Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 15,858
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Long Play - Dark Souls - Part 033 - Ending
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Decided to check what this Lordvessel is all about after Bed of Chaos. Aaaaaaand it's done. Awesome stairs though with those Dark Knights Ghosts walking. Area GFX probably was best from whole game. Few Dark Knights here and there and fog door.
I walk through fog door and whoops Gwyn. Arena looked amazing but fuck Gwyn was hard as hell. If not for those Pillars i wouldn't have slightest chance to win this fight. Not only he does ton of stamina damage but after his longest combo there is only like half a second of space to do some damage and then he continues to do one combo after another.
Neverless my cheesy tactic preserved me enough time to hit him once every 10-20 seconds at cost of one estus slip. At the winning fight i literally didn't have any estus left and using humanity for health would be bad idea (due to longer time).
So after my win.. no ending !!!. YAY. I noticed there is bonfire but it isn't named bonfire but first flame or something like that. AHA ! So i decided to postpone my ending and look for other areas (like other bosses). I quit arena aaaaaand ... ending. WTF ? And somehow i vanquished flame and darkness started. That was weird imo ending as i didn't really expect it. Also i was stupid not to use homeward bone.
So my review:
First of all combat design. It is much better than Demon's Souls. Bosses have more moves and ton of actual normal mobs have more movements. There are ton of those little things that make this game special. Like for example receiving hard hit when you block sending your warrior back in backflip. When i saw it first time i was like nooo way ! Then there is a lot of stamina mob design, parry systems, backstabs and so on so forth that makes this game special. From combat perspective it is much better game than Demon's Souls. Though i need to say that playing as archer definitely downgraded me and i needed to change into sword and board fighter for later game.
Area design. Great, simply great. Tone and atmosphere is definitely different to original DS but at the same time it packs very diverse landscapes with neat system of shortcuts. There is a problem though. It is especially visible after my original DS playtrough. Bonfires. To understand this problems you need to look at area design and pain&reward system.
In DS there are no bonfires. There are archstones. Which are basically same thing in therm of transportation. Problem is not with Bonfires themselves but what they do to gameplay and P&R system.
There is no feeling like DeS where you know that there is no safe heaven around corner waiting for you to be discovered and only way to get to archstone is either go back nullyfying your progress) or killing area boss. So if you have for decide to explore deep mines with ton of tunels and small holes in which you can just drop dying then you really are on edge whole time. Because you know if you die now you need to do whole level again.
This is especially visible in boss fights where bonfire was just max a minute away from boss area. Also because of lack of bonfire system every 2 minute choosing exploration at all cost is very hard choice where in DS it isn't really a choice.
Story wise game was interesting. It definetely treats you as an adult. Not as a kid that needs to be hit with nail bat in head with written dialogs and quest markers everywhere. I loved how story and lore intertwined with eachother. Game story basically is game in itself in vein of older adventure games where you would need to create whole picture for yourself instead of being told what is this and that. I love that in XXI century of decline people still can create awesome lore and story that isn't "BRUH DRAGUUNS KILL DRAGUUNS, GOOD GUY". Sure it does use some tropes in one way or another but it does it tastefully. Like mentioned dragons for example. In whole game there are like only two dragons who you can kill and both of them are optional. Seath is dragon though but it is not your normal dragon. Dude is basically a slug that vomits crystal magic....
Lastly there is shit ton of content. As you noticed i clocked solid amount of hours and that was without any grinding on my part. I commonly omitted areas in which i sure would probably find ton of treasure and secrets. There were places like for example that hole in tree in blightown where i could definitely explore more.
But that is good, that is what make good game special. It's called replayability. Where i can start again, pick different goals and have different play trough doing different things in different order and focusing on different aspects of the game. And what is most important game has NG+. Now my pseudo archer-swordman is like 3-4 hit kill dude instead of being powerful dude and suddenly you have new game to play where you can't cheese that much anymore with high health and so on.
And this makes me wonder. What if developers would scale severely down progression system (flatten it a lot) and focus completely on polishing combat, encounter design, NPC reactivity, improving area design instead of focusing on where to drop next piece of soul to collect...
As for mentioned DLC idk if i will put it online. I fear that NG+ will require a lot of grinding to achieve enough power to beat bosses and as i heard DLC ones are really hard thus making it shitty to anyone for viewing purpose. Could also start new character and simply play it without "+" but that would require probably some preparations that would take time. I would love to try Cleric based build though.
