From Software Dark Souls 3

[Black Angel]

Between handing DS2 to a different team and recycling BB for DS3 it feels like From really had no interest in doing any Dark Souls game after the first one and might have just been compelled by their publisher.

This 100%. Seriously. They really just should stick into making new stuff. Souls junkie be damned lmao

 

[Elwro]

Yeah, I just started with Sekiro and even though I see some familiar mechanics the game feels a lot fresher than DS3

 

[Lyric Suite]

Hopefully Vaporware Ring will set things right on their RPG front.

 

[Multidirectional]

I want them to make another single player game with fine tuned combat that doesn't have to account for lag, RPG or not. The i-frame spam shit of DS III is not to my liking.

 

[Caim]

Been playing some more Cinders, and I managed to pull off something I managed only one time before. Both times on accident. You know that trick where you can "ride" the ladder in the Painted World if you cut it and stand in the right place so you land in the spot where you'd end up if you climb down the ladder? Well, I did that on an NPC in another location.

Yep, I managed to cut the ladder in such a place where the invading Tsorig landed at the base of the bridge-turned-ladder and managed to lure him all the way to the Smouldering Lake. I didn't bring a Seed of a Giant Tree with me, so the demon/mimic/skeleton threeway fight was of little use to me. Instead I lured Tsorig past them all the way over here. The place in the third image is about as far as he'll go (he doesn't take damage from the Sandworm either), and if you try to lure him past this point he just starts to backpedal because he went too far. So that's pretty neat.

Also the Lightning Arrow is busted as all hell. You start with it as the Priest class, and it pretty much turns the game into a third person shooter. Then you go to the High Wall and find the chest right before the dark tower with all the thief hollows inside and pick up the Spirit Amethyst. Even in the early game Lightning Arrow can kill basic enemies in three shots. Lightning Arrow costs 10 FP per use, and the Spirit Amethyst restores 50 FP upon killing an enemy. You do the math. Oh, and remember that FP restores on its own in this mod.

 

[newtmonkey]

I finally completed this tonight. I had initially played as a pyromancer but got frustrated with the Abyss Watchers fight, so gave up and restarted as a melee character focusing on great swords. This went a lot easier and without too much trouble I got to the Lorian/Lothric fight. I had trouble with that battle and ended up putting the game off for months... but decided to give the game another shot tonight and defeated them on my third attempt. I then discovered that this is the second-to-last boss fight and 10 minutes later I had completed the game.

I enjoyed the level design of the individual areas in this game, and felt that it was overall the most consistent game in the series (DS1 is awesome for the first 75% of the game, but let down by a handful of endgame areas that seem quite unfinished or rushed, while DS2 has some REALLY annoying areas toward the end). However, the areas all feel completely disconnected from one another and the game overall suffers for this.

I still have some of the DLC content to finish, but I'll put that off for another day.

 

[Multidirectional]

I had initially played as a pyromancer but got frustrated with the Abyss Watchers fight, so gave up and restarted as a melee character focusing on great swords. This went a lot easier

Interesting, I had a lot easier time with pyro char than pure melee. Abyss Watchers (and a bunch of other earlier bosses) I just cheesed with Boulder Heave, wasn't even hard.

 

[newtmonkey]

Multidirectional
I'll have to give pyro another chance, it's also possible I built a poor character haha.

 

[Multidirectional]

Multidirectional
I'll have to give pyro another chance, it's also possible I built a poor character haha.

Well if you like great swords, Astora GS is a fun weapon and scales great with infusions. Also found pretty early in the game.

 

[NJClaw]

Also the Lightning Arrow is busted as all hell. You start with it as the Priest class, and it pretty much turns the game into a third person shooter. Then you go to the High Wall and find the chest right before the dark tower with all the thief hollows inside and pick up the Spirit Amethyst. Even in the early game Lightning Arrow can kill basic enemies in three shots. Lightning Arrow costs 10 FP per use, and the Spirit Amethyst restores 50 FP upon killing an enemy. You do the math. Oh, and remember that FP restores on its own in this mod.

The Cinders mod is a joy to play. Maybe it's a bit too easy to break, but it's so much fun.

Since the Focusing Crystal allows you to fully restore your FP, you don't even really need the passive regeneration, so you can keep the Curse of Simplicity always active. You could think that you don't need those added souls, but primordial fragments are very expensive and you need them to upgrade your accessories.

 

[Caim]

Also the Lightning Arrow is busted as all hell. You start with it as the Priest class, and it pretty much turns the game into a third person shooter. Then you go to the High Wall and find the chest right before the dark tower with all the thief hollows inside and pick up the Spirit Amethyst. Even in the early game Lightning Arrow can kill basic enemies in three shots. Lightning Arrow costs 10 FP per use, and the Spirit Amethyst restores 50 FP upon killing an enemy. You do the math. Oh, and remember that FP restores on its own in this mod.

The Cinders mod is a joy to play. Maybe it's a bit too easy to break, but it's so much fun.

Since the Focusing Crystal allows you to fully restore your FP, you don't even really need the passive regeneration, so you can keep the Curse of Simplicity always active. You could think that you don't need those added souls, but primordial fragments are very expensive and you need them to upgrade your accessories.

