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jeeplethicar · 11 months ago

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Something that always strikes me as odd is whenever I consider playing any “soulslike” game since I enjoy fromsoft games so much. But I’m always turned away from them because they always miss that thing that actually makes fromsoft games good.

After you play any of the games more than once you immediately find the game easier and easier each time (in my experience at least) where my first playthrough was over 100 hours any subsequent one I first try most bosses regardless of the build or challenge I impose on myself and I clear it in 20 hours max. Mind you that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable I’ve played through the whole trilogy back to back multiple times but it’s undeniable that dark souls is not that hard when you actually know what you’re doing. I’d say at least 70% of the actual “hard” part is just not having any idea what you’re supposed to do when a boss does x thing. But the second you do? Then you make the boss look like a goober who’s never held a sword before

Dark souls (and other fromsoft games) have received this unfortunate label of “this game is hard” which turns a lot of people away from it. Or even worse becomes a glorified aspect of it when in reality it’s difficulty is one of the least important aspects of what it has to offer. Yet that’s the thing that everyone latches on to. Don’t get me wrong I remember spending hours on nearly every boss my first time around but after I win it really was more a fact of “oh I just need to do x when y” it’s not that preforming the action itself was actually difficult.

But whenever any “soulslike” games, weather they advertise themselves like that or not. The inevitable words that are coming out of stupid peoples mouths is “this game is harder than dark souls” or something comparing difficulty. And then you watch gameplay of this game and it looks like a shitty dark souls mod with worse UI. Oh sorry could you not tell which game I was talking about? Yeah that’s because there’s a lot of them floating about.

And I don’t even necessarily hate these games either I would probably have a fun time playing it if the bosses were entertaining enough. However I probably wouldn’t want to play them again for one reason and one reason only. These games all focus so hard on the hard game set in grim medieval setting that they completely ignore the whole beautifully crafted world with lots of lore in every corner that is woven into the gameplay so seamlessly that it’s not until you’ve played dark souls a few times that you begin to notice how well done it is when you see things that you missed the first time. That’s what these games are missing, they just try to make a “hard” game and sometimes even end up failing at that. And then these games fade to obscurity as just another dark souls clone. Which is very unfortunate for the developers of these games as I’m sure plenty of them didn’t even have dark souls in mind when making their game

Even for fromsoft, they have Bloodborne (which I have yet to play) and Sekiro. Are absolutely fantastic stand alone games and have earned their own spots next to dark souls that have their own unique stories and gameplay despite being similar in vibe. However who didn’t escape this was Elden Ring, now I could go on for a long time about how disappointed in this game I am. But I wont for now. Elden Ring really is just fromsoft wanting to keep making dark souls but having the self respect to not go “dark souls 4 we continued this for some reason” because they know ds3 is the perfect ending. But there’s a huge reason why any time people talk about Elden ring you see dark souls tags on it. It’s obvious it’s meant to be a continuation of the series (gameplay wise obviously not story wise) Elden ring just doesn’t make itself unique enough to be one of the great fromsoft games.

And that’s not to say I didn’t play the game all the way though so don’t think I’m just some dark souls bootlicker. I did one regular str/faith build (just for golden vow and lightning buffs) and my second playthrough was a naked throwing knife only run. So I did throughly play it and while there were enjoyable parts of it. Elden ring just feels so much less developed atmospherically. Like in terms of icons? We have a tree. Oh and another tree, and in case you didn’t notice on your way in we have a tree. The tree is cool for a bit until you see that that’s literally all it is. Things like messages are there because… well because.. Why does our character respawn? Oh because of the undead curse-..

I think Elden ring is a fun game and is still well done but it always falls short of being it’s own unique thing and it will always be that way to me, I want to get into the lore like I can with the other games but it just feels like it’s not there (ignoring the god awful Samey same names) it plays exactly like ds2 if it was polished and didn’t have adaptability. And it’s bosses/enemies are copy pasted way too many times and they don’t even do it like the Capra demon in ds1 where you encounter it early game as a point to warn you about the kind of beasts you’re going to meet when you go past the depths and blighttown. But also that when you struggle with this thing now but then are able to handle three of them at once later shows your growth in strength.

As apposed to “oh yeah just throw in this same boss again, what do you mean we already have twelve tree sentinels? Just one more it’s okay. No don’t change anything about it no new moves just the same boss. Oh and while you’re at it copy paste some more crucible knights, let’s make a duo fight with them people liked ornstien and smough. These enemies have no chemistry and the room is too small? Do I pay you to ask questions? Just because of that I’m putting in an area that’s entirely a swamp, actually fuck you two swamps”

End point, the reason games labeled as “soulslike” or clearly model themselves after it inevitably fail is because what makes dark souls so special isn’t because it’s hard game haha get gud. It’s because of the atmosphere and the story it tells *while* it’s beating your ass. The way every boss takes hours and dozens of attempts your first playthrough is because you’re supposed to feel like one of the undead dying time and time again with the only thing that keeps you returning is your will to keep trying. Other games are hard because they want to have that little sticker they can put on the box to say “we’re like dark souls guys please pay attention to us” they lack the why that dark souls has. It’s themes are perfectly executed and that’s why they have been, and will always be a timeless classic that people will try very hard to emulate but it’s not until they figure out how to make a good story that they’ll ever make something nearly as good

#dark souls #ds1 #ds2 #ds3 #soulslike

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phytoremediator · 4 months ago

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Shadow of the Erdtree review

PC, 2024, DLC for Elden Ring, $40

Verdict: Not worth $40. 7.5/10

Elden Ring was my first soulslike. After a couple of false starts a few weeks after release I settled into a strength build and achieved the Age of Stars ending (Ranni's) and got all remembrances. A year later I even filled out my inventory with missing items like obscure talismans and tried a new dex build and didn't get very far. In between, I played Dark Souls (even streamed it), Bloodborne (loved it), DS2 (worse than 1), DS3 (best of the trilogy - haven't played the DLC), Demon's Souls remake (good, but faithful copying of esoteric and clunky mechanics detracted), Sekiro (not for me, i.e. "too hard"), and Lies of P (excellent soulslike. Got all achievements. Some quests a bit annoying).

In the lead-up to the DLC I was mostly debating whether or not it'd be worth the steep price tag despite really wanting to play it. I can talk about value but I don't want to sound like Marx in this review. I'd probably lean towards the value being $25. Far less to do than the base game, which is $60 (less if you get it on sale). It's sort of worth playing, but the content duration is only extended by virtue of needing to retry bosses like Radahn, Consort of Miquella over and over again.

DLC content that requires a significant portion of gameplay to get to and in turn requires choices or includes points of failure can be a headache for blind playthroughs. I ended up following a basic side quest guide after accidentally (?) slaying a member of the forager brood and angering Moore, locking myself out of some recipes. This helped somewhat but I still missed out on Ansbach's bow due to siding with the Hornsent who promptly invades me in Rauh. Whatever. I could copy the nonsense pathed absurdly named save file into a backup folder like I did to get the last two achievements I was missing (Elden Lord and Lord of Frenzied Flame) but that seemed like too much work.

There are a few side areas and overall the exploration was fun. Once you grab the first few easy upgrade materials it becomes easier to get the rest. The handful of dungeons were well put together but generally relied on lethal falls as a threat. Bayle the Dread was kind of gimmicky in that you needed a blessing and an ally to defeat him. The furnace golems were also the essence of gimmick and had insane damage. Midra was easy but I tackled him at 20/10 upgrade level. The uh, Putrescence Knight? was easy enough, though I really expected sleep to be more of a threat in Stone Coffin Fissure/Cerulean Coast, while it was actually absent. Shadow Sunflower wasn't too bad and thematically interesting, although I like my plants alive, not undead or shadowy. The boar rider guy caught me off guard but I defeated him second try despite his ridiculous hitboxes. Metyr and its side quest was probably the most enjoyable of the side quests, though it felt a bit empty. Mostly I was like "welcome back Bloodborne" because of the cosmic horror and motherhood.

The main quest was fairly enjoyable - I defeated Divine Beast Dancing Lion first because I watched SGDQ 2024 and that's what the runner did. Anyway, the NPCs each had their little goals that changed a bit after defeating Rellana and approaching the Shadow Keep, but none I agreed with. Leda has the archetype of golden zealot, whose gleaming armor belies a bloodthirst. Ansbach wears his bloodiness on the outside and allies with you if only to give Mohg a proper burial. Thiollier is pathetic yet probably the most agreeable character. After slaying Messmer, whose design is targeted towards people vulnerable to evil blorbos, you go through another area and fight another boss. After a bit you make your way to where Miquella is doing some very weird necromancy (hashtag toxic yaoi) and eventually slay him and Radahn. Well, I would have. I got him down to 10% but didn't feel like grinding the rest of the way. Also it seems that asking Ansbach and Thiollier to help actually makes the fight significantly harder, for some reason. So I'll just have to imagine Miquella being very sad about dying.

Many fans were blinded by some of the antagonists being pretty, going so far as to romanticize Miquella's divine power of coercion. Messmer was the subject of evil blorbo-ing from the moment of his reveal. His crimes are self-evident and yet he is upheld as a tragic figure who impaled and burned for love.

The DLC is very self-contained. You access it after defeating Mohg, which is usually the last remembrance boss players defeat in the main game. The Shadow Realm is an entirely different map. The story and lore in the main game barely makes reference to anything happening in the DLC, save for Marika, Miquella/St. Trina, Radahn, and Mohg. Much of the DLC builds off of the existing lore (+3 talismans, anyone?), though it emphasizes the motif of light and shadow. This is a familiar and ubiquitous concept but I would like to make special reference to the twin trees of Valinor in The Lord of the Rings lore, as the Erdtree and Scadutree may well be inspired by these two. I would have liked some stuff retconned into the main game and the DLC content be more integrated into the main game lore and world. I replayed from the start prior to the DLC and found nothing new to suggest the existence of pretty much anything in the Realm of Shadow. I always side with Ranni but there wasn't really a way to play the DLC in a manner befitting this, though you do end up slaying Messmer and Miquella and also some fingers (Metyr) anyway.

Overall, pretty enjoyable. If I had to give it a score I'd probably say 7.5/10. Point off for bad difficulty scaling especially after hitting a wall with the final boss. Point off for not tying in with the rest of the game enough and being a bit empty in places. The main quest feels especially pointless since Miquella's grand plan is only revealed fully at the end and you promptly put a stop to it. Half a point off for combat gimmicks that require abnormal gameplay (Bayle, furnace golems, aging untouchable, Radahn). The bulk of the Realm of Shadow was well executed and pretty (and gross), most of the bosses and enemies were engaging, and some of the new equipment was worthwhile. Pick it up if you're really into Elden Ring but if some of the negatives are glaring you can wait until it goes on sale.

