Brave Soul, Who Fears Not Death

[François]

Yeah, after the Anor Londo hump, gathering the great souls tends to feel a little easy, relatively speaking. You can technically do them in any order, so by the time you get to the fourth one, you've been steadily increasing in power while the last boss of the set is still tuned to be just one step further on the difficulty curve than Smaurel & Orndy.

[Wheels]

Unless you can parry. That last boss is so easy to parry.

[Destynova]

Pondering just stripping down and running past the Lothric Castle knights. They along with the Black Knights punt me across the room so often.

[Yoji]

So, Romo's been saying for years that I should try Dark Souls. PROS: It's by From Software, which makes Armored Core, which I've been playing since the PS demo disc. I would've married it if I didn't meet someone who also loved Xenogears. CONS: Everything I've heard about Dark Souls is how you will die repeatedly and it's holy shit hard. I'm not really into that these days.

So I'm trying to convince him to make a pact: I will play a Dark Souls game if he plays Armored Core For Answer. Two games by From Software seems appropriate, and I want to see what kind of AC he comes up with.

But there's that "a Dark Souls game" part that's hanging me up. The latest one is for PS4, which I'm not prepared to buy just to play one questionable game; I hear it's good, but it's not something I just NEED to play, like MGS4. I'm thinking of II since it's fairly recent (2014, barely two years ago), available on a console I own, features a giant dog at one point, and I understand it's relatively stand-alone as far as plot goes.

[Smiler]

People make a big deal about dying in dark souls, but its mostly a edgelord "LOOK AT HOW TOUGH MY FAVORITE GAME IS ITS BETTER THAN YOURS." It has some cool traps but as long as you don't run blindly through every doorway you don't die to bullshit too much. On that note, you should probably start with the first Dark Souls, since Dark Souls 2 decided to balance itself around having you fight about 3-10 enemies at a time, and if you aren't familiar with the combat you will probably die a lot to just that.

[beatbandito]

Dark Souls 1 is an incredible stand-alone game. It's not yet old enough to be mechanically or visibly dated in any way except when compared against others in the series. If you have any interest I can not recommend at least trying it enough.

Important to remember about the difficulty is that it's all about strategy and not tactic. Fights and even navigating the world will always make sense. If you ever think something doesn't make sense then there's another option you need to look for, or at the very minimum somewhere else you can go for the time being to clear your head.

[Bal]

Speaking of, hey Friday, how's that run going?

[Friday]

Since last post I've cleared Duke's Archives, Crystal Cave, and I'm just past Artorias in the DLC. Progress has been slow due to Overwatch charging into my life like a shift happy Reinhardt.

- time to try Duke's I guess, I'll leave Hell for last that seems thematically -- OH GOD ARMOR PIG IN NARROW HALLWAY

- fucking finally killed you you little shit now on to OH GOD ARMOR PIG PART 2 - THE HALLWAY NARROWS

- ok fucking what is this crystal skeleton dudes hey a broken pendant thats for the dlc cool i'll just go through this first fog door which is not the boss door because there are always a few before you get to the

- SEATH THE SCALELESS

- ok cool i can't hit this guy and he one-shot me, how the fuck am i possibly underleveled or undergeared at this point in the game my fucking sword has a +15 on it and this fucking bastard just takes it SHUT UP IMOEN oh wait I woke up in a jail cell I guess that was a scripted death???

- so i get my souls back then right

- right

- haha dark souls ur such a kidder

- alright well this guard is literally leaning against the bars and i have a sword so uhhhhhhhh

- oh great they rang the alarm and these creepy tentacle things are - holy shit the other guards are ignoring me and running away THIS IS ACTUALLY SCARING ME IN REAL LIFE

- jk my +15 baller swag sword one shots them

- ALARM = OFF

- haha that crying is creepy WHY ARE THOSE TWO CRYING IN LITTLE GIRL VOICES hey Logan what's up oh you got caught again w/e fag

- hey a big golden golem i will kill it hey what's up onion-knight san friend sama dude WHOA SAMUS WAS A GRIL??!?

- oh it's the daughter hey wassup i bet ur fine as fuck under that armor yeah i seen your daddy heh heh heh

- what's this a crystal cave

-some more golems w/e my swag side baller blade knows no fear

- huh it's a dead end

- well maybe i have to kill these moths or ride them somehow i don't

- huh it's attacking me now, okay i'll just wait till it lands like in the boss fight

-

-

-

-

-

- ..

