What are you Playing Now? - Right Now at the moment edition

[majestic]

Dark Souls, which was a replay. I replayed on Steam after trading my Switch cartridge for a Steam key with a friend.

First of all, in spite of doing a whole lot of grinding to find out whether one can make do with the Greatsword of Artorias if you waste all the stats for it (short answer: yes, but it is not worth it, outside of making it really easy to beeline for the Rite of Kindling after starting a new cycle), it only took me half the time to achieve everything in the game, compared to Dark Souls 2. Which is to be expected, Dark Souls is a lot smaller, and on new game cycles a lot of the game can be skipped.

The achievements and the game systems were also designed to waste a lot less time compared to Dark Souls 2 while playing offline, but between completing all Dark Souls, Dreck Souls 2: Scholar of the First Suck and Sekiro achievements, one thing has become abundantly clear: FromSoftware has no idea how to design interesting achievements. They are all just either related to playing the game, achieving all possible endings and looking for equipment. Contrary to the usual edgelord opinion, achievements can be interesting, the ones in FromSoftware games, so far, were not.

I think I might have found the reason why Dark Souls feels better to play - for me - than Dark Souls 2 did. The recovery animations are a lot shorter. One can - more or less - smoothly transition from an completed attack animation into a roll in Dark Souls, while in Dark Souls 2 there is a recovery time between finishing the attack and being able to roll away. Combined with the boss attack patterns of Dark Souls 2, that makes it a game of baiting out an attack and punishing it or dodging through a combination and then get an attack in. While Dark Soul's combat cannot be called fast paced and frantic, it feels a lot less slower than Dark Souls 2's: the bosses have more openings to attack and their movesets are not employing as many two or three hit combos. I got lucky in my early game, getting the Black Knight Halberd right at the start, and while that meant playing most of the game semi-naked due to the rather hefty equipment load requirement of the Black Knight weapons, it never limited me to hitting an enemy once and having to prepare a roll because the follow up attack would just end with me being hit.

Now, having played the game again, and a couple of times at that, and having listened to lore videos while playing to break the monotony of the grinding and replaying the more annoying parts of the game, I can say with some confidence that, lore and story wise, the only two really interesting parts are not related to the player's quest, which will always be the quest of someone else you just happen to accept because you have nothing better to do with your time anyway.

I am, of course, talking about the two NPC related quests in the game, of which Solaire's might be less involved and harder to miss out on, but is the better one, so it is fine. There's some personal tragedy in Siegmeyer's quest, plus some statements by Sieglinde that make you question what happened (girl, what exactly do you mean when you say you have to kill your father again?) but the two outcomes of Solaire's quest are simply fantastic. He either finds his sun, and loses himself, or you help him fail his quest by finding the Sunlight Maggot first.

It is the consequence of Solaire failing his quest that is most poignant and which elevates it: he becomes disillusioned and depressed because he did not find his sun, which is what he became an undead for, out of his own volition. He then can be summoned to fight Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight Cinder, and he's so ludicrously strong that he can basically solo the boss for you. Not only can you summon him to fight the very lord he worships, but his rage is strong enough to overcome him without much of your input. Not that Gwyn isn't more of a jokey fight, I wonder why people complain about Nashandra and Aldia in Dark Souls 2 being a boring pair of bosses to end the game with. Gwyn certainly is not much better, even if you do not or cannot parry him, you just need to stay close to him so he misses half his attacks without you having to do much, so is that sort of complaining coming from players working their way backwards from Dark Souls 3?

So, anyway, back to Solaire, I found his personal story to be really on point. Was it all lies? Why, yes, it was, although that does not come out as much in Dark Souls, I suppose. It is a part of the game that was made retroactively better.

Still, and there we are back at something I already wrote about, at lenght, is how much Dark Souls did not live up to the hype for me. The story is not that great, and while it is undoubtely genre defining in the sense that there is now a "Soulslike" genre, I am not sure if the combat system alone is what defines a whole genre, and even that is blurred with additions like Bloodborne and Sekiro. It is a "difficult" dark fantasy third person action adventure game that just seems to have come out at the right time.

I put difficult in quotes because replaying the game just cemented my opinion. The game is not that difficult, outside of a few areas that are not really well designed, and gimmicky fights that are more frustrating than fun. Yes, I'm looking at you, Bed of Chaos. Then there's the issue that Dark Souls falls apart after the first half. Everything that comes afterwards (well, and in the case of New Londo, technically before, because it is possible to complete it before getting the Lord Vessel, as long as you're willing to kill Ingward for the key) is just terrible, with the worst offenders being Lost Izalith and the Tomb of Giants, which one could easily consider to be contenders for the worst areas in any game, period. The forced death to Seath and the run through the Crystal Caves would be high on the list too, if Seath wouldn't be so easy. Well, once you have cut his tail. Cutting his tail is the worst. It is even worse than the Kalameet tail cut, which is annoying becaus you basically have to bait it out, but at least one can bait it out. Seath can just move in a way that makes it impossible to hit his tail - for long, long stretches of time.

Now, well, I cannot say anything about the state of gaming back in 2011. That was a time when all I did was play MMORPGs. Maybe Dark Souls really was the moment that brought actual difficulty back to games. Maybe that was Demon's Souls already, and maybe all of that was just Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3, both games that were a much greater success than Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2.