#game review

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mintmiltra · 4 months ago

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The elden ring DLC is seriously messed up man. Like, yeah it's a souls game but my character is level 137 and it's already working better than my level 150 character!? I'm gonna have to yap. The bosses have just a tad too many flurry attacks I feel like, like it's extremely fun to watch them miss every hit once you dodge the first one and I was known as a princess of dodging within the people i played with but come on bro :(

But seriously I feel like the base game was just better, I got the dlc for like $60 in Australian money which was probably like $20 less than I got the main game for and it felt just a little... substandard. The bosses are the best part of the game in my opinion and I don't know why but me and my friend (we were playing the game together) both thinks they're mid. Don't get me wrong it's not all bad I had lots of fun taunting my friends about it but some of it just felt rushed, even if it had lots of effort put into it. For how big some of the clearings were they just felt.. empty? We think there should've been more, but overall, DS3 dlc still on top!

#Elden Ring #shadow of the erdtree #dlc problems #yapper #professional yapper

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castleinthemist · 5 months ago

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anyway continual complaining about ring of eld below - i've got grief with the combat in this game and watching sis also really exemplifies that because her playstyle is different to mine:

dude.poise means fuck all in this game. get staggered by rats and dogs while wearing full plate armour. lol. lmao even. seriously what the fuck

idk what the point of having that stat is anymore when certain moves from a variety of enemies can stagger you to shit regardless of what you are doing/wearing and then have certain moves they can poise over yours in an inconsistent manner....like....what????

maybe if it was phrased as 'stagger' rather than poise it would make more sense i suppose because it does act more like a sekiro style stagger but like also there's poise and stagger but htey are doing different things and the only tell for stagger is the stance break animation.

anyway all this is to say this game gives me the shits to play because it leans so fucking heavily into combat and the combat is just. real fucked up feeling. Everything is faster and moves around too much (part of my issue with ds3 as well as it's in response to the prior 2 games of that series), dlc has vfx blocking your screen half the time and clarity for a lot of bosses is just straight out of the window (prioritising spectacle but spectacle is only great the first couple of times ... no? i think it's works better on something like the ice worm ac6 boss where that's the most notable aspect of the fight...more to that thought but i'll end it here)

i feel like the back and forth of prior games is kinda gone in preference for smaller and smaller windows of opportunity between combo strings that feel like they last forever and distance the boss can keep zoning you about from - couple that with the fact you're choices are 'burn the boss down into nothing asap or perfectly follow simon says to complete these fight (effectively trying to do a nohit version lol) and well. I guess that was my issue with artorias in the 1st souls game dlc and that's the thing that's gotten stronger with each subsequent game in this style

#ring of eld #taupe talks #anyway i have gripes aplenty and since i'm not playing hte dlc i can bear the mental load of sorting it out while #watchign someone else struggle through it (that being said my sis has been totaling these bosses so)#(she's much better at these games than i)

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dianight · 5 months ago

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About elden ring dlc and other stuff (very, very long)

I hate elden ring so much. You can't begin to understand with words alone. The pain. The disappointment. The outrage.

So. When sekiro came out I played it a lot. I occassionally enjoy racing and there was a bit of competition so I ran it for a few weeks. Beautiful community effort. Sekiro runners (current ones) tend to be very chill people, but at the start there was a bit of disagreement over rules and terminology, as it happens every time. I didn't even run shura until I decided to get all achievements on a whim, as a certain archmage would say.

A few tools came out to help us. The usual integrated autosplit and the tutorial message autoremover. One thing that I noticed along with other runners was the obscene amount of eaten inputs, aka I pressed the button but nothing happened. Mostly fine after a few patches (maybe placebo) but the usual fromsoft shit pops up.

You see, for those who have been running these games for years there's some "fromsoft things" you kinda get used to. One of them is patches worsening performance. Sekiro on release was running very smooth. Current patch has some major freezes, usually on Ashina castle rooftops. Not exclusive to that area but they can be brutal there.

It's one of the main reasons I run 1.15 on ds3, the other being that I'd rather not update all of my tools since it's a pain in the ass. Justified in that 1.15.2 runs like shit. You get a few fps drops on static locations, but on 1.15.2 they are much worse and you also get random ones all over the place. Loading areas putting me on 5X for a few seconds is completely fine. Getting less than 40 on random spots (even boss fights) is unviable.

Enter elden ring.

Let's start from the base. A game released on 2022 that cannot run without freezes/fps drops when your pc is top tier is unacceptable. A game released on 2022 that takes 50gb+ is unacceptable. A game released on 2022 that runs like shit on hdd is unacceptable.

Now some people will have lower standards. Those people are wrong. Developers (or companies, interchangeable) getting away with poor optimization and massive file sizes are a massive issue due to poor expectations that leads to poor optimization that leads to poor expectations that leads to poor optimiz- You get the idea.

When going into elden ring I was expecting terrible and hoping for bad. It was pretty bad, which is like halfway there. I had more than the requirements, so what you'd expect in that case is that the game runs correctly (for the most part) at 60 fps with no major drops/freezes if you put all settings on minimum. That was not the case. That was not the case even if you had a top tier pc.

I was recently watching an apex pro player going through elden ring. On Maliketh he kept complaining that whenever he got X attack his pc would go 10 fps. While certainly exaggerated, I do know for a fact that that attack will drop fps no matter how powerful your pc is. It does get worse the more "potato" your pc is.

I focus on performance because for an execution game, as in, one that requires even a minimum amount of reflexes, timing and attention, as opposed to a turn based game or other strategy games where how well you can play (physically) is way less important (or irrelevant) compared to how well you can play (mentally), performance is everything.

All of that to say: some card game having fps issues might be annoying but ultimately it does not affect gameplay, but an action game having fps issues is a dealbreaker. No matter how cool, how breathtaking, how beautiful the game presents itself all of that won't matter if you can't play the fucking game.

For people like me, people who are willing to compete (friendly) for results, race for world firsts and be the ones to dive into the game without any info/guides not being able to play the fucking game is problematic. It is only due to my divine nature that I simply kept trying despite how tilting it was. 50+ minutes runs ended after the tedious setup because Margit jumps and my game freezes.

I made a post a while back about some gameplay aspects and my experience with the game. To expand a bit from a more casual perspective, the game does not do a good job of being "open world" because travel time becomes tedious very fast and once you know where enemies are you realize how empty everything feels if you ever decide to go off the path.

I do realize that people do eat it up so I guess good job to fromsoft, great game and atrocious souls game. Not even kidding. That meme from a little bit ago is 100% real. I don't want to get into enemy design in the middle of rant but it's bad. Bad bad bad.

So what about the dlc? Amélie has it but I cannot be bothered to get it because I cannot play the fucking game since it runs like shit. I was planning on watching a full playthrough that a streamer was going to do but as soon as it started I realized I don't actually want to. I only care about the game to hate on it.

Imagine everyone you know starts eating literal shit, offering you literal shit to eat and you see the news about how delicious literal shit is. Everywhere you go is about how tasty literal shit is. It gets a bit unbearable.

I did watch a bit, everyone is playing and I wanted something to watch for a bit while eating. There was this dancing divine dog(?) that looked straight out of bloodborne and every time it attacked it would have random lightning all over the place. Immediately close it and pick something else to watch.

Normal (more casual, less hardcore) players will see this and perhaps be like "oh cool". For me, I see a fight that combines area denial with (random!) multihits and blocks the players' vision. Terible, terrible boss design. Literal shit.

I don't care about how beautiful and well crafted the enviroments are (don't make me pull out the mesh viewer) because the game is laggy and unoptimized. I don't care about how impressive the bosses, weapon arts and spells are because the combat system that souls games use (elden ring included) fundamentally favours, and shines, when the bosses and players can do a back and forth of dodge/punish/trade instead of letting bosses do 3+ hit combos or add mix ups for no reason- You disengage and try for a better combo, or just play ranged and fully disengage from the fights. Nevermind that in that game you are either constantly punished with chip damage (sometimes not even chip damage) and gap closers or ranged play trivializes the game because it's badly designed.

Like if I had a reason other than ranting I'd do a little bit of game design talk to shit on elden ring even more. But. What for. Literal shit. Smells bad, probably tastes worse no matter how much everyone goes "yummy yummy". Not much to add.

My finisher was "and never again" after getting a shitty run for an even shittier game. I didn't even want the "glory" of world first, that's how much I disliked it. Technically fourth(?) since someone else got first the day before and the day I got it it was like 3 or 4 different people and the one I got in practice before that (with no recording) will never count.

Oh well. For a less ragey, more nuanced explanation of why elden ring is terrible game design. I don't know, knock on my door or something.

I'm on the fence about this because on one hand I do want to say my piece but it'd be highly toxic and very niche but on the other I do believe in letting people enjoy trash.

I'll probably make a singular post about it later and just use it as reference.

#toxic

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acephysicskarkat · 4 years ago

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top 10 works of media

Wow, we’re going broad here, uhhhhhhh

#10: THE REVENGE OF THE SITH NOVELISATION

Significantly better than the movie.

#9: OK KO! LET’S BE HEROES SEASON ONE

OK, I haven’t seen past season one, but it was really good: offbeat, clever, fun to watch, with a much smarter understanding of relationships and storytelling than [glares into the middle distance] certain other recent cartoons I could name.

#8: DARK SOULS 3

I had to get a videogame on here, and DS3 is more accessible without compromising too much on the series’ trademark difficulty. The rush of beating a difficult boss for the first time is better than heroin.

#7: THE LOCKED TOMB BOOKS

If you want to see a good gay enemies-to-lovers arc set in a science fantasy setting with two lesbians raised in an unhealthy environment, one of whom uses a big sword, this is definitely where you should go.

#6: SENTINELS OF THE MULTIVERSE

I’ve only played it in digital but I want to get the hardcopy sometime. Great tabletop game, fun mechanics, willing to experiment and with a cool lore podcast.

#5: STEVEN UNIVERSE SEASON TWO

Good development from the first season (which is also great but is just so long compared to the others), plus it contains one of the best redemption arcs in media.

#4: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

Probably the best Star Wars movie.

#3: CHUUBO’S MARVELOUS WISH-GRANTING ENGINE

One of my three favourite TTRPGs, with a good system, a great setting, and a very distinctive authorial voice. Wish the organisation of the corebook was better, but you can’t have everything.

