Dark Souls is on Steam

Armenius said:
7. run straight through the hole and kill the boss.
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that last jump trips me up sometimes with having to dodge all those swinging branch arms...I don't mind running from the bonfire to Bed of Chaos...it's not too bad (but you need to activate the hidden bonfire inside that tree)
 
Uh, there is a bonfire in the lava, a short trek, ignore the statues and chaos eater and you are good to go, just in case you do not mean that one.
 
I can only say that dark souls changed the way I viewed games. It can be hard, but most people would call it "fair". Death in this game is a teaching tool to learn what works and what does not. Beating a boss where you died so many times can be oh so satisfying. The game also has a lot of surprising depth in the lore. You might think it to be very shallow in the way the story is presented but the characters have arcs that come through story but mostly through their equipment drops. And finally the world design and interconnectedness is superb.
 
Elf_Boy said:
Never played.

How brutal is it?

Convince me the torture is worth it :)
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it's worth it but it took me around halfway through the first game to understand the mechanics and gameplay...honestly it probably took a complete playthrough...I looked through so many guides and YouTube videos back then to help me...I hated it when I first played it as I was playing the way I played all other rpg/fps games and it was hard as hell...but once the game clicked I loved it and it's now my favorite gaming series of all time...each one of the 3 PC games I have over 1000 hours each of play time...it's an amazing series- level design, enemy design, bosses, environment, weapons, armor, pvp etc...
 
I didn't like Dark Souls at first, but it tends to "click" at some point for a lot of people. For me it was right around the 3rd or 4th boss - in the sewers. Now it's one of my favorite game series' of all time. Once you adjust to playing the first one, you'll be able to hop right in to 2 and 3 as well as Bloodborne. You'll be right at home in Lords of the Fallen and Nioh, too.

The best advice I can give you is to grab everything you can in the cemetery and then go up the stairs on the hill. Seriously, don't even both with the other paths until you get used to the game.
I wouldn't read any walkthroughs right away BUT it can be wise to read a guide on how the game handles leveling up stats and weapons. That can be done spoiler-free and it'll save you some needless confusion.
 
Domingo said:
I didn't like Dark Souls at first, but it tends to "click" at some point for a lot of people. For me it was right around the 3rd or 4th boss - in the sewers.
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I had a couple of attempts to start and quit early on until it clicked. After that, it became one of my all time favorite game series too. Something about the game-play makes combat in nearly all other RPGs seem to simple and boring.
 
the difficulty is also over-stated...once you understand the mechanics the difficulty is not as high as people make it out to be...it's challenging for sure but people who have never played (or only played a little) tend to make it seem like it's impossibly hard when it's not
 
polonyc2 said:
the difficulty is also over-stated...once you understand the mechanics the difficulty is not as high as people make it out to be...it's challenging for sure but people who have never played (or only played a little) tend to make it seem like it's impossibly hard when it's not
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I agree. I think most people go in with the mindset that it's going to play like any other action RPG. I was guilty of this, myself. You just have to slow down and be more observant of both the environment and the enemies.
 
I think what throws a lot of people off with Dark Souls is the speed of the game. After coming from Devil May Cry and (especially) Ninja Gaiden, it's a tough adjustment. Movement is much slower and more deliberate. You also can't freewheel dodge and attack at will, either. Especially early in the game. In most games the speed of your attacks and dodges dictate how you use them, but Dark Souls adds a stamina meter on top of that. It requires you to keep an eye there and on the action, which is pretty unique. I think the different pacing throws people off just as much as the difficulty. In some encounters the programmers DID do a pretty brilliant job of timing enemy attacks and movement with healing time, though. It's almost brilliant how close you can come to healing, yet the bosses attack is 1-2 frames faster.
 
Dark Souls difficulty/learning curve is somewhat like bowling. You throw lots of gutterballs in the beginning, but if you're patient and stay focused (or just start strafing around to the enemy's back constantly, lol), you fall into a groove and start kicking ass. It's that inflection point that hooks you.

The magic moment that hooked me was the first time I parried a Black Knight - that parry "thud" sound and then performing the crit on him, is there anything more bad ass feeling in gaming than parrying an intimidating enemy the first time? Same thing happened with Gundyr - the first boss in DS3. First time I parried him with some peashooter small shield and he dropped to his knees - a real WTF moment, since the guy is like 20 feet tall.
 
I think I'm ready for the remaster...