As far as my experience goes, it certainly would not have been, because the game is just not difficult enough to count. Lastly there's the dopamine release and adrenaline rush aspect of the game. I understand that being stuck at Ornstein and Smough for a longer while makes one feel really good once the challenge has been overcome. I just did not get if from Dark Souls - but also not from Dark Souls 2 or Sekiro. Having to fight a boss, solo, for a handful of times to understand its moveset and find counters is nothing next to having to deal with your raid group and having difficult raid encounters lasting up to fifteen minutes. Pulling them over, and over, and over, and over and over again. Not five times, ten times or even twenty. Hundreds of  times, in the case of the really difficult ones. I realize that does not apply to a whole lot of people, given the MMORPG population that usually partakes in its most difficult content, but, yeah, this is relevant for my experience. Insofar, well, Dark Souls is a good game with a terrible second half, but with me not really being interested in the world, unlike in Hellpoint, I can say that Hellpoint, while being the much worse game in terms of combat and movement, was still the better experience for me.

[melkathi]

2 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Well... the minutemen thing kind of makes sense from a role playing/ character pov along with the settlements in terms of you 'refounding the US' amid the Fallout theme of hyper nationalism, especially for someone who has been frozen from pre apocalypse rather than brought up post so might realistically have bought into that hypernationalism. Same for looking for jr too really, you are told you care rather than being made to; but logically you would.

I won't defend it any more than that since pretty much only the base idea is fine, the implementation is definitely typical Bethesda.

 

The looking for jr thing works for me.

Or I can pretend it does. I can make the logical choice. But typical Bethesda gives you a drive then forces you to ignore it. "They stole your baby! Now ignore it because NPC X can't put down a mattress on his own."

[Zoraptor]

I suspect the minuteman thing may also work better for americans, since it's their history.

(For those outside the US the other Minutemen may actually be better known than the militia, which would at least bring irony to the situation)

[Humanoid]

I never engaged past the introductory battle with them in my relatively brief time playing FO4. There was no narrative reason for me to go follow them anywhere, and I proceeded to Diamond City with no hesitation. That's the last I ever saw of them.

But yeah, the Boston setting in general may be another reason non-Americans might not engage with the game so well. I don't know anything about the place other than that the water may taste slightly of tea. I may not know much about the real Vegas but put up a few gigantic neon signs and it's pretty instant recognition. Washington has the White House and the obelisk, which is something I guess.

The broader issue though is that if you design in-game locations that make sense as self-sustaining communities, it doesn't matter if they don't correspond to actual real-world locations. Is Shady Sands a real place? Hell if I know, but it's a place that makes sense and I don't question its existence in the game. If instead a location's entire raison d'etre is "hey it's this famous real world location, but ruined" with no thought put into it beyond that, then those locations better be notable and relevant to the potential audience.

[Bartimaeus]

18 hours ago, majestic said:

Contrary to the usual edgelord opinion, achievements can be interesting

Wrong.

18 hours ago, majestic said:

the ones in FromSoftware games, so far, were not

*laughs in Demon's Souls*

Never mind all the "must obtain every spell, weapon, armor, and ring" achievements, it sure would suck if one of the weapon materials necessary to get the "Obtained Best Weapon by [Upgrade Material]" only has a sub-1% chance of spawning on exactly one type of enemy. I have a friend that farmed this enemy for about eight hours and never got one...their Demon's Souls achievements are still not 100% to this day.

18 hours ago, majestic said:

The recovery animations are a lot shorter.

Not just for being able to move/roll: do a light attack in DS2 and try to follow it up with a heavy attack (or reverse the order, or try to cast a spell instead, or use an item, or...), then try the same in DS1. It's atrocious in DS2. In theory, DS1 has the slower, weightier, and more limited movement between the two games, but it didn't actually feel like it at all to me in practice because of all the inexplicable delays they added in between different types of actions for DS2 (not to mention the harsher directional limitations to prevent you from turning between attacks too quickly, which feel like they were designed specifically to help the noobs who never learned to turn off camera targeting while kneecapping those of us who did). You can either chain light attacks or chain heavy attacks, but not one off of the other, and don't try to do anything else because **** you. As I said before, I could forgive most everything that was wrong with Dark Souls 2 (and boy was there a lot that was wrong) except for the fact that the controls made me want to strangle someone. Dark Souls 3 mercifully reverts back to being a bit more like Dark Souls 1, thankfully.

18 hours ago, majestic said:

Gwyn certainly is not much better, even if you do not or cannot parry him, you just need to stay close to him so he misses half his attacks without you having to do much, so is that sort of complaining coming from players working their way backwards from Dark Souls 3?

Yeah, it sure would suck if you were a player where you generally try to stay out of reach of a boss until you have some time to look at and comprehend a boss' move set before you try to take them on and tried to fight Gwyn that way...yep, it sure would suck. It would suck even more if you had defeated most bosses on your first try due to that strategy having successfully worked up until that point and then being unprepared on what to do when a boss just won't give you the opportunity to stay back and figure out how they work.

I remember my first time with Gwyn not being very fun because of his sword being too long and his move set being too erratic - not to mention his inclination to suddenly fly at you when you're out of range. It wasn't until I actually tried to take him on properly - after dying a bunch of times while not really trying to fight him - that I realized that his bark was a lot worse than his bite, and that trying to not die to him was having the opposite effect intended. And then as soon as you learn you can parry him, it's basically impossible to lose.

18 hours ago, majestic said:

Yes, I'm looking at you, Bed of Chaos. Then there's the issue that Dark Souls falls apart after the first half.

The infamous "we ran out of time and money" half of Dark Souls 1. Truly gaming at its finest.