#2: THE ANCILLARY SERIES

@annleckie is one of the best sci-fi writers currently creating and You Will Respect Her. The Ancillary books have some really clever things to say about identity, culture, personhood and imperialism. They’re also just really well-written.

#1: DISCWORLD

I really cannot recommend the late Sir Terry Pratchett’s work enough. Genuinely a formative experience for me, and if you haven’t read, say, Feet of Clay or Going Postal or Hogfather or Maskerade you owe it to yourself.

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beesmygod · 5 years ago

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i like dark souls 3 a lot

im making this post because DS3 is on sale in the steam store for $21.24 with both the DLC and im going to try to convince you to play it.

if you’re new to dark souls there’s probably only two things you know about it:

1. its allegedly very hard

2. the fanbase is awful.

i cant argue against #2 because i am int he fanbase and i am awful but i will say: dark souls 3 is the most accessible of all the soulsborne games and my second favorite of the entire catalog (my favorite being bloodborne but it will forever be ps4 only ;_;). dark souls 1 is a great, but extremely dated game that is pretty hard to go back to unless you’re REALLY jonesing for more ds content. dark souls 3 is ds1 with the rough edges sanded off to make a really slick, highly polished game that really pushed all the right buttons for me.

“my son is also named vordt”

if you’re looking for a coherent, precise narrative, the ds games aren’t to your taste: they’re intentionally weird and vague with a lot of speculating and guesswork required to fill in the blanks in the narrative. the game wants you to scour every item you pick up and read its description and apply its importance to the larger world being introduced to you and to repeat gameplay (via the mechanic of “dying frequently” or “doing a new game+”) so you don’t miss things presented to you. advice i don’t really see repeated anywhere: when you clear a small area and determine you’re safe, take a moment to look around at your surroundings. think about how you got there and why. when you pick up an item consider where you found it and how it might have wound up there. sometimes there’s deeper meaning that isn’t pushed into your face.

another piece of advice: not everything is trying to kill you so don’t go in swinging unless they start acting funny and making movements at you. most things are enemies but some characters are just assholes or really good friends who you should help out, when possible. and watch your back. seriously, though.

actually a friend

you do not need to be deeply involved in the dark souls lore of the first 2 games in order to “get” ds3. it works fine on its own, and the stuff that pops up from previous games is fun, but not vital. there are characters that return from previous games, enemies that suddenly show up that seem familiar and locations that...okay there’s one location that if you played ds1 will blow your ass clean off but i don’t know if i’d rec playing ds1 just for that experience. maybe watch a play-through by someone who is good at the game so they breeze through it.

the soundtrack to this game is absolutely sublime. its crazy how good literally every boss track is. like, the environmental sounds are always very good in soulsborne games to help create the dire and moody atmosphere of worlds approaching their extinction but ds3 tracks slap the shit out of the other games, imo.

somehow this is one of the easiest boss battles in the game’s music??

youtube

ah...1:37

the dlc is fine. there’s never been a soulsborne dlc i liked (except the bloodborne one until the last boss and then its the worst bullshit ever made) but for the price? totally acceptable. i hate the boss fights of “the painted world of ariandel”, they are miserable, drawn out affairs and somehow “the ringed city” doubles down on that premise by introducing a (optional) boss with a bazillion hp. bosses with more than 2 phases are just totally unnecessary for a game like this.

but, the areas are neat, the items are good, the lore is interesting. too bad about the rest of it.

i like ds3 and you should try it out, imo, if you computer can handle the strain and you can handle getting a little mad at videogames.

BUY IT HERE!!!! FOR ONLY $21.24

#dark souls 3 #ds3

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sanshine · 3 years ago

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omg nooo i love the rant hehe especially bc ur so into it <33 i've played every fromsoft game except for demon souls but tbh i never finished ds1 or ds2 😭 i really didn't like ds2 bc they changed a lot of stuff and made it miserable to play when i played it the first few times so it might be different if i go back to it NOW but im glued to elden ring for the time being instead <3 i got stuck at the exact spot you're stuck in in ds1 too those bell gargoyles are just 😭😭 actually the first time i play i did things really out of order and accidentally attacked an npc then aggro-ed him and then couldn't go back to the gargoyles so i trapped myself and ahahha it was a mess </3 but since then i still haven't been able to get past the gargoyles 😭 hilariously i played them mega out of order i went from 3 to 1 to 2 to bloodborne to sekiro then now elden ring KDFSLK and in terms of accessibility for new players i think elden ring, bloodborne and ds3 are most accessible? obviously that's based on how good i feel i am at those games but yeah <3 i imagine ds3 with be much much easier for you than ds1 is just based on my personal experience 😭 sekiro is way different in a lot of ways and i know lots of FS fans didn't like it bc of that but personally i really loved it T-T

i think imo elden ring has been the most accessible for me personally and for people i know who haven't played any FS games!! i agree with you, i spent a lot of time watching streamers struggle immensely so i was super worried and scared about it being like,,,,ridiculously nonsense difficult but it wasn't!! im horrid about doing things in order tho so i'll admit i have made things way more difficult for myself than i could be T-T i felt like for me with margit it kinda clicked and made sense and i got my timing down there then by the time i got to radahn i was better at dodging and such so i was lucky enough with RNG to knock him out first try lkkljsflkd

im not sure where you arer in terms of story so i don't wanna be like talking out my ass about bosses and stuff SLDKFJSLFKD but i just beat my fourth elden lord dude thingy but i did it out of order so i think he was supposed to be the third one? but still i don't think i've had much trouble with the required bosses either! it feels much easer than other souls games and idk if that's bc the game is easier or it's just easier to grasp!!! there's a big difficulty curve i think depending on the ending you go for and i accidentally locked myself into that ending so now it feels a bit like im back to level 1 all over and im hitting enemies with a TOOTHPICK 😭 but it's still so fun it's so pretty and the music is lovely and the setting and scenery and graphics just aaaaa im so in love with it <33 definitely up there with bloodborne for me personally i think they perfected so much about the series with elden ring and made it a wonderful thing 😭 the sheer quantity of bosses is just BONKERS!! i made myself a spreadsheet to keep track of who i'm beating and such bc im a completionist and my god i keep having to add to it bc it's so so many 😩

i've been hyped since it was first announced and tbh i was only nervous about the STORY bc george rr martin was gonna be working on it but honestly this story makes more sense to me than any of the other games i feel as though they are much more willing to give information about the story through characters and dialogue and that makes it easier to digest so im loving it i really do thing it's the perfect blend of everything they have built up in previous games 😭 im playing on pc too and tbh i've not really had performance issues either so like,,,im having the best experience i can!! i will say tho there are two bosses in particular who drove me nuts just bc im personally not good at fighting multiple bosses at once bc i have a hard time managing them but again i found out that i did them way earlier than i should have and made it awfully difficult for myself so that's kinda on me HAHA one day... one day i'll learn to be better about that... bc i do that in every FS game...

i ended up talking out my ass anyways i could go on forever too CLEARLY!!! but yeah it's a 10.5/10 for me characters are phenomenal amazing attractive in luv with them the voice acting is crazy good radagon is highkey hot but YOU DIDN'T HEAR THAT FROM ME! blaidd too if you take away the furry bits his voice is just so nice and he's tall and has a big sword it's the perfect man right there <3

im sorry for putting this WALL OF TEXT in your inbox 😭 but i miss u more i love u more i hope u are doing so well mwahmwah im so happy ur playing and loving it too 😭💖

omg ddshvbshdbvhsdb OKAY LESGO

im really curious about the other ds games!!! i think ds3 is overall the most popular? so im really looking forward to playing it jsdbvhsdbv wanna give bloodborne and maaaaybe sekiro a chance too, not sure yet bc right now elden ring tunnel vision yk hdvsbdsvhbd but yes!!! those gargoyles are so annoying >:( AND THE WORST PART IS THAT THERE IS A VERY SIMILAR GARGOYLE DUO FIGHT IN ELDEN RING LUNA BELOVED I RAGE QUIT THE GAME WHEN I FOUDN THEM JSDVBHSDBVHSB but yes like you say i think those games are most accessible too!!! elden ring has a bunch of tutorials and popups that explain whats actually happening, I DIDNT FIND THAT IN DS1 LMAO <3

margit is nowhere near as bad as people make him seem fhbsdhfvb you'd be surprised how many new players there are that literally cant get past him??? sdbvhsdbv like sure the whole anti-panic-rolling mechanic sucks (yk when he raises his sword and then waits.... and waits........... AND EVENTUALLY HITS FDVBHSB) making you have to REALLY time your rolls well but even then margit aint THAT bad i mean sure he's the first real boss of the game but obviously he wouldnt be unbeatable shdvbhsd people are just bad <3 jsdvhdvb also i think radahn is much easier now after the patch, at least from what i've heard? my streamer beat him before the patch so maybe thats why it took him so long but its a shame bc i want a real damn challenge and radahn was one i was really looking forward to jvbshdvb

.... i have to admit im not sure myself either JHBSHDVBDS i literally have no clue what im doing!!!! in terms of game progression though im currently stuck searching for the medallions for the grand lift of dectus!! and bc i dont wanna look shit up unless im really desperate i decided to go explore the open world a bit more and last thing i did when i played was entering the carian study hall!! so that's on my to-do list right now uwu just need to grow a pair first jsdvbhsdvb oh no you poor soul (SEE WHAT I DID THERE) im curious who you're fighting tho? bc as much as there are still many boss fights i havent seen, i do know about them sjdvbhds if anything else from the soundtrack alone bc the elden ring songs are the only thing i listen to these days fdjfbhfvb am unsure about the exact number of the bosses but i think i heard there are 83???? which is NUTSS

oh you'll have to enlighten me about the story bc again i literally have no idea whats goign on sjdbvshbv ofc i caught some bits but not enough for them to make sense to me?? but what made me really interested in the story was when i walked past the frenzy flaming tower, idk if youve been there but THAT SHIT IS SO EERIE AND COOL!!!!!!!!!! i love it hsdbhsdbv tried looking up more lore about that particular thing but havent found much :(( i wonder, those two bosses you mentioned sdhvbsdhb are they the godskin duo by any chance? sdvjhbsdhvbdshbv BUT ALSO IM GLAD YOURE HAVING SUCH A GOOD EXPERIENCE <33333333 im playing on the ps4 and i kinda wish i either had a psn or played on pc because its a shame that i cant see those online messages from players i think they're a very fun addition to the game sdvbshdbv

