[TXTSWORD]

No need to come down on wolfteam, He isn't entirely wrong in what he's saying.

Someone asked about tips for a beginner? When you find soul items that can be redeemed for souls - which are your exp and cash combined into a single value - hold onto the items until you're ready to buy stats or something. So as not to lose any souls needlessly. Other than that, just experiment and have fun. The learning how to handle a game like this can be a big part of the fun.

[remote]

Guhhhhhh what I wouldn't give for a bonfire. Got past the boar, but there are tons of huge skeleton knights guarding a boss after that.

This game is going to make me cry.

Have yet to see a black phantom or anything like that. So far this is great, but I have yet to see some of the key things that made Demon's Souls one of my all-time favorites.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Sniper Honeyviper]

Can you describe these key things for someone who hasn't played the game, remote?

[remote]

... Do you want me to recap the entire Demon's Souls thread for you?

Maybe later, if you don't want to go read that. Could take me a while, and I'm kinda playin' this for now. :B
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Sniper Honeyviper]

Not necessary, just mention the good things from Demon's that Dark doesn't have.

[analogos]

kind of disappointed that they didn't include a means of consuming an entire stock of souls this time around. i mean i can appreciate that they want every action to hold a tangible consequence but it's pretty obvious that under normal circumstances you're obviously going to clear the area of enemies and go hang out at a bonfire at nearly nonexistent risk (of anything other than invasion (and even then you have to be online (come to think of it, are any of you guys playing offline?))) and at that point it's just a bit of a cumbersome waste of time.

[Sniper Honeyviper]

Okay, that is a legitimate issue!

I got a few of the red rocks that let you invade others' games, but there doesn't seem to be a place to use them? I haven't been invaded myself.

[diplo]

[remote]

[remote]

[Sniper Honeyviper]

Yeah, I guess I shouldn't hear too much about Demon's before I've played this a good amount. Don't want to sour the experience.

[analogos]

[thestage]

Wow, this collector's edition blows. My "art book" is all jacked up, too. If this had cost a dime more than the standard game I'd be pissed.

[Broco]

[thestage]

man, 1-1 hooked me straight up

[jjsimpso]

Wondering if I should cancel my CE 'release date delivery' order from amazon and just pick this up local. Current status is 'shipping soon'.
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PSN: TaipeiGamer

[Moogs]

This game is terrifying.

[spectralsound]

i don't think i have ever felt so thoroughly defeated by a videogame. not even Demon's Souls.

mission accomplished, i guess? i'm predicting that, like Demon's Souls, i will like the game much more when i figure out just what in the world i'm supposed to do
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[Flylighter]

Day 1 impressions:

There are a lot of things that need sorted out. The most frustrating is some sort of bug (lag-induced, maybe?) where you go to attack an enemy and it won't go off until 1-2 seconds later. The whole game doesn't lag out, you can still move and the enemy will still move/attack also, but then all of a sudden your attack will go off at the wrong moment, likely getting you punished for it. Like, I'll go to backstab a dude and nothing will happen, he'll spin around so I'll raise my shield to block his attack, and then all of a sudden my attack will go off and I get clobbered! It's terrible in a game this unforgiving.

They also need to fix whatever abysmal matchmaking system is in place right now. Instead of an invasion stone they give you little shards for invading, and they get used when you invade. This is fine, except that if the invasion fails it consumes the shard anyways. You're given four shards, and I failed to find someone to invade on three of them, which I find impossible to believe with this many people playing on release day. The second shard of four succeeded, however, and I invaded the world of someone who I can only assume was cheating. I was level 15-ish. I walk in and this chick is doing -cartwheels- in the heaviest armor I've ever seen, she looked like a metal yeti. Huge two-hand weapon, and she has the fastest tumble speed (in this game, it seems to be 25% of equip burden or less). I land a hit on her, and it does 3 damage. I then get one-shotted.

I'm enjoying the monster combat a lot, though! I went pretty far down the path with the actual skeletons not realizing there was another way to go, and ended up getting a shield that came in very handy against a forest boss. I've killed every tough enemy the game has thrown at me so far, probably some OCD throwback to Demon's Souls. The toughest enemy I've fought so far was probably the one right after you find the blacksmith. Yes, there's a blacksmith. I bought the repair kit thinking there wasn't going to be one, but there you go. At least I can repair at all the bonfires now!

The halberd's not as awesome as it was in Demon's Souls.

