From Software Dark Souls 3

sums up my feelings about DS3


it's what i expected it to be. not many surprises. combat was a loose mix of bloodborne and dark souls', i.e. off footing. i really hope they "go crazy" with the DLC.

 

stupid patch makes the game crash like hell now.

 

Isn't current best 2 hits for from start to end boss run? BTW happy hobbit was hit by a letter and now he's called happy hob.

Squillakilla ended on Twin princess with no hit run.

Actually there was a no hit run done recently https://www.twitch.tv/faraazkhan/v/75551068 Name of character was Minizaki.

 

If you've listened to even five minutes of him you can understand why even a worthless brand would want as much distance as possible.

But you've made me curious what effect the new patch will have on speedrunners - whether the Anri scaling reduction hits luck or not and whether they've now changed the estoc attack speed when in the left hand to match the slower right hand from the last patch.

 

Is Journey 2 supposed to have some sort of attraction for offline play? So far I've noticed that normal monsters do ridiculous poise damage (an over 50 poise broken with one hit by a kitchen knife basically), but they do little stability damage, and the first two bosses are too easy. I'm guessing the game becomes harder than Journey 1 at some point due to item upgrading having such low caps and stats hitting soft caps (I've read you can find some better rings and maybe a few other items but that's about it apparently).

 

he's p cool guy what's the problem

 

well you can collect the same items again, pontiff sulyvhans dogs become ridiculously strong. There are new souls you can collect, you can get the same boss soul and transmute to get another item. You can finally got both lothric and lorians sword and fuse them to get one of the best weapons in the game.

 

Is it well-balanced though? What do you think about the poise issue? What do you think about the "feel" of newgame+? So far it seems quite lame.

 

The poise issue is simple: poise doesn't work in DaS3. This has been stated several times through the web...

 

I guess I used to take so few hits after acquiring Yhorm's shield I didn't notice poise was gone, and confused it with hyper armor too.

http://www.hngn.com/articles/198604...-poise-broken-what-means-character-builds.htm

Apparently it used to be in that game, but was taken off in a patch possibly due to what was seen as PvP abuses. Crazy that From would ruin single-player in an attempt to "fix" multiplayer. I don't know, maybe they're just trolling gamers. Who the fuck knows.

I guess I'll go back to the From games that actually work properly until they fix this (if ever).

 

yeah poise doesn't work at all and it is BS. The closest thing you can get to poise like the past games is when you attack with a heavy weapon, mid-animation you can't be stopped except if your enemy does the same thing or uses a weapon that gives them poise for a second. The worst part of this whole no-poise BS is that you will always get stun-locked by an attack and if it is a light attack, then you will always be able to hit your enemy with another light attack as long as they are in range. Daggers are ridiculously strong in this game and people abuse this in PVP with no poise and just stun lock you to hell.

I'd say that NG++ is hard enough. When starting NG+, I go firelink shrine > high wall of lothric > lothric castle > consumed kings garden > untended graves. It makes the game at least feel different instead of going the usual high wall of lothric > undead settlement > road of sacrifices and so on and so forth. I do think the game would have been much better if you could go to the grand archives without killing the other three lords of cinder first. It would have been less linear and also lead to one of the best areas in the game early on.

 

On other hand dodge now is way superior to anything else in DS1-3 and unlike rest of the games you can't be stunlocked completely as after 2-3 hit you can dodge it or counter attack. So R1 spammers are punished especially with great weapons.

 

Why don't they want there to be poise, especially when it's shown in the stats? If they wanted to do Bloodborne style no poise, why not just remove the stat instead of pretending it's there? It's so weird. It can't be a bug, because they would have fixed it ASAP.

So much in this game seems like a Bloodborne sequel that was transformed into a Dark Souls sequel mid-development that I'm starting to think this is some sort of an attempt to force people to play the game like it's Bloodborne. The Dancer seems like a Bloodborne boss, not just appearance but the near impossibility of winning with a shield guy. OK, so my theory doesn't make too much sense but my other theories are even crazier.

 

The dancer is easy with a shield, that's how I beat it the first time. Just use a black or silver knight shield or a heavier shield and watch your stamina when you attack.

The poise on the other hand is fucked. I think they started doing it the old way then changed their mind half way.

 

You can fight Dancer with a shield. I tanked her whirlwind and I had 11 endurance, thus quite low stamina. You just need to use brain.

 

I did have rather low stamina, so maybe that was the issue now that I think of it.

 

Dear sir I decided to inform you I fought dancer with 11 endurance, which means 96 stamina, which is about as low as you can get it, because deprived starts with 10. I fought dancer with shield and tanked her whirlwind. It was quite enjoyable because I have time to actually see all attacks.

(Kinda wonder what was the bright idea with all these sucky armor. The only difference between light and heavy armor is getting 3/4 of damage because of absorption, or not.)

 

Right. Maybe we were playing a different game.

And I don't care about her whirlwind, because it's easy to evade even with a fattie character, but I've tried blocking the attack which is a long combo with a shield that had 69 stability and with full stamina. I was completely slaughtered.

