From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[Zep Zepo]

When I Bell Bro, sometimes I'll have my lady character with no armor holding the ladle and just (try to) evade if I am the first Bell Bro summoned until #2 shows up.

My favorite time doing this was when a Red invaded, he killed BellBro one...I thought I was toast, So I started punching the bell invader, Red backed me up and after bell invader was killed, I did the prostrate emote and he didn't attack me. I got my Titanite and lived, he got 2 kills.

Zep--

 

[Invictus]

Mmm I hadn't thought of that; From wanting to focus more their level designs and overall game approach catering to PvP
Perhaps thrying to reach have more shelflife for players who want to focus on PvP...Call of Duty like ?

 

[Zep Zepo]

Another time on the lava bridge, was just trying to help for the boss. Got summoned, was confusing as hell as a pvp battle was going on. 1 host, me, a dragon bro, and a red bro. Didn't realize WTF was going on, as it seemed I could target everyone, so I just jumped in the lava

Zep--

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

I just shot mah havelyn at a dude on the BoB arena bridge and the dude just panicked and rolled off. I guess that's when I started feeling bad about being a triple-buffed SL 350 havelyn lancebro. Those 500 arena kills aren't going to happen otherwise though.

 

[Murk]

The video of criticism is pretty well done and makes some solid points. I don't agree with all of them but I liked most, and I can definitely see the complaints regarding the level connectivity and design. The placement of bonfires and arbitrary obstacles is definitely just... baffling.

I do miss the "look over horizon, see next area" feel that DS 1 had. That was pretty damn sweet.

So far I like some of the ideas behind PVP more but it seems that some of the ideas will not be executed terribly well and overall invasion is low. But, I mostly do not invade so I am ok with that. Being summoned to co-op has worked really well for me so far, but recently my first fuck-up char hit level 123 or so and now I imagine I won't be seeing as much luck. I'll probably have to make a more conservative char later so that I can experience more interaction.

I think that with the way they were presenting the game before it came out, it was very heavily implied this game was aiming more at multiplayer as nearly all games now are. I donno... I definitely see the loss of internal consistency and the attempts at recreation of things DS 1 did failing. I guess I'll have to wait and see how a proper replay pans out, as that's when I really solidified my view of DS 1 and its perks and flaws.

I do think this game has more bullshit arbitrary difficulty tho. I'm also finding no consensus over "which bosses are hard" with other players with all of us having difficulty on different bosses and breezing through other ones. Even for people who are playing similar characters.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

Level 123 should be still ok for co-op unless your soul memory is through the roof. Matchmaking don't care 'bout no soul level.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Darn, Smelter Demon is pretty difficult, and cool. I'm probably underlevelled and undergeared for him, and I imagine stacking fire res would take the edge off his attacks, but still. I was complaining about the lack of imposing bosses, and well, I got my wish. Also, the effect of darkening the rest of the room when he lights up his belly looks fucking awesome with the graphics mod I'm using.

Backstabbing in general is a lot harder in Das2, which I count as one of the major mechanical improvements. In particular, powerful attacks seem to knock you back more and result in a longer recovery animation from the block.

I don't really like backstabbing though. The reason I found the guardians difficult, is that I normally use slow weapons, and they recover really fast, both from their own combos as well as your hits. In this, I think, they're unlike any previous Souls enemy, or at least I don't recall anything similar. And I'm playing with call of champions, so getting hit once due to misjudging a guardian's recovery time would typically kill me.

i really don't see them recovering all that fast after their combos (slightly faster than the average DaS1 enemy, sure, but nothing game-changing. there are enemies with much faster turn rates or response times and after the initial period of acclimatisation to the new mechanics and turn/track rates, i did not find backstabbing all that much harder except in crowded situations where the initial part of the animation is not invulnerable). i always had enough time to hit them at least once even with huge slow weapons like greathammers (that stagger them pretty easily and reliably. it was just bait->2HR2 pancake->2HR2 on wakeup->dead). what slow, heavy weapon are you using that you cannot stunlock them?

