From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[DramaticPopcorn]

Bullshit.

Lightning engine is definitely not the same

 

[Admiral jimbob]

One change though i don't know if i would like is increased number of enemies.

this worries me because, along with the stupid band-aid Agape Ring thing, it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how their own game works - much like Drangleic, they blindly build strange new edificies on the ruins of a superior culture that has long since moved on, heedless as to why the great Neanderthals did what they did. Dark Souls 2's idea of clever enemy placement is already almost invariably "unexpected gank mob" - like the entirety of Drangleic Castle, a location that should have been interesting - and to me this just reads like they're going into gank overdrive, which is already how I would have described NG+. Subtle as a gyrm's great hammer and heedless of tact and artistry, gg b team

edit: I will probably still play it and really enjoy it

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

One change though i don't know if i would like is increased number of enemies.

this worries me because, along with the stupid band-aid Agape Ring thing, it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how their own game works - much like Drangleic, they blindly build strange new edificies on the ruins of a superior culture that has long since moved on, heedless as to why the great Neanderthals did what they did. Dark Souls 2's idea of clever enemy placement is already almost invariably "unexpected gank mob" - like the entirety of Drangleic Castle, a location that should have been interesting - and to me this just reads like they're going into gank overdrive, which is already how I would have described NG+. Subtle as a gyrm's great hammer and heedless of tact and artistry, gg b team

edit: I will probably still play it and really enjoy it

There are no gank squads in castle drangleic

Spoiler

You never have to fight more than two enemies unless you are fuckng retard

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Afaik, you have to fight three statues in the room you get to by going up the ladder after the post-Dragonriders bonfire.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

Yeah two of which you can demolish with a hammer before they get up. In most cases if you are getting ganked in DaS2, it is your own fault.

The 2013 demo lighting is never coming back - it's clearly a long abandoned development iteration. They have never said anywhere that the game will look like that again. All the graphics upgrade shit for SotFS is definitely regarding next gen consoles. PC is hardly going to look different - it already has "HQ" textures and sound compared to PS3/360.

 

[Gozma]

Was there a way to get rid of the giant mario brothers pixels on the edges of shadows in the original PC release if you did shit with the settings or some other sorcery I don't pay attention to?

Other than that the only thing the re-release is gonna do is probably prolong the period where the DLC isn't on sale

 

[Gentle Player]

Looks like "new version" will have original feature of torches back.

For people who don't know. Many areas in DS2 should have pitch black darkness. Which means that for example you would have to set your second weapon as torch which also means no shield scum. Which should change a lot how DS2 was played for many people.

I already had this experience when I played on PS3. The game was so dark that I was stumped outside the hut in Things Betwixt for a while, unable to distinguish the pathway to the tree area from the surrounding wall without a torch. I'm sure that this was actually down to my television settings (unless I'm simply going blind), as nobody else seemed to mention the game's darkness. The Souls games also have a brightness slider with a picture of a bonfire and a dragon, and a recommendation that the slider be altered until the fire is visible and the dragon invisible; in DS2 PS3 even with the slider set to maximum there was no way to make the dragon visible. I left my TV settings alone, however, as other games seemed normal on it, and the result was a great experience: having to use torches fairly regularly just to be able to see. The Abyss was deadly, as it was impossible to tell the difference between solid floor and the void without a torch - I think this is what the developers actually intended, as I remember that in one particularly perilous area there was water dropping from above that, if stepped under, would douse one's torch and force one to waste a flame butterfly or risk death.

The difference between that and my PC version was, well, like that between night and day. This time the game was so bright that even with the slider set to minimum it was impossible to make the dragon disappear. I don't think this was due to monitor settings either as I set my monitor's brightness to the lowest level and still found the game to be too bright. The upshot was that I didn't even need to use torches at all. Not even in the Gutter or in the Abyss, which would have been a death sentence on the PS3. Was terribly disappointed.

 

[Perkel]

I actually liked that part with 3 on 1 battle. It wasn't "nice" but fuck it beating them alone was awesome. The trick was to beat first dude fast on that plarform and then move lower just to beat those two instead of three.

I think their mobage of DS2 new version is due to few things.
- 6 player coop which is crazy for any DS game. With 4 people even at lvl1 your would have no problem beating game. Hell even 3 people is a lot.
- old players playing again same game just in HD wouldn't qualify for full 60$ pricetag. VV said that he likes changes and he played a lot DS2 on that event in NY so i assume they put some effort into this.
- obvious shield users problem which became problem with DS1 and then DS2. It least in DeS finding 100% shield wasn't that easy but like i said could be done differently.

