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I think he just means the pre-order artbook or whatever, not in-game content.

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Hitting walls and such even contributes toward diminishing your weapon's durability!

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I'm pretty sure there's some functional amount of invincibility in that roll. Enough to bypass just about anything when timed well enough.

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http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=18932

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Guys you realize co-op is kind of a balancing tool in and of itself, right? You don't need to go get Final Axe or start a whole new game because a boss is hard.

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Not "every time you start a new game" if you mean every time you make a file. But every loop of one character's New Game + cycles gets progressively harder as it goes along, yeah.

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Narrow ledges/staircases I'll give you (on 4-2 at least), but there isn't much reason it wouldn't be useful in hallways. As I think I posted a few times already, I'm pretty sure you're invincible for an appreciable chunk of your roll. It's a timing thing as much if not more than a spacing thing. Bait out an attack and then capitalize on their recovery. This works pretty consistently throughout the game!

The lock on isn't too bad. It mostly screws me over when it jumps to another target right after I've killed the one I'm locked on and then the camera quickly changes and potentially undermines the direction I meant to roll or whatever. But I don't think it's ever really gotten me killed or anything.

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Man just roll with the punches. Getting worked up over that stuff on your first playthrough seems to miss the point to me. Just make an experience of it, man.

And FWIW Adilegian I've really had nothing but overall positive experiences with BPs. Even if things go south you'll most likely at least get a good story to tell out of it because this is just that kind of game.

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chill out on the good av/sig combos itt.

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grey and swollen demon's souls can both be exchanged for something unique. none of the boss souls should be consumed until a much later cycle because the amount they reap is basically peanuts and some of them can be exchanged for more than one thing which means you'll want to use them again on ng+ too.

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xposting from news thread: Dark Souls

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Do we know they're not publishing it? Honestly I'm pretty sure the naming convention was intentional and obvious enough. While the game certainly isn't as drastic a "spiritual sequel" as the jump between King's Field and Demon's Souls, they're still making an effort to distance themselves from the strict narrative constraints/world/premise of the original game while building off of a lot of its key ideas. This title does that while still being perfectly recognizable as a related product.

Honestly I was really hoping this was exactly the sort of follow-up they were going to do and anyway I think Demon's Souls 2 sounds kind of tacky for this sort of thing.

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I don't know. I don't think it's especially important to have more than an intuitive understanding of Demon's Souls' mechanics. You can get a lot of mileage out of an informal relationship with all the systems hiding underneath the hood, really. In fact I generally think it's for the best to not get too hung up on the numbers in this game.

Also, before the official guide even existed everyone just used the wiki, which was an aggregate of all the experiential knowledge gained and gathered by the player pool. People figured stuff out and compiled a resource for anyone who cared to know. The game didn't necessitate that this thing existed, it just lent itself to that sort of behavior. In any case the wiki ended up being about as comprehensive as the official guide ever did, which kind of makes your complaint look silly! People did figure all this stuff out without the game telling them how. A lot of the fun was specifically in the process of making sense of all the arcane rules involved in something as seemingly straightforward as upgrading your weapon. All the same, coming back to my original sentiment, I think you can end up more or less making something satisfactory without even totally understanding all the specific requirements, so it doesn't much matter anyway.

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I wasn't really trying to say that it was unique to DS at all. I was just saying that if we figured everything out before the official guide existed anyway, Toptube's criticism of the game re: the transparency of its systems doesn't really hold up.

But since you bring it up I will say I've never encountered a wiki for a game that was actually of any use to players before. I'm sure there are decent ones (probably mostly for RPGs) and I just haven't run into them, but you generally just have dull character lists or plot synopses or timelines or relationship charts or whatever. DS's wiki was the guide-before-the-guide and I doubt that happens nearly as often or with nearly as concentrated a collaborative effort, and I'm sure Demon's Souls being the kind of game it is contributed to that.

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toptube I read those posts and I wasn't going to respond because I know it'd either sound like I was just engaging in dismissive shitposting or I was adhering to this Demon's Souls Can Do No Wrong doctrine, but if I'm being perfectly honest I just kept thinking: "so what?"

the thing is that if you're in a position to really sincerely give a fuck about the difference between Quality X or Crescent Z and are building a serious PVP character or whatever, you're going to be referring to extramedia resources whether it's because you "have to" or not. at that point it hardly matters that the information is not in the game itself. and if you're just sort of feeling your way through a playthrough intuitively, it definitely doesn't matter. I understand that you're trying to make a distinction between things you feel are just fundamentally fair and convenient for the player and things that actively contribute to the game's themes and mystique, but I feel like it all falls comfortably enough within the latter to not feel like a glaring omission and I don't see it as an objective failing. on the contrary I think it might encourage the cultivation of a Nippon-Ichi like obsession with maximum numerical efficiency to its own detriment.

demon's souls confidently adheres to a philosophy of apathetic design with regard to the way it provides opportunity for the player to explore the game the way one chooses but without actively enabling them in any particular way. demon's souls' menus say: "experiment, proceed, survive". disgaea's menus say: "get to level 9,999 because that's what you do". it's subtle in execution but I think it's ultimately an important contributor to the game straddling the line between action and RPG as well as it does. the other most important nuance it wrestles with is between being a singleplayer and multiplayer game. that the game is as much experienced by the individual as it is built from the ground up by a community is a big part of it. it's not an oversight that we might be inclined to look to our peers for guidance on matters like these. its in a certain respect to the game's credit.

edit: on the other hand I just got done playing FFXIII today (lol) and I more or less had the same issues you're having here about the way that game handles certain aspects of its weapon upgrade system. they're different games, though, and are trying to do completely different things. that feels like enough to me to justify how I feel about it in either case.

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yeah failure seems pretty unfair. unless you've some unquenchable desire to get the platinum trophy and its accompanying potential hassles I think it mostly just gives the game texture and character without explicitly getting in your way very often at all.

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well: they have consistently done a holiday event since the game's release and they announced a few weeks ago that the servers were just extended into 2012. so yeah, okay, there's a new game, but i don't think them supporting the old game just because they can (or to help justify the servers having been extended) is worse than not doing it at all? there'll be more events. doesn't really hurt anybody.

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if you would rather not a.) engage or b.) outmaneuver the manta rays, the thief ring should leave you nearly undetectable to them

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to be fair you don't really need to see them. as i recall there is an audio telegraph, right?

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here's the update as it appeared in the email they sent out, nice and big so no one misses it

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you can absolutely run past without taking damage. i mean i don't know if you want me to link a specific instructive example of this but that's certainly what i did.

the funny thing is that in the youtube video i found, this player highly emphasizes vitality over endurance, which is something i've never done until my most recent dark souls character.

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also: i'm not sure about this whole trying to talk about demon's vs. dark's difficulty in some universal capacity irrespective of individual players' builds, consulting of outside help, time spent online vs. offline and/or in co-op/against invaders, play styles, patch version, etc., thing. there are too many variables to consider to boil the issue down to whether or not a boss is "a joke" or if one room has three enemies against the other game's two.

if i pick an int-focused royal with a crescent falchion+3000 and stand around waiting for my mp to refill every four steps and co-op maneaters the first time i even encounter them then i'm probably going to get a game about as easy as any hypothetical dark souls playthrough.

not that i don't find those more general differences interesting or worth talking about, i'm just surprised it's been limited to that and also think we probably shouldn't try to draw too many conclusions from them.

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