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Wish they'd rerelease Demons Souls. I liked it more than any of the others. I wanted to like Bloodborne but the framerate makes it hard to look at for very long.

And I wouldn't call all of the series "fair" necessarily . Most of it is fine but then there's the Capra Demon in DS1 where the entire challenge comes from the camera having no idea what to do.
 
Bankie said:
Wish they'd rerelease Demons Souls. I liked it more than any of the others. I wanted to like Bloodborne but the framerate makes it hard to look at for very long.

And I wouldn't call all of the series "fair" necessarily . Most of it is fine but then there's the Capra Demon in DS1 where the entire challenge comes from the camera having no idea what to do.
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Bluepoint Games needs to work on Demon's Souls for their next remaster project...would be epic...they have teased that their next project is another remake, but one even greater in scope than its Shadow of the Colossus remake for PS4...as far as Capra Demon, the camera was fine...it's more the tiny room plus those dogs that make the fight tough initially...once you make it to the stairs the fight gets much easier
 
Andym22 said:
That is pure awesome. I'm the same...played it on the PC (200+ hours) with a mouse and kb before I learned to play these games with the controller. Cannot wait for this to drop for the PS4.
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Thanks! I'll be getting the remaster on PS4. My PC is getting long in the tooth but I had no problems with the original on it maxed out. Those are Gecco statues, they did the $400 collector's edition of DS3 with the Yhorm statue. They're putting out a Black Knight and Bonfire statue. I have Prime 1 Lady Maria from Bloodborne on order too.
 
Bankie said:
Wish they'd rerelease Demons Souls. I liked it more than any of the others. I wanted to like Bloodborne but the framerate makes it hard to look at for very long.

And I wouldn't call all of the series "fair" necessarily . Most of it is fine but then there's the Capra Demon in DS1 where the entire challenge comes from the camera having no idea what to do.
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The difficulty comes from the room size, and that they start attacking you before you regain control of you character after stepping through the fog gate. Especially for newbies, up to this point you never had to fight in such close quarters. But again, like a lot of Dark Souls, if you stay calm and observe the environment you can see that they put a staircase in the room for the sole purpose of bottlenecking Capra and the dogs so you can manage your strategy better.
 
I might be lucky, but I've only died on the Capra Demon once. That's out of 6 different passes. I think I just always noticed the stairs. When he and the dogs start hightailing it at you, that's just my first reaction - get away. I usually just keep circling up the stairs, fall down (hopefully with a falling hit) and repeat. The one time I died his dogs were basically right on top of me from the get go. I couldn't get around them to make it to the stairs. Other than that one fluke, I don't think he has ever been that bad.

The Four Kings is another one I've never had much trouble with. I've certainly died a few times, but that seems to be a long-term stumbling point for a lot of people. IMO the key is just to keep swinging and healing. I don't even really dodge much.

This is all the while I constantly die vs. normal prowling demons and I can guarantee like a dozen deaths against the Bed of Chaos.
 
Domingo said:
I might be lucky, but I've only died on the Capra Demon once. That's out of 6 different passes. I think I just always noticed the stairs. When he and the dogs start hightailing it at you, that's just my first reaction - get away. I usually just keep circling up the stairs, fall down (hopefully with a falling hit) and repeat. The one time I died his dogs were basically right on top of me from the get go. I couldn't get around them to make it to the stairs. Other than that one fluke, I don't think he has ever been that bad.

The Four Kings is another one I've never had much trouble with. I've certainly died a few times, but that seems to be a long-term stumbling point for a lot of people. IMO the key is just to keep swinging and healing. I don't even really dodge much.

This is all the while I constantly die vs. normal prowling demons and I can guarantee like a dozen deaths against the Bed of Chaos.
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I never had issues with Four Kings until my later playthroughs. The time it takes for the extra kings to spawn must be random or something, because sometimes it takes up to 2 minutes and other times it's as little as 30 seconds. I thought that taking a companion in might make the spawn time shorter, but I get the same randomness whether going solo, bringing in a PC, or bringing in Beatrice.
 
Armenius said:
The difficulty comes from the room size, and that they start attacking you before you regain control of you character after stepping through the fog gate. Especially for newbies, up to this point you never had to fight in such close quarters. But again, like a lot of Dark Souls, if you stay calm and observe the environment you can see that they put a staircase in the room for the sole purpose of bottlenecking Capra and the dogs so you can manage your strategy better.
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Yeah, it feels like complete cheese to use the stairs but then the room is so small that you can't even fight him there.
 