Long Play - Dark Souls - Part 033 - Ending
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Decided to check what this Lordvessel is all about after Bed of Chaos. Aaaaaaand it's done. Awesome stairs though with those Dark Knights Ghosts walking. Area GFX probably was best from whole game. Few Dark Knights here and there and fog door.
I walk through fog door and whoops Gwyn. Arena looked amazing but fuck Gwyn was hard as hell. If not for those Pillars i wouldn't have slightest chance to win this fight. Not only he does ton of stamina damage but after his longest combo there is only like half a second of space to do some damage and then he continues to do one combo after another.
Neverless my cheesy tactic preserved me enough time to hit him once every 10-20 seconds at cost of one estus slip. At the winning fight i literally didn't have any estus left and using humanity for health would be bad idea (due to longer time).
So after my win.. no ending !!!. YAY. I noticed there is bonfire but it isn't named bonfire but first flame or something like that. AHA ! So i decided to postpone my ending and look for other areas (like other bosses). I quit arena aaaaaand ... ending. WTF ? And somehow i vanquished flame and darkness started. That was weird imo ending as i didn't really expect it. Also i was stupid not to use homeward bone.
So my review:
First of all combat design. It is much better than Demon's Souls. Bosses have more moves and ton of actual normal mobs have more movements. There are ton of those little things that make this game special. Like for example receiving hard hit when you block sending your warrior back in backflip. When i saw it first time i was like nooo way ! Then there is a lot of stamina mob design, parry systems, backstabs and so on so forth that makes this game special. From combat perspective it is much better game than Demon's Souls. Though i need to say that playing as archer definitely downgraded me and i needed to change into sword and board fighter for later game.
Area design. Great, simply great. Tone and atmosphere is definitely different to original DS but at the same time it packs very diverse landscapes with neat system of shortcuts. There is a problem though. It is especially visible after my original DS playtrough. Bonfires. To understand this problems you need to look at area design and pain&reward system.
In DS there are no bonfires. There are archstones. Which are basically same thing in therm of transportation. Problem is not with Bonfires themselves but what they do to gameplay and P&R system.
There is no feeling like DeS where you know that there is no safe heaven around corner waiting for you to be discovered and only way to get to archstone is either go back nullyfying your progress) or killing area boss. So if you have for decide to explore deep mines with ton of tunels and small holes in which you can just drop dying then you really are on edge whole time. Because you know if you die now you need to do whole level again.
This is especially visible in boss fights where bonfire was just max a minute away from boss area. Also because of lack of bonfire system every 2 minute choosing exploration at all cost is very hard choice where in DS it isn't really a choice.
Story wise game was interesting. It definetely treats you as an adult. Not as a kid that needs to be hit with nail bat in head with written dialogs and quest markers everywhere. I loved how story and lore intertwined with eachother. Game story basically is game in itself in vein of older adventure games where you would need to create whole picture for yourself instead of being told what is this and that. I love that in XXI century of decline people still can create awesome lore and story that isn't "BRUH DRAGUUNS KILL DRAGUUNS, GOOD GUY". Sure it does use some tropes in one way or another but it does it tastefully. Like mentioned dragons for example. In whole game there are like only two dragons who you can kill and both of them are optional. Seath is dragon though but it is not your normal dragon. Dude is basically a slug that vomits crystal magic....
Lastly there is shit ton of content. As you noticed i clocked solid amount of hours and that was without any grinding on my part. I commonly omitted areas in which i sure would probably find ton of treasure and secrets. There were places like for example that hole in tree in blightown where i could definitely explore more.
But that is good, that is what make good game special. It's called replayability. Where i can start again, pick different goals and have different play trough doing different things in different order and focusing on different aspects of the game. And what is most important game has NG+. Now my pseudo archer-swordman is like 3-4 hit kill dude instead of being powerful dude and suddenly you have new game to play where you can't cheese that much anymore with high health and so on.
And this makes me wonder. What if developers would scale severely down progression system (flatten it a lot) and focus completely on polishing combat, encounter design, NPC reactivity, improving area design instead of focusing on where to drop next piece of soul to collect...
As for mentioned DLC idk if i will put it online. I fear that NG+ will require a lot of grinding to achieve enough power to beat bosses and as i heard DLC ones are really hard thus making it shitty to anyone for viewing purpose. Could also start new character and simply play it without "+" but that would require probably some preparations that would take time. I would love to try Cleric based build though.
