From Software Dark Souls 3

I beat the game and felt pretty good about myself for a bit.

Then I talked to my friend (a very honest friend, no sarcasm) and he drops that he thought the game was quite easy. "Sure, it's not too bad compared to-" "Yeah, I only died to one boss once in my first playthrough."

What.

Then I told him that's hard to believe (but I do believe him, I watched parts of his first playthrough and he never, never, never ever died during those times.) but he said it's no big deal, he knows three more friends who also died only to one boss or never died to a boss. On their first time. (Note: including DLC bosses and Nameless King.)

I... clearly need to git gud. How good do you have to be to never die ON YOUR FIRST TIME? You don't even know the attack timings of the bosses yet! Gah.

Sigh. At least my own stats weren't all that bad. I did die to pretty much every boss at least once though, except Oceiros and Abyss Watchers. No boss took more than ~5 attempts except for Dragonslayer Armor, Lothric, Soul of Cinder and Nameless King.

In my defense, perhaps my weapons of choice were lackluster. Mostly no armor and a Bandit's Knife. Had to pull out a great hammer for Nameless and Cinder, though.

 

Sounds like your friend is yanking your chain or summoned every fight or something. There are too many grabs and one hit attacks that will kill you in one hit or almost kill you. No way a bunch of people who know each other 3 or 4 people you mentioned all went through everything while only dying once to one boss.

 

Yeah, I'm calling bullshit as well on this one. No way he did shit like Dancer, Lothric, Nameless King or Soul of Cinder with all their bullshit combos, grabs, teleport and multiple phases on the first try. Let me guess, he died to Wolnir?

 

That is what I thought but it's quite possible that he is indeed not lying. He played a super tanky build and plays very carefully. He /never/ died when I watched him play a bunch of DS3 on his first time on Stream so I think it /might/ be possible. Still... the odds of him AND his friends being this good are tiny.

It's just that I feel a bit bad! Nameless King took me ages, like 3 hours. Most bosses were not very hard for me, but Lothric and the Nameless King together took a lot of my time. And even to 'easy' bosses I died a bunch: Vordt once or twice because I was rusty, the tree because I didn't know he'd grab you, etc.

I do want to state there is not a single 1-hit kill I encountered in the entire game, though, with 27 Vigor.

Edit: i went through the log. My friend claims only Nameless King killed him once. See, that's what seems off. The Nameless King, despite taking me a long time, should, in theory, be easier than, say, the Dancer because all the attacks are telegraphed and he needs to recover a bit after each attack. It's far more likely to die on your Dancer 1st encounter because of the strange off-beat dodges that you can not expect the first time you fight her. Him. it.

That said, to be completely fair, he did do most of DS 1 and 2 without getting ever hit when I watched him play; the thing that is hard to believe to me is just that you'd do this on your first time through. Probably just me being gullible again. At least I can be proud of beating infamous Champion Gundyr on my first try without breaking a sweat! That was more luck than anything as I had a weapon he seemed to be weak against, my Bandit's Knife. That was a fight I really loved because all the attacks were telegraphed and he never seemed to vary the dodge timing much so all I had to do was not miss a beat.

Well, I still have the DLC bosses to go, minus Gravetender. So far I am not too fond of Ariandel. It feels a bit ... like a rehash sort of. The snow village ain't blowing me away.

Edit: the video below shows the sounds my friends must be making

 

Well, I did beat the Dancer on the first try while struggling with most bosses.
Lost several hours on the DragonSlayer Armor, gave up after many hours and summoned help for the Namless King, Twin Princes and Pointiff Sylvhan. Took me quite a bit of effort to beat Champion Gundyr and even Abyss Watchers. Guess I need to git gud. But I'll prolly never have console reflexes.

Was warned by a friend to roll away as far as possible once the Dancer starts spinning and it worked very well. Her, Oceiros and Aldritch (once I learned his arrow pattern) were among the easier bosses for me.
Champion Gundyr was the most satisfying.

 

Fuck the Nameless King, more specifically fuck the first phase of the fight. The real battle is seeing what the hell is going on.

edit: Also, fuck the hitbox on the dragon's head. With the telegraph pole that is the Astora GS I should have been able to hit him from fucking China, instead it felt like I was wielding a broken dagger.

 

Eh, yes, but at least I could reliably beat the first phase after a few tries. The second one on the other hand....

 

I probably died 20 times to Nameless King. I tried different tactics like using a bigger weapon, I think Astora Greatsword because I was having trouble hitting Storm King with the longsword, but I couldn't get the timing down. Whenever I try to switch to bigger weapons it seems tough to roll out of the way in time. I eventually just two handed the longsword and that worked. Then I tried using a shield and rolling against Nameless King but he would just end up roll catching me. I eventually tried two handing the longsword against him and beat him on my second try of doing it. Somehow using the shield was slowing down my rolling and I was able to roll away from his attacks easier without it.

Friede I probably died 10-15 times on. Again I tried using a bigger weapon which just made things worse. Also tried parrying her. Kind of worked on her first phase but not second or third. I'm terrible at parrying though. Still take damage when I do it.

Midir probably a little less than 10 times including the times I tried using a Lothric Knight Greatsword and staggering him which didn't work at all. Switching back to longsword I did better.

Demon Prince probably 3 or 4 times.

Gravetender I beat on my first or second try.

Gael I only died once on and that was due to running out of Estus learning his moveset. He only had about 1/4 health left. Otherwise I could have beaten him on first try. He seems really easy.

After doing the DLC I didn't die on Soul of Cinder at all. He was easy too.

I probably died on all the Cinder Lord bosses about 5 times each. Even Yhorm because I couldn't figure out how to get the Storm Ruler's weapon art to work right.