LMAO I SAID LOWKEY BC DIDNT WANNA WEIRD YOU OUT IN CASE YOU'D DISAPPROVE BUT YES <3 what a hot man honestly. he can be undead he can be half empty glowing golden rays from inside, i dont care i see him for what he really is!!! (hot) HSDVVHSDBVHBSD but also luna beloved have you seen him in the 2019 trailer???????????????????????????? GOD thats where he looks the best hfvbhdb BC HE LOOKS HUMAN THERE AND EVEN THO YOU CAN REALLY ONLY SEE HIS BACK AND ARMS, YK,,,,,,,, ITS KINDA ALL I NEED TO SEE ANYWAY SHDBVHSDVB but also blaidd yes <3 he's so tall and cool, a big confident good boi, how could you not love him 😔😔

DONT BE SORRY!!!!!!!! IM HAPPY YOU MESSAGED ME ABOUT THE GAME I REALLY ENJOY TALKING ABOUT IT ESPECIALLY WHEN ITS WITH YOU BELOVED 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 always feel free to update me on your journeys <3333333333333

#ilylylylylylyly uwuwuwuwuwu #luna ❣#reply #khongz

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hacknet · 1 year ago

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ok fine heres an explanation. comparing to what ive played of ds3 and er:

most enemies do less damage relative to your hp since you encounter them in large groups more often

status effects wear off faster, cure items are more common/easier to get, and armor can mitigate the buildup

you can carry 20 blood vials minimum, and they always restore a percentage of hp rather than needing to upgrade both your vial amount and health restored. they can also drop from enemies

rally allows you to regain lost health more than if you were restricted to blood vials only, and its especially good for countering minor damage (also rewarding you for playing aggressively)

parrying is done with guns rather than shields, which again encourages risky aggressive playstyles, but can also allow you to back off and watch the attack patterns for when to shoot, then move in for the visceral once you hit it

all hunters move the same. doesnt matter if youre using a rapier with a gun in the handle or a sword with a giant stone block on the end of it. you always move and roll the same speed with the same amount of iframes

nearly all of the armor is useful and is placed in the world or purchased from messengers rather than dropping from enemies. youre not gonna be dying hard because you didnt get a hat to drop from an enemy is my point

all starting weapons are good and will work well through the entire game as long as you upgrade them

the areas have Tons of shortcuts for faster boss runbacks if you dont waste your time fighting through the map (comparison invalid for er)

runes can remove the need to level stamina almost entirely (im level 107 and my stamina is 17. for some reference)

^that means you basically only have to level vitality and whatever you've chosen for damage. arcane and bloodtinge hunters have it a little harder but the game is so well designed that you will most likely not be trying to play arcane your first time around because you dont know how to use it

enemies dont turn to face you immediately on attacking (most of the time. theres like 2 exceptions but theyre still not instant autotarget snaps, they feel more natural and you Can still dodge if you rolled a bit early if your positioning was good)

um i think thats it. anyway that's what makes bloodborne easier than both of those games. maybe its just my preferred playstyle (fast and aggressive) making it a perfect fit for me but it is soooooo fun while ds3 and er kind of feel like a slog because of their lack of speed and how much you have to keep track of build wise

genuinely cannot imagine how bloodborne is considered one of the harder fromsoft games. i barely beat the tutorial area in ds3 but ive cleared bloodborne like 6 times now. ive killed multiple bosses hitless. this is easymode

#my post #bloodposting #like in splatoon my favorite weapons are dapples sploosh and sloshine. bloodborne was literally made for me

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dekuinthelake · 6 years ago

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Mother fucking Blight Town

I was play Dark Souls 1 yesterday with my sister’s boyfriend and my friend Lexnn watching. I’m sucking ass. I’m getting pushed off or cliff by diseased Goblinoids. But like always I’m a good sport. I’m having a good time swinging my big sword and getting AUTO TOXIC’d by those shit eating bucket wearing clowns. My duo person audience was entertained. Good.

I finally chop my way through buttcrack club wielding fuckbois and their blood bug pets. I’m at the bottom of Blight Town. First time I’ve been here and I lost my mother fucking shit at the TRADE MARK FROMSOFT POISON SWAMP. Gross, but I’m killed with my 10 Estus. NPC man eating invader? No problem. Three swing kill with the one and only

Toddle my way to a secret area. I see a jumping puzzle. Fuck that. Mistakenly, my hallowed ass finds the Boss room, but not before top hat McPvP build smears his oiled chest grease all over my screen. Out of Estus and too prideful to let this Bloodborne cosplaying mother fucker kill me, I enter the boss room thinking I can quickly put on a ring or sacrifice.

No.

This Bitch leaps across the room and ends me. Shit. 14K souls and 4 humanity stuck at the front of a Boss room. Obviously it’d be easy just to go back with a ring on, pick them up and keep combing the POISON SWAMP™️ for items.

Yeah that would have been the more surgical way to do it. But my dumbass didn’t want to die twice to the “Beware of nice chest ahead” Boss in front of two people.

No no noooo. I came back up at the root bonfire because like a plebeian, I forgot to rest at the on closer to the Boss. I’m out of MOSS so why not just shit my pants and JUMP DOWN THIS HARMLESS LOOKING ROOY SYSTEM.

Well it was easy enough. I’m not new to the jank jumping in Adult Zelda. I get to what I think is the bottom until I se a ladder between some webs. My mind was too busy calculating how next to jump when... 7 THOUSAND shit eating basilisks jump out of the webs and spray me with their charcoal colored PISS.

Stoned, but not in the cool way. My ass is grass and the two dudes around me just start cracking up as I come to the slow realization that

CURSE PERSISTS THROUGH DEATH. What follows is a string of profanities that would make a good Mormon’s ears turn to dust.

Now I’m stuck here in this FUCK PIT. Forced to be hallow and half health. No purging stones and no idea how to get up. But I had to get my souls back, obviously. This time I was ready and one by one, all one million frog wretches fell. Rad. But where did the ladder lead?

I jump down, get hidden items that caught my eye on some branches. More climbing down...

“The fuck are those!?”

Something I say a lot while playing Souls games first time. Mushroom men. Slow, idiot anthro fungus. OBVIOUSLY harmless. The little ones went down like nothing. The big ones couldn’t be that bad. To be extra safe I climb up on a ledge and ready a plunging attack. I’m out of Estus. My already halted health is half from jumping. But whatever. I’m not afraid. I haven’t spent nearly 600 hours combine on DS3 and Bloodborne to be a pussy bitch about some abnormally obese mushroom men. I leap of the ledge, my glorious big sword singing, oaken hair flowing in the wind.

This fucker... this MUSHROOM CUCK SLAPS me out of the air and the last of my health is gone.

Is 3K souls worth going back? HELL NO. It was time to leave. Without the ability to kindle and at half health, there was no way.

“Fuck this.” I grunt and trudge my way back to the goblin tree house only to be met with insta death from ass crack warriors more than happy to take advantage of my gimped health. That’s when I realized... there were no ladders back up.

Furiously I rush to the Boss to try and escape.

She pummels me.

Fuck.

I’m panicking at this point. Is there really no way out and no one here who sells purging stones!? I contact my friend Ben, husband of my first wife @everplague and local Semi-professional Dark Souls player.

“Yeah man there is a lift here is a video.”

Son of a fucking bitch. Fuming, I take the lift. I cut through more HIDEOUS insects and collect some more items. I roll past the fatty club wielders and find myself in New Londo. I go through a door after bullying some pathetic hallows praying to a pot— as if that could save them from HALF HEALTH HELL.

I turn the corner. The Firelink Shrine music starts to play. Are these... tears in my eyes? I’m free, I’m safe! All that stands between me and revenge against that spider bitch is a purging stone!

I run like I’ve just been introduced to fields of flowers for the first time all the way to my favorite moss vendor. She welcomes me back genuinely, gracious enough to have personally peeled moss for ME.

I scroll down her list of goods until I find the beautiful stone I need.

Six... THOUSAND souls. I shake out my wallet and one thousand fall out. I feel my face contort in a mix of anger and grief. No... NO.

But I’m tenacious... Dark Souls has taught me to never give up and keep going. Okay. Just farm the dumb knife hallows and dogs. That’s easy. It’ll take a while but—

Oh? I died? To a fucking dog? No problem. Even if I only have 300 health I’m not a coward. As long as I don’t die to anything stupid I can get my souls back no proble—

These damn dogs that move faster than an F150 driven by an old, white republican on the highway slam in to me not even half way through and destroy my ass. A collected 4K souls down the drain.

Silently, I slam the windows key on my keyboard and manually exit out of Dark Souls.

“Goodnight guys. I need to work tomorrow.”

Let this be a lesson. Don’t forget your moss and purging stones. Come prepared like a good undead boyscout.

#dark souls #blight town #spoilers #dark souls 1 spoilers

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captainscominglookbusy · 6 years ago

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rant about Dead Space 3!!

Let’s just take this part by part, shall we? I could go stream-of-consciousness style, but then we’d be here all day.

Without further ado, why Dead Space 3 is the most disappointing video game of all time. Full spoilers below, for Dead Space 3 and Mass Effect 3.

THE STORY

The story is sad because it’s a worse version of Mass Effect 3.

Our grizzled hero, despite his heroic actions, is now stuck back in the midst of civilization until he is whipped back into the action by a big strong Latino man, who helps him get off the planet just as it is attacked. He must leave behind his civilization in order to save it.

He must then reunite with old and new characters alike in order to find some crapshoot plan where no one knows how it works - they just know it’s the only way to stop the Eldritch Abominations that are threatening life as we know it, the ones that show up once a civilization has advanced beyond a certain point and then wipe them out for Generic Evil Reasons.

People needlessly die along the way, the hero must confront the pain of failing to save his friends, and in the end he must sacrifice himself in order to give the war An End Once And For All. Except also he might not be dead.

Despite my tone, that story’s alright on the surface. I actually really liked Mass Effect 3. Say what you want about the ending, the game as a whole is pretty solid. Dead Space 3 just executes all of those things worse.

At no point are you given a really clear idea of what’s happening on the moon in the first level, or in humanity’s civilization at large. Have the Unitologists taken over? Are they ALL militant? Is it moon-wide, or just in the city Isaac’s in? Or just a few city block’s worth of revolution? What’s their goal? Are they just trying to create more Markers, or are they trying to kill Isaac? Does Isaac know any of this before Carver and Norton show up? If so, why is he just sitting in his apartment? If not, WHY NOT? Nothing ever gets explained. Instead, never mind that, we must now venture forth into space.