Either you never had to deal with that attack, or you used Giant's shield, or you're full of shit. "Using your brain" doesn't improve your stamina or the stability of your shield. I played against the Dancer dozens of times, so I have a fairly good idea of what you can or can't do in that fight and survive.

 

The Dancer is an interesting boss in that she may be extremely easy or extremely hard depending on your playstyle and gear. I know most Souls bosses are like that but she may well be the most emblematic for this. I trashed her in my 3rd attempt (after almost one-shotting her).

One thing I noticed is that the first time you meet some bosses, when you don't know them yet, you make a good performance and almost kill them (or indeed one-shot them), but by the second time forward he gets difficult and rape your ass repeatedly. Perhaps psychology explains this ? Perhaps this has to do with carelessness (confidence?) when you meet a boss for the first time, and then getting respect and being more cautious on the subsequent times just because he killed you (and now your mental image of him got more powerful because of this) ?

 

You can't use your shield to survive grabbing attack. That grabbing attack... From my 60 attempts 45 were one hit kill by grabbing attack. Shield doesn't protect against grabbing attack at all.

She even started her whirlwind attack close to me so I was forced to tank whole attack, or die. Last hit/hits went trough but I survived. The fight was beautiful, how these wooden stairs went on flame from grazes of her sword, and because I tried to find few seconds to drink estus and to avoid tactics that depends on luck, the fight wend three times longer than normal.

Are you actually mistaking whirlwind attack for something else? And doesn't Giant shield require something like loads of strength? I had about 18 when I fought dancer. I kinda had balanced character.

edit:
I could do dancer in only two styles, as long as I didn't want to learn her attacks to dodge them, it would distact from the story and feel too like fighting game where you beat one boss after another instead of fighting trough enemies doing quest and then find the dancer.
Either using shield, or as a mage. But as a mage, which I tried 10x, it would be very twitchi, and my hands would be shaking half hour later after I'd win. Considering I didn't wanted to risk heart failure by overdoing it, I used shield style where I could kill her more consistently, and I could use armor. (Actually I don't remember if I used shield, long sword, and master swordsman clothes because fuck that. Who want to change armor from my last mage attempt.) With mage I had strong problems to have enough blue estus to be able cast enough soul arrows to actually win. It's pretty harsh balance between enough estus for HP, and enough blue estus for casting.

The shield way is significantly more consistent when you don't have enough FP for casting reliably. It's true you can save FP in first phase, but...

It's actually easy to kill Dancer in first attempt, all bosses are doing all attack in the first attempt, ony in second they would use what's more efficient. When you remove 3/4 of health when they are not doing the best things, it's easier to finish it.

Dancer is strange in this case, because she can be really variable. It can be extremely easy, or as in my case when I killed her, she can have combats when she's extremely hard, chains nasty stuff, and combines attacks correctly.

When you encounter it in the more nasty state, you'd be screaming murder. The longer the fight goes, the higher is chance she'd do few these combinations which would murder average player. So going all in removing half of her health fast and finishing her before she has chance to do more nasty way of fighting, can happen, because she's not always doing her worst immediately in the start of combat.

I actually don't remember if I wansn't horribly underleveled. I was definitely under 60 because I did Lothric at level 64 and I was forced to level to that because he kicked my ass, because I summoned to have more funny fight, and summons were killed early, and I was forced to fight SIGNIFICANTLY longer. Fighting significantly longer in the second phase is death sentence, as long as you don't have proper dodging skills for Lothric fight.

 

Finished the game.

The Nameless king was a tough boss (died ~15 times), the wyvern phase could be quite time-consuming, leading to a rather frustrating phase 2. I resorted to peppering him with arrows from a distance.

I am very, very pleased with the final boss. It was an awesome fight (mind you, It took me ~10 tries). Great movesets, brutal but fair, fairly easy to tell what was happening most of the time and what was about to happen. Plus, nice reference to DS1 (as if the rest of the game wasn't). If only the rest of the game had been less retarded combat-wise.

I still can't understand how I beat the Dancer in my 1st try. Maybe dumb luck.

Goodbye Dark Souls 3. Hello XCOM 2.

 

Heh. I've found XCOM 2 a good game but pretty forgettable, more or less the same as DS3. Let us know your impressions on it too.

 

You might be somewhow disappointed when you compare it to XCOM long war. I think they screwed up the actual implementation of the whole "guerrila concept" And also they screwed with pacing.
The main weakness is lack of multiple concurrent missions. Either you'd take all available, doesn't matter how hard, or you'd have less resources before difficulty jumps up.

 

DON'T YOU FUCKING MENTION LONG WAR (has a spergfest seizure). Seriously this mod, awesome as it was, gave me an aneurysm. It's probably because I played it in the higher than recommended difficulty (or because I'm a fucktard). Never managed to beat the Long War campaign. But I gotta say it was XCOM in all its gory...err...glory.

I'll see you gals in the XCOM2 thread, with the usual bitching and first world problems! yay!

 

I always play at highest possible def in LONG WAR. Sure i am 99% sure i will loose but i treat it as DF. You will fail and game is about surviving longest possible time.