From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

I meant there's little difference between weapons of each class, some difference (like Iaito vs Uchi) makes it more fun. Take a look a these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slqP4-Sa4V8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZTXCVcTotA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9prKXqO2c

As for bosses, the designs are OK (not great but OK), but the strategy varies very little between them.

 

I feel they did a lot worse job with the bosses. Most of them have what feels like very samey movesets, and the ones that are unique(covetous and song demons for instance) are insanely easy. Honestly the only boss I really like is Darklurker.

 

Do all weapons fail to go from r1 to r2 attack combos?

also I guess you can do a dash attack just by jumping back and hitting r1. press the run button while standing still then r1 and you do a brief dodge-back fakeout and counter attack.

I cannot figure out parrying yet, it seems.

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/...r_project_beast_from_software_ps4_looks_like/

Apparently this is a leak for FROM's new game. I don't know how authentic these pictures are, but here you go.

 

I saw this sort of when I fought the Pursuer.

 

That gif is a bit confusing but I'm imagining you mean the weird hit-box/tracking issues?

I'm not sure if this was an agility issue but earlier in the game I noticed I would get hit when I was not even visually near the enemy's weapon/attack. Later, this wouldn't happen. I do not know if I got better or if it was because I raised adaptability and subsequently agility.

IMO Pursuer is a really fair fight, more so than giant rat, Vendrick, salamanders, or dragon shrine guardians who seem to have endless stamina, unblockable hits, heinously difficult to dodge attacks, or in Vendrick's case just way too much reach for the arena.

Pursuer has clear tells, takes a while for each attack to play out, and he does some stupid flashy animation afterwards giving you a nice spot to hit him, heal, or dodge away. Makes for a good early boss and a chance to learn the exact same attacks you can expect to see with 80% of the other bosses (or larger humanoid enemies.)

The biggest issue with pursuer is if you are co-opping some other idiot nails you with the ballista.

 

I parried Pursuer and then shot him with one of the ballistas. Yes, you can parry the bastard

 

Nice. I tried to parry a bit but I can't seem to get the hang of it down unless I am up against a "normal" human enemy (like invaders or other players). I think my old tell of when to parry no longer applies with current animations/timing. I used to parry when the enemy's hand was about to hit me in DS 1; worked on small enemies and big enemies alike. My issue then was parrying too soon, now it seems I'm parrying too late.

I donno if I care as much tho, the riposte and subsequent effects take too long to pull in a group fight and with a boss or single enemy I can just chain 2-3 hits instead. Still, gotta get good I guess.

Looking over a video of parrying it makes no sense. The visual animation looks like the guy gets "knocked away" before even swinging. This is the case with backstabs too, I have idea when I managed to fire off a backstab other than the animation being out of control. That part is kind of clunky and doesn't feel as tightly responsive... at least yet.

 

I don't really see your point. DaS1 had like what, 5 thrusting swords? 4 of them being the same as here. Except not, because now the mail breaker actually has a useful R2. And Velka's rapier was irrelevant anyways, while Tark's sword is actually quite nice. It didn't even have twinblades. And it's halberds had less variety no matter how you slice it. You're basically bitching that there are extra weapons with different stats/looks with the same moveset in addition to the weapons they had before. The first game didn't have movesets like the royal greatsword, or the heide weapons, the whips were vastly inferior, and there was a major lack of variety in appearances and parameters, since a lot of them were just the exact same shit with 5% more speed and less damage, like scimitar/falchion, club/reinforced club, longsword/sunlight sword/broadsword. Not to mention shitloads of totally useless weapons like the silver knight weapons, or generally anything with elemental damage in small amounts like the demon spear, astora's sword, dragonslayer spear, etc.

And again, for the bosses, you had what, Iron Golem, flame centipede, ceaseless and 4 kings as pretty much the only ones that had some sort of interesting mechanic. Gwyndolin and BoC were different but not in an interesting way. I could easily name twice as many noteworthy bosses in the sequel.

 

I don't like tracking, it's so stupid to see an enemy with build of a Butcher from Diablo to rotate on place like crazy teapot handling his warhammer with a beak a size of mountain. It's just not what you'd expect or can predict, seems like a sloppy animation job. It would be simplier to just give monsters lighter weapons and faster attacks, and give most tracking to most agile enemies from the pack.

 

Reminder that From Software is developing "Project Beast", what seems to be the fourth Souls game

 

Shadenuat Or to give them a different attack. Instead of having 3 attacks that all work the same way, and then a crazy tracking overhead swipe, why not give them a short range self-centered AOE, a back-wards trap (like turtle knights or the cyclops), a side-based attack, or something else. Just attacks that work because they are designed to be for different situations instead of a "homing hit".

