SA2's Gaming Blog Topic

[Marie Rose]

- So I finally went to the Throne of Want to face the Throne Duo, along with Benhart & Vengarl because why the hell not? Seemed like they were useless for some reason, both bosses focused on me for the first half a minute & ignored them, then when the bosses did target them, they were dead in less than a minute while I could barely get their health below 50%, is there HP normally that low? They felt about as useful as Luca. Afterwards, Nashandra showed up to fight with her cheesy curse orbs. Fortunately, I had a greater quality of cheese with me to spam soul spear from 10 feet away where she can do very little about it since she moves at the speed of a snail, that's what she gets for attempting to play Fashion Souls. I hope Nashandra had insurance, because she just got rekt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luQvaWmZ9zA#t=0m8s

Anyway, I wrapped up any optional stuff & tidbits I hadn't done besides Ancient Dragon because fuck that. Also got any boss weapons I wanted & used every kind of consumable soul I had in my inventory, came to just under 900,000. Finally checked the monument & I had a total of 119 deaths, probably would have been around 140-145 if I wasn't aware of some things beforehand. So now I suppose this is the point where I go over the things I liked & the many things I didn't like since I complain a lot. As I said with my initial thoughts, I liked the bump up from 4 equipment choices to 6, I liked that spells at least early on came out decently fast. It's good that I don't have to be incredibly light to do a decent roll. 90% of the time, when I'm going for a backstab it'll regularly come out like it should. I'm forgetting a few things but whatever, time to move onto stuff I didn't like so much.

First off, I don't like how practically all your tools for survival were basically nerfed, though I do get the thought behind it. Dark Souls was probably most known for its difficulty, a lot of people tried it for various reasons, some dropped it when they just didn't get it, some came back to it later on & ended up enjoying it when they gave it another chance. If you haven't played Demon's Souls or seen Dark Souls beforehand, you'd go into it with the wrong mindset & get stomped on repeatedly. But once you know the mentality you should have, it's really not that hard (Though you still gotta put a lot of effort in). But Dark Souls was out for over 4 years, people have run through the game like half a dozen times, done speedruns, done SL1 runs (which I still think is nuts but who am I to judge?), people know almost everything there is to know, eagerly await the sequel & hope its as artificially difficult challenging as it can be, or else they'll be dissapointed. So the way to truly attempt to up difficulty is by taking away what kept you alive in the previous game during the early portion of it.

Estus flask? You start with 1, you gotta find the rest if you wanna last very long. Hell, it takes longer to drink the damn thing than it did in the first game & far longer to recover your health. Lifegems? Pfft, They heal less & even slower, plus take even longer to use than estus flasks, I rarely use these. Shields? Most kinda suck since they'll usually have around 80%-90% physical defense, it's not like you only have 2-3 estus flasks or something. You lost all your stamina while blocking because enemy attacks drain it so fast? Whelp, I'm just gonna stretch for about 4 seconds, feel free to land all the hits you want. Rolling? Nerfed, for a good while I'd just prefer to block & take the chip rather than attempt to roll & have a 50% chance of somehow being clipped by an attack which at least on my screen didn't touch my body, the hitboxes in general seem to be a little questionable at times. Many of these points seem to be tied to the stat Adaptability. Basically if you want some of it to go back to DkS 1, you gotta dump 20 points or so into it so you don't get killed because your character took their sweet time doing something. Moving on, titanite, there isn't enough. The basic ones aren't a big deal but there isn't enough large titanite shards & titanite chunks during the first half of the game (especially the chunks), yeah, it's apparently for balance but when it takes 8 of them to go up 3 levels, you don't get much room to experiment. For quite a while I wouldn't go too far with upgrading my stuff even though I had the materials, because the upper levels of titanite were scarce & I didn't wanna come across some better weapon or armor & couldn't fully upgrade it because of that. Took me a while to fully level up my fire longsword when I figured a better weapon wasn't going to come along, I'm still using it in NG+.

The rings, many of them aren't that great. It's cool that you get 4 slots now, though it would be great if they wrote down exactly how much of a percentage boost some of those rings are giving you. Did you know the Chloranthy Ring that boosts stamina recovery is pretty much worthless? I found out it only boosts it by 3.5%, that's basically nothing. Armor feels a little useless compared to the previous game, I raised an eyebrow at the damage inflicted on me on occasion, but fighting Lost Sinner made it feel more apparent. When I upped by defense by like 300+ points, giving me like a 4% damage reduction just so I can barely survive her full combo, but now I can't roll. Sometimes I just didn't even see the point of bothering with armor, I'd do just as fine completely naked, wielding my sword two handed (I was tempted to do this for NG+, may reserve that just for Smelter), no wonder many people just wear whatever they like the look of. If armor is gonna mean little, may as well just wear whatever looks good on your character, stats be damned. You gotta make sure you look your best even when you die, this is Fashion Souls, son. I may shake my head at you for dying to Covetous Demon, but hey, you looked damn good during it. Don't like how they changed illusionary walls either, and never said anything about it, there were many I missed & had to do quite a bit of backtracking because I initially thought you just pressed a button now, but the ones you attack are still here, so why have two different types without the game saying anything about it?

