MoviePage

Just finished my first playthrough. I'll offer some more detailed thoughts later on.

I don't think it's better than the first, but I admit that I have a hard time separating my judgment of that game from the experience that was playing it.

wlj

how many hours was your first play through (DS2)?

dom56

I got most of the gears from chest.

The Coveteous Silver Serpent Ring +1

Archdrake Staff

Poink

It's a wonderful game. I'm pretty far into it; guessing that another solid night or two at it will finish off my first play. I'd say it's easily as good as the first Dark Souls, which is probably my personal favorite game of the PS3/XB360 Gen.

If there's one complaint it'd be that the bosses, while still cool and challenging, are a little too similar to the previous title sometimes. Which in a way is a series trademark; several of Dark Soul's bosses were quite similar to Demon's Souls boss fights, and hell, we found ourselves facing the "Asylum Demon" THREE times in that title alone (calling himself "Demon Firesage fooled no one).

That's not to say there isn't any innovation, because there's plenty; however, those moments make the virtual re-skins seem a bit lacking in comparison. I suppose there's only so much you can do with the game's very specific style of slower, deliberate combat, and I suppose I'll take one more Asylum Demon-esque fight over a quick time event or whatever.

As for the changes, I'm cool with all of it so far. The limited respawn hasn't been a problem for me; in a few cases I've practically counted down how many more times I had to make a boss run before I could do it in peace! It's a nice way to ease the difficulty a tiny bit without nerfing it; you still have to kill the enemies in order for them to stop spanwning; they don't just disappear if you die a lot.

I can see it being a bit of a pain trying to farm items, but for a first playthough, I don't know enough about the item drops to even know where to farm from (or what items I want at all, really). Might make Trophy/Achievement hunting harder if I decide to go down that road again, but right now it doesn't bother me.

As far as soul-farming? Well, you can still do that to a point, but honestly, if you need to farm souls to the extent that you literally kill EVERY enemy in the game 15 times just to make it through, you should probably just try out a different character build instead of farming for levels. Which the game lets you do fairly painlessly, since they added a "Re-Spec" system.

In the original Dark Souls, my second playthrough character was a Sorcerer, and for some reason when I got to the Duke's Archives I just couldn't kill a damn thing to save my life for some reason; those Crystal Hollows were pretty magic-resistent, and my melee stats were kind of abysmal. So in order to even finish the game, I had to spend HOURS farming just to invest in some decent melee skills so I could kill some basic enemies, only to absolutely destroy Seath with about three spell casts. In Dark Souls II, I could decide that "Hey, I don't really need 50 INT and 24 END right now, re-spec and get back into the fight within about 5 minutes. I'd say the trade off is acceptable.

Anyways, I'm sure I'll write a hell of a lot more about the game in the coming months. To me, the Souls games don't truly shine until you've played them several times and tried different character builds and uncovered all the little secrets. One of the only games where I've thought "I can't wait to play through this again!" before I've even finished it once. There's a few bosses that gave my little Sorcerer/Knight hybrid trouble that I know my Strength/Faith build is going to just murder. And that my Dual-Wield Swords(wo)man is going to absolutely hit a brick wall on.

wlj

thanks for those impressions!

dom56

Lost Bastille is pretty tough place right now.

mhg83

Found out boss fights are 1,000 times easier when my character is naked.

dom56

Probably because armor weigh you down maybe?

mhg83

Yes. The only negative is boss battles take twice as long since you have to be extra cautios not to get hit.

Groucho

I am way behind all of you guys, but I finally made it over a hump where I am now able to run around and explore without dying every 30 seconds. It helped when I ditched my cleric and restarted with a knight instead.

MoviePage

This game is so, so good. The online aspects in particular are just amazing. The game was clearly designed with online taking precedence over the solo experience, as some of the bosses are a nightmare in solo mode and there are lots of very well-hidden secrets and illusion walls -- feels like many more than the first Dark Souls. So many clever and helpful messages to be found, and the multiplayer covenants are an experience of their own. There are a couple of entire areas that were very clearly designed specifically for PvP.

I've been ready to start NG+ for a couple of days now, but I've been having too much fun with co-op and PvP stuff, and the rewards are fantastic. If you're not summoning and being summoned regularly, you're missing out.

GreenMonkey

I got through Duke's with my first character (a level ~60 sorcerer type) just fine although it was one of the most painful areas to get through. I did have to equip a non-enchanted/magic weapon though which makes a world of difference - killing the guys, especially the channelers, was very difficult with my enchanted sword, but much easier with my +14/+15 Balder Swag Sword.