I'm actually a bit confused about the interrupt/poisebreak mechanics in DaS2, although maybe they're the same as in DaS1, but it never mattered in that game.

So, in essence, it feels like some enemies recover from being poisebroken very fast. Purgatory Guardians are one example, but I've since encountered several others. Pyromancers in Earthen Peak for instance, let's take a Bastard Sword and a Large Club for comparative purposes. With the club, just mashing R1, a Pyromancer gets stunned by the first attack, but recovers fast enough to be able to sneak in a combustion before the second attack in the combo hits (therefore oneshotting me, because call of champions trololo). With the bastard sword, I stunlock her to death and she can't do anything. Did this happen in DaS1 with the large club as well? Or are the mechanics the same and there were simply no enemies with such fast attacks in the previous game?

This has one other annoying effect - for most weapons it's faster to start another attack animation than to stop attacking and do something else. So for example, I can stunlock a purgatory guardian with a zweihander, but if I don't have enough stamina to kill him, he'll recover from my last attack AND hit me before I recover and am able to block/roll. Don't really recall this happening in DaS1, or at least not nearly as much.

"Pancaking" on the other hand, seems to work exactly as it used to.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

Dude go farm the gyrm warriors in doors of pharros for the gyrm greatshield - 100% fire/physical def. Smelter demon is suddenly a pussy.

 

[Kanedias]

I have been very busy lately and I may still be busy tomorrow, so I didn't get to write the stuff about lore that I intended to write here, I'll probably do so it soon, though.

Anyways this is another post about this game's geography and my theories that the game started development with an area layout similar to Dark Souls 1, and that they changed their mind mid-development for some reason, which resulted in the more fragmented sense of geography that this game now has.

The I Am Undone trailer was released 10 months ago and includes the following shot

Credit here goes to HellkiteDrake, who found that this was actually the Lost Bastille and took a similar shot in-game.

I actually prefer the atmosphere in the second picture, but it's really interesting to note how the lighting and decorations of the first shot match the Forest of Fallen Giants (the overall color palette, the roots). This leads me to believe that originally the Lost Bastille was going to be directly linked to the Forest, and that's why they have matching designs (by directly linked I mean that the areas were positioned next to each other in the world layout and you could walk from one area to the other)

In the final game, the Bastille is only accessible by "warping", either from the eagle's nest in the Forest of Fallen Giants, or taking the boat in No Man's Wharf, and it's another example of a geographical oddity (though not as obvious as the Earthen Peak - Iron Keep connection): the Lost Bastille is actually close to other locations in-game, but completely invisible. I must cite another thing HellkiteDrake found and posted on his blog:

An issue with the world not lining up properly in Dark Souls II like it did in the first Dark Souls is what you’re seeing here.

I died in he Lost Bastille, and from Heide’s tower of Flame I can see my bloodstain.

The Lost Bastille should be right there, but it’s completely invisible.

Several area locations do not really make sense, as Emarrel shows on this video:



Like I said before, I'm pretty sure this is the result of a very big change in development we know nothing about. I can't say why they'd change it, but it's very likely that they were building the game in a similar way as Dark Souls 1 and then they decided to change this, some areas they were already working on were moved to other locations, like the Lost Bastille or the Iron Keep. I explained why I think the Iron Keep was also moved in a previous post, I don't remember on what page it is so I'll link my thread on the wiki forums:

Iron Keep's Geography

As always, I don't have solid proof, but I find that this theory makes a lot of sense.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Dude go farm the gyrm warriors in doors of pharros for the gyrm greatshield - 100% fire/physical def. Smelter demon is suddenly a pussy.