I kind of wonder if the love for Dark Souls' passive/environmental storytelling seemed a breath of fresh air compared to the long cutscenes, bloated exposition dumps, and "standing around" sequences of yesteryear. You don't have to engage with Dark Souls' world or storytelling at all...if you don't want to. Clearly, you didn't want to, so you did not, and that's fine...but a lot of people did, and they seemed to get a lot out of Dark Souls in that way specifically. I especially think of it in comparison to Half-Life 2, which was hailed for moving the medium forward in terms of characters having dialogue and the game telling a story while not jamming the player into unskippable cutscenes...contrasted with the fact that I personally much prefer to replay Half-Life 1 (or even better, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.!) precisely because I find Half-Life 2's style of telling its story to you (or maybe more accurately, around you) while you have to just impatiently stand around waiting for conversations that don't really involve you to end before you can get back to playing the game. I think Dark Souls is similar to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in the sense that it's kind of what you make of it, and some people will make nothing of it because they're not interested and some people will make a great deal of it because they are, but at the end of the day, if you're one of the people that don't want to make anything of it, at least it's not being constantly shoved down your throat at the expense of everything else: I maintain that there is nothing worse than a game/movie/book/show that has a terrible story that just won't get out of the way of whatever you do like that is making you keep engaging with it, whether it's characters, atmosphere, music, or gameplay.

Edited September 28 by Bartimaeus

[Hawke64]

The achievements can highlight unusual or unexpected by the player actions (as the developers are the ones implementing the achievements, the actions required are expected). The only game I remember where the achievements enhanced the experience beyond the possible points of interest is Wandersong. Though, it was the only positive quality of the game.

Finished Moonscars. Generally, a nice Souls-like/Metroidvania, with the healing system allowing to travel a lot without returning to "bonfires", which was complemented by the game saving your exact location upon exiting (it also partially respawns the foes on reloading, which led to an interesting situation once). Surprisingly, almost all traversal abilities were unlocked from the start, so I was trying to jump-climb all walls. The only issues for me were the side quest design, with the triggers really obscure or time-limited (so I failed the cat-saving quest), there being only 1 ending, and the (lack of in-character) reason to murder the second boss (which I did after trying to go everywhere else; the ability was required to progress). Some side quests had several outcomes, but due to the above-mentioned design, the choice did not feel intentional.

The story follows Grey Irma, who is not the Chosen Undead, but a Pristine Clayborn, which is technically different, and trying to find the Integral Vessel, which is supposed to end the plague of clayborns. There are no dialogue choices, but not counting the issue with the second boss and the MC's resulting reflection on it, the logic is fine.

Edit. Review:

Spoiler

Moonscars is a Metroidvania with Souls-like elements. The story follows Grey Irma, who is not the Chosen Undead, but a Pristine Clayborn, which is technically different, and trying to find her creator, Zoran the Sculptor. There are no dialogue choices, but not counting (spoiler), the logic is fine. The game discusses the topics of free will and self-determination.

There is minimal character customisation and it is limited to combat. The health, Ichor (mana), and damage increase linearly when finding the upgrades on the map, certain modifiers can be chosen as one progresses and lost on death, while the spells have to be bought with Bone Powder (“souls”). There are 3 amulets, 2 spells, and 1 special weapon to have equipped simultaneously. Though, nothing stops one from changing the amulets and spells between battles, the special weapon can be changed only at the Mirrors (fast-travel and checkpoints) or upon defeating a boss. While there are few bosses, each of them feels significant and has a background story, with the dialogues building up the boss battle.

One of the most notable aspects is the healing system - Grey gains Ichor to spend on healing or casting upon attacking foes or getting hit, so there is no hard limit on recovering one’s health and it is possible to travel and fight for long before resting. The game saves the exact position on exit, so it is possible to continue between sessions without the need to backtrack to the nearest checkpoint. Another important aspect is that the combat difficulty and rewards from the enemies increase the longer one keeps going without dying, though it caps at 5 passive abilities and it is doable due to the healing system.

The highlight of a Metroidvania is exploration and in Moonscars is enjoyable and rewarding - most of the traversal abilities are available from the start, the controls are rebindable and responsive, though the rewards vary - there are above-mentioned stat upgrades, a few quest items and keys, some amulets (better ones can be bought from the merchants at the hub), and a lot of little piles of bone powder. The only issue is the second unlockable traversal ability, Super Dash. It takes some time to learn from what distance it should be activated to successfully get over a chasm.

The pixel art and almost monochrome visual style is gorgeous and readable at the same time. The animations are fluid and expressive. The soundtrack fits the game and does not distract from it. There is no VA outside of the opening and ending cinematics.

The only issues I have with the game are the design of the side quests - the triggers are really obscure or time-limited.

Overall, it is an enjoyable action game.

Edited September 29 by Hawke64
Noticed that [spoiler] is a formatting option.

[Mamoulian War]

Goal nr. 7/2024 achieved.

September 28, 22:30 – I took a small break from DS2 NG+ and played through the original story of Mortal Kombat 11: Ultimate Edition on PS4. This unlock Frost and two arenas. It took me about 4 and half hours and if I remember it correctly, I enjoyed the story mode more than in Mortal Kombat X and 2011. I will need to replay three chapters where you had to pick the fighter, and the last fight to see all the content and finish it on 100%. I took a small break from DS2 NG+ and

[Hurlshort]

Colony Ship - I don't know how I slept on this one for so long, it is a very good RPG. I think it's because Age of Decadence never really won me over, despite a lot of attempts to play through it. Colony Ship is a lot more polished and has a great storyline so far.

[Hawke64]

Lunacid. Bought a "Health Viai" for 1 coin and drank it (a Health Vial costs 12 coins at the Sanctuary). Entered the (Vampire) Castle and confirmed that the Fire Sword is the best melee weapon.

