/svidya/ - Strict /v/

I liked Demon's Souls but not Dark Souls 1/2 and Bloodborne doesn't look too good either (great area aesthetics not withstanding)

I really wanted to finally give these Souls games a try but they raped the PC ports with DRM. Such a shame.

>>5408
>Scholar of the First Sin
Ah yes, the patch that is being released as a full price game.
Fromsoft always tried to antagonise me with the horrible PC porting or Games for Windows life. This shit is the straw that broke the camel's back.

>>2290
The number of iframes in rolls scales with Adaptability

>>5505
http://gamecopyworld.com/games/pc_dark_souls.shtml#Dark Souls v1.2 [MULTI9] Fixed Files 3

Crack for you.

I'd say DaS was the overall better game, but chalk that up to nostalgia. The bosses definitely were harder.

DaS 2 fixed a lot of things/made them better overall, but also broke a few things.

>What did you think of Demon's Souls

It definitely altered my perception of "difficulty" in games as well as how RPGs function. I remember picking it up well after some time of it getting released and remember reading right after purchase that the server hosting for online play would be extended and that they were doing halloween events. It was overall an insanely satisfying experience, especially after beating Flamelurker for the first time.
>Dark Souls
Seeing as I really loved DeS, I saw the news for a spiritual successor and immediately knew I had to try it out. I actually remember staying up for it on the day of release and waiting in line while everyone else was waiting to get Rage or some fps that came out that same day. Im pretty sure I was the only one anyways.

As far as the game is concerened, it felt different than DeS, the limitation of healing items was at first annoying but I adjusted soon enough, and soon found myself enjoying a lot of the boss fights, even if the ethos surrounding most of the earlier bosses felt kind of scrawny compared to DeS (the 2nd boss in DeS is Tower Knight, compare that to Gargoyles and you'd see why I was initially disappointed) That sort of changed after Gaping Dragon and overall I enjoyed it but I liked the environment of DeS more.
>DaS 2
I enjoyed it overall but significantly less than the other two.
I didn't like the online aspect of it. I didn't how a lot of the boss fight mechanics were similar. But I did find a lot of areas in it to be more interesting than DaS. Hopefully Bloodbourne draws on DeS/DaS design and the bosses are more varied in tactics.
>Bloodbourne
I haven't followed it a lot as I don't own a ps4 and I don't think Ill buy one just for Bloodbourne.

I have only played Dark souls and i just cannot be arsed to finish this game.
It's not the difficulty, i actually like the challenge.
But the goddamn saving system breaks it for me. It's not difficult to drudge back where i died, just time consuming. Useless time padding grind.
It's goddamn frustrating to use checkpoint system. We are not living in the 90's anymore, checkpoints should be a thing of the past.

>>5685
Just run past everything. It's not time consuming at all that way and it's an additional kind of challenge.

I played Das1 about a year after it came out on PC so most of the community hype was down so I never understood what was the deal with Afro can someone clue me in why he is so hated?
I got a cheap ps3 to play Das2 and des after I played Das1 on PC

>Des
Amazing atmosphere,best music in the souls series and a coherent plot to drive you through the adventure. Some really good level design. I actually got lost a couple of times. That shit hasnt happened to me since the 90s.
-Tooth and nail combat keeps you on your edge all the time. That said most bosses are poopoo and can cheesed easily or just gimicky. Dragon god comes to mind same as Saint Astrea.
-Pvp was horrid imho. Grass and scraping spear make it unbearable. I had a fight that lasted about 30 min before I gave up and let the guy kill me.
-Swamp part is worst level in all souls series bar none

>Das
My Gamefu. I love every bit of it even the broken ones but I am ashamed to say I spoiled the expereince for myself and I can never get it back. I got at the behest of a friend and he pretty much care-bear'ed through the first part of the game then we kinda had a falling out so restarted the game and used online guides/youtube walkthrough of ENB and kinda messed up the whole experience for myself.
Never got into PVP after I figured it was a backstab fishing simulator.
Limited fashion souls potential but I love the Leeroys paladin armour. Best Pala armour of all games I know.

>DasII
Biggest disapointment especially since it looked like a sure bet. Everything that could go wrong went wrong.
Boring music, nonsensical level design, gone is the tense spooky atmosphere and lots of other things anons have mentioned.

Pvp is proabably the best in the series but ruined by the soul memory and twitch bro dudes culture.

I will probably get BB when there are more games to get for ps4. Payin half a grand for a game is a bit steep

Played Demon Souls for the first time recently. Unsure what to make of it. Some things are just bullshit.

Fuck the spider in particular, and the entire Stonefang area

Good to see how much is reused in DaS1 though.

