Returned after an entire summer video game break. I'm on what i think is the last guy (but i thought that about Lothric too). Last guy is hard.

It's really a great game

Cheapest fail in Dark Souls history. So pissed.

That's pretty unbelievable to have that happen given the circumstances.

Beat the game. Did not summon anyone. I think it was considerably easier than Dark Souls 2 but much better.

Restarted as a mage and holy **** is that hard.

Sorcerer is a struggle the first half of the game. You become god-like in the second half.

There are some boss fights though that almost require melee that can be tough.

I thought I start a sorcerer build and run it toward the end game just to have one in NG for the DLC. I spent about three hours before I remembered just how not fun ranged magic is in every Souls game.

I dunno dude, hitting enemies with 40 different soul arrows is pretty fun imo.

2nd playthrough i am finding so much more stuff. Found 2 more NPCs, found another bonfire, found a way to get up to the top of Siegward's (or whatever) tower.

I've tried going with a strength build, but man the weapon animations just take so damn long I can't do it.

I keep trying to use a Great Hammer or Greatsword, but I always end up going back to a Battle Axe just because I can't fight enemies when the swing time takes over a second.

I've gone great club 40-50 strength in every Dark Souls game. It's just too damn good... lol.

There are plenty of options for smaller weapons for a strength build. The Butcher's Knife starts with A scaling in strength and it's very quick. Shortsword, longsword, broadsword, every club, murakamo, mace, morning star...I think they all have A strength scaling at +10. I'm sure there are more plus others if use a heavy gem.

I love the Butcher's Knife moveset.

The butcher's knife is pretty nice on a pure strength build. The moveset, swing speed, and attack rating are all from the axe class, but it has a significant reach advantage on all other axes. If you're used to straight/curved/piercing swords, it can feel a bit slow, though.

I don't think any of the straight swords you mention get A scaling without infusing, but then again, you'll always want to infuse them. Murakumo isn't fast nor is it a very good strength weapon. It has a high enough dex requirement that you should make it refined even if you put no additional points into dex.

A weapon I'd recommend to a strength build is Yhorm's machete. It's a greataxe, so it's not very fast and all you do is slam it down in front of you. On the plus side, it has high base damage, scales well with strength even above 40, and has good reach.

Unless they nerfed it the Dark Sword was great for my build that had a decent amount of strength.

I've never really bothered with PvP in Dark Souls but have been invaded a few times and have joined Darkmoon covenant so I can get the darkmoon blade miracle. It's not been enjoyable mainly because the hit detection seems weird. Like I'll swing my weapon, it seems to miss, but a second later the opponent's health goes down. Other times my weapon looks like it's connected but nothing happens. That's presumably due to the iframes when they're rolling, but in practice it looks and feels awkward.

The PvP has always been secretly terrible in Souls games.

I don't know how many hundreds of hours I've put into souls games and I don't know that I've ever invaded anyone.

I had great fun in the Cat Covenant and as a Blade of the Darkmoon in DS1. But you have to accept that sometimes a guy is gonna be 30 feet away and then suddenly warp behind you for a backstab.

I think we forgive the crappy PVP because of the cool way they integrated it so that it feels like an enhanced part of the PvE difficulty.

DLC comes out Oct 25th

15 New Weapons and 4 Armor Sets
4 New Sorceries, Miracles, Pyromancies
New PvP exclusive map, called Hollow Arena
2 New Bosses

Decent but not great reviews for Ashes. Sounds like it has lots of features that aren't fully developed.

The DLC:

The DLC was mailed in and can suck my nuts. **** the NeoGAF defense force. This is the most lacking in content of all of the Soulsborne DLCs, ainec. One of the bosses is amazing, though.

If I were to take a flyer on the DLC - I forget, does the game keep a save around before you fight the last boss? I think my most recent save would be near the start of NG+ and reviews say you need an endgame-leveled character to play the DLC, not sure if I'd want to grind the whole game over again just to play it (if that's required).

No, unfortunately.

It's not that far into the game, I don't think it would take that long to run there from the start if you knew what you were doing. Unless there's some late game boss you have to beat before it shows up, but I don't think there is.

NG+ doesn't start until you choose to start it, so even if you have already beat the last boss, you'll be OK as long as you haven't started NG+ yet.

You don't really need to wait till the end of a NG+ cycle to go in. If you've been leveling up normally, you don't get the same sort of returns for stat investment in NG+ as you did in NG and you'll obviously have a fully upgraded weapon from the start. Also, for whatever reason boss health hardly increases at all in NG+.

You do need to kill three bosses to gain access.