[majestic]

I just found Dark Souls 3 at 65% off, so I guess I am continuing my FromSoftware binge. While it downloads, one quick reply (a longer might yet come):

On 9/28/2024 at 6:05 PM, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, it sure would suck if you were a player where you generally try to stay out of reach of a boss until you have some time to look at and comprehend a boss' move set before you try to take them on and tried to fight Gwyn that way...yep, it sure would suck. It would suck even more if you had defeated most bosses on your first try due to that strategy having successfully worked up until that point and then being unprepared on what to do when a boss just won't give you the opportunity to stay back and figure out how they work.

Well, yes, I ran into that problem too, which is why Gwyn is one of the few bosses that I had to try more than twice in my original Dark Souls run. Insofar I guess he's harder than Nashandra or Aldia, both of which I killed on my first try, but not overly so, but my game experience with Dark Souls taught me relatively early that when staying away does not seem to work it is usually sticking close that makes things easier.

Like the repeated Asylum Demon fights, where the winning strategy is to stick really close to its ass and only run out when it takes off or sits down. Or, well, at least it is when you're playing an accidental glass cannon build and the attacks with the explosion right on top of your character don't happen when you're close and behind the enemy. Although yeah, that probably depends a lot on one's build.

Edited September 30 by majestic

[Mamoulian War]

4 more bosses DS2 NG+ down since my last post.

First was Lost Sinner. And again to my surprise, the fight was much easier with melee than with sorcerer in my previous playthrough. I needed few attempts to adjust to the two red phantoms joining the fight, but it took not to long. The worst part was the gauntlet again... FromSoft really drop the ball here, and put everything to make your corpserunning as complicated as possible. Cost me almost 100k souls

Next one was Scorpioness Najka. Again, fine with melee build. Only 1 attempt needed. And again, the issue was to get to her, through the "ghosts", although not as big as to Lost Sinner. Thankfully the mask from the DLC helped a lot to counter Curse. I had to play a little bit backup and reload, due to the Golden Lion, which drops two unique items not respawning. After 15 minutes or so, I got his helmet. Will still need to do the same in NG+2 for his red cloak

Third one was Prowling Magus with the Congregation. As always, whenever I underestimate something due to not wiping for a long time, the cheapest mob finishes me off That's why it took me two tries to get this one. Nothing special. Just need to watch out for his AoE attack, which finished me off at first attempt

And the last one was The Duke's Dear Freja. So far the longest fight in NG+. It challenged my patience a lot as a melee, now that I am attempting all bosses without summons. Thankfully few Great Lightning Bolts helped a little bit with the fight. But i had to save all the smaller ones for the spider spawns.

After that, I got completely engulfed with the Mortal Kombat 11 and Towers of Time. I have found out, that I can get two super rare Classic MKII skins for Skarlet and Johnny Cage as the battle announcer, if I gather enough points to rank in top 5% PvE Tower players. I am now in top 3.5% after 36 towers cleared, but there is still one day until the end of the challenge. So, I have to be prepared to run few towers tomorrow after work again.

[Mamoulian War]

Goal nr. 8/2024 achieved

October 1, 19:15 – After I spent way to much time fighting in Towers of Time to unlock Klassic MKII Skarlet skin (successfully, ranked in top 2.9% of PvE Tower of Time players last "week" ), I have took today a more chilling approach to my PS4 version of Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate and replayed last three chapters needed for completing the Story Mode on 100%.

[Bartimaeus]

Bloodborne...on the PS4, and definitely not on PC. For real this time. Yes, I know I already did this that one time a couple years back, but it's for real this time.

You know, I could swear the atmosphere of this fight felt...different somehow the first time I played it nine years ago, but I can't put my finger exactly on what the difference is. It's like there's some mysterious kind of...audiovisual component missing or something. I just can't put my finger on...

Oh, yeah, that's it. Huh, weird...guess he didn't feel like chatting today.

(I had to play the game at literally 360p, which is what you're seeing in that video stretched up to 1080p, because my damned GPU doesn't have enough VRAM for anything higher and running on even 480p kept causing the game to explode...I guess I shouldn't have cheaped out on my GPU after all, although maybe by the time the emulator isn't completely broken i.e. sound works, it won't need quite so much? IDK: for rendering at 360p, it still looks pretty alright all things considered...).

Edited October 3 by Bartimaeus

[Hawke64]

It does look reasonably good in this resolution, though the muted sound is more noticeable.

---

Lunacid. Found the most OP spell (Ice Tear) for my non-magic build and defeated 2 bosses in the (Vampire) Castle (one technically was a mini-boss). The game also highlights why I had less issues with Dark Souls not having maps - open areas with visible landmarks are much easier to navigate than similarly-looking corridors. I have also found a mimic. After losing ~200 coins to it, I decided to reload and avoid it.

Dustborn (demo). The demo used several disconnected scenes to show different gameplay systems. The game is techinically similar to Dreamfall or The Walking Dead, but with rhythm mini-games and combat. The graphics and visual style are beautiful, and I liked the music, but the combat animations or physics are lacking (the regular attacks had little impact; the abilities were fine, though). I guess, if the MC had a sharp weapon, I would like it more - while Batman-style non-lethal combat is narratively fitting, it is  less satisfying in the context (a party of D&D bard-like mutants are crossing a post-apocalyptic version of the US to deliver a mysterious package, so leaving the foes alive and being able to report does not seem like a reasonable course of action).

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

13 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Bloodborne...on the PS4, and definitely not on PC. For real this time. Yes, I know I already did this that one time a couple years back, but it's for real this time.

You know, I could swear the atmosphere of this fight felt...different somehow the first time I played it nine years ago, but I can't put my finger exactly on what the difference is. It's like there's some mysterious kind of...audiovisual component missing or something. I just can't put my finger on...

Oh, yeah, that's it. Huh, weird...guess he didn't feel like chatting today.