I wonder why from removed the magic changes from the DaS 2 beta, half of the reason I was hyped was for that.
Instead we got soul arrow spam 2, hex boogaloo.

Also, why does mentioning BB outside here generally ends on a shitstorm? the game is barely mentioned outside shitposting, and it releases soon.

Am I the only one who felt that Demons's Souls had way better design but DaS had better continuity?

I can't think of a single area in Demons's Souls that was worse than its Dark Souls counterpart (except maybe Blighttown). Demons's Souls just feels like the way better designed game. Both in atmosphere and in creativity.

idea; would it be a good addition to the games to have a third bar under health and stamina that is for poise? for example when you get hit it would fill up, and if it reached its maximum your poise would be broken. otherwise it would drain back to 0 for a time when you aren't being hit

>>6282
Things can be bullshit because things can be cheesed. You know how those scaled miners take so little damage? It's because they have hella slash and crush defense. Piercing damage ignores all of it completely, though. A lot of the game is like that. It's like a megaman game, in a way. While it's possible to blast everything down with whatever you want to use, it's a lot easier to just cut Woodman with a metal saw.

>>6303
I don't see why not. It's not changing the mechanic, just bringing it into the player's view. I'm okay with it because it helps players know how the game works.

>>6319
They're fake.

>>1068
I thought this was supposed to be a significant gameplay departure from dark souls?

This looks exactly like a DS2 fight with a shield-less build and a lot of healing items.

And I for the life of me cannot understand why they put pillars in every boss arena if their attack hitboxes completely ignore the geometry

>>6552
I expect they'll keep milking the Dark Souls cow for as long as they can.

And judging by the press's recent mass fellating of the game, the well isn't running dry anytime soon.

>>6303
It would. For what game, though?
DeS has effectively no poise, neither does DS2 as it's completely broken (despite the poise you flinch from absolutely everything), nor does Bloodbourne seem to have poise at all.

I'm not too sure about Bloodbourne having poise or not. It looks like some attacks with heavy weapons simply have super armour, like in a fighting game. I've also not seen any heavy armour in any of the videos so I assume from just took that out entirely.

Can somebody who has Bloodbourne check that?

DeS and Bloodborne should be in one thread

DaS 1 and 2 should be in a different one

>>6374
I've just been using the Falchion all the way through so far, seems to have done the job for the most part.

>>622
>>What did you think of Demon's Souls
I got Demon's Souls around '09 after seeing how much praise it got even though I was never (and am still not) an RPG guy. Demon's Souls was rumoured to be 'crazy hard' and whatever so I went in with that foreknowledge playing 1-1 extremely cautiously. My immediate thought was, "Really? People consider this to be hard?" Admittedly I put on Royalty class because I heard it was the easiest mode thinking I'd go back later to a harder difficulty.

Anyway, my very first impression of the game was that it was boring. When I bought the game I had a friend crashing at my place and he watched me play it (not a very watchable game if you don't have Souls experience and you're watching a brand new player at that, too) and we looked at each other like, "That's it? It's not even that hard." It felt really slow to me and I also felt a bit overwhelmed by how many items etc there were. This is related to my lack of experience with RPG games. Like I said, I'm not an RPG person and the main reason for that is that I've rarely come across an RPG with good gameplay (later I discovered how good Souls actually was but it took some time for Demon's Souls to 'click' with me). Another thing I don't like about RPG games in general is the concept of grinding and updating your stats to get through areas, rather than just having the skill to overcome an area. Of course later on I discovered that I liked the way it was done in Souls - it felt a lot more 'natural' or 'organic' to the game's progression than it did to other RPGs I've briefly tried in the past.

Anywho I initially played through Demon's up until 2-2 or something. I think the level after the spider boss where you have either long route or a fast shortcut by dropping down. I was playing blind first playthrough so I went the long route and my god I got soooo ridiculously bored by the game. You had those high HP enemies in those tunnels - those giant beatle things - that took so many swings or whatever to die and I just wasn't having any fun. I dismissed the game as boring and set it aside, as I had done many RPGs in the past. I didn't even know at that point how melee based Demon's Souls was actually supposed to be since I chose Royalty class and for the most part I was just standing around shooting magic at everything, only rarely using melee. This was so bad in fact that I didn't even know I could backstab the whole way through in Demon's… I only discovered backstabbing in Dark Souls.

A year or so past and Dark Souls 1 was announced. Everybody started going nuts on /v/, there were threads for the game everywhere, nobody could stop talking about it, the hype was immense. I started getting drawn in as well, reading the threads, seeing the videos, etc. Being a multiplat game everybody was merry as fuck (very much unlike what we're experiencing now with Bloodborne) and it was actually quite a nice time to be on /v/.