There’s some derelict ship exploration for the first third of the game - the ships all have the same design, so it’s really boring, but the concept is fine. If it got diversified and revamped, it would have made a solid base for Dead Space 4’s gameplay, which I believe was kinda the plan if Dead Space 3 hadn’t been awful and tanked the franchise.

Then you go to the scariest place of all places you could go in a horror franchise - Hoth. And you spend the rest of the game there. You just walk in circles around this one snowy science base, trying to figure out what happened. Oh wow, they got killed by Necromorphs. Whoa.

At one point I actually started to appreciate the story’s twist on certain things - up until now in the franchise, Big Establishment Things like the The Church and The Military were the bad guys, whereas the good guys were generally normal people, often with the power of SCIENCE on their side (you come across several evil scientists as well, but the general trend still stands). And for the first while of DS3, it seems like the opposite is true - you find out this science division was trying to turn on some Machine that might lead to an outbreak, and the military general is the one trying to stop them. His way of doing this is by murder, but still, I found it to be an interesting twist that the military seemed to be fighting against scientists for what was best for humanity this time around, a reversal of what the Dead Space universe has catered up to this point.

But then it turns out that turning on the Machine is the right thing to do, science was right, the military were just being jerks and not listening to reason, because why explore different angles of the same themes the franchise has already covered. Let’s just do the same thing again but worse. I love it.

Eventually you find out that there was an alien civilization that did the exact same thing humans are doing now with the Markers, and that they tried to stop the Markers from taking their final form…A MEATBALL MOON MADE OF ALL THE ZOMBIES PILED TOGETHER LIKE IT’S KATAMARI DAMACY. HOW SCARY.

Why would the Moons work like this? Like, on a biological level? Why design a Marker that creates deadly vicious monsters, if building more Markers through non-zombified people is required for the process to work? How could a species evolve to function in such a way? Don’t worry about it, aren’t you scared?

So anyways, after you’ve found the Codex to turn off The Machine (no, those are not made up names for the MacGuffins, those are the ACTUAL generic names they decided to go with), you let the bad guy activate the Moon beam (instead of just shooting him once he gives up his hostage, which the heroes have at least five seconds to do without any risk), and then fight the moon. And fall from space back down to the planet. And live.

*sigh*

Moving on.

THE CHARACTERS

Dead Space has always had two separate schools of bad guys; the Marker side, and the human side. In Dead Space 1, you have a deceptive hallucination manipulating you on one end, and crazed scientists and secret government agents on the other. In Dead Space 2 you have Nicole, no longer hiding as a messenger for the Marker haunting you at every turn in a fantastic representation of PTSD, and you have a provincial overlord willing to contain a deadly outbreak at any cost, not to mention an INCREDIBLE character in Stross, a fellow inmate whose scrambled brain and his tendency to lash out can’t overcome the fact that he truly does want to help make things right.

In Dead Space 3 you fight evil people with guns and a moon. Such depth.

Danik is this game’s main antagonist, and he just shows up to make things more complicated and less fun. He’s sane enough to taunt Isaac with generic evil monologues, but insane enough to believe that necromorphism is the ideal form of humanity. They try to have their cake and eat it too, and in doing so they’ve curb stomped the cake. None of his ideology is any more interesting than what players already found out in the Unitology church in DS2, and that didn’t even require a living character to give us exposition.

I should reiterate that Danik, also, has no idea what THE MACHINE Macguffin does, but he’s convinced he’ll be able to activate it the EVIL way, instead of the GOOD GUY way.

The Brethren Moon twist is an attempt at cosmological horror, a stab at Lovecraftian abominations, but it falls completely flat. There’s nothing intimidating about a moon, aside from I guess being big.

Cthulhu is not scary because he’s big.

Cthulhu’s scary because his very presence can drive you insane, can take you into the abyss, can make hallucinate and rave and kill. Sorta like the Marker we’ve been dealing with for two games. An effective, creepy looking icon inherently tied to the franchise. So what’s the point of revealing the Marker’s Final Form?

The Moons add nothing to the story, aside from providing something that can technically be considered a plot twist and giving Isaac something bigger to fight and upping the ante so that the final boss of Dead Space 4 would probably be just fighting space itself. Dead Space. OoooOOoooOOOOoooh.

The good guys are only slightly better. Isaac’s character, while not developing all that much (he’s just mopey the whole game), isn’t completely sabotaged, and Carver is a fine character in his own right, particularly if you play co-op (so I’ve heard). The two have some decent dialogue with each other - their sort-of-friendship feels unearned, but looking at it on its own, it’s written well.

And then, Ellie…

The game flat-out tricked me. Ellie, the awesome cool amazing standout character of Dead Space 2, becomes a complete damsel-in-distress in this game, and I say it tricked me because I didn’t even notice. When she first showed up as “stranded and in need of rescue,” I figured “okay, once we finally find her she’ll start kicking butt and taking names again,” but I was SO DISTRACTED BY HOW BAD THE REST OF THE GAME WAS THAT I DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE how nothing of a character she is in this game. She gets rescued, she gets upset with Isaac, she cries, she talks to him over the intercom, she has A BIG FAKE SACRIFICE FOR NO REASON, then gets captured, is used as a hostage and bargaining chip, and then she gets sent away on a shuttle. I don’t think she fires a gun once in the whole game. She’s there for Isaac and Norton to fight over, because that’s right, Dead Space 3 has the AUDACITY to introduce a LOVE TRIANGLE AS PART OF THE MAIN PLOT. I understand that emotions are heavy in stressful scenarios, and that people act irrationally even in important, large-scale moments, but some of the dialogue plays out like a fricking soap opera.

“I know you two [Isaac and Ellie] had a “thing,” but she’s mine now.” - actual dialogue from Norton. THE DRAMA.

As far as the other characters, even Isaac and Carver don’t care about them.

At one point Isaac finds the corpse of Rosen, a former squadmate, and says “Oh thank god” because it’s not Ellie’s corpse. What kind of monster do you have to be that THAT’S your only reaction to seeing your ally’s dead body? They don’t become good friends, but good Lord, Isaac, show some sympathy. The guy drove you around space for the first third of the game.

Another side character, Buckle, the group just leaves to freeze in a building, even though it takes Isaac about 2 minutes to find the heater for the building and turn it on (AFTER said character dies). And the other side character, Santos, Carver actively tries to stop Isaac from saving because “it’s too risky.”

Let me clarify: Carver (and also Ellie) just stand and watch Isaac try to help her for about 30 seconds, before stepping in and forcing Isaac to stop. Santos falls off a cliff and dies because Carver decided to criticize Isaac’s sense of morality instead of actually helping. These are the heroes, let me remind you.

And Norton’s just stupid. He’s an annoying a-hole, who is then revealed to be a spy, whose life you then save, who then tries to BLAME YOU EVEN THOUGH HE KIDNAPPED YOU TO COME ON THE MISSION IN THE FIRST PLACE, and then you shoot him. And Ellie’s sad about it for ten minutes, despite all of the above.

Wouldn’t it be cool if the spy was a character you had grown to trust and like, like in Dead Space 1? Or even one that you were mostly apathetic towards until the twist, when his character suddenly becomes ten times more interesting, like in Agents of SHIELD?

But no, they just picked the character you already hated. Because that makes for a GREAT character and a SHOCKING TWIST.

There’s nothing satisfying about it. The character is a jerk to Isaac the entire game, then is revealed to have sold you out to Danik, then gets starts trying to shoot you, and you’re STILL somehow supposed to feel bad when you kill him.

What?

Also, there’s just…dumb stuff that happens.

Isaac has a gun pointed to his head. Point blank. You want to know how he gets out of that situation? This genius engineer that has survived by the skin of his teeth for two games?

He waits. And waits. And then right as the bad guy’s about to shoot, he just moves really fast out of the way.

Kinda dumb, right? A pretty anticlimactic way to resolve a supposedly tense scene?

What if I told you he does that THREE TIMES throughout the course of the game?

*shuffles cue cards* alright, what’s next? Oh, right, yes-

THE GAMEPLAY

The gameplay is the scariest part of the game.

Because it’s bad. Everything that feels crisp and neat and unique about the first two games is gone.

You know things are going wrong when the first weapon Isaac shoots is an automatic pistol. Not a plasma cutter. Nope. One of the most interesting things about the last two games, where Isaac the engineer is forced to improvise mining tools in order to create efficient weapons? Out the window. Here’s a normal regular gun. And also all the ammo is the same. That inventory management that actually created an effective level of anxiety in the last two games? The one where you had to cleverly balance how much of each type of ammo you carried based on what you were expecting to encounter, and how comfortable you were with each gun, and how running out of one type of ammo would challenge you to confront the situation differently than you normally would? Gone. Shoot whatever gun however much you want. Which begs the question, why even craft more than two guns?

WHY EVEN CRAFT MORE THAN TWO GUNS?

WHAT’S EVEN THE POINT?

There’s no point, is the point. I created a plasma cutter and an assault rifle on my first play through. And I pulled out the rifle like three times. One gun was enough, and I felt no desire to try out anything else. Because what’s the point. It’s all the same now.

And not just the ammo. Every enemy encounter feels the exact same. Within a single side quest I lost track of how many times I entered a room and three to four Slashers crawled out of the vents, one by one. Every room felt the exact same. After a certain point, the game just stops trying to surprise you.

In boxing, an uppercut can take you by surprise, if it’s thrown in at the end of a chain of jabs and crosses. But imagine you’re sparring with someone who only uppercuts.

Ever.

That’s not a challenge. It doesn’t matter how hard the uppercut is. You just lean your chin back a few inches and counter.

Every. Single. Time.

Every element of spice and variety in Dead Space’s 1 and 2 feels gone, or at the very least watered down.

And speaking of variety, let’s talk about the enemy design.

Dead Space 2 was fantastic about upping the ante with enemy design. It added at least five new kinds of necromorphs, and every one of them was a change in gameplay. The Pack can be killed in a single shot but swarm you in massive numbers. The Stalkers rely on predatory, velociraptor tactics; every new enemy introduction is cool.

Even Dead Space: Extraction has Grabbers that hide under the water and Fliers that soar around the room and swipe down at you. (For the record, Extraction as a whole is a little cheesy, but still a lot of fun and clearly trying out new ways of exploring the Dead Space universe that are fun and interesting. Unlike a certain other entry in the franchise).

Compare all that to Dead Space 3, which outside of bosses, introduces two enemy types: the Fodder, which are essentially slashers that can turn into Lurkers by exploding into tentacles, and Aliens, which are (to be fair, legitimately scary) minibosses in the last few levels of the game.