Without even knowing about any of the major exploits, I was still able to do some pretty solid damage to him with fireballs atop the stairs. There's a little lip you can stand on where the AI isn't sure exactly what to do to you. You can hit him with a full set of fireballs followed by a falling attack and he'll be at about 1/2 life. I'm guilty of never using throwing items, but those would likely finish him off.
The game borderline forces you to fight using the stairs considering the size of that room. Only those crazy players who never get hit out of rolls can consistently fight him traditionally. You're so tightly squeezed you can barely even see what you're doing.
 
Andym22 said:
There is no cheese when fighting dark souls bosses, only different strategies.
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there are a few cheese techniques...with Manus you can cheese him with arrows from outside the fog gate...with Ceaseless Discharge you can cheese him into getting stuck at a particular spot...
 
polonyc2 said:
there are a few cheese techniques...with Manus you can cheese him with arrows from outside the fog gate...with Ceaseless Discharge you can cheese him into getting stuck at a particular spot...
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Does anyone not do the first kill method against Ceaseless Discharge? Because that way is working as intended. It gets "stuck" because it jumps into the dropoff to Lost Izalith chasing you and catches the ledge, but it can't move back or climb up. Dying causes it to respawn at its original location and forces you to fight it the "normal" way. I don't consider it cheesing unless you're exploiting the game mechanics in a way that was not intended like with your Manus example.
 
AFAIK, you can still do the cheese strategy against Ceaseless if you die, if you run back to where the body is.
 
Bankie said:
Wish they'd rerelease Demons Souls. I liked it more than any of the others. I wanted to like Bloodborne but the framerate makes it hard to look at for very long.

And I wouldn't call all of the series "fair" necessarily . Most of it is fine but then there's the Capra Demon in DS1 where the entire challenge comes from the camera having no idea what to do.
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turn off auto wall recovery in the options for camera behavior. everyone should do this.
 
Kain said:
AFAIK, you can still do the cheese strategy against Ceaseless if you die, if you run back to where the body is.
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I don't think it's cheese since the developer put the animation for him hanging onto the edge.
 
Seems like it's basically going to work like the dsfix/hd textures version of the game without the related bugs. I can't really complain too much about that.
Plus, that version of the game doesn't run well once you go above 1080p, so there's that too.
 
jiminator said:
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Looks amazing. Can't wait to play through it again on 4 different platforms :D.
Domingo said:
Seems like it's basically going to work like the dsfix/hd textures version of the game without the related bugs. I can't really complain too much about that.
Plus, that version of the game doesn't run well once you go above 1080p, so there's that too.
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I didn't have issues running the original with DSFix at 2560x1440, but I always kept the game locked at 30 FPS. I was also never satisfied with any of the textures that came out as the changed to aesthetics too much, so I always ended up sticking with the original textures despite how low res they were.
 
Armenius said:
Looks amazing. Can't wait to play through it again on 4 different platforms :D.

I didn't have issues running the original with DSFix at 2560x1440, but I always kept the game locked at 30 FPS. I was also never satisfied with any of the textures that came out as the changed to aesthetics too much, so I always ended up sticking with the original textures despite how low res they were.
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I can't do 30fps. I just can't do it. I tried, but like most other PC games running at that framerate it just feels sluggish. Without Dsfix I doubt I could have even played the original game. I just toggled back to 30fps whenever needing to make a longer jump. Luckily there are only a couple spots where it's completely necessary.
60fps and anything over 1080p is shaky. I tried OC'ing both my video card and CPU further and I can't pull anything better than the 40's at 4K.
 
holy crap the remastered version is a huge improvement (graphics wise)...the textures, lighting and particle effects are major upgrades...not to mention the 60 fps...so much more then I was expecting...From Software never disappoints!

 
polonyc2 said:
hopefully From Software will finally give us full details on all the improvements, pricing etc...they've been really quiet on details up to this point
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Well, I for one cannot wait! It's been a long time since I sunk 500+ hours into Dark Souls 1 on the PC. Since then I have played all the other Souls/Born games and while they were fantastic in their own right none of them had quite the same magic for me as exploring the world of DS1...the dread of blight town, the fear of being cursed, the anxiety of the boss fights, the joy of the shortcuts and the interconnected worlds. I'm ready to start anew on the PS4 and play with a new generation of fans playing for the first time.
 
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