(I had to play the game at literally 360p, which is what you're seeing in that video stretched up to 1080p, because my damned GPU doesn't have enough VRAM for anything higher and running on even 480p kept causing the game to explode...I guess I shouldn't have cheaped out on my GPU after all, although maybe by the time the emulator isn't completely broken i.e. sound works, it won't need quite so much? IDK: for rendering at 360p, it still looks pretty alright all things considered...).

I guess it's too late now, but for being a Cleric that monster didn't even bother to cast a buff or a cc spell. Someone should help him with his build tbh.

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

I guess it's too late now, but for being a Cleric that monster didn't even bother to cast a buff or a cc spell. Someone should help him with his build tbh.

I believe it actually can heal its own limbs once they're crippled, but it's hard to make out because 1. most of the lighting/visual effects are currently broken, 2. there's no sound, so you can't hear its violent bloody murder screaming as it casts the healing spell (see dog video), and 3. it doesn't actually restore any of its overall health when it heals the limbs. In-game lore says the Cleric Beast was a member of the city clergy but drank too much blood and turned into a great rampaging monster, which is pretty much what happens to everyone in Bloodborne.

Edited October 3 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

I believe it actually can heal its own limbs once they're crippled, but it's hard to make out because 1. most of the lighting/visual effects are currently broken, 2. there's no sound, so you can't hear its violent bloody murder screaming as it casts the healing spell (see dog video), and 3. it doesn't actually restore any of its overall health when it heals the limbs. In-game lore says the Cleric Beast was a member of the city clergy but drank too much blood and turned into a great rampaging monster, which is pretty much what happens to everyone in Bloodborne.

Being unable to hold your mutagenic blood is a skill issue. Should have invested more into Fortitude saves.

[majestic]

Well, took an extended nap today so I can't sleep. Yay.

 Dark Souls 3 is progressing nicely so far, though I don't really have any idea where I am going, but the game certainly improved the storytelling aspect. The NPCs gather at Firelink Shrine as usual and their questlines are about as confusing and arcane as always. 

On 9/28/2024 at 6:05 PM, Bartimaeus said:

Wrong.

I have an example from World of Warcraft to back up that claim. Back in the heyday of the game when I still played extensively, Blizzard build what is probably still the least played dungeon of all time, and in many a player's opinion the worst. The Oculus made extensive use of their newly introduced vehicle combat mechanics, which in this case means that the five players in the dungeon eventually need to mount vehicles. Drakes, in the case of the Oculus dungeon. As if the average MMORPG player would not already be overwhelmed with navigating a pseudo-3D dungeon while still playing their class at least passably, the drakes could of course fly and added a true third dimension to navigation. A disaster in the making, but not the point, I digress a bit.

The final boss in the dungeon needed to be fought on, uh, drakeback, replacing the player's usual abilities with their drake's. There were three types, ruby, emerald and amber, being the tank, healer and damage dealer respectively. The standard setup would be one tank, one healer and three damage dealers, but the boss had three achievements to its name: one for defeating it without using ruby drakes, one for defeating it without emerald drakes and one for defeating it without amber drakes.

Each of them, assuming they were done within the appropriate gear and level range, forced the players to approach the fight in entirely distinct ways, adding a unique twist, changing the tactics and coordination needed to deal with the boss. Well, except for Amber Void, which just meant four tanks and a healer, and the fight would just take longer.

Could always argue that such challenge runs could always be played without an achievement as well, and while that is true, it still rewards players for challenges taken on. The dungeon achievements were parts of a larger meta achievement that rewarded a special mount to show off.

On 9/28/2024 at 6:05 PM, Bartimaeus said:

*laughs in Demon's Souls*

Never mind all the "must obtain every spell, weapon, armor, and ring" achievements, it sure would suck if one of the weapon materials necessary to get the "Obtained Best Weapon by [Upgrade Material]" only has a sub-1% chance of spawning on exactly one type of enemy. I have a friend that farmed this enemy for about eight hours and never got one...their Demon's Souls achievements are still not 100% to this day.

I have a Violet Proto-Drake that I got during Wrath of the Lich King in World of Warcraft. That was only obtainable by grinding out rare drops and doing rather specific PVP activities in time limited events and took at least nine months complete. It takes that long for all the events to show up. Miss one or didn't get part of your achievement? Woops, better luck next year.

The point, uh, yeah, farming a sub 1% drop chance item for an achievement? Child's play.

Don't look at me like that, getting the Violet Proto-Drake was the only way to achieve 310% flight mount speed in the game at the time, next to ending a pvp season within the top 0.5% of arena players.

On 9/28/2024 at 6:05 PM, Bartimaeus said:

Not just for being able to move/roll: do a light attack in DS2 and try to follow it up with a heavy attack (or reverse the order, or try to cast a spell instead, or use an item, or...), then try the same in DS1. It's atrocious in DS2. In theory, DS1 has the slower, weightier, and more limited movement between the two games, but it didn't actually feel like it at all to me in practice because of all the inexplicable delays they added in between different types of actions for DS2 (not to mention the harsher directional limitations to prevent you from turning between attacks too quickly, which feel like they were designed specifically to help the noobs who never learned to turn off camera targeting while kneecapping those of us who did). You can either chain light attacks or chain heavy attacks, but not one off of the other, and don't try to do anything else because **** you. As I said before, I could forgive most everything that was wrong with Dark Souls 2 (and boy was there a lot that was wrong) except for the fact that the controls made me want to strangle someone. Dark Souls 3 mercifully reverts back to being a bit more like Dark Souls 1, thankfully.