While I love Cinders, it's kinda strange that they keep juggling certain things around. For example, in the most recent version (2.03.2) there is no Focusing Crystal, so all FP regenerates over time. Armor still grants certain bonuses, but aside from a few outliers the bonuses all feel kinda samey with even the special individual pieces being more or less the same. In an earlier patch the Sage's Big Hat gave a beefy bonus to your FP, and paired with the pretty princess robes you were quite a powerhouse as a caster, even though you were a glass cannon. Slap on the Blueblood Sword, a decent casting implement and bob's your uncle. Nowadays the Big Hat only gives a 5% increase in FP, and there's almost two dozen items that do that.

Summoning worked differently back then as well. First you could summon Solaire as a nigh unkillable phantom, which was broken as fuck but still kinda fun to do. Then the summoning item was bought from Solaire the NPC early in the game, and now he's been reduced to one of the summons you get from the one summoning item. I think that they might be changing that in the upcoming 2.4 patch, but that remains to be seen. Oh, and weapon reinforcement is gone as well, so it's all about them stats and a proper infusing to get the most out of your weapons.

 

[Caim]

Dark Souls 3 is currently on sale on Steam for less than 24 hours... and I just realized that this five year old game is STILL 60 bucks, with 25 more for the DLC. Remastered and Scholar of the First Sin are 40 each. I mean, Dark Souls has some pretty good content but I expected that after these years the price would've gone down a bit.

 

[newtmonkey]

Interesting, I had a lot easier time with pyro char than pure melee. Abyss Watchers (and a bunch of other earlier bosses) I just cheesed with Boulder Heave, wasn't even hard.

I have been replaying this recently as a pyro, and you are right! Pyro is totally OP in this game. Chaos Bed Vestiges is insanely powerful, and Black Fire Orb is a good backup plan against enemies resistant to fire. Could not believe how trivial Pontiff Sulyvahn and Dancer were with Pyro lol.

 

[Ivan]

I had the itch to replay this after my romp through Daughters of Ash (DS1 remix) and I came away very pleased. This is probably my third run through in total and it was pretty damn smooth. I loved the world design and the smooth feel of the combat, thanks largely to the development of Bloodborne. Bosses were mostly great, I loved the duels but grew miffed by the ones that take up too much of the camera. All in all, a pleasure to see a title with the world design of DS1 and the fantastic combat from BB

edit: I gave Cinders a quick spin but was disappointed to see that they got rid of weapon refinement. it reminded me of what happened to the Stalker Misery mod, I saw a lot of tacked on, bloated features that didn't resonate with me.

 

[Caim]

I had the itch to replay this after my romp through Daughters of Ash (DS1 remix) and I came away very pleased. This is probably my third run through in total and it was pretty damn smooth. I loved the world design and the smooth feel of the combat, thanks largely to the development of Bloodborne. Bosses were mostly great, I loved the duels but grew miffed by the ones that take up too much of the camera. All in all, a pleasure to see a title with the world design of DS1 and the fantastic combat from BB

edit: I gave Cinders a quick spin but was disappointed to see that they got rid of weapon refinement. it reminded me of what happened to the Stalker Misery mod, I saw a lot of tacked on, bloated features that didn't resonate with me. I did replay the vanilla game and will give my updated thoughts in that thread

Refinement is back in Cinders. I really like the mod, but features are added and removed so fast it borders on schizophrenia. Currently trying a Sorcerer build where I use the option that you can't refine and instead get a 1% damage increase for every boss you kill, see how that goes.

 

[ADL]

My favorite Dark Souls II modder retweeted some stuff from the Archthrones project. I've never heard of it but it looks pretty fucking cool.

Archthrones is a DS3 mod that aims to bring some mechanics from Demon's Souls, such as world layout, soul form, world tendency, etc. while still keeping it within the Dark Souls universe. The world of Dark Souls 3 has been rearranged into 5 separate realms, each with their own story.

Archthrones will provide players with a completely new way to experience Dark Souls 3. Every map will be redesigned in some way to fit the new narrative. Every boss fight is completely new with incredible 3d models, as well as animations from other FromSoftware titles.

There will be many new enemies, npc questlines and many secrets to find, some big, others small. We hope you look forward to the eventual release! Please make sure to follow, RT and subscribe to our youtube channel for further updates!

https://youtube.com/c/DarkSouls3Archthrones

 

[Can't handle the bacon]

One of the biggest appeals of the original DS was the interconnectedness of the world. In the early game (Undead Burg) you could see the walls and cliffs surrounding Anor Londo towering over you, and the tops of the trees in Darkroot Garden below you. Once in the garden, you could look up and see the bridge from the old church (where the blacksmith is located) to Sen's Fortress above you. In blight-town you could clearly see that it was a horrid ramshackle village of sorts built on the side of the enormous outer wall surrounding Lordran, and once on the ground the ground you entered a toxic swamp, and then down underground leading to the Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith.

