Dark Souls 2

Angelwatch_sl said:

I actually just started DS1 again for kicks. By this point the game is a bit clunky and dated but still holds up. I just forgot how much of a "fuck you" the game is though. God I hate Blight Town and then Sen's Fortress. Both zones are designed to kill you over and over and over again. Powered through them though and it took me about 3 tries to get through the archers from hell and I reached Orstein and Smough when I called it a day. I never did kill those two solo so I'm going to give it the old college try.

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The funny thing is, playing the PC version over the last few weeks, everywhere is a ghost town. I saw maybe a total of 3 summon signs, and all those failed to actually summon anyone. But the bonfire before Orstein and Smough had like 10 sunbros signs around it. I probably should've tried them solo, but I was so happy to finally see other people that I didn't consider it.

Vinyard_sl said:

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This guy gets it.

Angelwatch_sl said:

I finally killed Ornstein and Smough solo which is a first for me. I did it the way God intended. Soul Arrowing their assess off while strafing around the pillars. It still took me a couple of attempts but I feel good that they're dead.

That fight has got to be the hardest one in the entire Souls series.

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I'll have to go back and try it solo. Even with another person it was far from trivial, but I beat them on the first attempt.

From my experience doing bosses as a team is almost cheating. Even if you don't get carried most dark Souls 1/2 bosses/encounters are all about avoiding targeted damage and then countering. If one person can get aggro (or bounce between two people) and the other can do the damage it's a cake walk.

I actually avoid tag teaming bosses just for that reason (Plus a lot of times the person who helps you just carries you through it).

NG+ four kings is harder than O&S solo, but its pretty close.

I don't mind the tag teaming as much as I did in prior games when I was more snobbish about soloing stuff. In DS1, at least, a fair number of the bosses were not significantly easier solo than with help like they are in DS2. And some of the DS2 fights are clearly made with at least one helper in mind (Medusa bitch, Persuer 1.0, Smelter, and Sinner 2.0) for the fight, usually with an NPC phantom as an option. When I did my second run through, I thought about trying to solo everything with the pure two handed character, but I really did not especially feel like spending hours on Smelter, so I said fuck it.

On the flip side, I really enjoyed helping people power farm zones and clear bosses. It was genuinely fun, if your builds differed, and good soul income.

Angelwatch_sl said:

The story is completely separate. You understand the lore better but you really don't need to play the first to understand the second.

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What he said.