Cleric. Hopefully another pawn of the gods that gets maximally pwnt.

I used to played Demon Souls, DS and DS2 as a Warrior/Knight. Str, Vit, Sta type builds with some Dex.

My second play through of DS2 I switched to a Battlemage build. Int, Dex, Vit. And now I love that. I think it makes you play the game better because you have to wear very light armors and it really reinforces the idea of not getting hit.

Just finished a play through on DS with this build. Took about 40 hours. My first Warrior toon completed the game in 129 hours

Thought i had seen pretty much all Souls related things there is but somehow i had missed this gem...

Sending everyone back into memory lane with probably the best DS tribute ive ever seen.

Yeah I've watched that video a bunch of times, hard to imagine a better fan made tribute video.

So stoked for this...I also like the idea that you can allocate FP/HP estus giving more freedom for spell casters if they want with the tradeoff of less health refills. More things to test out.

Game unlocks 6pm EST next Monday.

Seriously???? That's incredible.

I read somewhere the PC version still has really long load times. The Bloodborne engine strikes again.

From the Eurogamer review:

This concerns me a little. One of the worst things about DS2 is that it threw large groups of powerful enemies at you. That turned the combat into a slog that felt unfair rather than being a tough challenge. Contrast to DS1, where the few large groups of enemies consisted of weak monsters.

yeah

I wouldn't worry about it, after like 3 souls games and BB, I think they have consistently proven they understand how to make things difficult but fair at the same time.

Besides, I'm not even sure I remember such about DS2. There were some tricky trash mob sections, but nothing that felt unfair.

Hopefully the load times aren't an issue though. I got BB a few months ago, long after the load time issues were fixed, but I've seen videos from back and they were pretty awful at the start.

Gitgud?

DS2 was probably the easiest in the series (except for the dlc which is harder than the Bloodborne dlc). Is there a specific area you are referring to with the clumps of enemies that pound you? Most can be approached one to two at a time in the game.

Personally I don't want to just coast through the game quickly. I want the satisfaction of beating another tough game.

You won't be disappointed, then. This is the toughest Souls game, imo. I can understand the Eurogamer criticism. There are a few areas where it's pretty tough to aggro just one or two enemies and fighting even one or two is difficult. There's one area in particular that almost seems to designed to force you to just learn the layout and run through large parts of it rather than attempt to fight solo.

I'm most of the way through my second playthrough and I've been playing a lot of co-op, messing around with dried fingers and 4v2 PvP. The game is still very easy with summons, but the toughest to beat solo, I think.

This may be my favorite Souls game. It's hard to say, though, because nostalgia.

The difference imo is that both in DS and in DS3 the groups of enemies are there for a reason and there are usually different ways to fight them than just trying to pull them one by one and if there is no other option then the encounter is usually optional. In DS2 the enemies where clumped and non skippable often with grouped leashes so you could only fight them in one way.

I view Miyazaki as a teacher in that every encounter has a meaning and is trying to say something instead of in DS2 that encounters where there as obstacles with no other meaning than being "hard".

Yup. You could lure enemies in DS2 but that was often quite tedious, and not something that needed to be done much, if at all, in DS1. This DS2 critique goes into more detail about this from the 9 min mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UScsme8didI

Tick Tock Tick Tock....4 more days (assuming my Best Buy preorder copy gets in). I'm still debating between Assassin/Sorcerer/Pyromancer. I don't like pumping Dex stats but I'm assuming IF I went Assassin I could pretty much build it any way I want.

One thing I will be curious about is the iframe, especially since there is no adaptability stat in this game.

Still on second playthrough and just PvPing like mad. So glad to be away from BB PvP. Everything is so seamless and active now. I think the Japanese love co-op, though. Invading solo players is rare. I've also never seen so many people bow.

In case anybody is interested, here's an informative side by side breakdown of the settings and their effects on the PC.



What's funny is that not only do most of the settings have nearly indistinguishable differences, some have the game looking better at the lower setting.

never played a souls game on release, guessing im gonna get ganked repeatly? (looking forward to this if so)

Yep.

especially with the staggered release and no more soul memory

Everyone find's their first FromSoftware game extremely hard. And all the reviewers are saying this is the hardest one so far, so ya, you're gonna get owned, but so is everyone else.

But it's the most rewarding type of game because every bit of progress you make in the game, be it downing a new boss, opening a new area, unlocking a new shortcut, feels like a big rewarding achievement.

If by ganked, you mean the PvP aspect, multiplayer in the games is always optional. If you don't wanna deal with it, you don't have to. It may also be hard to focus on PvP and beat the game through the first time. Builds and weapons specialized for PvP may be less good for PvE. Probably a good idea to beat the game once through, learn how to play, the game mechanics, etc. and then do a PvP char after.

But if you're wanting to jump right into the thick of everything, go for it.

Got my ps4 copy in the post today, best surprise! Can't wait to get stuck into it.

So you can just pop it in the PS4 and play it now right I'm guessing?

Is the online portion for it turned on yet on PS4? Or will that be turned on Tuesday?

I haven't bought a console game on launch date in like 4 years probably, so I have no idea how they handle physical copies that get out into the wild before the official release date.

I won't get a chance to play until later tonight but I am assuming you can play online right away based on previous experience.

There are some games that might reset online stuff on the day of release though to make it more fair on everyone, don't think this would be the case with DS3 though.

thanks, I've finished both dark souls games, just played them a few years after release so haven't been invaded often