Oh, the whole despawning enemies. Technically, I don't actually have a problem with this, I neither like it nor dislike it, the only issue I have is with drop rates concerning this. Many enemies drop some pretty special stuff & if you're unfortunate enough to receive this stuff before their expiration date arrives, you're screwed. After all, it's not like there's only a select few enemies that drop twinkling titanite while there are a ton of decent armor & weapons that need 10+ twinkling titanite to upgrade & you can't simply buy it, GG FromSoft. What's that? A bonfire aesthetic? Maybe I would use one if it didn't make the enemies on the level of NG+, and it doesn't get reset upon actually going into NG+, so if you're planning to go pretty far it might be a bit of a bad idea. Can't believe I almost forgot one of my biggest gripes, the platforming, ugh. There was too much of it in this. Many points where there was an item across a ten foot hole, which wouldn't be so bad if the jumping animation looked like it covered 3 feet at best, makes it hard to tell where exactly you need to be jumping to make the jump. I think I died over a dozen times overall doing jumps like these, after a while I simply looked up the items for jumps which just looked stupid. It's not very good when I'd rather go look up whether what's over that hole is worth the effort because I'd rather not up with dying to a badly designed jump repeatedly. Oh, the fall damage too, a lot of it is pretty absurd if you're not wearing something that lowers it, in DkS 1, you could easily make that drop down the well & survive no problem. Here, even with the ring, you'll be nearly dead when you hit that plank, the forced drops aren't as common as in DkS 1, but you take far more damage over the smallest drops.

Don't like the auto-tracking of the enemies. Many enemies seem to target me mid swing to the point they can turn like 130 degrees to the side & do chip damage when they really shouldn't be able to, it's just annoying that many enemies have CoD auto-aim to try & prevent you getting backstabs. Durability can be rather annoying for some weapons, sometimes it can be a little silly like wanting me to stop using my fire longsword so I can be forced to magic spam instead, I’d rather spend the tiny amount of souls every few hours to fix my stuff like in the first game. To this point, I still don’t get half the people going on about sorcery being OP pretty much the whole game, because it’s really not, coming from someone who basically played through as a Magic Knight (more emphasis on Knight). Honestly, Sorcerors probably have the easiest start since the early enemies die rather easy to the basic Soul Arrow but a little after the Ruin Sentinels, it starts to become rather mediocre/stagnant. From that point, Dark Orb, a Hex, takes over as being my go-to spell because it did almost as much damage as Great Heavy Soul Arrow, has twice as many casts, and comes out almost as fast as a basic Soul Arrow, only faults are that it doesn’t home in & go as far but that doesn’t matter very much in PvE. If people are referring to lighting spears & certain Pyromancies when they talk about OP magic, I’d agree. Lightning Spear was regularly doing 500+ damage which was around the same Soul Spear was doing. Lighting Spear, that only required 22 faith, compared to Soul Spear, that needed 40 INT and only has 2 casts at first while Lightning Spear gets 10, doesn‘t help that most of the new spells suck as & aren‘t worth using. Sorcery finally got OP once I got an extra copy of Soul Spear, got Soul Geyser & finally got the Staff of Wisdom…at the Dragon Shrine.

Before that, running through with melee was far smoother than doing magic because many of the good spells in DkS 1 got nerfed to being near useless like Homing Soulmass. It’s like they physically abused him for several years, I thought he was still himself, but I had to accept that he’s just not the same, what happened to you, HS? Early on, like many others, I read up on the book of strafing & never looked back. You could say that upping my INT increases fire damage so technically it was making my sword a little stronger, but it must not have been very much since I didn’t notice. What, like +5 damage per hit? That means nothing when it comes to bosses. Most of them operate under the same rule of simply strafing in one direction all day & you already win since they can’t do much about it. I even poked fun at it using the Ruin Sentinels theme. Hell, the boss fights wouldn’t take very long at all if most of them didn’t have health bars on par with Four Kings, Old Dragonslayer in particular. Seems like killing just one of the Ruin Sentinels would be around how much health a normal boss in DkS 1 would have. May be forgetting a few points but whatever, I’ve gone on long enough.

...So I liked the game a lot. Around as much as the first. Yeah.

[ganonfloyd]

Sounds about right.

[Marie Rose]

I'd probably be interested in doing some co-op on bosses at some point. Just running through NG+ atm, not much different aside from a few extra enemies through in certain spots & really annoying red phantoms thrown in numerous spots that have too much damn health.