Bullshit.

Lightning engine is definitely not the same

Same fucking flat lighting = same lighting engine.
adding few light sources doesn't change overall lighting engine being flat.
And by flat i mean places where for example there is no lightsources and yet they have uniform lighting which looks just weird.

DS2 has static lighting for their levels and yet there are places where there are completely no baked AO or global ilumination which points that their old lighting model was revolving around dynamic light sources and huge amount of shadows casted for almost every light which would "fix" those uniform looking textures.

Some of DS2 levels where straight up Silent Hill 2 corridors from playstation 2 where you had this uniform lighting without any shadows or lightsources (mostly lakeview hotel part). But in Silent Hill 2 you had light source which wasn't ambient like that belt thing and cast shadows fixing those corridors.

I already had this experience when I played on PS3. The game was so dark that I was stumped outside the hut in Things Betwixt for a while, unable to distinguish the pathway to the tree area from the surrounding wall without a torch. I'm sure that this was actually down to my television settings (unless I'm simply going blind), as nobody else seemed to mention the game's darkness. The Souls games also have a brightness slider with a picture of a bonfire and a dragon, and a recommendation that the slider be altered until the fire is visible and the dragon invisible; in DS2 PS3 even with the slider set to maximum there was no way to make the dragon visible. I left my TV settings alone, however, as other games seemed normal on it, and the result was a great experience: having to use torches fairly regularly just to be able to see. The Abyss was deadly, as it was impossible to tell the difference between solid floor and the void without a torch - I think this is what the developers actually intended, as I remember that in one particularly perilous area there was water dropping from above that, if stepped under, would douse one's torch and force one to waste a flame butterfly or risk death.

The difference between that and my PC version was, well, like that between night and day. This time the game was so bright that even with the slider set to minimum it was impossible to make the dragon disappear. I don't think this was due to monitor settings either as I set my monitor's brightness to the lowest level and still found the game to be too bright. The upshot was that I didn't even need to use torches at all. Not even in the Gutter or in the Abyss, which would have been a death sentence on the PS3. Was terribly disappointed.

I tried to actually emulate that on PC but there is literally no way of doing that beside switching of my TV. Played it also a bit of friends console and it was the same thing. Sure it was bit darker but every area had this uniform brightness that wouldn't go away unless you would go down with brightness up to point where you have problems viewing normal lit areas.

Tried to use ENBs too and they sort of worked but areas clearly intended to be dark sometimes were pitch dark and sometimes were not because from start it was intended to go tandem with some sort of screen space filter that would change a lot depending on place like in Dark Souls 1 going depths to blight own momentary changing brightness of area.

Also it annoyed me that they wouldn't use torch stands to tie that to some hidden quest like opening new area or something.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

I actually liked that part with 3 on 1 battle. It wasn't "nice" but fuck it beating them alone was awesome. The trick was to beat first dude fast on that plarform and then move lower just to beat those two instead of three.

I think he meant regular stone soldiers in Drangleic Castle, not the Ruin Sentinels boss battle in Bastille. The topic was about regular enemy mobs and ganks.

 

[Makabb]

I don't have the 3 dlcs so i'm inclined to get it on muh ps4, can't imagine playing this on mouse and keyboard.

 

[Jaedar]

I don't have the 3 dlcs so i'm inclined to get it on muh ps4, can't imagine playing this on mouse and keyboard.

That is because you are not PC master race

 

[Ivan]

where do you live? I may need it for mah bloodborne

 

[Cadmus]

guys I finally installed Dark Souru II. I thought the difficulty was exaggerated but I'm lvl 40 and I have around 150 deaths... I simply have no patience for this. The Pursuer killed me like 15 times already and I can't get him past half his health. I think I'm really bad at this type of game. I had similar problems in Blade of Darkness but not like this.

 

[Abu Antar]

guys I finally installed Dark Souru II. I thought the difficulty was exaggerated but I'm lvl 40 and I have around 150 deaths... I simply have no patience for this. The Pursuer killed me like 15 times already and I can't get him past half his health. I think I'm really bad at this type of game. I had similar problems in Blade of Darkness but not like this.

Can't you summon someone to help?

