boss in any Souls game is invulnerable to cheese.
 
"I did it"

My strategy was all wrong. I was staying underneath him and swiping at his legs when I should've been in front of him swiping at his head.

I still don't think it's a good boss. These gargantuans mess with the camera so much. Even playing with camera unlocked it's sometimes hard to get a read on their moves because they're right up in your face taking up your whole entire screen. And there's also times when they back you into a wall and you can't see shit. The auto-adjusting camera makes playing unlocked a pain too.

But that's a wrap my friends. Dark Souls 3 is done. I wish the DLC had more of an ending. Some reward for all of this effort would be nice. I don't even get to see the painting that the mini person creates?

Great game overall. But I do prefer Elden Ring. Lots of quality of life improvements in that game, plus Torrent, the open world, and endless options for making a boss easier.
 
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TwistedMetalGear said:
Rant time.

Midir is quite possibly the worst boss fight in this entire game. I thought the camera was bad on nameless king, but this is a whole new level of trash. The only lock on point is his head? Why not his arms or legs which are on ground level? Sheesh I don't even know if I want to continue fighting him. But I guess I have to for sake of completeness.

Also, I don't know why people consider Ringed City better than Ashes of Ariandel. Ringed City is not so much a city as it is a big staircase leading to yet another swamp. Plus the enemies are terrible. Just endless projectiles being spammed at you from the angel, the archers, and those damn turtle things.

On the plus side, Gael was a top 10 boss.
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I like Ring City because you're descending through the remains of the realms from the first two games to emerge in the one that the primordial serpents came from. That is despite the whole DLC being a huge pain in the ass.
Domingo said:
I think I struggled more with Midir than I did Friede. At the very least both kicked my ass equally a ton of times. I lost to Gael a bunch of times, too. I think at that point of the game I was also burned out on tough bosses, so that didn't help. With Friede, I ran into the same situation as TMG's video. Sometimes you get lucky and an enemy will keep trying the same attack over and over. In the case of Friede, you can interrupt her melee attacks repeatedly if you're swinging the right weapon. The times I've beaten her solo were times I lucked into that pattern. Other times she'll spam stuff that's tough to counter or punish over and over. With Midir, I hated that there seemed to be no way to make that fight shorter or easier. I tried everything and I started looking for help videos, and they were all long and involved simply playing really well. Maybe there are better cheese strats now, but when the game was new, you just had to play really damn well for like 10 minutes.
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Pestilent Mist. It's like Demi from the FF games where the amount of damage dealt is proportional to the target's HP. Unlike Demi, the target can be killed by Pestilent Mist. Since Midir has a huge health bar it's particularly effective. You still need to watch his attack patterns so your cast is effective. If you get him to stay in the AOE it will cause 2,000 damage per cast, which makes the fight only last around 3 minutes. If you want to stick to melee he is weak against the Wolf Knight's and Farron Greatswords.
 
chameleoneel said:
The FOV on this way too tight. Also, they look at the ground most of the time.
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This is why I don't pay any attention to random Unreal Engine exercises people post. Even if it were an actual playable version of the game in UE, why would I want to play it over the official release?
 
Armenius said:
This is why I don't pay any attention to random Unreal Engine exercises people post. Even if it were an actual playable version of the game in UE, why would I want to play it over the official release?
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I think they're better approached as proof of concept, "what if" material. It's not trying to be end user playable, but intended more as inspiration. That's my read.

FROMSOFT and Bandai Namco saw the video as well. On the slight chance it made them consider or reconsider something like remastering the whole Dark Souls series in UE5, or commissioning it and subbing it out to someone like BluePoint, then one could argue that the proof of concept did its job. Or maybe it inspires some other offshoot.
 
First play through. Wrecking pretty much everything with a Heavy Broadsword +3 and crest shield with Lothric Knight armor. Broadsword is amazing; fast swings that stun lock normal-sized enemies and has an R2 that reaches forward quite far and can stagger and when 2hing the R1 is a fast attack that cleaves and hits everything within like 3 yards and 90 degrees to each side. It's like roleplaying a Vitamix. With the heavy armor I can facetank pretty much everything. Just past the Big Momma Mage boss. I'm sure it will get harder but it's pretty easy going so far.

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Lvl49 and still using the Heavy Broadsword but now at +6. My strategy has been to explore the maps fully, beat the boss, then put my sign down to help someone murder the level and boss. There's not too many people online though; would have been cool to have played it when it was big.

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27 hours. Level 69. Current location: Anor Londo. Biggest cheese so far: Fire Demon in the Catacombs can't fit though a doorway.

Irithyll was pretty exciting; lots of coop and invasions.Pontiff took me 2 tries (though I did practice it once where the host died). Silver knights everywhere and 2 beasts in a pit then the ole Anor Londo sniper run. I was assisting a fellow sunbro and we were invaded twice in the span of 5 minutes here. The first invader got stuck on a long ladder between my bro and me and fell to his death. The second invader was a dagger build on the roof with all the Silver Knights; the enemy was weaving in and out of the knights and I watched my partner run at him only to catch an arrow to the face from a knight. When that happened I charged the knight and phantom to get them off my partner so he could flask up. We battled this one phantom all the way across the rooftops through what must have been 8 or 9 Silver Knights before we were able to box him into a corner to dispatch him. We made it all the way to Aldritch but I was low on health and out of estus and quickly discovered that while the pillars do block the little purple magic balls they do not block the big purple ball so our fellowship ended there. I missed out on my sonbro medal because those invaders wore down my estus reserves but it was such a fun time that I just laughed when the purple kamehameha destroyed the pillar and melted my last 60 hp. Back in my world I made my way up through Anor Londo only to get killed by the demoncatspider that also killed me in the Deeps.

The vistas in this game are something else. When I reached the top of Anor Londo and looked down I saw that the valley is WAY the fuck down there and all of those places that I had fought through are there, way off in the distance. I hadn't really thought about how all of these areas just flowed into each other. The swamp was 2 days ago but I feel like I've been on an impossibly long journey to get here. It's insane; the zones are massive and take forever to explore yet they just fly by. I don't know if anything is after Anor Londo or if I'll be exploring the dungeon below next but I'm assuming that the end is approaching. It started off a little slow but it's moving at a breakneck pace now. The XP curve is weirdly different from most games; 1-40 are kind of slow going then after 40 you are gaining so many souls that you're adding 4 or 5 levels at a time.

Incredible game.
 
Have you all heard of this DS3 Archthrones mod? Apparently it's a complete overhaul and requires both DLC. More info and link to vids here: https://archthrones.com/

There's a demo available on Nexus, might give it a shot tomorrow.
 
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