Everything else is either the exact same or a slight redesign. The Lurkers are dog zombies, not baby zombies. The swarming enemies are now emaciated adults instead of children. But everything still feels…the same.

There are even little swarmer necros that, this time around, can take over a body and start haphazardly shooting the gun its holding.

But that’s made entirely moot by the NON-haphazard gun-shooting human enemies you fight in the first level! What’s interesting or scary about a zombie that can’t aim?

Oh, also, that satisfying squishing noise when you killed a Swarmer that was crawling on you? It’s just gone. Isaac just swats them off silently. No sound effect at all. Minor gripe, but it’s stupid.

There’s a recurring Giant Enemy Crab that is just annoying to fight, and one boss sequence against the Nexus that’s legitimately fun. Because it’s just the final boss of Dead Space 1 with a bit of a twist. Almost everything good about this game is lifted directly from previous games, and almost everything new and innovative about it falls flat.

There’s three new types of puzzles, and only one of them is decent.

And also, one more random note - and by random I mean it felt just as random to me as it does in the middle of all this - Dead Space 3 is incredibly proud of its ladders. It’s weird.

Someone real high up the corporate Ladder (heh, ladder) was really pleased with how the ladder mechanic worked out.

In case you’re wondering, the ladders are nothing special. They’re fine, they didn’t ever glitch for me or anything, but like…there’s ladders everywhere.

Dead Space’s 1 and 2 handled elevation through stairs, inclines and lifts, but someone was REAL happy that they came up with the idea of adding ladders. They’re bright blue, they’re generally required to use in order to progress, they halt momentum because Isaac climbs ladders slowly, and did I mention they’re everywhere?

At one point there’s a wall of ice, or rock, or tightly packed snow or whatever, that comes up to a bit above Isaac’s head.

A fairly physically fit person could pull themselves up. And you’re playing as Isaac. Who can curbstomp limbs straight off of bodies in a single go.

But nope, we need to throw a ladder in there for no reason.

Don’t have an animation where Isaac can pull himself up. Don’t just desiGN THE LEVEL WITH A SLIGHT INCLINE. GOTTA REALLY MAKE THE MOST OF THIS HOT NEW LADDER TECH.

It doesn’t ruin the game. It’s just bizarre. And it’s bizarre that someone’s proud of it. And once you’re looking for it, it’s blatantly obvious that someone is DEFINITELY super proud of it.

So now we can go into glitches.

Let’s start small. Sometimes there are just little hiccups, like environmental elements loading in late.

Other times you take damage from, shall we say, plays that the coach should challenge. Here’s one where I defeated the boss, but (without touching me) it did damage to me as it sprinted over to where it needed to be for the next cutscene to happen.

Oh, also, every time you walk up to a wall and try to melee it, Isaac’s arm and shoulder JUST GO THROUGH THE WALL. For EVERY SINGLE WALL. I’ve programmed games in Unity that avoid that glitch. It looks and feels so lazy, and I don’t think it happens in any of the other games.

The game introduces a combat roll, but doesn’t expect you to use it. I accidentally rolled into a cutscene, and instead of just having Isaac roll in place and complete the animation before standing up, which would have looked fairly natural, I watched in shock as Isaac, like a photorealistic version of Samus’s morph ball, just uncurled in midair and teleported into position so the cutscene could play “normally.”

At another point a cutscene started as I opened a door, and for no reason (unlike the above, which was caused by my rolling), I watched two dead bodies take life and snap into place for the cutscene like extras in the freshmen musical forgetting their cue.

Also the game has these invisible threshold walls that enemies can’t cross. There are points in the game where you’re fighting enemies, and if you back through an open doorway or across a bridge, the enemies will just FORGET YOU EXIST. They literally run the other direction and then just stand there until you cross the line again. It’s ridiculous AI design that I only saw once in any of the other games, but I found four blatant examples of in Dead Space 3.

I didn’t encounter the infamous “main characters get their limbs shot off in the middle of a cutscene” glitch, but I recommend looking that one up as well, because it’s hilarious.

REDEEMING QUALITIES

I never said Dead Space 3 was the worst game ever made. Just that it was disappointing. So here’s everything they did right, that I can remember.

-Isaac’s character, thanks largely to Gunner Wright’s performance, is still pretty good.

-Carver’s character, while a little shallow, still feels “lived-in,” if that makes sense. I got the feeling that this guy had a story as long and complicated as Isaac’s even though we only hear bits and pieces of it in-game.

-Isaac and Carver’s evolving dynamic throughout the game, while feeling unearned in single player, is still well-written if you look at each scene without context.

-Apparently in co-op, the player playing as Carver will hallucinate and see enemies that aren’t actually there, prompting the player playing as Isaac to ask “What the Eff are you shooting at?” A really neat concept.

-The graphics, particularly in the space scenes, look solid, as long as they’re not glitching out.

-While not executed well, the idea of scavenging in a spaceship graveyard is a cool concept. Apparently that was gonna be the basis of Dead Space 4’s gameplay, and provided they make it more interesting, less linear, and more focused on survival instead of just advancing the plot, I think that would have been a good move.

-The scavenger bot is cute and I’m glad it was there.

-The boss fight against the Nexus is a modified version of the boss fight against the Hive Mind in Dead Space 1. And since it’s something stolen from Dead Space 1, it’s better than pretty much everything else about the game.

-The last portion of the game takes you into an underground alien temple. It feels cheesy, like you’re watching a 70’s horror movie, but it adds some change-ups and I actually enjoyed playing through it. They also clearly focused on making that part of the game scarier than the rest, because I actually got unsettled a few times.

IN SUM

All in all, though, Dead Space 3 is a mess of an action game despite having two masterpieces of the horror genre to use as rungs on the Bright Blue Important Dead Space Ladder. The story is cheesy, the characters are good at best and just awfully written at worst, the gameplay mechanics have simplified all the interesting parts of the franchise [re: enemies and inventory management] and complicated the streamlined parts [re: upgrades and crafting], and there are glitches and technical hangups galore. It all adds up to an uninteresting, non-scary, non-fun adventure that sends the franchise out on a note so low the basses in the choir would strain to hit it.

I have my own thoughts on what a Dead Space 4 could and should be, but that’s a separate essay. More than anything I just want it to exist and I want it to be good, so that passionate Dead Space fans who were disappointed by 3 can wash the sour taste out of their mouths and play at least one more game worthy of the first several entries in the franchise.

It’s a long shot, but trust me, EA, you’ll be doing the world a favor.

Because after Dead Space 3 you left a lot of us feeling like this.

Shameless plug for my Let’s Play of Dead Space 3 here. As of the time I’m writing this, the upload schedule is only a little ways in, but rest assured, I saw this monster through to the bitter, bland end.

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professoricepick · 6 years ago

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Next year, the Darkstalkers franchise is going to turn 25 years old. Despite the fact that it’s been essentially inactive for more than half that time — with a handful of characters managing to make their way into various crossover titles, some developed by Capcom themselves (but most developed by other companies) — it’s still a significant milestone. After all, while being the third-most recognizable fighting game franchise in Capcom’s stead isn’t exactly an impressive accomplishment on its own, considering it has to compete with both the Street Fighter and “Vs. Capcom” franchise — the latter of which actually managed to rip off core mechanics and utilize the intellectual properties of Darkstalkers itself — the fact that it managed to rate that high is an accomplishment of its own. The last proper Darkstalkers release we saw was “Darkstalkers Resurrection”, a re-release of the second and third games in the franchise with full online play (using the industry standard GGPO netcode) on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360’s digital storefronts (but sadly not PC).

That was over five years ago and while Resurrection was Capcom’s way of trying to gauge interest in a more significant revival of the cult classic IP, it failed to meet their lofty expectations. Without a money-baked success, Capcom will likely never revitalize the series in any meaningful form. This brings to mind the old adage: “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” And wouldn’t you know it? We have a perfect blueprint for a modern-era Darkstalkers re-release right in front of us: the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection came out earlier this year and managed to release on all 4 major gaming platforms — the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC.

So with that in mind, I’ll be attempting to build a similar collection using the same exact limitations put in place by 30th Anniversary Collection, as well as the recent batches of MegaMan compilations. That means that at the most, there will be 12 games in this collection — consisting of titles that originated on the CPS series of arcade hardware (as well as various older home console platforms, including but not limited to the NES and SNES, as well as the first two PlayStations) — with a scant four receiving online play via Capcom’s proprietary “Kagemusha” netcode. The most obvious bonus features would be image galleries consisting of concept art, official artwork and even fan art and a music player that would allow players to listen to the game’s soundtracks in isolation. But that’s obvious. Meanwhile, the meat of this collection are the games themselves and these are my choices.

1. Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors (1994)

If Capcom saw it fit to include the original Street Fighter from 1987, it’s difficult to argue that they wouldn’t include the original Darkstalkers. Definitely stiffer than its successors, Darkstalkers still manages to include its own unique quirks compared to future titles. Considering it was one of the earliest non-Street Fighter fighting games produced by Capcom, the game clearly still leans a little on SF influences in terms of its gameplay mechanics, but was clearly more experimental.

2. Night Warriors: Darkstalkers’ Revenge (1995)

Easily my personal favorite of the Darkstalkers games, Night Warriors was one of those weird “retcon sequel revisions” Capcom occasionally did with their fighting games during the mid-to-late 1990s, like Street Fighter Alpha 2. A lot of the mechanics that would become hallmarks of the series made their debut here and the gameplay itself began to deviate significantly from Capcom’s other fighting games. Likewise, the ability to play as the boss characters from the original Darkstalkers , as well as two entirely brand-new characters added to the fun.

3. Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire (1997)

The clear favorite game of the franchise, no Darkstalkers collection would be complete without it. Hell, Jedah — the game’s main antagonist — not only managed to appear in Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite, but was also one of the most impressive aspects of it. Vampire Savior (or Darkstalkers 3, if you’re nasty) still manages to be played in fighting game tournaments all over the world to this day, so there’s no doubt that people would be clamoring for another modern re-release.

4. Vampire Hunter 2 (1997) 5. Vampire Savior 2 (1997)

It’s funny: I remember when people speculated that Capcom might add these two games as DLC to Resurrection. I have no idea where that whole mindset came from. Either way, while these games aren’t particularly popular, they are unique in the sense that they brought Pyron, Huitzil and Donovan (from Night Warriors, but conspicuously absent in DS3) into the fold, allowing various dream match-ups. Vampire Hunter 2 was a recreation of Night Warriors using VSav’s engine, while Vampire Savior 2 allowed for various dream match-ups — Lilith vs. Donovan! Huitzil vs. Q-Bee! Jedah vs. Pyron! — while removing Sasquatch, Rikuo and Jon Talbain as playable characters. Various balance changes made to both games have made them unpopular among hardcore fans, but if Street Fighter’s 30th Anniversary Collection included games like 2nd Impact, Super Street Fighter II (sans Turbo) and the original Street Fighter Alpha, it only seems fair that these games would be added to a Darkstalkers collection.

6. Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower (2004)

In what may very well be a bizarre compromise, I’d love to see Darkstalkers Chronicle return in this collection. It’s essentially the “Hyper Street Fighter” of the Darkstalkers series, allowing players to pit various versions of the game’s cast against one another — imagine a fight between Night Warriors-era Felicia and Vampire Savior’s incarnation of Morrigan. On top of that, I’d be happy if Capcom were to use the PSP version in their collection: it had all of the content from the more-obscure, Japan-only Dreamcast release, with the addition of a brand-new single-player mode, The Chaos Tower.

7. Vampire Savior Arrange (2005) 8. Vampire Hunter 2 Arrange (2005) 9. Vampire Savior 2 Arrange (2005)

Okay, I know these may appear to be weird choices, but let me explain. Back in 2005, Capcom actually released Vampire Darkstalkers Collection on the PS2 exclusively in Japan. In addition to the first five games I’ve listed, Capcom also released three additional “arranged” alternate versions of Vampire Savior, Vampire Hunter 2 and Vampire Savior 2. All three of these versions include all 18 characters found across all versions of the game, though there are some additional differences as well. For starters, all three of these games offer a brand-new character: Dee, a “what if” evil version of Donovan (loosely based on his Night Warriors ending) which was cobbled together by putting the Dark Hunter’s head and sword on Demitri’s body.

Otherwise, both Vampire Savior games are pretty much identical to their original versions. Vampire Hunter 2, on the other hand, decides to eschew various features from the Savior engine, effectively recreating Night Warriors much more accurately in the VSav engine, all while bringing along the new entrants from Savior along for the ride. I guess that would make Vampire Hunter 2 Arrange the most unique (and therefore, the most worthy of inclusion) of the trio, but if Capcom can get one, they might as well re-release them all.

10. Red Earth (1996)

I’ll be honest, I was hesitant on adding this game to a Darkstalkers collection. I hate the conflation that so many people have made between Red Earth and Darkstalkers. Honestly, I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve seen people demand that Red Earth just be folded into the Darkstalkers universe, despite both games having entirely different settings. (And don’t get me started on the people demanding that Ruby Heart and Amingo be added in!)

But with that in mind, Red Earth is thematically similar to the Darkstalkers games, though Red Earth focuses more on high fantasy, while Darkstalkers was based on monster movies. Much more importantly, this may be the only chance we could have to get Red Earth on home consoles — of the six games released on Capcom’s CPS-3 hardware, Red Earth is the only one that wasn’t released on home console in any form to this day. So as much as I hate the implication of the two games being folded into the same universe, getting Red Earth an actual home release is more important to me than maintaining the “purity” of a Darkstalkers collection.

So those are my choices for games to be included in a Darkstalkers collection, but which games should get the nod when it comes to online play? If we follow Street Fighter’s format, I’ll have a maximum of 4 games to work with. The most obvious picks were Night Warriors and Vampire Savior: these games are clearly the most popular on the tournament scene and it would effectively mean that support for Resurrection could be easily dropped if necessary. Red Earth was another obvious choice. While most fighting games rely on a competitive two-player mode, Red Earth has a cooperative mode, allowing two players to take on its menagerie of monsters together — that just seems like an awesome selling point for the collection in general. Which brings us to the last game. After mulling it over, I was left with two possible choices, but in the end, I decided to go with Darkstalkers Chronicle over Vampire Savior Arrange. Aside from the constant complaints that it wasn’t Darkstalkers 4, the main criticism I saw levied at Darkstalkers Resurrection was that it comprised of two arcade ports, as opposed to a re-release of Darkstalkers Chronicle. And personally, I think it’s more interesting watching different variations of the cast (even ones that didn’t actually exist, like Darkstalkers 1 Donovan and Night Warriors Jedah) duke it out is way more interesting than a recycled headswap. If you disagree, feel free to argue your point in the comments — I’d love to be convinced otherwise.

I’ll be honest: I also considered adding Pocket Fighter to this collection, but considering that it would likely lack online play — based on the limitations set in place by Capcom’s Street Fighter compilation — it just doesn’t seem practical. But hey, if Capcom decides to patch in online play for more games in Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection (SFA2 and 2nd Impact appear to be the favorites), then you could consider Pocket Fighter as Game #11 and the fifth to include online play.

It seems kind of pointless to discuss the bonus features, but honestly, if they included the Japanese opening for the PS1 port of the original Darkstalkers, the remixed music commissioned for Darkstalkers Resurrection and various pieces of artwork, I’d be happy. As I said before, the games themselves are far more important than any extras.

But what do you think? I’ve considered doing more of these speculative proposals for video game compilations I’d like to see down the line. Would you like to see more of them? Even if you don’t, I had some fun coming up with this one, so I’ll probably continue regardless. You’ll just have to deal with it.

Proposal: Darkstalkers 25th Anniversary Collection Next year, the Darkstalkers franchise is going to turn 25 years old. Despite the fact that it's been essentially inactive for more than half that time -- with a handful of characters managing to make their way into various crossover titles, some developed by Capcom themselves (but most developed by other companies) -- it's still a significant milestone.

#capcom #darkstalkers #red earth #street fighter #warzard

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6ad6ro · 7 years ago

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dark souls

an analysis of every game in the dark souls series by a big fan, but not a fan-boy. someone who isn't so clouded by toxic competitiveness and false pride that they can't see the obvious flaws. a sorta guide for the average person so they can enjoy all the great things souls has to offer, while avoiding the substantial amount of garbage that 95% of players will genuinely hate.

tl;dr - play ds3 or bb first. they’re the best and most fair. maybe watch playthroughs of others to see if you can handle the series’ flaws. a more detailed, WAY longer write-up is underneath the readmore cut! - souls games from best to worst - 1. dark souls 3 GOOD: best souls, best action, great aesthetics, best mixture of everything series did right, best starter game, most fair, least issues. BAD: broken early game co-op due to smurf invaders ruining it for everyone. still has issues that are in every souls games like no offline pausing and artificial difficulty. 2. bloodborne GOOD: fresh new take on souls, made the action better, fair difficulty, souls for people who don’t care about tolkien fantasy, another great starter souls. BAD: confusing multiplayer, shorter than most souls, aesthetic direction limited variety of everything, “chalice dungeons” suck. 3. dark souls 2 GOOD: co-op is the BEST in all of souls, fixed many difficulty and balancing issues brought in by ds1, not a miyazaki game but that can be a good thing sometimes. BAD: without co-op is probably worse than demon’s tbh, rigid laggy combat, kinda linear compared to ds1, not a miyazaki game and you can tell. 4. demon’s souls GOOD: really started it all and deserves the credit, short but sweet, weirdly happy but still evil aesthetics, feels like a fun set of obstacle courses, many ways to mitigate the difficulty. BAD: horrible co-op, confusing mechanics, comparatively too short, almost level-based which takes away from exploration, “world tendency” isn’t great, still very rough around the edges. 5. dark souls 1 GOOD: best aesthetics/music/characters/world/lore of any souls, originated souls exploration, plenty of secrets and replayability, HUGE game, the fan favorite, the deepest levels of masochists will love the abuse from this game, an exploit in all versions to “cheat” and help mitigate the bullshit. BAD: almost not worth playing due to insane cheapness and difficulty right from the start, the fanbase of ds1 is so toxic and horrible and elitist i have to include it, “ornstein and smough”, “curse”, even the world exploration is frustrating in this one, i have never labeled a game as “abusive” until now, is so broken that i have to include a cheat as a fix. 6. dark souls 2 on ps4 GOOD: a remixed version of ds2 that manages to feel very different, way better visuals and 60fps, potential for co-op paradise with ability to play through all of ds2 with 3 friends simultaneously (i wanna try thisss). BAD: worst souls, least fun single player of the whole series by far, most of the balance and fairness brought in by vanilla ds2 is gone, literally patched balanced bosses to break them and make them artificially unfair, feels like a sloppy ds2 fanmod made by a ds1 purist, combat seems even laggier than the original, as much as i hate on ds1 at least it was a fully original game, just go play the other versions unless you’re desperate.

THE READMORE

this will kinda be in order of release. one last thing to note before starting the series is that souls IS inherently cheap and unfair by design. even avoiding most of the worst parts and doing extensive research won't save you from all of it. the concept of souls is that wasting your time retrying parts isn’t enough of a punishment for errors. the creators wanna really hurt you. and they refuse to include difficulty settings! but imo some of the pain is worth it tho, because the storytelling, world exploration, and aesthetics might be better than any game in the last ten years. and highly competitive, “i wanna prove myself” types will eat this gameplay up. this is like if castlevania symphony of the night and silent hill had an incredible but problematic baby.

demon's souls: GOOD! a gorgeous, tough, medium-sized game that really started it all. rough around the edges, but so cool! don't skip this one. this is like your favorite band right before they hit it big. it's still hard, but a lot of the difficulty can be dealt with by choosing an overpowered starting class (royal), and grinding for levels and healing items. the aesthetics are through the roof. it's somehow a happier game than any other souls, which makes it stand out imo! sadly no expansions for this game. i'd have loved more!

there's some bad stuff for sure though. like having to keep track of inventory carry weight. and other things that became staples of the souls series but are really horrible design. like inability to pause even offline. plentiful cheap traps and "gotcha" guess and check mechanics everywhere. super easy to accidentally attack an npc and literally break an entire playthrough. horrible autosaving. confusing awful multiplayer. forced invasions by (usually) smurf players who aren't looking for a fair fight. i'd say "play this one offline" but sadly the servers just went down for good so you don't really have a choice anymore.

it's also comparatively short. maybe a third the size of ds1. maybe even less. and the whole "world tendency" mechanic is just... so so confusing. meaning most players will miss out on a ton of content. it was a cool idea, but it just kinda didn't work with how they did it. too much research required for too little reward. in it's defense, that made the whole game feel very mysterious? idk even with the issues it's still a fav.

dark souls 1: TERRIBLE! i have a lot to say about this one. it's a bit sad, because truth be told this has THE best style and THE best lore and THE best music THE best characters and THE best world design of any souls. aesthetically, this is the pinnacle. it's also a HUGE game with tons of replayability and hidden stuff everywhere. it even has dlc that's really really cool! as far as world exploration goes, this had my favorite part in any souls game ever ("under the tree").

