Bought this game after everyone hyped it in the Games Suck thread.

Pretty awesome. I'm a cleric since the idea of a cleric on pilgrimage getting imprisioned sounded like an incredible start to an epic. Chose twin humanities as a gift for some reason. I have zero ability to ranged attack.

Had some incredibly painful deaths.

Finally beat the armored boar, got way further than I'd ever been. Met some of those rapier knights and kicked their asses. Got to the entrance of the church, fought and beat 3 rapier knights in a 3 on 1. I rule. Then I get invaded and guy kills me in the church. What a douche. On the trek back to my body one of the rapier knights parry/riposte's me for instant death. 9700 souls gone :-/

Been failing vs the Bell Gargolyes so i decided to search the burg for some equiptment i may have missed. Found the merchant who was right by the start. Oops. Finally upgraded past my starting equiptment and bought a couple keys. Travel through new parts kicking ass, beating a knight and getting a new ring that helps when you're almost dead. Get underground and free that wizard dude. Get ambushed by those poison assassin dudes who slit my throat and i'm dead. On the walk back to my body I die the worst death ever. While still outside in the fire temple there's that part where the guy throws firebombs at you while you fight the low level guys below. Somehow i managed to walk off the cliff while fighting those guys. 6600 souls gone :-/

Currently stuck between the Bell Gargoyles and the goat demon (Capra?) and the darkroot on the other side.

I envy people who get to play this game for the first time. Slowly realising the brilliance of the world design was a great gaming experience.

Lol, just figured out where you meant, i.e., the first enemies in the game. Yeah not a good death Don't worry though, you have 10s of thousands more to lose.

I didn't think you could get into the Lower Burg where the Capra is without beating the Gargoyles for some reason. Guess I'm wrong though.

BTW, I've seen a lot of people who call the capra demon w/ the 2 dogs one of/the hardest fight in the game. Took me a ton of times.

If you are human you can summon two computer characters to help you with the gargoyles (one always, and the second if you free him from his prison behind a secret wall in the second level of the church). They are pretty trivial if you do this.

I found it worthwhile to explore the Darkroot Garden after beating the Gargoyles, some good leveling in there. FWIW I found it worthwhile to pay the 20k souls to open the shortcut to the back half of the garden (Crest of something you buy from the Blacksmith), but you don't need to do it, you can reach that area from another spot later.

The basement key is in the church, in an area before the Gargoyles, so you technically can go all the way to the second bell before beating the Gargoyles (unless there's something else that pops up, I've never done it this way).

Capra is probably in most peoples top 5 toughest boss fights, especially since the fight comes when you are still learning the game. Small area/tight windows of movement, multiple enemies, luckily he might have the lowest hps of any boss.

My top 3 toughest bosses:

I'm actually just getting around to this game as well. I think I'll start it this weekend on my computer. Should I use mouse/keyboard or an Xbox controller? Also, wasn't there a graphics pack that I am supposed to download to fix something? I thought I heard a lot about this when it was first released for the PC a while back.

Edit: This is the GFX mod I mentioned earlier if anyone else is starting this on the PC.
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/24/da...in-23-minutes/

Yeah, it was fall off the couch bad.

I beat the gargolyes.

Go to the dark souls nexus website and get a DSFix launcher that makes configuring the mod much easier.

And I'd definitely use the Xbox controller to play. It works much better than the mouse+kb.

I just played Dragon's Dogma because I heard it was semi similar to Dark Souls. After 15 minutes I was bored out of my mind, you just can't mimic the Souls experience. Maybe I'll give it another try later.

Btw, for those that have played Dark but not Demons, definitely give Demons a try when you're done. Dark is more polished and a better overall game IMO, but Demons will give you more of the same type of experience, and there are some great things in Demons that they decided to leave out of Dark.

I've honestly had a rough time getting into Demons Souls (big fan of Dark, and beaten multiple times). Seems like you can't neglect certain aspects of fighting (ie ranged) - I'm kinda stuck at the level with those squid-head grabber lightning spitting dudes. I dunno, just overall not being drawn in like I was to Dark Souls. Not sure if my attention span is low right now, or if Dark's 1-world thing is so much more immersive, or theres something else.

They're definitely different games. I think Demon's Souls is the harder game, but other people think the opposite.

If you want a hint for fighting the squid guys with melee weapons, then wait out of their range at the end of their route. Then when they turn around, you run after them and backstab them.