But bosses I heard were difficult like Dancer, Pontiff's, Grundyr etc I only died once or twice. Dragonslayer 2 or 3 times. I think I might have beat Dancer on first try, can't remember for sure. Either that or only died once.

 

I lost the motivation after the 4th attempt. I know his move set but even with a +10 sharp Astora GS at 50 Dex it feels like it takes forever to kill him.

 

Yeah I'm not sure it's as useful using bigger weapons in this game. With long sword you can get in 2 swings in the time it takes to swing a UGS once. You'll also do about the same damage or more than a UGS in 2 swings against a boss. Sometimes you can even get in 3 swings with a long sword and roll out of the way before a boss hits.

 

Perhaps not the most efficient and/or easy thing to do. But I simply can't imagine playing a DS title without a huge UGS (although BKGA will do as well).
The impact is soo satisfying. And it looks so badass.

 

None of my go to weapons worked on Nameless King. Bandit's knife? Forget it. Once I pulled out Gordy's Great Hammer, I started ripping out huge chunks of his HP though. While timing the slow hammer is hard, just four or so consecutive hits can stagger him. It's very satisfying to do the visceral attack on him after.

 

I beat soul of cinder first try and lothric after 3rd. Some of us are gifted.

 

With a few exceptions, the AGS outperforms my side weapon, a sharp Lothric Knight Sword. It requires more care because of the longer swing time and slower recovery, but I got better results against most enemies in the game, bosses and mobs. Abyss Watchers - where I used the Irythill Long Sword - Twin Princes, and the Dancer where the only fights so far where I got better results sacrificing sheer power for speed.

 

Or you stepped in shit before the fights.

Took me quite a few attempts to beat the fucking Soul of Cinder, I'm pretty bad at dodging delayed attacks. Lothric wasn't hard, but he dethroned the Orphan from the top spot of my personal cheap-ass-fucks list.

 

sully looks at videos of people beating bosses before he fights the bosses himself.

 

Lore-wise, how is Ringed City? Does it wraps up DS3 nicely? I confess I'm playing more to see it's atmosphere/lore/world design than the actual gameplay per se.

 

Haven't played it yet, and not sure I intend to, but to my knowledge it pretty much wraps up the entire series.

 

this is partly true. I didn't play the souls games until much later so I was bombarded with videos on the souls games on YouTube. I did play Dark Souls 3 2 weeks after it released so I didn't have to look at videos to beat the bosses, by the end of the game you should have more than enough tools and skill to beat Soul of cinder.

 

Finally got around to buying and playing this. Kind of have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, there are parts of it that I thought were amazing. Some levels and bosses (particularly Champion Gundyr) were very well designed and fun to play but at the same time it's hard to shake the feelings that significant portions of this game were just Dark Souls 1 rehashes. Anor Londo v2.0 being the worst offender. However, I did think Gwyn's theme appearing during the last boss fight was kind of cool. So at least that reappearance felt appropriate.


Some random thoughts:
That ending with the Firekeeper asking if you can hear her voice is haunting. That was really cool.
Kind of funny that lots of people complained about the lack of an interconnected world in DS2 + gank squads (only one of those complains being valid by the way) but then DS3 ended up being much closer to DS2 than DS1 in both those respects.
Pontiff Sullyvahn legitimately seemed like the hardest boss I had ever fought until I realized you can just block all his attacks as he barely drains stamina. I think he is the only boss in any Dark Souls game where the optimal way to fight him is to block rather than to roll.
Champion Gundyr is awesome. The moveset seems designed to really just mess with the regular way people play the game.
Puzzle bosses really aren't this series' specialty. Some of them are decent. The best being Executioner's Chariot from DS2 but some of them are just downright dumb. Nothing was nearly as bad as Bed of Chaos in terms of boredom but they really aren't as fun or challenging as regular boss fights either. I guess the serve to break up the monotony of the game though.


At the end of the day, it was a Dark Souls game: fun and challenging combat, well designed levels, dumb as shit NPC questlines, etc. I just wish they didn't live in the past as much. I'll probably buy the DLC and really get into the PvP. Although I've already re-installed Dark Souls so I'll give that one another run (up until the lordvessel of course).

Final thought is that Dark Souls 2 DLC is still the undisputed champion of the Dark Souls series (never been knocked down, never been knocked out ... ).

 

Sort of wraps it up, but it's unsatisfying imo. The lore is garbage imo. The reason everything is so vague is so they don't have to commit to writing a coherent story or plot. There's nothing those lore idiots on Youtube can make up in speculation to save this mess. You're left with even more questions than you are at the end of Dark Souls 1 or 2. Hell the Ringed City DLC seems to imply nothing you do at the end of the regular game matters in the end.

 

Miyazaki planned the lore for 1 game, and it is really good in Dark Souls 1. The rest is a convoluted and rehashed mess, as are Dark Souls 2 and 3 as games overall.

 

You know, I like the series, but I do pretty much agree. They had run out of ideas after Dark Souls and Demon's Souls. The story has been the same thing over and over and over and over again. I am tired of hearing about the same cycle. It didn't even change in the DLC for 3. That's hardly 'closure'. I didn't need closure, but I also didn't want to deal with the same topic over and over again.

Now, Demon's Souls 2? I'd be very much on board. Sadly that is almost impossible unless they do some wizardry with the rights, but I would not ever hold my breath.

 

That's because Demon's and Dark Souls are artistic games, they came from the same mind. Dark Souls 2 and 3 is Bandai Namco milking the franchise, the results are not surprising at all.

 

No and no. If you play Souls for the story (NOT Lore), I don't know how ou even trudged through DS3 in the first place.

DS2, with a year more of development of so, would have been a PERFECT ending to the series. But no, Miyazaki fucking wanted the climatic fights with Guts in a hill.