Damned Registrations; I'd say that the Manus fight had an interesting mechanic (the pendant) and that while O+S was basically a duo -- that the two complimented one another well. One has fast range closing attacks and a light bolt; the other has large swiping attacks and a single powerful charge. It wasn't a gimmick, just well planned.

 

O+S wasn't significantly more interesting than say, twin dragonriders though. Manus I'll give you. But this game had;

Rat Vanguard
Scorpion Lady (who wasn't even close to the boring bullshit quelaag was)
Iron King (counterpart to ceaseless)
Giant two headed spider (this was an excellent fight, the mechanic of one head falling off if you focused it too much and making things more difficult was very cool, and the spiders swarmed enough to make weapon durability a problem)
snake lady (I hated this fight, but it's quite different and well designed)
the gargoyles (much better than the original, not only do you fight a lot more, but they have better AI that makes them hang back and breathe fire after being injured so they tend to build up naturally)
smelter demon (the damage aura he puts up part way through makes things interesting)
flexile demon (just an interesting set of attacks)
the chariot fight
the skeleton lords

And I haven't even finished the game yet.

 

Sure, I'm not going to argue opinions but I guess our lists are different on "what was fun".

Twin dragon riders didn't have that dynamic sense of difficulty that O+S did, IMO. Maybe because it was old, or maybe because they were too old given how much I've played DS 1 and 2 at that point. Really, the magic of O+S is the first time you fight them.

Side comment on scorpioness. First time I fought her I was helping someone else -- I ran behind her while in the dirt and started to wail, not knowing she was immune then. She didn't do her burst attack, just rose up, and I ended up on her body behind her human part wailing away at her. Was p cool looking until my attacks dropped me off and I got tail swiped. Then I pewpew'd her while other dude smacked tanked.

 

Rat Vanguard is gimmicky although idea is interesting, but it relies on player not having solid weapons or AoE spells I think. It was a bit nightmarish to fight it with Heide sword, if I had my trusty Claymore at that point, they'd eat fucking shit. I realised the trick about fight by simple luck. That it resembles rats from Planescape is not a plus, resembling something from another game is not an advantage.

Scorpion lady can't cast anything unless you're far away from her, unlike Quelaag who is, arguably, more dangerous (without phantom at least). It's a Frankenstein's monster stitched from Quelaag and Priscilla's invisibility, but Priscilla looked majestic and elegant, and leaving snow tracks made sense--
ah, Priscilla..
(drools)
......, while Najka not leaving anything with her size by burrowing in sand exept dust flakes is kinda stupid. Everything but tail can be blocked, her claw attacks are so short you can probably stab her with a spear when she does them. Her tails stab never harmed me, and it's so slow, that it allows 3 attacks with greatsword (!) until she recovers.

Iron King... mechanically he is better than CD, but he also looks like Diablo and shoots lasers and, as Smelter, relies on instant death beam and fire damage.

Giant Spider who shoots lazor, yeah, there was a mecha like that in Dominion Tank Police. Switching heads is kinda interesting I guess. I'll admit I'm not familiar with that boss as others and need to pure melee him first learn more, magic is just not the same. I'm actually closing on him now, just finished Rat-Sif.

Snake Lady, aka Pure Cryptic Horseshit. Without poison harmless. Her spear attacks can't do shit even against medium shield. Like Ornstein, wait for big stab and kick her.

Gargoyles is just plagiarism, "more of the same would be even better right? right?".

Smelter Demon, Gwyn who can't be parried. He has like what, 4 attacks? Including a jump? A boss which relies on fuckton of elemental damag and player being underleveled and unprepared, imo.

Flexile Demon, idea is interesting, and maybe a low level wizard can take some damage from his sabers. But his mace side is as dangerous as a regular brute like demons with crescents or turtles.

Chariot, gimmicky but makes sense and fresh, I liked.

Skeleton Lords, because DS plays so well when they throw more than 2 enemies at you at once, right.

tl;dr so far I'm dissapointed in my melee run For some reason only boss who proved difficult for me was Rotten, because I couldn't get his wacky hitboxes right, he managed to catch me with his instant death hand a lot even when I was rolling somewhere behind his ass, and because I'm suffering from tunnel vision and died 7 times inside fire pits. Also I was armed with Heide's sword and was wearing medium-to-heavy armor (Royal Soldier) larping a paladin, and often my attacks were just too short and running too slow to land a hit (I didn't want to use a phantom on this one cause Rotten was kinda fun). I also reeeeealy liked cutting his hands (anyone managed to cut both of them off?) and that he continued to wave them around and growing them back. Fun.

Oh and Pursuer I think is a good take on "knight" enemy. I wish he was the only one "knight" in game...

 

Yeah, I started over to do a sorceror playthrough and I'm enjoying it a lot more. While there's a lot of weapon variety, I feel like it's mostly irrelevant on the initial playthrough due to the scarcity of titanite. You can't upgrade many weapons to use, let alone to test to see if you even want to use them.