The hype was infectious and I, too, started getting hyped for DaS. I thought I should give Demon's another shot and so I did. After getting through the boring 2-2 I found that the game's quality got much better. Up until that point I had been really bored with the Royalty magic class. Phalanx made me go, "What?", with Tower Knight I just stood around at the top shooting his head with magic, with Flamelurker I summoned someone because I remember reading how hard he was supposed to be, etc. but somehow I really started getting into the game and using my sword more. By the end of it I actually understood what a masterpiece it was and I loved the game. However Dark Souls had been out a week so I sadly I never got into DeS the way I got into DaS. After that first 40 hour playthrough I never actually touched the game again and never got into its PVP scene at all. Maybe I should… hmmm.

>>7395 continued

>>What did you think of Dark Souls
This game I fell in love with and it's one of my all time favourites, in my 3x3. After using that boring magic shit in DeS, and now having a greater understanding of stats leveling and other RPG ish, I said fuck being a sorcerer and chose some melee based class and holy shit I had fun. I was addicted to this game for at least an entire year and it destroyed everything else. Everything else felt trivial and shallow in comparison and goddamn so much of my life was sucked out by this game. I probably have around 800-1000 hours total, made many builds, did a lot of PVP. I'm kind of glad in a way that the netcode is so subpar because if it wasn't I may have never stopped playing this game's PVP. So many great moments were experienced online, whether I was PVP'ing or helping others in coop. Trolling was also fun as fuck when it wasn't happening to you (but even when it was I would just grin most of the time 'cause you had to appreciate it), such a great game.

And my god I loved the world of Dark Souls. There was so much variety to it. Demon's Souls all looked kinda same-y to me but Dark Souls had so many varied areas that when I saw certain screenshots of it I was amazed that it was the same game. For example Anor Londo was sunny as fuck, then you had places like the depths, forest areas, the bright blue crystal colours of crystal caves, the lava etc of demon ruins, the 2spookiness of new londo ruins, the majesty of duke's archives, etc. I remember the first time I saw a screenshot of Princess Gwenevere and thinking, "Holy shit, this is Dark Souls? How?" since the colour palette was so strikingly different to anything I had seen before in DeS. People often say that after Anor Londo there's a huge drop in quality but I never experienced that. I thought it was solid all the way through, only one or two areas may have a big drop in quality like Valley of the Drakes (disappointing name for such an empty area) but apart from that it was awesome.

I'll never forget my first Dark Souls playthrough. I was 24 or 25 when it came out and of course I did it blind, only asking occasionally online on where I needed to go or seeing what the community was saying on /v/ regarding weapons etc. Dark Souls first playthrough gave me a sense of adventure in vidya as an adult that I hadn't felt since I was 12 years old and playing Ocarina of Time for the first time. I didn't know that it was even possible for me to experience that again. I found that as a kid I used to like video games much more than now and would find it easier to get immersed into their worlds and enjoy their gameplay. Somehow though, Dark Souls managed to bring out that level of glee that I felt as a child for Ocarina of Time all these years later which is a huge testament to how much I loved and enjoyed the game.

>>7396 continued

>>What did you think of Dark Souls 2
Sadly I found this game to be one of the most disappointing games I've ever played in my life. You can imagine how hyped I was for this game after Dark Souls (I'm rarely hyped for any game) but when I finally played it, it was a complete let down in many ways. Most of all I didn't like the unresponsive, laggy gameplay that felt slower and the hitbox detection was disgusting. Game was marginally slower overall, too. The other major fault was its world which felt ridiculously bland and generic compared to the first two games. There were some memorable places though, such as pirate ship and that wooden suspended place that was all dark until you light it up with torches but, apart from that, goddamn it was forgettable. After my first playthrough of 45 hours I never touched the game again. It's not an outright bad game - after all I bothered to complete it - but to me it was a huge step down in quality compared to tis predecessors, even if it had some neat improvements in places like with guard break and the way it fixed exploitable backstabs.

>>What do you think of Bloodbourne
I haven't played it yet and won't be able to for some time but from I've seen it's looking pretty damn good. Will definitely be picking it up. I'm pretty sure I'm going to love the first few playthroughs but I do have one major worry about this game, and that is that it might not have the replayability of Dark Souls from what I've seen. Less stats, less weapons, less build options, less armors/clothes makes me worry that I won't be able to get sucked into it for hundreds upon hundreds of hours like I did with DaS1 but we'll see. I'm sure I'll get over a hundred hours though and I can't help but be hyped for it. The world and atmosphere look incredible (I can really see the touch Miyazaki brings to these games when you contrast it with DaS2) and community feedback has been insanely positive. I'm expecting, at the very least, that BB will be my 2015 GOTY, not like it has much competition though, and a damn good game.