 

[StaticSpine]

guys I finally installed Dark Souru II. I thought the difficulty was exaggerated but I'm lvl 40 and I have around 150 deaths... I simply have no patience for this. The Pursuer killed me like 15 times already and I can't get him past half his health. I think I'm really bad at this type of game. I had similar problems in Blade of Darkness but not like this.

Summon some bros. It's fun cause they will ocasionally kill you with ballista.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

If you're using shields buy a greatshield from Maughlin or kill Old Dragonslayer for an even better one. If you're dodging attacks then get your Agility to around 105 and things will be easy.

 

[Caim]

guys I finally installed Dark Souru II. I thought the difficulty was exaggerated but I'm lvl 40 and I have around 150 deaths... I simply have no patience for this. The Pursuer killed me like 15 times already and I can't get him past half his health. I think I'm really bad at this type of game. I had similar problems in Blade of Darkness but not like this.

IIRC you don't even need to fight the Pursuer. Just skip him and go the the Bastille the other way around.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Boss too hard and patience running low? Go elsewhere for the time being. As mentioned, you don't even have to kill the Pursuer to progress.

Honestly, the placement of Pursuer is kind of assholish, it gives the impression that he should be attempted right after Last Giant, at which point a new player will likely be underlevelled and undergeared for the fight. The solution is to go to Heide's and get tons of free stuff over there. It does lead to No Man's Wharf though, which is another kind of assholish area for how early in the game it appears.

 

[Caim]

Yeah, regular enemies should not be that much of a problem but having the game suddenly throw those bigass knights at you without having ever faced something like them before is just a dick move.

 

[Cadmus]

I don't know. I thought I was supposed to be able to take him down. I killed 1 boss in Heide, cleared all No Man's Wharf up until the boss in the ship which I haven't attempted yet. I think I just suck, I randomly die to any mob when I start up the game and it takes a few deaths to get used to it again. Ive got the Knight armor +3, Fire Longsword +3, leather shield, 4 rings, estus 4 +1. I just utterly fail at fighting. I feel bad leaving so many bosses behind.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

I don't know. I thought I was supposed to be able to take him down. I killed 1 boss in Heide, cleared all No Man's Wharf up until the boss in the ship which I haven't attempted yet. I think I just suck, I randomly die to any mob when I start up the game and it takes a few deaths to get used to it again. Ive got the Knight armor +3, Fire Longsword +3, leather shield, 4 rings, estus 4 +1. I just utterly fail at fighting. I feel bad leaving so many bosses behind.

Leather shield is no good for pursuer. Remember that big armor dudes are resistant to slash and vulnerable to strike and sometimes pierce. Elementally infused weapons can work against you sometimes as well. Some mobs/bosses will have insane elemental defense but physical damage is almost always good. Good example - anything that comes in contact with water gets a temporary boost in fire defense but a decrease in lightning.

Poise also works differently this time around - if you are idle you always get staggered, if you are moving then you will get half staggered and finally during attacks poise works fully.

You have to choose whether you're gonna be building a shield guy or a dodge guy. Shields are no good for PvP but excellent for PvE. If you plan on doing any PvP at all then you gotta get some points in Agility. ADP and ATN will increase Agility which makes rolling easier (more invincibility frames). Lots of STR and END are required for good shields.

Maughlin sells a 95% reduction greatshield. If you kill the 2nd boss at Heide, you'll get the first 100% reduction greatshield in a chest afterwards.

TL;DR get a mace/club/morning star and go wreck his ass.

 

[Zep Zepo]

I beat the pursuer as a new scrub summoning 2 other new scrubs at the first encounter, (you know, where he flys away) (2nd play thru, 2nd char).

Zep--

 

[Caim]

Elementally infused weapons can work against you sometimes as well. Some mobs/bosses will have insane elemental defense but physical damage is almost always good. Good example - anything that comes in contact with water gets a temporary boost in fire defense but a decrease in lightning.

Come to think of it, do you fight the Flexile Sentry in an area that's a bit flooded? If so, try getting the Heide Sword and use it against the boss.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

I remember being a complete n00b and trying to get through Sinner's Rise with a fire longsword. I had no idea that water buffs fire resist. This was on release too, before they nerfed the exploding undead assholes.

 

[Dreaad]

.... If I remember correctly you can beat the pursuer by parrying his first dash slice with a buckler in front of a ballista. You then have more than enough time to use the ballista to take off like 80% of his health in one shot.

Or did they patch that out at some point?