Or just dodge forward whenever he makes a noise. That's his key for when he's about to swing. He's actually not that hard once you get his pattern down.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

I was also able to avoid damage altogether on my Sl1 run by being under 30% load and always dodging left into his swings.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Or just skip him and come back later. He's entirely optional.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Does being under 30% load actually increase the number of iframes on roll? I thought only Agility changed that.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I'm actually a bit confused about the interrupt/poisebreak mechanics in DaS2, although maybe they're the same as in DaS1, but it never mattered in that game.

From what I can tell they've broken it into two separate things now. One is a sort of ministun effect when taking any damage at all. Even using something like a rapier vs the mirror knight will cause this on every hit. It won't reset an attack animation, just cause a slight pause for 1-2 frames that makes them look weird and jittery if you're attacking really fast. The second is just the plain old poise mechanic, where building up enough forces them into a stagger animation, but this can't be chained any more (at least on certain enemies), so you actually need to pause with some weapons to stunlock, or you'll hit a second time at the end of the stagger, they'll recover before you and you're fucked. Also, lots of enemies now have 'hyper armor' which is an animation that they can't be poisebroken during. Usually big windup melee attacks or rolls have this, if anything.

Another thing that seems to have changed is which weapons get deflected by shields and how easily. It used to be very bad for things like rapiers/spears/daggers when you hit a decent shield you'd stagger for ages, now it's pretty minor. And before something like a greatsword wouldn't get deflected by fuck all, you just follow through with every swing. Now it'll bounce off relatively dinky shields. Unless you're two handing, that seems much more effective vs shields now.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

Does being under 30% load actually increase the number of iframes on roll? I thought only Agility changed that.

I just know that you roll farther. I was getting hit less so maybe yes? No idea... Your movements seem faster in general if your equip load is less.

 

[Murk]

Agility = invincibility frames, load = distance of roll (if i am not mistaken)

UndetectedButthurt My soul mem is at 29mil apparently; not sure if that is high or not but oh well

I did have like 15 ratbro invasions fail in a row; not sure if that was related.

---

was the last 2(3) bosses supposed to be a joke?

also, you can't skip the credits I guess?

I donno man; this game went a bit shitty about when shrine of winter opened. DS 1 breaks down a bit after you get the Lord Vessel (assuming you already did the catacombs) but this was definitely much worse. Dragon Aerie and Dragon Shrine were just... pointless.

Also, I killed Vendrick. He's a bit of a broken fight but once I got the timing of his horizontal swings down it was easy. Just had to play it super conservative; the real threat was not fucking up a dodge because he has so much defense (I'm told giant souls weaken him; I had 4).

One theme that DS 1 handled well was the idea of having a "purpose"; all of the NPCs were out trying to accomplish something and only when their mission ended would they go hollow. Or, rather, when they failed their mission. It was nice to see people grow and depressing to see them fall -- especially when they then blindly attacked you and had to be put down. Something of a parallel to siegmeyer and sieglinde's questline.

In this game the idea of memory/forgetting is explored but it is barely hinted at. A few NPCs forget, one feigns forgetting, but most of all you are just kind of doing shit because... uhh... well, because. You're playing a game, you do shit in a game, duh.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yeah, maybe it's because of the route I took through the game, but the NPC interaction has felt VERY thin here. Most of them I just meet once and then they show up in Madula. And they don't even say new shit as time goes on. The only exceptions really are Vengarl and Tark. They actually reacted when I did stuff relevant to them. Lucatiel showed up a couple more times but only so she can continue whining about herself. But nobody is going hollow, or following any sort of actual sideplot or anything. Rather dissapointing.

By comparison, DaS1 had:

Seigmeyer's continued loss of confidence as you bail him out until he goes hollow and his daughter kills him.
Solaire's descent into madness as his faith is tested again and again while his hopeless search for his own sun fails.
Reah being toyed with by Petrus.
Patches trying to kill you repeatedly.
Logan going insane trying to learn from the Duke's Archives.
Quelanna asking you to put her sister out of her misery.
Pyrodude becoming hollow after you tell him about Quelanna.
And both Priscilla and Gwyndolin having actual personalities.
Plus some implied stuff like Kirk very likely serving the chaos covenant.