No doubt Dark has the much better world. Just way cooler environments. Some of the environments in Demons could have been thrown together in 15 minutes.

In terms of difficulty, it's hard for me to say since I played Demons right after Dark, so I was used to the gameplay and had didn't have much trouble getting through Demons. I tend to think that Dark had the tougher areas, but in Demons you had to redo a lot more stuff on average when you did die. Also, since nearly everyone dies a lot on their first playthrough during one of these games, you would spend a lot of time at 75% life in Demons, which obviously adds a lot of difficulty. Bosses were pretty close between the two games IMO.

Here are the things I thought improved from Demons to Dark:

1. Much better environments, as said above.
2. Having to constantly stock up on healing and mana items was pretty annoying, especially considering that souls got you everything. Course, I should be careful what I wish for, it was kinda nice being able to use an unlimited amount of one spell. This was obviously changed in Dark with the bonfires replenishing flasks and spells
3. Better weapon upgrading, don't need to have 40 shards and 30 chunks etc, more simplistic
4. Kinda poor execution with the tendency stuff in Demons. It wasn't a bad idea, just the way to shift it was kinda silly, especially with online play resetting it when you log off. Maybe it would have made more sense to me if I played when it came out so things could be shifted more with online play.
5. I think dropping the half life soul form was good. Better to make the game more difficult in other ways.

Here are things I thought got worse:

1. There wasn't much story in either game, but at least in Demons there was some initial stuff, and a few other things scattered throughout, which I think added to the game. In Dark they scaled back on that even more, which was surprising.
2. Demons gave you the feeling of epic boss fights, which Dark didn't do as much. The final dungeon in Dark was maybe the most surprising. Kill a few knights then Gwyn just attacks you, no cool mini cut scene. Most might not think that stuff adds anything, but a little boss intro and a bit more of a final dungeon would have added to the game for me.

I think both could benefit from better music, although I may be in the minority here. Only cool song that stood out for me was Ash Lake in Dark.

Having said all of this, both games are two of the very best I've ever played, so that says a lot about how good I thought everything else is.

I'm really wondering how some of the Souls vets on here would compare the two games.

Wow Art dont really know where to begin.

Dark souls has more story than most games have but it isnt thrown in your face. Its like how you need to learn how to beat the bosses by studying their moves and the same way goes for the story and lore. read descriptions, listen to dialogue and the story will start to build around you.

Dont know what to say if you didnt think the boss fights in Dark was great. OaS, Sif
4 kings, Priscilla...

Also the music in dark is epic. Just fits the mood of the bosses perfectly.

Each to his own though

I thought the boss fights in Dark were great, just a little bit less epic than Demons. I was just comparing what I thought was better and what I thought was worse.

I know the story exists, but it takes quite a bit to unravel it. Most aren't going to know much of the story during their first playthrough. It's a personal preference thing I guess, no problem with preferring the story to be super subtle.

As far as music I was mainly talking about environment music. Agreed that there's some good boss music, although sometimes I'm too busy dying to notice .

now that I think about it though, the DLC may have tipped the boss fights into Dark's favor

Couldn't sleep today so i banged out a decent session.

meh i also found the end boss pretty underwhelming

i thought ornstein and smaugh was cooler than that

My 3 toughest bosses (played through as a Wanderer with light armor)

1. Four Kings
2. Capra Demon
3. Ornstein & Smough


Four Kings is really easy if you use a tank character, but sucks with any sort of light armor character.

I bought it on sale cause of the recommendations here, could only get in half an hour before switching, I HATE the controls, seriously why not port it over properly.

Get a proper controller for it because not playing one of the best games ever cause you have the wrong controller seems kinda dumb.

Just bought it last week.

Finished off the Gargoyles this morning. I gotta say I did a huge fist pump when they went down. What a great game so far. Loving the environments. Capra is next, and he has kicked my ass a few times so far. Those damn dogs!

Game does an amazing job of making you hate every environment.



The game is all about familiarity. Every new bad guy is super hard until you learn his moves and what strategy to take against him. And I suck with every new weapon until i have like 100 kills.

It shouldn't take a long time to get back to the Four Kings. From near the beginning of New Londo Ruins, you can roll down to the area where the darkwraiths are.

here's the quick way to 4 kings, or at least my quick way, didn't fight anything:

That guy is definitely carrying >50% equipment load