I have a sneaking suspicion that many of the things that we have complained about with the Dark Souls 2 controls were specifically added or changed to address grievances with the Dark Souls pvp (i.e. backstab stunlocks or the inability to change the direction of heavy attacks with large weapons). There's a reason why Dark Souls 2 is particularily regarded as having the best controls, mostly by players who enjoy engaging in pvp in these games.

Which, for the life of me, I cannot fathom, but hey, what do I know.

Speaking of chaining attacks, much of my Dark Souls 2 experience was light attacking with a 2-handed rapier. Because it does ridiculous damage, is quick and makes the combat in the game (against bosses in particular, but not limited to them) feel more bearable. Like I said earlier, it was not just the controls that add to the detrimental experience that I had in Dark Souls 2. It was the combination of these recovery times with the encounter design that made it all the worse: you can get more than one hit in even with a slow weapon in Dark Souls, while that was almost impossible to do in Dark Souls 2.

On 9/28/2024 at 6:05 PM, Bartimaeus said:

I kind of wonder if the love for Dark Souls' passive/environmental storytelling seemed a breath of fresh air compared to the long cutscenes, bloated exposition dumps, and "standing around" sequences of yesteryear. You don't have to engage with Dark Souls' world or storytelling at all...if you don't want to. Clearly, you didn't want to, so you did not, and that's fine...but a lot of people did, and they seemed to get a lot out of Dark Souls in that way specifically.

Like I said, I barely played anything but WoW at the time (later Star Wars: The Old Republic). Dark Souls is a good game, even with all the jank, the unfinished second half and when played well after it seems to have struck a chord at the perfect time. I still would like to know what they got out of it. It is also not that I generally do not want to engage in that kind of storytelling (and while it is a TV show, Utena was full of the same sort of clues). In Dragon Age: Inqusition, of all games, the best time I had was going through ancient elven ruins that added only tangentially to the plot of the game, but mostly to the lore. That interested me in a way that Dark Souls never did.

Take Anor Londo for example, where you can find the trashed room of Gywn's firstborn next to the pristine room of Gwynevere, all the firstborn's statues are missing and you can gather from the item descriptions that he was considered a god of war who fell from grace and had his name and likeness stricken from the annals. That's all fine but... I just don't care? Nor is it actually relevant to the plot of Dark Souls, so that sort of storytelling is perhaps there, but it does not pertain to the story.

I actually watched a couple of Dark Souls theory videos, and they're downright bizarre. People believe that every line of dialogue and every item placement in the world mean something. In a game that was clearly unfinished and rusehd to release, no less. The video game equivalent of coming up with conspiracy theories. Well, riddle me this, how is anything in this world in its current state relevant to age old lore when Frampt so clearly states that it has been at least one thousand years since Gwyn linked the first flame and became the first Lord of Cinder?

You guys honestly believe that one bow in the Darkroot area was someone meant to cover Havel's escape from confinement some two hundred years prior? Really? How's that bow still there? Magic wood?

Anyone ever thought that the reason why the Havel that actually is in the game doesn't drop his armor when you kill him is because the game designers did not want you to run around in Havel's gear during the half of the game they had time to design and make fun, and not because "that is clearly not the real Havel, just someone who traded places with him during his daring escape after his failed rebellion that he incited because Seath abducted his secret girlfriend for experiments"?

I guess it beats Makoto x Ami shippers, but not by much.

That became a bizarre rant. Woops.

On 9/28/2024 at 6:05 PM, Bartimaeus said:

I think Dark Souls is similar to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in the sense that it's kind of what you make of it, and some people will make nothing of it because they're not interested and some people will make a great deal of it because they are, but at the end of the day, if you're one of the people that don't want to make anything of it, at least it's not being constantly shoved down your throat at the expense of everything else: I maintain that there is nothing worse than a game/movie/book/show that has a terrible story that just won't get out of the way of whatever you do like that is making you keep engaging with it, whether it's characters, atmosphere, music, or gameplay.

No, you're right. Dark Souls' approach is better than having a terrible story forced down your throat. My point is, more than anything else, that Dark Souls' reputation for having such a rich and subtle storyline and amazing lore is merely the result of players imagining much more than that there really was. That was intentional by Miyazaki, who is apparently on record stating that he wanted his game to be like the experience he had while reading English books about mythology as a kid, i.e. only understanding a miniscule amount and filling up the gaps with your imagination. I read that on a wiki somewhere and have no source to link to, but it does make a lot of sense. I am sorry, but... at least in my opinion, the lore of Dark Souls is not all that interesting, and the story the game tells has a dark fantasy trapping, but is still a really basic "you are the chosen one and decide the fate of the world" story, and it is not very well told to boot.

I suppose I am salty about this because word of mouth taught me to expect the most amazing game experience ever, featuring hard, unforgiving but still fair bosses, a well designed world and fantastic storytelling and lore. What I got was Dark Souls, a game that is more often janky than not, has more than enough moments that are objectively unfair (and no amount of copium huffing will ever convince me that the Capra Demon boss fight is fair - it is easily dealt with once you know what's coming, yes, but fair? Nah.) and that falls apart in its second half - and it wasn't even that hard, just to add insult to the injury.

I realize that is my fault for buying into the hype by the fandumb. It is amazing that I still enjoyed playing the game, and a testament to how strong the things in the game are that it did right. You know, in spite of the Titanite Demon having the jankiest hitboxes of any game ever.

 

Edited October 3 by majestic

[Bartimaeus]

22 hours ago, majestic said:

I have an example from World of Warcraft to back up that claim.

Wrong.

Boy, arguing on the internet is easy.