On this game: I've been enjoying this so far, though it doesn't seem as good as DaS1 (and the graphics are terrible compared to the first, but the framerate is VERY stable, and I guess I'll take that trade-off).

I'm a level 50 or so sorcerer. I did dump a bunch of points into STR/DEX to use the fire longsword I picked up though (my weapons of choice in DaS1 were the Baldur Side Sword, Iato/Uchi and later the Great Scythe).

The limited respawning worried me a lot, but I think it was well balanced with the warpability. I'm finding in some areas, though, I grind killing the enemies again and again to get a clear path to the boss (esp. the first Tower of whatever with the Anor Londo like sentinel enemies and the Lost Bastille). Now that I've got a few more estus flasks though, maybe that won't be necessary as much as when I had 2-3.

I don't think I've been invaded once yet.

mhg83

if you summon a player for help on a boss and end up killing it , can the other player kill you and take your souls?

MoviePage

No. If you summon a player for co-op, it's co-op with no friendly damage. There is never any situation where another player can take your souls, even an invader. All they can do is kill you just like any enemy...or you can kill them and get rewarded.

DaveyJoe

Wasn't there friendly damage in Demon's Souls? I remember tanking a mob and accidentally hurting a fellow player while recklessly swinging my sword around.

mhg83

oh that'd pretty cool. i was in fear some jerky players would ruin the game. i'm gonna hook up my online tonight

MoviePage

Nobody's going to ruin your game. The online is designed to be a fair, but challenging, system, just like the solo aspect of the game. And I can't emphasize enough how important the messages are in this one. They saved my life or pointed out hidden treasure to me a countless number of times. There are even some ladders and bonfires I would have missed without messages drawing attention to them. Plus, you get a health bonus for leaving your own messages if others rate them (which people are really good about doing).

dom56

The cleric seem to be a popular class at gamefaqs. There was a thread on how to build a good one that went about over thirty pages. Might tried it out on my next build.

mhg83

Finished off three bosses last night naked. The Pursuer, Old Dragon Slayer, and the one across from him. Felt pretty bad ass
After i killed old dragonslayer i came across a big knight dude looking out from a balcony. i approached him, tried talking to him but got nothing. I'M guessing it was another player? if so why didn't he/she try attacking me? i wasn't in dead form. i even tried clicking on to target him but still nothing happened. So what the heck was he?

MoviePage

That's an NPC that you should have been able to talk to. I'm not sure if there's some requirement before he will talk to you or what, but I don't think there is.

You'll always get a notice on-screen if/when another player enters your world, and they'll always appear as a phantom of certain colors depending on their purpose: white, gold, blue, or red. Anything else is an in-game character (and there are some in-game phantoms as well).

mhg83

Does the Forrest Of the fallen giants merchant ever re-spawn? I killed her and found out later she sells the Blacksmith key. Am I royally screwed?

dom56

I check out on Dark Souls 2 wiki and you bring her back for 2500 souls. Need to find her gravestone wiki doesn't mentioned it where to find it.

dom56

Jesus, I'm in Grave of Saints and I go to this mist door which pretty much mean a boss fight

Poink

That was actually one of the harder fights for me at that point in the game. Keep moving is the best advice; "kiting" is the best strategy if you're not able to stand your ground and dish out wide arcs of damage. Pyromancy helped quite a lot for me, especially ones with a good bit of AoE effect (Flame Swathe = Best Spell Ever).

Firebombs would probably do wonders, which I should mention in general that the "consumable item" weapons (Knives, etc) have gotten a HUGE increase in usefulness compared to past games.

Poison, while not effective for this particular boss, is amazing in DSII. It will snatch the life from an enemy within a matter of seconds rather than the several minutes it'd take in the first game. Very, very useful for a lot of the larger high-HP enemies that you normally have to slowly chip away at.

GreenMonkey

Good tips.

I did notice the throwing knives did a lot more damage, but I haven't used many other consumables. I kind of hoard items typically.

Throwing knives were super useful in DS1...up until about the Undead Parish. :S Poison throwing knives were useful in PVP though.

I got all the way to an area full of water...at the bottom of Sinner's Rise? There were some very large enemies there that I could kill, but had to burn like all of my Soul Arrows to do so...launched me on a wander-around-and-figure-out-somewhere-else-to-go campaign.

Found another route to go, tried to get into the Undead Purgatory probably 7 times now, only to be smacked down by the Red Phantom there or the "other guys" in the mountain path. :S