From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[Shadenuat]

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.

 

[Kanedias]

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

 

[Murk]

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.

 

[Damned Registrations]

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.

 

[Murk]

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.

 

[Shadenuat]

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...

 

[Damned Registrations]

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.

 

[Murk]

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 >;(

 

[Cowboy Moment]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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+.

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.

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.

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

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.

 

[Surf Solar]

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

 

[Murk]

Same here; had the same problem last night.

 

[Damned Registrations]

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?

 

[Murk]

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.

 

[Damned Registrations]

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?

 

[Murk]

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.

 

[Damned Registrations]

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'.

 

[Jaedar]

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

Claiming that ornstein and smough fight is as interesting as double dergonriders makes me question your judgement. I mean, twin dragonriders have the same moveset and are trivially easy, whereas the super londo bros are challenging and depending on who you kill first you get a different drop and have to deal with a different phase 2 moveset.

For me the issues with the DS2 bosses is that all the interesting ones are piss easy(yes, even gargoyles). The only ones I died often too were the really boring ones and that's mostly because boring bosses make you want to take stupid risks and get more hits in than is safe.

 

[aris]

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.

Looks more like something that could be an expansion/DLC to dark souls 2.

 

[Shadenuat]

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.

I really can't name anything more boring than a big armored dude with flaming sword and horns. And lingering elemental damage... there's that arena, why not make enemy like that create some fire pits or slow flying fireballs that do the same, but allow player to roll around them or dodge. Where's imagination in automatic damage?

I just find that so many bosses in DS2 simply lack in moves. In wiki they have 3-5 moves noted, while guys like Kalameet are as rich to have 10+. Many enemies in DS1 also had fewer moves, but then add-on picked up and went into right direction, it had Manticore, Kalameet, Artorias, Manus... and I thought DS2 would have bosses like that everywhere.

It "plagiarizes" Four Kings just as much (if not more), and is actually better and more challenging than its two predecessors.

It's not an easy fight, but I just can't get any fun out of fights like that because they feel like I'm playing DarkSouls 1 NG+ instead of DS2. "Gargoyles were fun? 4Kings was fun? Here, you can has both!!11 awesum!". I've seen all that, it's just not new to me.

 

[Jaedar]

I switched to a murakumo for PvP, stuff is going way better. Fighting hexers on that fucking bridge map is not cool though. Also faced a dude with a mundane avelynn, not cool. What's the best pyromancies for pvp? Currently using fire whip and flame wreathe.

 

[Malpercio]

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-

Honestly, this dude seems like an idiot trying to niptick.

Like when he laments the NPC in the room full of exploding mobs. First, they don't even hit him, second, are we forgetting Dusk getting killed my mobs at the lake?
Or shit like the critique to the healing. Healing is MUCH more balanced than DS2, were you could stack humanity WHO FULL HEALED YOU INSTANLY. You also could easily get 20 flask as opposed to DS2 much more limited stocks.

And then he criticizes the linearity. I guess we are all going to pretend the Tomb, Seth's cave, the DLC last areas and Dragon's asses never happened, eh?

 

[Jaedar]

How much estus you can have doesn't really matter when you can easily get nigh unlimited amount of lifegems.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

How much estus you can have doesn't really matter when you can easily get nigh unlimited amount of lifegems.

Lifegems are a far cry from Humanity. The heal from one is really slow, even if it's a decent amount, so it's only of practical use when out of combat (I have not tested if you can stack multiple lifegems for a faster recovery, but it's still a far cry from Humanity pops).

 

[Shadenuat]

Lifegems are great, since you can strafe and use them at same time, even if you move slower than normal.

How I feel when I finally upgrade Lightning Claymore to +10:

 

[Jaedar]

How much estus you can have doesn't really matter when you can easily get nigh unlimited amount of lifegems.

Lifegems are a far cry from Humanity. The heal from one is really slow, even if it's a decent amount, so it's only of practical use when out of combat (I have not tested if you can stack multiple lifegems for a faster recovery, but it's still a far cry from Humanity pops).

You can stack them, and unlike humanity, which was rather limited and required you to remain stationary, lifegems abound and even when moving that slow most enemies fail to track you fast enough.