Okay, but really, I'm reading your reply here, and all I'm hearing is "you have to do what players consider to be the worst and what might objectively be the least-played content that nobody wanted to do even once multiple times...but you have to do it in more complicated and time-consuming ways". Great, fantastic, that's exactly what I want to do with my life, . If I want to play and beat Dark Souls at level 1, I can go decide to do that of my own free will, and there's nobody that has to award me some "congratulations, you are a total dip**** for doing this" award in order for me to feel rather pleased with myself for doing so. Nor for doing any other number of arbitrary goals that I might decide I want to do, because if I actually love the game and there's something like that which I actually want to do, I can just...go decide to do it. With achievements that I cannot disable tied to an always online account like Steam, there has been a non-zero number of times where I've got through the first area or tutorial or something of a game, had an achievement pop up for completing that or for something else completely minute, I go look at the achievements and see that there are seventy distinct achievements for this stupid ass game that I'm playing, I immediately think that I'm probably not even going to finish the game - much less get all the achievements! - so I close the game, I use the Steam Achievement Manager hack program to reset the achievement that just unlocked, I uninstall the game on Steam, and then I go download the game from elsewhere and play my downloaded copy instead - blissfully free of any thought for achievements or stat-tracking or time-tracking or any other unnecessary meta garbage that's not really actually part of just playing the damned bastard ass game that I'm supposed to be enjoying. No, I'm now able to just play without thinking about any of that, just like I used to be able to do when I was a kid and put a video game into an SNES or an N64 or when I loaded up a Baldur's Gate or Age of Empires save game. Just let me play my video games exactly how I want to play them, it's all I ask.

What are they going to come up with next, achievements for watching the entirety of a 10 season show at half-speed with French audio and Chinese subtitles - on top of all the progress-tracking and "MAKE SURE YOU BINGE THE ENTIRE SHOW IN A DAY OR TWO OR WE'LL CANCEL/REMOVE IT"-itis that streaming services already do? Get me out of this hellhole.

22 hours ago, majestic said:

I have a Violet Proto-Drake that I got during Wrath of the Lich King in World of Warcraft. That was only obtainable by grinding out rare drops and doing rather specific PVP activities in time limited events and took at least nine months complete. It takes that long for all the events to show up. Miss one or didn't get part of your achievement? Woops, better luck next year.

The point, uh, yeah, farming a sub 1% drop chance item for an achievement? Child's play.

Don't look at me like that, getting the Violet Proto-Drake was the only way to achieve 310% flight mount speed in the game at the time, next to ending a pvp season within the top 0.5% of arena players.

I've had this .gif that I once found on the internet saved to my imgur for years and years

But I decided I needed to make my own higher quality version to mark this occasion, and the ability to record and make good quality 100 MB gifs that even play at the correct frame rate in under a minute is one I don't abuse nearly as much as I should

Feel free to use as appropriate, @ShadySands

22 hours ago, majestic said:

I have a sneaking suspicion that many of the things that we have complained about with the Dark Souls 2 controls were specifically added or changed to address grievances with the Dark Souls pvp (i.e. backstab stunlocks or the inability to change the direction of heavy attacks with large weapons). There's a reason why Dark Souls 2 is particularily regarded as having the best controls, mostly by players who enjoy engaging in pvp in these games.

Which, for the life of me, I cannot fathom, but hey, what do I know.

Speaking of chaining attacks, much of my Dark Souls 2 experience was light attacking with a 2-handed rapier. Because it does ridiculous damage, is quick and makes the combat in the game (against bosses in particular, but not limited to them) feel more bearable. Like I said earlier, it was not just the controls that add to the detrimental experience that I had in Dark Souls 2. It was the combination of these recovery times with the encounter design that made it all the worse: you can get more than one hit in even with a slow weapon in Dark Souls, while that was almost impossible to do in Dark Souls 2.

I never found even one weapon that I liked in Dark Souls 2, so I ended up using the Lost Sinner's Sword for most of the game. It comes with this lovely unique ability where it slowly kills you as you use it, which I thought, if I'm going to be stuck using some crappy greatsword because I can't find even ONE weapon in this entire game with a good balance between speed, damage, and move set...well, at least the fact that my own weapon is literally killing my character feels thematically appropriate.

Some of my fondest memories of Dark Souls were with the PVP - both being invaded and as an invader. Especially with some of the weirder places I got invaded, like in the Abyss right before Manus in the DLC. Impossible to see more than like ten feet, big area that you normally only explore once, and where the hell do invaders even spawn in this area? Ended up being some jerk dual-wielding electric Avelyns (the unique repeating crossbow) taking burst-fire potshots at me from in the dark, ended up murdering him with my trusty Great Scythe. I loved the Great Scythe in DS1.

22 hours ago, majestic said:

Take Anor Londo for example, where you can find the trashed room of Gywn's firstborn next to the pristine room of Gwynevere, all the firstborn's statues are missing and you can gather from the item descriptions that he was considered a god of war who fell from grace and had his name and likeness stricken from the annals. That's all fine but... I just don't care? Nor is it actually relevant to the plot of Dark Souls, so that sort of storytelling is perhaps there, but it does not pertain to the story.

Yeah, some people like thinking about that sort of things and trying to connect dots, basically fan theorizing. The original theory for a long time was that Solaire is the disgraced son of war, who's on his rather inexplicable quest to "find the sun", whatever that actually means. Though it never directly plays into the plot, he interestingly happens to be the one who is summonable for challenging Gwyn if you use the Chaos Servant shortcut to prevent him from going hollow. Always being explicitly told everything can get a bit boring, and though I never really got into it myself for Dark Souls, that stuff really reminds me a bit of my younger days when I'd get excited thinking and talking about games (or movies or books) with other people who were super into whatever I was into, even when it was over relatively minor details, so it made sense to me that people would do so for something that caught on like wildfire like Dark Souls did. But online communities and fandoms for even the things I love are always ultra-toxic these days, so I never have much desire to go out of my way to interact with them personally.