As it stands, for me,
DaS1 > DeS > DaS2

Hope you enjoyed my blogpost.

>>6291
I much preferred Des level design to the other two. Combat had its work which they worked out… then undid… but DeS levels actually gave me the creeps and made me hesitant to move forward.

That being said the intermingled world of DaS was an awesome and well received way to go.

>>6875
You are a lunatic.
>No poise damage
>No range
Makes it pretty much useless. Anyone can just tank the hits and poisebreak you.
Which is a shame because it's really cool and painting guardian pvp is up there with ricard and oscar pvp.

>>8877


Dark Souls II (without DLC)
Cons:
>World is mostly one piece, but the layout is in the shape of a hand, Majula being the palm
>Geography wasn't all that interesting, aesthetics felt inconsistent
>oh god the lighting
>Majority of areas aren't interesting
>Bosses are uninteresting. Seriously having trouble thinking of memorable encounters despite playing through the game less than a week ago.
>NPCs are bland as fuck. They all have the same "uhhhhh i came here for something but i forgot" shtick. The cat was the most charismatic and interesting NPC.
>Soul Memory
>seriously soul memory dear fucking god why
>parrying feels fucked but i probably just need to "git gud". Almost 100% of the time it feels absolutely not worth the risk.
>some item sets require farming. Shit like Berserker, Aurous, Shadow all require stupid fucking gimmicks to get that aren't fun to go through.

Pros:
>all dem weapons and armor, a lot of weapons have nice movesets, boss souls are actually worth using now. Stuff like Spell Parrying and other unique item mechanics add a lot of replay value. To me the equipment is the #1 thing carrying the game.
>Covenants feel the most polished, had the most unique ideas by far of the games adding depth to online play
>While areas aren't really interesting, very few of them feel unpleasant to play through
>UI improvements
>Greater spell variety, pyro miracles spells all felt pretty good.
>Trash mobs aren't pushovers. While there is a lot of obnoxious AMBUSH mob layouts, and people whined about difficulty stemming from loads of enemies being thrown at you, I felt many of the encounters were done pretty well and ranged enemies were given more precedence in this installment. More than ever sweeping attacks had a place

tl;dr (because who the fuck is going to read all that)
DeS: Interesting world and difficulty mechanic, weakest equipment and online play, needs some streamlining in some elements
DaS: Best world, solid equipment and online play, second half of game lacking. Overall just felt like a really solid game with lots of opportunities for self-driven adventure
DaS2: Consistently mediocre. Not all the memorable but thanks to equipment and online mechanics has good replay value. Mob placement and weaponry makes for pretty enjoyable combat.

>>8878
>>8877

I never understood the meme of Das had giant plunge in quality in the second half. Everytime I asked for reasons I was shitposted to death.

I loved the open world aspect of the second half and how unique every area is. I never forget the pants shitting experience I had when I went down the tomb of the giants or the how i was made to cross and invisible bridge going to sif.

I do concede bed of chaos is a shit boss but that hardly invalidates the whole of the second half.

>>8893
It's not all terrible. I think for most people what comes to mind first is everything after Quelaag. Minotaurs are copy and pasted in the lava. There's a capra demon. There's those stupid statue enemies and rockworms which are just not interesting to fight. Asylum Demon is reused. Then you have the retarded dragon butts wandering around. Then the cherry on top of all of this is Bed of Chaos. It's one shitshow after another with that entire "wing" of the second half.

The second half actually has a layout much like the entirety of DaS2. Rather than weaving in between areas, you're heading down one path until you reach its end. It's not like the first half of the game where you're kind of free to just go where you want, barring Anor Londo, which even still had Painted World as a pick me up and is a great area on its own. It's like, "Oh, I need to do the entirety of Lost Izalith for that soul." Or "Oh. I have to deal with the ghosts of New Londo and the Four Kings (some people like this boss, some don't - I personally don't), and the lack of bonfires there. Duke's Archives is just getting magic shit thrown at you with crystal hollows. Add on to the fact there's the encounter with Seath where you have to die, then you're stuck in the pit with the aliens or whatever they are.

Like I said I personally like ToTG. I have very fond memories of slowly going through there with a cleric's robe, knight's helm and a divine longsword and having a very immersive experience with the skull lantern. It was pretty harrowing. I think for a lot of people, the first time around they may have had trouble getting a good light source, they fell off ledges or whatever else, and it can be hard to navigate. It's an area where you have to go really slow and that may have thrown some people off. After you get th'e hang of it you don't even really need to fight many enemies. You know where shit is and are basically just picking up whatever loot you need on the way to Nito. Personally I found ToTG "unpleasant" in a pleasant sort of way, the same as the Depths. It calls feelings of hopelessness and having to pay attention to navigation, and your step.

