Dark Souls 2 (PC/PS4/XB1/PS3/360)

[tyven]

I still can't beat Vendrick LOL

[Kuishen]

I never really had terrible trouble with bosses in souls games at all, the biggest challenges were always fighting multiple things at once. A few bosses take a couple tries til you figure patterns and such out, but I'm hardly underwhelmed. I died more solo on ruin sentinels than I did on ornstein/smough. The game is at least as good as DS1 to me.

Wasn't talking at all about the difficulty, each boss in 1 felt unique, all the bosses in 2 with a few exceptions feel the exact same, and they don't have the cool backstory/feel/purpose to them. That said, the bosses in 2 are definitely easier than most in 1.

@Elcura: I'd argue that Ancient Dragon is akin to Bed of Chaos. At times it's a complete coin flip and getting hit by either boss is a 1-shot 90% of the time (Bed of Chaos getting hit almost certainly means getting thrown into a pit). They both have only 2-3 moves and aren't challenging aside from their cheap gimmicks.

Like seriously, compare the Ancient Dragon or Guardian Dragon to the Kalameet fight. There's not even a contest. Cutting off Kalameet's tail was a challenge and absolutely fun.

That's another thing, the complete lack of cutting off pieces of bosses for unique weapons, why did they take that out? You can cut off pieces of bosses in 2 but it does literally nothing aside from restrict their already bland moveset.

[Darkmagi]

Ancient dragon is not luck based, you can completely predict the moves and avoid death with complete consistency. I'll agree that it was a pretty damn boring for a giant dragon fight though. I feel like bed of chaos had much less room for error and the damn jump at the end is what killed me more often than not. lol

[Souj]

That's another thing, the complete lack of cutting off pieces of bosses for unique weapons, why did they take that out? You can cut off pieces of bosses in 2 but it does literally nothing aside from restrict their already bland moveset.

I was coming to post that I just cut off the Rotten's cleaver arm lol Didn't know you could do that. Not that it was needed at all, his cleaver attacks or horribly easy to dodge.

[Kuishen]

Ancient dragon is not luck based, you can completely predict the moves and avoid death with complete consistency. I'll agree that it was a pretty damn boring for a giant dragon fight though. I feel like bed of chaos had much less room for error and the damn jump at the end is what killed me more often than not. lol

I'm talking more about the very first move he does. If you run straight at him, he'll most likely do the forward breath attack which you can dodge by just running past him, but sometimes he'll go into the air and do the downward blast, which there is no dodging at that point because you've committed to running at him to avoid dying at the door from a forward breath attack. At least that's how I did it, if you can dodge his first attack without having to run straight for him then I'll keep that in mind but if you do that and he decided to do the air blast instead of the conal one then you're just screwed.

Anyways here's the best interpretation of lore that I've seen yet:



It's what makes the most sense at the moment so it's worth believing. It was never specified that the souls the person was holding when they link the fire are consumed and it makes sense that they would be scattered again so the cycle can continue. How would the fire be linked more than once if there weren't any powerful souls left? In order to become a powerful soul, you need to consume powerful souls, so kindling the fire scattering powerful souls after the fact isn't that far-fetched.

[Priran]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...e-to-Die-Again
Zero Punctuation DS2.

Not that I usually consider Yahtzee a good reviewer but it's really funny how much his opinion of the series improves as it gets more popular, to the point where he's applauding the same thing in DS2 (lifegems) that he mocked in DeS (grass).

[Kuishen]

Yahtzee is a complete moron.

[Hatedregret]

I never thought DS had interesting fights. This game has a lot going for it aside from bosses though. A lot of versatility. From power stance weapons to four types of magic. I have enjoyed different styles of play. The real fun always starts in NG+ anyway and they've done a good job of increasing the difficulty. Solo flexile with only dual cestus was fucking hard.

I agree lore/visually that the bosses are flat. I wouldn't rate it above the other games but it's still a great ride.

[Kaisha]

Started my PS3 copy late, probably should have just waited for the PC release at this point. Maybe it's because it's been awhile since I've played DS1, but DS2 feels like it runs worse in general, and has pretty long loads with the install, compared to DS1 which was fully off the disk.

When does the game go into the dickhead mode with the traps and enemy placement that we all know and love? A couple hours in and so far nothing out of the ordinary; wasting a fair bit of time just playing it safe around every corner. I'm assuming it's to help ease in new potential players, where-as both DeS & DS1 kicked you in the groin in the tutorial, then kicked your dead corpse further in the first area following it.