Anyways, I'm hoping to find a place to get more invasion stones tomorrow, and to have them function and not pit me up against cheaters/level 150 characters. I don't know how to tell what my equivalent of character tendency is right now, but I expect it to do towards Bad Person tomorrow! Which is sort of a bummer because I found the thing that lets me make weapons for Good People.
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I'm on Steam! ----- I'm on Youtube!

[hyouko]

The game is hard, no question, but I'm slowly chipping away at it. The spear-wielding hollow soldiers are giving me a lot of grief, and I see notes recommending that I kick them; how do I do that? The game never bothered to explain the controls for that, so far as I can tell.

Also, something that I've found highly useful for early-game play: If you make a suicide run down through the graveyard where the skeletons live, you can pick up a number of decent weapons and items, including a zweihander and a winged spear. After boosting my dexterity a bit, I'm rocking the latter, and it's made a number of the enemies - particularly the poisonous rats - more manageable.

I do wish the game wasn't quite so stingy in handing out bonfires. After killing off the first boss and a subsequent mini-boss, I was really hoping for a place to refuel. No dice so far.

[remote]

[remote]

[TXTSWORD]

[klj5j6li]

I really don't get why they removed the Nexus. A big seamless world is kind of a cool idea I guess, but so far it's just led a lot of backtracking and confusion.

[Focus]

how did i get this extra humanity? did i get it from leveling up? :c
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[glossolalia]

well i'm enjoying it. i picked bandit and haven't switched any of my equipment yet. seems like minor enemies die a little more easily than in demon's souls (although that could just be the bandit axe) but they are a lot more persistent in following you. i just got chased pretty far into the undead parish before falling off some scaffolding in panic. i'm not missing the nexus at all; it feels like it could go anywhere, and i really like that. granted, i haven't felt compelled to backtrack yet.

one really bullshit death: on my way down the stairs to escape the dragon, just as i was about to go through the door (which is already pretty far down the stairs) i jumped when i meant to roll and somehow just barely got caught by another burst of fire that didn't even look like it touched my character. and poison is pretty punishing. but overall it doesn't seem any harder to me than it was at this point in demon's souls.

[remote]

Holy shit, the fucking Bell Gargoyle. Reminiscent of a fight from Demon's Souls, but... uh, bigger.

I only meant I missed the atmosphere of the Nexus, I guess. But then, I can play Demon's Souls any time, and I'm liking the way new areas in this game become all interconnected as you explore. There's actually not much backtracking or confusion at all after you persist and find yourself back in familiar territory.

So yeah, I think I'm getting somewhere. The only equipment I've changed is my weapon, which was switched from a longsword to a morning star and now a battle axe, and my shield, which is currently a shield one of the Hollow dropped, but I have a better knight's shield that is still just a bit too heavy for me.

This feels a bit more like what I'd want out of a 3D Metrovania. Not that I really want a 3D Metrovania, because I have this. But, you know.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[analogos]

i'm pretty sure i have not at all experienced this purported lag/glitch issue y'all are on about.

---

i feel like i wasted today's efforts on stubbornness. i think the bonfire system has some influence on the way i conceptualize "progress". i kept trying to get away with figuring out how to brute force my way through either sprinting to the next checkpoint and reestablishing from there or praying i'd at least come into possession of some new equipment before dying -- dying basically being a given. like, it's not that i didn't want to slow down and think about what i was doing, i just knew i didn't want to do it yet, so i kept running my head into the wall to little avail. i guess i'm going to have to do something resembling grinding. in any case i definitely didn't play demon's this irresponsibly, and i guess i've learned my lesson at this point.

somehow i ended up triggering a flag that opened up a shortcut for me and i'm not entirely sure how, but if not for that i'd probably say that i'd done myself more harm than good today.

[analogos]

actually i think i just regret my character/class decision and might want to restart before i'm in too deep

but

[costel]

Dark Souls is the living embodiment of oppression. Zen and the art of death. It's everything I ever wanted it to be. Perfect fatalism.

Anyways, I haven't been invaded yet, nor have I found a way to co-op with anyone, I'm sure the item is around somewhere.