BUT... you have to actually play the game to see all that, and that's the problem. it's just not fun to play unless you're an insane masochist and don't value your time. they kicked up enemy numbers like crazy, made the ai way smarter, REMOVED grinding for health items, and made grinding for levels not that effective at all. everything in this game is tedious work. escapism that's harder than real life? no thanks. there's artificial difficulty walls everywhere you turn, usually in the form of bosses.

seriously the bosses in ds1 are the worst. think of a normal tough game. take that difficult last boss fight. imagine you're now fighting three of those final bosses simultaneously (stun-lock included). now imagine that fight is at the start of the game. and that's the benchmark of ds1's bosses. they aren't ALL that impossible, but a lot of them are. there's this one particular boss fight, "ornstein and smough", that is by far the most misplaced, unfair, stupid boss fight i've ever seen in any game ever. whoever developed it is truly a moron. i almost forgot about the “curse” status effect! about half way into the game, you’ll run into this. it requires an expensive and rare consumable item to deal with it. it’s very easy to miss these until it’s too late. why am i bringing this all up? because not only does curse kill you almost instantly, you respawn with half your health missing until you heal it. imagine all your hard work leveling, all gone to waste from just a single status effect. and this is before teleporting between bonfires was just a part of souls games from the start, so even if you figure out where to go to heal it, you still need to slog through some of the worst areas with half max health to get to them. and then there’s always the risk of getting cursed again when you go back? big issue, because most likely where you’re at in the game the curse removing items aren’t unlimited. bad bad bad bad baaad design.

but, thankfully, there's a way around all these issues. kinda. CHEAT! there's an exploit that lets you consume boss souls an unlimited amount of times even on consoles. it still takes a while to do. it's not instant god mode. on the contrary, the game is still super hard even if you're over-leveled. by doing this, ds1 will feel more fair, like the other souls games. you'll have way more fun.

i NEVER cheat in games normally, but cheating in ds1 takes a bad, horribly flawed game and fixes it. you may hate cheating, but this is more like ripping off an evil casino or like the mob without taking any risk, since the game is so so so unfair to begin with. if you don't wanna cheat, i'd say play the first parts and then watch a playthrough of the rest. the deepest levels of toxic elitist souls fanboys absolutely WORSHIP this game. don't listen to them. even the creator himself has moved away from a lot of this games bullshit.

dark souls 2: GREAT! those same souls fanboys i just mentioned? hate this game. because it's noticeably easier. because it made co-op viable. because their impossible game was suddenly moderately more accessible to everyone else. it's still super tough, super cool, super beautiful. the original creator may have stepped down from this one to do bloodborne, but it's still DEFINITELY souls. and it's an overall better game than ds1 by a long shot simply because your ticket to fun doesn't come at such an unreasonable cost. oh and omg they added back grindable healing items! they also removed the STUPID tutorial area/mandatory boss fight before you can level that every other souls has. and just a lot of the other player-unfriendly changes made between demon's (des) and ds1 have been sorta reversed.

it might seem weird but, since the game is comparatively unpopular, it keeps the majority of toxic soul elitists from playing. the kind of people who get off smurf invading so they can bully others? to stomp new players so they can feel misplaced joy in their otherwise pathetic, purposeless existences? yeah not really here thank god! most invaders are regular people looking for competition, and usually even have a good sense of humor.

outside of that making online totally do-able in this one, it makes online co-op really fairly easy. in comparison to des and ds1, i mean. it's still unintuitive silly bullshit, but imo in this one it's SUPER worth it. amazingly fun! get a good friend. play through the entire game together! a++++. just make sure to keep that soul level similar to each other!!!

there are bad things tho. the single player isn't nearly as good as cooping through the whole thing. the aesthetics aren't quite as good as ds1. the exploration is kinda worse. the gameplay feels weirdly sluggish sometimes too. it's just insanely tanky. people that wanted "dark souls 2: more dark souls 1" would be a bit put off by this bc it was more like how ds1 was to demon's souls. unconnected in lore. imo i kinda liked that but... still. it's biggest flaw was it's lesser story/lore polish compared to the other games.

oh, and while the dlc zones (THREE whole big dlc this time!) are pretty cool, the bosses are just crazy tough to the point of not being fun. still worth getting the dlc for the awesome levels, but the bosses were disappointing in their frustration.

dark souls 2 ps4: THE WORST! this is a sorta weird one, but it deserves it's own little analysis. theoretically, this should've been really cool. a tougher, remixed version of ds2 with dlc included and better graphics/framerate. tbh the game IS beautiful. some if the little touches and changes, while subtle on the surface, completely change how you path through the entire game. it's what "zelda oot master quest" WISHES it could be. also, theoretically, you can play co-op with up to three other people this time (was two before)! neat!!

*should have been neat. because their "remixed enemy placement" really just added way more way tougher enemies. made everything insanely harder. certain bosses that were tough but fun before now just devastate you with no explanation. imagine a shoddy fanmod made by a ds1 fanboy "to fix the casual play". that's what this feels like.

ds2 rode a fine line between cheapness and fairness before, but now all the balance is gone. frustrating annoying bullshit. if you're that kind of ds1 masochist i mentioned before, this is the ds2 for you. everyone else should stay the fuck away. just replay the ps3 version again. i suspect the reason it's like this is they balanced it around the ability to have 3 people helping you at all times? which is idiotic. bc the co-op was a way to compensate for the super hard bosses and invasions. but if you then raise the bar like that, it'd make any single player parts totally unfair. which is exactly what happened. btw i only played the dlc on ps4 and not on ps3, so maybe that's why i was wishy-washy about it?

had they included both the original enemy arrange of ds2 WITH this one, it woulda been cool. but as it stands now it's a much worse version of ds2 for more money. no thanks.

bloodborne: AMAZING! it's so odd to me. people kinda ignored des compared to ds1. they didn't like how ds2 was it's own thing compared to ds1 (see a pattern???)... but then the most drastically different souls game comes out, and almost everyone unifies and loves it. but i'm not complaining, i love it too!

suddenly super fast paced action in comparison. jrr tolkien replaced by hp lovecraft. a smaller game with more polish. it's great! some of the reactionary gameplay was traded for rewarding aggression and risk. but truth be told, that made the game easier. imo bb was the easiest souls game at that point by far. might still be?

but that's not a bad thing, because souls games are so inherently hard and cheap, that the "easiest" souls ends up being the most balanced and fun. the gameplay is just so much more responsive and better than any souls ever came close to being. as much as i missed shields, it was just better. no more slow responses. gameplay feels more like an action game "should".

tho there are a few flaws here too. there are still a few unfair bosses. not like ds1 or ds2dlc... but just the same, they kept up the annoying trend of moderately difficult and insanely interesting/fun world navigation, but with bosses as disproportionately difficult brick walls in your way of the game you really wanna play. the co-op was the most confusing souls co-op yet, to the point i've never even done it (thus could be all on me but still).

there's a whole big (technically optional) chunk of the game called "chalice dungeons", which should've been this amazing roguelike maze of seemingly endless exploration. think souls meets diablo. but it ended up more like the most boring (and often cheap) repetitive thing you've ever done in a souls game. the assets uses to make the random dungeons were too few and so every dungeon felt kinda the same. and they locked a bunch of REALLY good content behind this dungeon slog. i'd say use em for a bit of grinding and then ignore em completely.

my last little complaint, and i'm torn on this, is actually something i praised before. the aesthetics. in all other souls, even though it was "knights n dragons", there was a TON of variety. bright, beautiful locations. dark, evil places. alien landscapes. bizarre abstract things. legend of zelda. silent hill. but in bb, it's mostly just dark. everybody wears edgy black. it's all the same. the weapons and outfits are way more limited. it's more focused for sure, but there's just... less of everything. but souls is a confusing complicated nightmare of gear management, so this might be a good thing to some people.

dark souls 3: THE BEST! this is it. the best souls. they combined the greatest parts of every souls game into one. the amazing combat of bb, but with all the customization and variety of the other souls. the good kind of lore that was in ds1. it's actually the lore sequel to ds1 that everybody wanted, all while being it's own thing as well. there's even a weird aspect of navigation simplicity like des had? oh and it's possibly the easiest souls yet. they even removed soul memory to make co-op way easier! just everything is more intuitive.

a wide variety of aesthetics and locations. a "best of souls" while having it's own unique things. the "weapon abilities" feature is great. everything was polished and optimized. if this truly is the last souls game they'll make, then they went out on the highest note.

okay but now here's the flaws, lol. the removal of soul memory, while it should have made co-op simple and fixed it in comparison, it actually created a whole new HUGE issue. it made things so so easy for smurf invaders. in the earliest areas, you can't take more than a few steps in co-op before some loser with a obv troll name pops into your game and takes almost no damage whatsoever. you won't beat them. they're cheating.

smurfing via high end gear to this level is cheating. there's no other way to look at it. nobody would call an ant vs an elephant a fair fight. so to save time and resources that you need to play online (it's complicated), you have the host disconnect. and then you try again. it's tedious. i'm sure it's made countless new players just give up on co-op completely, and maybe even the whole game. souls smurfs are all so pathetic like i genuinely wish they would find a way to ban them. this is the biggest issue.

another thing is it's sorta linear. maybe even more so than ds2. it's not awful like i think there are more branches than bb but still it's definitely no ds1 in that regard. there are also a few cheap bosses. "nameless king" (optional), "sister" (end dlc thus optional), and "dlc dragon" (forgot his name but double optional). i also think "dancer" (mandatory) is a bit bullshit, but it's also really cool so...

the first dlc, while looking very cool, is kinda tiny and lackluster. it does have amazing npcs/lore... but as stated before, the final boss of it is awful. souls boss formula at it's worst. the second dlc is MUCH better, with maybe my favorite end bossfight in all of souls. it's so hard, but fair. they made the garbage secret bossfight in this dlc thankfully optional. oh and the dlc itself is beautiful and large. and very fitting in regards to lore.

it's kinda hard to not mix in good with the bad on this game. i genuinely love it. most of the typical souls bullshit is easier to avoid, but it doesn't take anything away from the good parts. if you played one souls game, play ds3.

well that's it. srry if it was too long. tried to make it as short as i could. i'm sure i forgot a few points, but i'll rant about this stuff even more extensively in my ds3 letsplay i'm sure. thanks for reading! hope it helped people interested in getting into souls!!

#dark souls #long #souls #gaming #from #anikiii

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