 

[StaticSpine]

Bros, can you please provide me with some decent DaS 2 criticism videos? I'm just curious.

 

[Murk]

Even Oscar has more depth than some of these cats. The most I think you get is Pate and Crichton; possibly the cleric chick. I guess she did something but her guilt was made obvious the second you talk to her and she freudian slips about taking advantage of people.

Oh, right, the mansion -- was that a thing? I just started NG + but I didn't check the mansion before I transitioned. I notice a lot of blood stains there; is that because of the skeleton or does something else happen?

 

[Murk]

Bros, can you please provide me with some decent DaS 2 criticism videos? I'm just curious.

this was linked a few pages back from reddit with the comments from A German Spy about how he too was disappointed. It's long, but p good; and dudebro is not obnoxious to listen to nor does he stall or spend time on stupid nitpicking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UScsme8didI&feature=youtu.be

EDIT: embedded-

 

[StaticSpine]

Bros, can you please provide me with some decent DaS 2 criticism videos? I'm just curious.

this was linked a few pages back from reddit with the comments from A German Spy about how he too was disappointed. It's long, but p good; and dudebro is not obnoxious to listen to nor does he stall or spend time on stupid nitpicking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UScsme8didI&feature=youtu.be

EDIT: embedded-

Thx bro!

 

[StaticSpine]

A pretty decent analysis, though some of the "issues" can also be applied to the first DaS.

BTW are there any decent retrospectives of Souls series and of From Software history?

 

[Invictus]

Super Bunnyhop has a very nicely edited video on Dark Souls you should check it out
And Static don't spoil yourself try the game first enjoy it and make your own opinion tovarisch
For 20% of good points matthewmatosis makes is trashed by the rest of the 80% nitpicking that could be applied to any of the Souls games and pointles biased nerdangst; I mean his whinning about the opening cinematic, red haze, hitboxes (without even showing any knowledge about the effects of adaptability and agility) is simply pathetic.
And all those youtubers who had early access to the game are entitled to all their opinions...but coming out before release when they had at least 2 weeks of early access to the game and jus say how awesome and wonderful it was and then change their minds 6 weeks in is pretty predictable; these are not profesional reviewers who are bought and paid or who have the balls to stand by their statements like men.
Anyway I don't think the same pandering with youtubers will work 3 or 4 years down the line with the next game so they made the most of it anyway
ENB and AGS are ok but that spineless manwhore Vaati asking for "donations" which he knows are 90% from Souls fans...sorry buddy but once you take their money you have a responsability to either give them what they want or jump in the "it aint so good" bandwagon and cry you had a change of mind because the new car smell has faded away

 

[StaticSpine]

Super Bunnyhop has a very nicely edited video on Dark Souls you should check it out
And Static don't spoil yourself try the game first enjoy it and make your own opinion tovarisch

I will, I was just curious, you know you can form your opinion not only judging by your own impression, but also considering the opinions of other people, which can reveal something hidden for you. So I'll play the game later, it's just too much souls gameplay for me at the time after beating DaS (and I still haven't touched DeS I own from PS+).

 

[Damned Registrations]

God, the endgame is fucking awful. I've long since passed the point where additional souls make me stronger, but even if I did want them to become a fighter/mage/priest/rogue/dragonborn or whatever the fuck, I'm now fighting enemies that give 200 souls when slain. Who can still fucking one shot me. What the fuck. You've already established I have over a million souls, and you're giving me shit like this, and bosses that don't even fork over 30k?

Considering starting over as a mage simply because they seem to keep getting goodies even lategame in the form of spells dropping/stashed in random places. And branching from sorcery to other forms of magic is way more viable than going from str to dex weapons, which offers no real improvement anyways and requires finding and upgrading whole new sets of equipment.