[Marie Rose]

Seems FromSoft are making a whole bunch of nerfs to spells & such, not like there wasn't already enough nerfs before. Well, at least I got my plat before they began nerfing the MLGS into the ground. Only bothered to get it on NG+ after apparently hearing how good it was, and sure it was a little better than my fire longsword, but it wasn't a massive difference, it could also be buffed too which is what I wanted in the first game. Still swings a little slow though (and they're gonna make it swing slower, and not allow it to be buffed...so make it like the first game where it was just plain avarage) it does look nice visually though. But I cheesed most of NG+ with magic, especially the bosses since if every enemy is gonna do half my health with almost any hit or combo, I'm gonna respond in kind by destroying their health bar with 4 Soul Geysers, took down Smelter Demon within 20 seconds with that, it was surprisingly amusing how fast I could tear down bosses when I got right up in the large ones faces & fired that, coupled with some Crystal Soul Spears & Soul Spears. Honestly, melee needs to be buffed a little, my NG+ run made that clear, especially due to the stupid red phantoms placed all over who use Megamule so they can have 5x more health than the other enemies. After a while they were just annoying to fight so I reserved my Soul Spears for taking them out, I wasn't going to put up with their nonsense. Would also like to know what **** decided to place one red phantom with a greatbow & a dual wielding in the tiny area where you need the Kings ring to get to the Throne of Want. Had to wait all day for that door to open then I just ran through, I was sick & tired of seeing red phantoms by that point. Anyway, yeah, good thing I'm basically done by this point at least. Looking back, I actually like the first more.

[ganonfloyd]

I agree with the last statement. I mean I still super enjoyed this, but the first one is just too cool.

[Marie Rose]

I found that during NG+, when I was doing a lot of stuff that wasn't really mandatory, I ended up just complaining about any nonsense that happened, while that happened in the first game, it was nowhere near as often. It was mainly the gimmicky last half of the game that I had issues with.

[Marie Rose]

Finally got off my ass & did it, mainly had some trouble with the second half but didn't wanna just half-ass it. Hope I didn't get a little too much into it & it's still understandable



Whoa! What’s that blob thing I see? what on earth could it be? they say it came from the boundry, sounds creepy when it is near, better get out of here
Huh? What the hell’s up with this, it’s speaking gibberish, I simply can’t understand this, something must be amiss, worse than broken English.

I  eed   reg  ar supply of se thr in  der to fully s stain myself, gugagaga, gotta…eat…I h d kn  ledge to gain, t e experi nce drov  me insane, I contin    again, th s ain’t the same, it came from th  depths of the boundry 
With  he azure being ne r my mind is   coming more clear, azureazure, kiihehehehe, I’ll devour it!   
I’m r nning out of  ime, the sit  tion may no  be fine but at the  nd of the day the azure is mine

Come! You can go do your worst but you’re still gon’ get cursed, I’m about to anticipate the burst, hold on, I’m not done just yet, I still got that reset
Yeah! I’ll devour your soul, I’ll block that reversal, then I’ll land that astral, when you’ve accepted defeat then it’s time to eat

Across the globe, many people know me by so many names…black squiggly, one of the boundry bros, that goddamn beekeeper: A-ra-kune.
I’m all alone, a black heinous creature, I’m running out of time, the bigger picture doesn’t really concern me at all while I’m walking the thin red line.

The bodies themselves don’t matter to me, power & knowledge is all I want to see, the Azure Grimoire is the pinnacle & the key, I’ll devour that azure with glee, frooooom n to infinity.

*dem guitar & drums, skip to 2:28*

Kiiiihehehehe!! I no longer h  e any mouth or  ven a face, so I can just make  ne & it’s just fine,    doesn’t m  ter to me. As I creep   ound the corners of the town & ambu h them before they hear a  ound. Ghuhguh  rhk. A  empts to try & p rsue me are    vain. When they see me  gain, it won’t be the same, but they’ll be sure to remember the name.

Ha! I’ll consume you with ease, they’ll scream “No! Not the bees!” You’re trying to block that string? Oh please, you’re not cursed just yet, but they’re still quite a threat.
See? My insects are aim to please, no, I’m not carrying fleas, you could call it some kind of boundary disease, when the cursed you’re mine, so feel free to whine.

*drums & more drums, fin*

[ganonfloyd]

I got goosebumps following along with the song. You have done my main and greatest fighter proud, sir.

I never quite noticed until now but the added bridge in the middle sounds kind of Castlevania-y.

[Marie Rose]

you're welcome, I'd probably be playing CP right now if developers weren't busy fucking Europe in the ass like usual, and I don't feel like probably having to pay £45-50 just to have some website send it. I don't have as much money to throw around as I did when Dark Souls 2 was nearing release.

[ganonfloyd]

I would be playing it too if I had the system to play it on. Some things about it have left a slightly bad taste in my mouth though; I'll probably wait for the next revision or the Kokonoe edition or whatever.

[Marie Rose]

That's what you get for not owning a PS3, shame on you

[ganonfloyd]

I did have one but it broked

[Marie Rose]

wat happen

[Ƨɒlƚy]

somebody set him up the bomb

[Marie Rose]

wat!