Bonfire warping out of the gate is much appreciated though, particularly since you can't just level up at the bonfire anymore.

[AoE]

Depends on what your build is. Playing both a melee and a caster job. Certain parts screwed me up hard on my caster where I breezed through it on my melee and vice versa. Also everything is way easy to deal with if you have a bow and deal decent damage.

[Veikuri]

What's the fastest route to beat this game? In NG+ trying to get to NG++ skipping all the optional stuff.

[Souj]

What's the fastest route to beat this game? In NG+ trying to get to NG++ skipping all the optional stuff.

What I've done so far was;

Spoiler: show

Majula>

dropped down to Blightown, ran through there really quickly, dropped down intot he Gutter, making sure to grab the Fragrent Branch of Yore that's just after the big fall, kill Rotten>

Flaming Tower, where I ran past every single enemy and to Dragonrider where I got him to fall off the ledge in a second (look up how to do it if you don;t know, it's pretty simple and it makes a boringly easy, undangerous boss fight waste less time), talked to faith girl so she'd move to Majula>
Forest of Giants, where I killed Pursuer first attempt, kill Last Giant for key, took the eagle to Lost Bastille>

Lost Bastille, I talked to Lucatiel in case I wanted to summon her for Lost Sinner, I summoned the NPC mage girl on ruin sentinels and then it was only a brief fight through exploding dudes to get to Sinner's Rise (where I haven't fought Lost Sinner yet)>

Unpetrified Pyro girl, went to Huntsman Copse, killed Skeleton Lord, made it through Harvest Valley and Earthen Peak, summoned Jester dude to fuck up Medusa lady real quick, made it through Koopa Castle, making sure to take my time here because you can get fucked up pretty fast trying to rush through, and killed Old King>

Shaded Woods, which only took me about 30 seconds to run through to get to Quelaag wanna-be killed her, ran through Doors of Pharos, killing the roughly 3 dwarves in the way, ignored all the enemies except the 2 boars who charged me in the campsite, killed the miner dudes on the way to the temple, summoned a sunbro to help rape the priest bosses inside, and I'm currently at the church that is just right before Freya boss room.

It's taken me maybe 2.5 hours to get through all that and I did die quite a few times in the fire castle due to idiocy. I'll probably summon Lucatiel for Lost Sinner fight just to make things easier.

Speed runs for the game are currently at about 3 hours I think, but that's on NG and I'm running through on NG++ and I've definitely never practiced a speed run nor am I going as fast as I definitely could be.

[AoE]

Koopa Castle. LOL

[Souj]

So do the spiders have a chance just to drop most any weapon in the game?
It seemed odd that I've seen them drop Zweihander, Great Scythe, Bandit Knife, Estoc, and Mail breakers, considering how is it possible they're actually carrying those things but I considered maybe it was part of the lore like maybe they were made from humans or they had somehow taken them from the humans they had killed, but I just had one drop Ricard's Rapier.

Add Mastadon Greatsword to that list as well...

[gaira]

burned through about 50 cracked red eye orbs and started ng+ on my mundane character. so far it's been a blast, with the blue covenant invading 1-2 times per boss.

[Souj]

lol so lame...
So all I have left is Lost Sinner. I had originally saved up and used a bunch of souls- gave myself 2mil from useable souls- so I could skip fighting the big 4. Well, I didn't have enough so I went through the game. I literally only have Lost Sinner left, i Go to the Shrine of Winter and it opens for me now.

[Souj]

I should be glad they decided to nerf Flame Swathe because ti was so overpowered, but at the same time... I was so close to getting through this last playthrough for the platinum trophy.

well, I actually was able to buy the spells from the Chancellor on NG++ my first time into the castle. Got the miracle trophy but I apparently am also missing Fire Tempest, Chaos Storm, and Fire Whip. Oye.

[Kuishen]

Chaos storm is in one of the chests in Iron Keep on top of lava rocks. Roll around in water, Flash Sweat and a lot of health. From my experience the flame quartz rings do dick all for reducing that damage. I think it's actually in the one with the longest run to get to it. The water in that area is in jars up on the upper levels.

[Souj]

Yeah, I know how to get them all, just bummed I have extra work to do now.

[tyven]

Oh shit how bad is the flame swathe nerf?