In short, while it's not "realistic" to have cities, castles, walls and buildings of such immense proportions, or to have so many different types of locations (including the fairly typical city level, forest level, lava level, swamp level, ghost caverns level, etc.) within walking distance to each other, there was a real sense to where you were in relation to other areas of the world. A few levels were disconnected (painted world, tutorial level, DLC location), but almost everything else had its place on the unseen world map, and the large amounts of verticality made it even more impressive.

With DS3, this is pretty much gone. Bonfire teleportation is available from the very beginning, many areas can only be travelled to by teleporting (no interconnectedness), and the game even throws out an excuse (the lands are converging to the first flame, whatever that means) as to why they didn't bother creating a cohesive world this time. Also, it's just a soft remake of DS1, and is so derivative, I had trouble separating one from the other when thinking about them.

 

[Can't handle the bacon]

With DS3, this is pretty much gone. Bonfire teleportation is available from the very beginning, many areas can only be travelled to by teleporting (no interconnectedness), and the game even throws out an excuse (the lands are converging to the first flame, whatever that means) as to why they didn't bother creating a cohesive world this time.

I actually have to take some of this back, watching a video by a nerd with a teleportation cheat engine showed that most DS3 locations are actually placed with a lot of thought and care as to their relation to one another. The Firelink Shrine is situated right behind Lothric Castle (there is no walkable path, aside from the weird portal to an alternate version of it from the mad king's chambers), you can see Irithil and Anor Londo from Lothric, and many of the intermediary areas (giant bridges, swamp, farron keep, etc) between them.

However, the geography of the setting is still extremely artificial and game-y, and the "lands converging" thing is a very weak idea. If you need to have all the different places literally moved closer together by unknown forces just so your character can visit them, you're basically cheating. Imagine Shire, Rivendell, Lorien and Mordor "moved" right next door to each other because "it's the end of an age". It doesn't work like that.

In DS1 there was a dream-like quality to the proportions and placements of the landmark areas, both horizontally and vertically. Blighttown and the toxic swamp (with entrances into the Demon Ruins and the Great Hollow) being situated in the space between the enormous walls of two neighboring cities (Undead Burg and the adjacent city that we never visit) was pure genius. In DS3 it's just some remakes/rehashes of the main areas from the first game with a lazy lore explanation as to why they're all there, which leaves the question of where they all were before they started converging and what was between them. And why Anor Londo still exists but is surrounded by a completely different geography.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Replayed this for the first time since 2017. I forgot that every enemy is Havel on crack cocaine which makes all your attacks feel weightless, the amount of DS1 jerking off is worse than I remember and the Bloodborne-style movement feels retarded.

DS2 really does shit on this game.

Anyways I still maintain my ranking for the DS games are DS2 > Demon's Souls > DS1 > DS3

 

[Talby]

DS2 will forever be trash.

 

[Curratum]

DS2 will forever be trash.

NO U!
...

Gottem!

 

[Silva]

In DS1 there was a dream-like quality to the proportions and placements of the landmark areas, both horizontally and vertically. Blighttown and the toxic swamp (with entrances into the Demon Ruins and the Great Hollow) being situated in the space between the enormous walls of two neighboring cities (Undead Burg and the adjacent city that we never visit) was pure genius. In DS3 it's just some remakes/rehashes of the main areas from the first game with a lazy lore explanation as to why they're all there, which leaves the question of where they all were before they started converging and what was between them. And why Anor Londo still exists but is surrounded by a completely different geography.

To be fair to DS3, they try to explain the "where were all those places before they started convergin" by saying the world has been this mess of new civs piling up over old ones again and again for eons, to the point the land became this irrecognizable jumbled shit. That said, yes, they failed miserably to pass across the idea, while the other games in the series had some degree of success at it (DS1's "twilight of the world", DS2's "oblivion and loss of identity", BB's "unknowable truths leading to madness", etc). In this sense, DS3 is the most "empty" of all games.

 

[ADL]

Recently spent about twenty hours going through the Cinders overhaul mod. It improved the game somewhat but I found myself asking why I wasn't playing Dark Souls II or Bloodborne instead. No amount of enemy placement changes and rebalancing will change that DaS3 has the worst content among all the recent From Software games. Honestly I feel like one game in that universe was enough for me, DaS2 felt like a King's Field sequel rather than a follow-up to Dark Souls so maybe I was just prepared to hate a continuation of Dark Souls no matter what.

The only good thing I'll say about Dark Souls 3 is that I like the increased speed and it doesn't look like shit because the intended aesthetic wasn't gutted last minute because of it needing to run on console hardware from 2006. Part of me feels bad shitting on this one so much because I always got the sense that it was rushed. Some of the cut mechanics like time of day, placing down your own bonfires and some sort of world tendency system would've improved it I'm sure but it wouldn't change the zones and bosses all that much.

 

[Silva]

I disagree that DS3 doesn't look shit. It's color palette and levels (forest swamp, poisonous swamp, that cathedral) makes me wanna puke.

 

[Multidirectional]

I disagree that DS3 doesn't look shit. It's color palette and levels (forest swamp, poisonous swamp, that cathedral) makes me wanna puke.

Yeah and on top of that I get very annoying texture lod transitions. Shit keeps popping in few meters in front of my character. At least DS II doesn't have that shit and has some color variety.