Spell wise I don't have anything terribly interesting yet, but I've got plenty of ammo. I actually had my staff break on me while clearing out the wharf because I used a couple of amber herbs. I also just got access to some hexes, so that'll be interesting in the long run. Right now dark orb doesn't seem terribly useful though, I suppose it's a situational thing depending on enemy resistances. Pyromancy intrigues me as well, I've seen enemies use some pretty cool shit.

 

Sorcery in the early game is odd. The heavy soul arrows no longer do more damage for longer cast. They are now just incremental upgrades like this; soul arrow -> heavy soul arrow -> great soul arrow -> heavy great soul arrow.

The soul spear barrage is cool; the damage is not great but it breaks the poise of damn near any boss I've used it on so far. Great to stun a boss when co-op or just for funsies in general. Works on enemies too, of course. I'll probably make a heavy weapon str+pyro build after this one.

Also, fucking steam >;(

 

Mechanically, the bosses are fine, on average better than DaS1, imo. It's their aesthetics that kinda fall flat, including the music which is notably worse. Chariot isn't a cool boss because it's complex or difficult (it isn't). It's a cool boss because it looks awesome, the whole scenario is set up to instill a sense of urgency and tension, and it has good music.

Actually, having a large weapon doesn't help as much as you'd expect with RRV, mostly because of the subpar hit detection that plagues the game in general. You also tank your durability really fast because it's impossible to swing without hitting those rat statues.

Still better than Quelaag, although Najka doesn't look half as good and has worse music. Literally the only thing Quelaag does that is halfway threatening is her AOE. At least Najka doesn't constantly pause to do absolutely useless shit (spewing lava), allowing the player to smack her with impunity. Also, dodging her homing soulmasses can be tricky depending on what she does.

It "plagiarizes" Four Kings just as much (if not more), and is actually better and more challenging than its two predecessors. I wish they put more stuff like this in, where the player is punished for taking their sweet time and wanting to be perfectly safe. Four Kings was also really fun and challenging at SL1 and in NG+.

C'mon bro, you're being ridiculous now. Smelter is nothing like Gwyn. Frankly, there isn't really a previous Souls boss he's similar to. Flamelurker, I suppose, would be the closest. Gwyn's whole shtick was unrelenting aggression and the main challenge was finding openings to attack/heal. Smelter has very obvious and easily exploitable openings, but his damage potential forces the player to constantly heal through the damage from his aura and blocking the occasional attack. If he catches you at lower than max health, you can easily die, and he seems designed to make staying at max an arduous task.

Plus, he actually looks like a boss and not a glorified trash mob.

Plays fine if they actually give you pillars to kite around, which they do. If anything, Skellie Lords are undertuned. They could be really good with more hp and damage on everything.

 

Is steam just down for me? Or why can't I connect to the souls servers right now?

 

Same here; had the same problem last night.

 

Just got to Straid with my sorceror. So THIS is where all the cool shit has been hiding. I offed the fucker with my melee guy because he just kept calling me an idiot.

Not sure how useful each of these spells is going to be, but at the very least toxic mist seems like a strict improvement over poison mist. Need more int to use most of the stuff though. The soul rain or whatever from najka seems underpowered, but I dunno, maybe it's good vs large targets or something? Large immobile targets... eh.

Edit: I also found a really well hidden secret passage in the Bastille with a really underwhelming reward. They sure mismatched the achievement/reward ratio of things a lot in this. Also, fuck those lion guys. Basically immune to every kind of magic, even shit like poison or emit force. Wtf?

 

What reward in Bastille? The only real secret I found there (through a Pharros stone) was to the Belfry Luna.

Straid also makes boss-soul weapons (and spells), btw. So even for melee he's worth keeping (possibly).

P.S you can get to McDuff without the key by having the powder keg blow up the wall. You'll need the ember, but you can at least get the chests.

Thing that works for me: the exploding corpse guys go down to a single throwing knife. I find it's a very easy and quick way to kill them, and from a nice distance. The throw is pretty fast and has decent range so you can probably do it when you land in the gutter too.

 

There's a secret door opened by activating a blank patch of wall. The reward was a crappy ring, I think the one that reduces durability loss?

 

Oh, gotcha. I got the ring but never bothered with it. Item placement in general is a bit weird, I guess that extends to rewards. A lot of chests have just garbage in them too.

 

I remember getting the scimitar by riding on top of an elevator in the bastille my first time through and thinking 'this is the most disappointing scimitar I have ever found in a game'. Seriously, who would give a flying fuck about getting a mundane weapon you can just buy for a trivial amount, with no upgrades, after wasting all that time dicking around with the elevator? Should have just been a room with a message on the floor saying 'Fuck You'.