Dark Souls 2

Vaclav

Vaclav

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I liked Dragon's Dogma - but I'd give it a 85 or so to Dark Souls' 95 personally - it's got A TON of rough edges and occasional long slogs for no particular reason and such (even after Dark Arisen improved things - before it it was even worse, do not play it unpatched, Christ some of the slogs were unexcusable) - but it's an overall solid game.
 
Vorph

Vorph

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Truth be told, I got a lot more enjoyment out of Dragon's Dogma than I did Dark Souls. Kind of hard to compare the two games though, DD's "open" world is lot different than DkS's. DD is more like a Japanese version of western series like Gothic or (ugh) Elder Scrolls. It isn't necessarily as easy as Pyros said either; it's just that you're able to grind levels and abilities to much greater effect than you can in a Souls game. If you head straight to Soulflayer Canyon and the Greatwall area right after starting out, you'll find it very challenging. (I can't actually remember why I felt the need to do that when I restarted my game after having played 10 or so hours, but I know I had a really good reason. Don't think it was just as simple as wanting items from the canyon chests, it was something at Greatwall that I was after...)

I played it before Dark Arisen was even announced too, and it's pretty much universally agreed that DA made the game even better. I still need to play DA since it was free on PS+, but just haven't gotten around to it. :/
 
Budos

Budos

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New video of some new areas and input from Vaati, who has played through the game already:




Edit: Also, bleeding now halves your stamina temporarily.
 
Vaclav

Vaclav

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Gecko_sl said:
I bought it based on reading a recommendation here, but couldn't get into it. The game just wasn't for me.
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How far in did you "force yourself"? I found that initially I was the same way, until I pushed past the first couple visits to Gran Soren. (Roughly about the time you have to chase down the Griffin)
 
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Column_sl

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Dragons Dogma was awesome, only thing I didn't like about it was the graphics weren't that sharp, and that stupid letter boxing shit.

Wish they would have ported the game over to the PC.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Vorph_sl said:
Truth be told, I got a lot more enjoyment out of Dragon's Dogma than I did Dark Souls. Kind of hard to compare the two games though, DD's "open" world is lot different than DkS's. DD is more like a Japanese version of western series like Gothic or (ugh) Elder Scrolls. It isn't necessarily as easy as Pyros said either; it's just that you're able to grind levels and abilities to much greater effect than you can in a Souls game. If you head straight to Soulflayer Canyon and the Greatwall area right after starting out, you'll find it very challenging. (I can't actually remember why I felt the need to do that when I restarted my game after having played 10 or so hours, but I know I had a really good reason. Don't think it was just as simple as wanting items from the canyon chests, it was something at Greatwall that I was after...)

I played it before Dark Arisen was even announced too, and it's pretty much universally agreed that DA made the game even better. I still need to play DA since it was free on PS+, but just haven't gotten around to it. :/
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Well I was saying in comparison to Dark Souls. There's many mechanics that make the game easier, like those shitty shards that let you rez on the spot when you die, healing being plentiful, mobs not doing particularily high damage other than a few key ones and even then generally not that much as long as you're relatively careful and some classes being flat out broken(mystic knight abusing canons trivialize 90% of the game for example). Also if you don't play solo, the game is noticeably easier(as long as you get your typical RPG group with a healer/buffer and some sort of frontline like a warrior or a fighter).

There's some decent challenges and especially Dark Arisen added some cool stuff unless you used one of the very cheesy setups, but all in all the game isn't very difficult and it doesn't compare to Dark Souls, if only for the fact death is rarely punished heavily especially later on in the game. But yeah if you rush in a high lvl area at low lvl it's challenging, but that's not much different than going down the catacombs right away, and it's not really much more useful either since the only thing worth getting in those areas would be overpowered items, which iirc you might not even be able to use cause they're lvl restricted unlike DS.

Still the first drake, the first cyclops, the gryphon, the Ur Dragon, definitely some cool encounters to be had and as I pointed out, they're almost always more epic than everything in Dark Souls because of the combat dynamics. Climbing on the back of a gryphon then having it take off while you're trying to stab it enough so that it crashes back down is pretty fucking cool.
 