I think to chalk it all up, the first game presents many opportunities for self-made adventure and many of the areas and bosses are memorable. The second half is fairly restrictive in that you're locked into a path 4 times and the bosses just aren't as good despite being the big bads.

>>9024
Oh. I actually forgot completely about Centipede Demon, who I think is a cool boss that makes players feel panicked, but them camera issues man. The pit with the Maneaters is cool, too. Kind of a drag to trek through though.

Almost everything that people hate about demons souls is what I liked about it. I'll take grass over only the host being able to heal any day. DeS also had the best stealth.

>>9024
Well thank for well written response and almost gave up hope for decent vidya discussion.

I understand that Lost Iza ist just copy pasta of all previous bosses but it kinda thematically makes sence, birth place of all demons and what not. I usually use the Chaos sister short cut so I skip most of the area maybe thats why i dont have such a bad opinion of it.

I can understand the gripe that the latter half the levels are not interconnected like the former part of the game so it makes them feel disjointed and linear but they still do offer lots of exploration. ToTG and New Londo especially.
Also dont forget that the DLC is also located in the latter part of the game so it kinda elevates it status. At least in my eyes.

>>6561
In a sense. That's a fake projection of someone who was once there.

>>9056
The problem with the DLC is that it's almost impossible to find.
That's the only problem I have with that but it's really stupidly placed.

>>9291
It is a bit convoluted yeah. Though its placing and manner of getting there makes sense lore-wise as that forest was at one point oolacile they give you almost no clues on how to get into it.

>>622
Whoever designed the character creator for these games needs to be shot out of a cannon into the sun.

>>9929
If there's any good reason why you need to go after that one random crystal golem all the way off in the Archives for some reason to get the needed item, I either never knew or forgot.

Also, the Oolacile time landscape and current version of the same place are crazy different. Almost nothing really lines up except for that one big waterfal sorta and Oolacile feels way bigger than the corresponding present locations.

I played DeS for the first time going in almost totally blind, I went over to a friends place and he was playing it as a wanderer fighting the Tower Knight. He was dodge rolling all over the place and the Tower Knight was doing his thing and I thought it was just another over the top action game like DMC or GoW which was the kind of stuff my friend played for the most part, I was deep into Europa Universalis and Mount and Blade at the time. Having beaten the TK he insisted I try it and I figured I'd humour him, he had me start a new game and I was presently surprised by the aesthetics of the starting gear for several classes. I had expected giant pauldrons and spikes and rondom glowing shit instead I got fluted armour.
I picked a soldier specifically to see how a sword and board character would play out, I was still expecting lots of over the top shield bashing and spinning attacks.

I don't know that I will ever recapture the enjoyment I had playing that first level of DeS as a soldier ever again. I loved the mechanics of it, pulling enemies, timing the attacks, managing the combat. It was fantastic, in truth playing DaS1/2 has just been trying to get that back. Both games I've played full turtle mode with no online. Also no minmaxing for me

Sadly it seems very much like From's vision for where they want the games to go is the opposite of what I liked about them. From the get go I was dubious of BB, the aesthetic was not particularly appealing and the weapons for the most part are that over the top goofy looking huge aesthetic. It seemed people doing demo videos spent more time rolling around than actually fighting The real nail in the coffin of BB for me is the shield which basically tells players who like the play style I do to fuck off

>>8893

Pretty sure the 2nd half of DaS was rushed quite badly, Lost Izalith in particular, everything leading up to it feels really nice and planned out, particularly the sen's fortress to anor londo transition which is one of my favorites, then it all goes to hell in the 2nd half.

At the very least the archives and new londo feel complete, they're kind of annoying to navigate but they feel like they got development time to iron them out a bit, now Izalith? Hell no.

To be honest I like all the souls game, if I had to pick one I REALLY didn't like it would go to Demon Souls, I loved the atmosphere, hated most of the stages, the bosses in particular where awful to deal with most of the time.

But I like them all because they feel different from one another, Demons to Souls 1 feels vastly different in every aspect, Souls 2 the game, Bloodborne with its faster paced combat and I'll go right ahead that I really like Souls 2, I loved the gear, the weapons, the combat, being able to use 4 rings, the magic system, its easily my fave of the souls series.

But like I said I like them all, I'd rather have a set of games that feel dramatically different from one another than the same thing all over again.