Playing as a thief, using the Estoc and riposte on everything. I cannot beat the Taurus Demon, don't know if it's the environment, or I'm too low level.
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[remote]

[remote]

[analogos]

wanderer (about as non-committal as it gets, i think). i felt kind of rushed at the character creation screen because i had an audience, to be honest. i knew i didn't want to exploit the ways magic and projectiles were as convenient as they were in demon's souls, but i also knew how the magic system had changed so i thought it'd be interesting to still leave myself open to the possibility of exploring the way offensive magic works now. i've also been somewhat infatuated with the idea of getting through one of these games with a heavy tank-like character (a la nedge), but as i recall the knight's base stats were pretty poor compared to the wanderer. it might have been the sort of thing that works out better in the long run, though. so yeah, i just found the middle ground between those things.

anyway i booted the game back up for a bit after posting and--yeah, i was just playing like an idiot. i adopted my more conservative demon's souls playstyle and things seem to have immediately improved.

[armed police catrider]

wait does class choice actually make a difference beyond starting equipment this time around?

rent cleaned me out this month and i'm having to resist obsessing over this game until saturday. grrrrrrrr

[analogos]

it's about the same, but i think it had at least a little more influence in demon's than you're giving it credit for. i mean, picking royal was pretty much a free ride after all.

also i think i just realized i might have been partly wrong about soul consumption. just noticed that if you mash square to drink from the flask it'll buffer/queue up additional sips in rapid succession. might work the same for souls but i don't have any on hand to test at the moment. anyone care to confirm?

[remote]

I pretty much didn't even look at the wanderer this time. It was the first class I chose in Demon's, and after about an hour of that I started over with a knight. This time, I felt like the knight's beginning stats were weaker than the warrior's, even at one soul level higher. So the warrior seemed like the obvious choice for a melee weapons class in heavy armor. The bandit probably would've been a great choice, too... maybe even better. I regret not taking the bandit's key as my starting bonus item instead of a few measly consumables.

[DJ]

So am I the only one playing as a Pyromancer?

I actually started as a Deprived for amusement value and/or to see how long before it would drive me insane, and wound up playing for about 2 1/2 hours before rerolling as my "main" character.

Was talking to a friend who was annoyed that there's "no way" to avoid the burning barrel trap when you're going up the stairs near the end of the upper part of undead village. On the off chance anyone else got killed by that and was wondering if it's avoidable, it is! Spoiler: Roll through the crack in the railing to the left about halfway up the steps -- you'll fall and land on a very small rocky outcropping instead of plummeting to your death. Do note that the skeleton who kicked the barrel down the stairs will usually hop down to join you, but it's pretty easy to just kick him off the ledge once he does. After that, get a running start and hop across to a hole in the far wall, and that'll take you back to the town proper. Also note there's a Black Knight with his back turned up ahead. You can leave him be if you want as he can pretty handily rip you apart, but if you do kill him, he's guarding a pretty useful ring.

A lot of people seem unaware that you can jump, for some reason. Or sprint. Not sure why because they tell you right at the beginning.

The again this is mostly going off of comments on the GameFaqs boards so I dunno.

Also, hey, I'm actually listed in the manual! Means I don't have to beat the game to fish my name out of the credits to win drinking bets.
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[thestage]

Poison sure does last a long time!

I'm a big fat knight. So far I basically just want to roll, but WHATEVER

I haven't used humanity yet. Should I? I don't get it.

The main thing I miss about no Nexus, and from Demon's in general: the maiden. When you leveled up in Demon's you're talking to this weird looking chick chanting catchy things with a cool voice; in Dark you just hit accept and nothing happens :( Also the Nexus was really pretty.

[glossolalia]

i was kinda annoyed that they copied the whiny depressed hub guy voice actor and all, but i guess i won't be seeing him much anyway.

[boojiboy7]

I thought about rolling Pyro, but ended up going with a warrior. I am enjoying the Undead Castle a lot, and the way you beat that boss on the wall was pretty darn fun.

[Focus]

i really don't miss the nexus at all! everything sort of felt like a checklist, but in dark souls, i'm very much enjoying the PLOD ON that is more or less constantly in my mind. i think i got too excited when i found a shortcut from a seemingly distant area, back to a bonfire. i enjoy this web more than any archstone.

pleasant surprises (also spoilers, i suppose):

summoned my first co-op friend, right outside of a white door with the message "IMMINENT DEMON" thought it would be ok, but turns out it was a horribly, horribly cramped space with a few blood wolves and giant biped capra demon. we almost got him, too! the space of the area was my favorite, so.

GHOSTS. USE AN ITEM TO FIGHT GHOSTS. RUN FROM GHOSTS. though, wary of how often the game provides these items for you? found some from a shopkeep.

no work today, so! also, i feel guilty for using firebombs.
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