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Gecko_sl

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Vaclav_sl said:
How far in did you "force yourself"? I found that initially I was the same way, until I pushed past the first couple visits to Gran Soren. (Roughly about the time you have to chase down the Griffin)
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Maybe 45 minutes. It all really bored the heck out of me. I was pretty much pulled into Dark Souls from the get go, but never felt it with DD. I have the DD/Arisen game for the PS3.
 
Pyros

Pyros

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Gecko_sl said:
Maybe 45 minutes. It all really bored the heck out of me. I was pretty much pulled into Dark Souls from the get go, but never felt it with DD. I have the DD/Arisen game for the PS3.
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Yeah I can see that, the start isn't that good. I personally really got into it once you get into the city and then in that dungeon thing that's under the companion building with the skeletons and the ogre, the place was fairly dark, was pretty lenghty, had the first ogre which was a rough fight and a cool end.
 
Vaclav

Vaclav

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Pyros_sl said:
Yeah I can see that, the start isn't that good. I personally really got into it once you get into the city and then in that dungeon thing that's under the companion building with the skeletons and the ogre, the place was fairly dark, was pretty lenghty, had the first ogre which was a rough fight and a cool end.
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Yep pretty much the timeframe where it finally clicked with me too - I think the Griffin stuff is the next thing you do outside the city, right? Or is that after the next dungeon? First Griffin fight sealed the deal for me though.

I bet you'd like it more than you did previously if you gave it say 3-4 hrs to draw you in first, Gecko - not as much as Dark Souls IMO but enough to be worthy of a playthrough at least.
 
Vorph

Vorph

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Depends on how much side stuff you do. I was at least 20-30 hours into the game before I fought the first griffin. Once you're at that stage of the main story you can put it off for a very long time if you want.
 
Raes

Raes

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I find it interesting that the only way the devs can provide challenge for players who have mastered the previous game is by tweaking combat mechanics in ways that attempt to somewhat negate your acquired skill, which at the same time raises the bar of entry for new players quite a bit. Kinda hard to grow your playerbase that way. Going to be fun to see how it evolves.

Coming Soon: Dark Souls X, "You're Already Dead" Edition.
 
Seananigans

Seananigans

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So this one has more/earlier fast travel than DS1? (Which AFAIK only unlocks late in the game?)
 
Raes

Raes

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Yes, from what people have said, you get the warp ability from the start. I think you have to activate each bonfire first. I don't recall exactly.
 
Seananigans

Seananigans

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Hmm. Not sure how I feel about that. As pain-in-the-assy as it can be sometimes, the travel aspect is really part of what makes the world feel like a world. (See MMO threads)

Blarg.
 
Raes

Raes

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Yeah, it's one of several controversial changes. Backtracking is now unnecessary, but even if it was, the whole hard-enemies-only-respawn-a-limited-number-of-times crap makes it less of an issue anyway.
 
Olscratch

Olscratch

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Being able to invade people while hollow is probably one of the coolest and best changes they could have made. Coupled with invaders facing penalties while invading, and PvP centric Covenants, it makes the whole system more fluid and dynamic.

I find it interesting that the only way the devs can provide challenge for players who have mastered the previous game is by tweaking combat mechanics in ways that attempt to somewhat negate your acquired skill, which at the same time raises the bar of entry for new players quite a bit. Kinda hard to grow your playerbase that way.
Click to expand...
In what ways?
 
Raes

Raes

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Removing a lot of i-frames, tying speed of dodging/blocking/parrying to a stat, things like that. Go watch youtube vids of the network test. You see a lot of people with plenty of DS1 experience getting slaughtered repeatedly. I mean, they have to do it, but how do you keep doing it without painting yourself into a corner?

Once you've beat the game, early mobs are a joke, right? Even for an average player. So, how do you offer a challenge to those people at the start of a sequel without making the game exponentially harder for people who never played DS1?
 
Olscratch

Olscratch

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Ahh, ok. Personally, I see those changes as a good thing, particularly in regards to backstab. Backstab was the biggest offender in DS, both in PvE and PVP. It trivialized both.
 
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