22 hours ago, majestic said:

No, you're right. Dark Souls' approach is better than having a terrible story forced down your throat. My point is, more than anything else, that Dark Souls' reputation for having such a rich and subtle storyline and amazing lore is merely the result of players imagining much more than that there really was. That was intentional by Miyazaki, who is apparently on record stating that he wanted his game to be like the experience he had while reading English books about mythology as a kid, i.e. only understanding a miniscule amount and filling up the gaps with your imagination. I read that on a wiki somewhere and have no source to link to, but it does make a lot of sense. I am sorry, but... at least in my opinion, the lore of Dark Souls is not all that interesting, and the story the game tells has a dark fantasy trapping, but is still a really basic "you are the chosen one and decide the fate of the world" story, and it is not very well told to boot.

I suppose I am salty about this because word of mouth taught me to expect the most amazing game experience ever, featuring hard, unforgiving but still fair bosses, a well designed world and fantastic storytelling and lore. What I got was Dark Souls, a game that is more often janky than not, has more than enough moments that are objectively unfair (and no amount of copium huffing will ever convince me that the Capra Demon boss fight is fair - it is easily dealt with once you know what's coming, yes, but fair? Nah.) and that falls apart in its second half - and it wasn't even that hard, just to add insult to the injury.

I realize that is my fault for buying into the hype by the fandumb. It is amazing that I still enjoyed playing the game, and a testament to how strong the things in the game are that it did right. You know, in spite of the Titanite Demon having the jankiest hitboxes of any game ever.

Like I said, I never got super into either the story, lore, or characters of Dark Souls personally...I think it's because while I find a few of the characters charming enough and I don't mind some more indirect storytelling and world-building, the connections between the world and its characters and its story all feel way too loosey goosey for me, and it doesn't end up feeling quite like a properly constructed universe/world that I can really project my brain into. I tend to do better with real world settings, even relatively extreme alternative reality ones (like SU, or Undertale...or even NGE, the latter of which has some very tenuous plot and world-building itself, which probably plays into why I really don't much care about the world-ending plot stuff of that series except insofar as it affects the characters and plays into the themes), as I have a better frame of reference to work with so that I can try to make sense of everything. But I have gotten into other things before, especially when I was younger, and even though Dark Souls doesn't fit that way into my brain, I think I can at least understand how it did for a younger generation of gamers experiencing something new and different that they clearly fell in love with.

Edited October 4 by Bartimaeus

[Hawke64]

6 hours ago, majestic said:

I am sorry, but... at least in my opinion, the lore of Dark Souls is not all that interesting, and the story the game tells has a dark fantasy trapping, but is still a really basic "you are the chosen one and decide the fate of the world" story, and it is not very well told to boot.

I generally agree, but the "Chosen One" trope was subverted - the PC is one of the many "Chosen Undead", but is determined enough to reach the end and become firewood (or have a party with giant snakes).

5 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

But I decided I needed to make my own higher quality version to mark this occasion, and the ability to record and make good quality 100 MB gifs that even record and play at the correct frame rate in under a minute is one I don't abuse nearly as much as I should

It might be reasonable to avoid large (>10MB) files, which browsers will try to download, in text-based discussions. My phone, fortunately, displayed it as a link and not an animated image, but still.

Regarding the achievement pop-ups. GOG and Itch.io allow to run games without the DRM apps (both platforms are DRM-free), so if the games are available, purchasing there would allow to skip the reinstallation step.

---

Lunacid. Reached the Prison. The area was easier to navigate due to the large space in the middle (except the lower floors/basement, which consisted of corridors). I also found the most unpleasant foe so far - the skeleton dogs (Lupine Skeletons). They have a chance to inflict the Slow condition, which, given my resistances, is 50%, so I could not dodge the subsequent attacks. On the lower levels, there were giant skeletons, which still managed to follow me into narrow passages, clipping through walls. The only other time I died in the area was upon picking the wrong elevator, which was a trap. I probably still could teleport back to the "bonfire" before dying, but reloading was preferable.

Judging by the teleportation menu being filled, I am close to the end of the game (2-3 areas of unknown size).

Edited October 4 by Hawke64

[Hurlshort]

Man, this thread is heavy on the Dark Souls lately. Meanwhile I can't even get past the tutorial bosses in those games. 

Colony Ship is going really well. The story is great. I need more plasma cells though. Those things are solid gold. 

[melkathi]

3 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Man, this thread is heavy on the Dark Souls lately. 

We should do something about that.

 

[Mamoulian War]

To not break the narrative, I have defeated two more bosses in the Iron Keep in DS2 NG+

Smelter Demon was interesting one. Somehow, I managed to get to the boss without a single death, and also defeated him on the first try. I was really surprised how that went

After that I went to save/reload farm the one very rare item dropping by the roaming souls in Belfry Sol, and then I went towards Iron King. And of course my clumsiness finally jumped in and my ass has been kicked a lot of times, which cost me again around 100k souls After some time, I have arrived at the Iron King, and again, I did some stupid missclick, and had probably the fastest ever wipe on this boss Seriously. One of the easiest bosses in game, and I still managed to wipe in less than two seconds

I am planning to spend some time on DS2 again tomorrow, as I am a little bit tired of all of that MK11, which I have experienced since I booted that up for the first time, since I have purchased it

 

[HoonDing]

I still consider DS2 = Dungeon Siege 2

[Bartimaeus]

8 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Man, this thread is heavy on the Dark Souls lately. Meanwhile I can't even get past the tutorial bosses in those games. 

Did you try to defeat the Asylum Demon with a broken sword hilt, out of curiosity?