- ...

- it's not fucking landing

YOU DIED

- alright so i guess I'll uhhhhhh huh a floating message thing

- how do they fucking write shit up in the air like that

- maybe if I jump i can read -- OH SHIT INVISIBLE PLATFORMS

- so i guess i can sort of see them where the snowflakes are falling huh clever game

- ONE HOUR LATER

- WHAT THE FUCK WHERE DO I GO

- "sudden drop ahead"

- (there's not a drop there)

- dark souls trolling.jpeg

- HEY CLAMS HOWS IT GOING OH WOW YOU GUYS NEED TO CLAM DOWN

- GET IT

- HEY SEATH WHATS UP I BROKE ALL YOUR STUPID CRAP MORON NEXT TIME TRY BUILDING A "NOT DYING" MACHINE oh wait

- I WILL NOW RUN AT YOUR TENTACLES AND STAB YOU UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD FOR REALZ

- alright dlc time

- WHOA A GIANT HAND

- WHOA A WEIRD MANTACORE BOSS THING

- WHOA MUSHROOM GIRL SURE I'LL SAVE DUSK AGAIN IT'S MY FUCKING JOB I GUESS

- WHOA ARTORIAS YOU SURE ARE JUMPY

YOU DIED

YOU DIED

YOU DIED

YOU DIED

YOU DIED

- okay it's not funny anymore stop hitting me

YOU DIED
YOU DIED
YOU DIED

- so i guess you're dead now

- huh

- so when they were talking about how it wasn't really artorias who stopped the void and the legend was false, I guess that's because I was destined to go back in time and do it in his place but I just hadn't yet

- neat

- who creepy undead town with creepy undead things that make creepy noises

- I'm gonna go play overwatch now bbl

[Blossom]

I started playing this game for the first time recently. I had a bit of luck in that the Undead Burg Black Knight dropped his sword for me. I've rung the first bell, and killed the Capra Demon, the Stray Demon, and the Moonlight Butterfly (and the hydra in the basin). Seems like the only places I can go now are exploring the New Londo Ruins, trying to get past those big cats in the Forest, or continuing on down the Catacombs, as I am now. I hate the Catacombs. I hate them so much. This skeleton mechanic is so awful.

Advise me?

[François]

Divine weapons kill skeletons permanently (until your next bonfire visit of course), so it's a lot less hassle to come back later when you've got one. I don't think you ever outright find a divine weapon, but if you don't care to invest in upgrading just for that, you can find an occult weapon at some point that can be "downgraded" to divine for cheap. Or you can go straight for the non-respawning necromancers that reanimate the skeletons, but there's nothing in the Catacombs you actually need progression-wise at this time so if the place is giving you trouble, there's nothing wrong with leaving it for later. It's a similar situation with New Londo and the rest of the forest, they have good stuff laying around but it'll be a long time before you're required to fully clear them out.

In any case, it sounds like you didn't come across the entrance to the Depths, which the Capra Demon dropped the key to. Poke around very close to the entrance of his closet slash arena, there's an easily-missed down staircase there that'll open the (long, long) way towards the second bell.

[Blossom]

... oh. I thought the Depths were at the bottom of the Catacombs. Well, that might help a little.

[beatbandito]

[Friday]

Finally finished up the DLC.

Poor Sif. I save u tho

Manus you dick stop being a spazzy fuck

Hey giant shoot a dragon

ok

hey dragon get sword in foot

ok

Your reward: ring that doubles taken damage

wat

All that is left is Hell, and then whatever is beyond that.

[Friday]

Re: TA:

Do Depths next, which lead to Blighttown. In the Depths there's a Spider Shield, be sure to grab that. It's the only thing that can block the toxic blowdarts.

Also, be sure to bring/farm/buy the moss clumps that cure toxic, because you'll need them. I went in with 7 and used all of them.

If you've got the Rusted Iron Ring, (from stray demon revisit) then the swamp at the bottom of Blighttown isn't so bad. I had to explore it with no ring, so I had a lot of fun.

[Friday]

Beat it.

Lost Izalith and its bosses went pretty painlessly, Gwyn took me a few tries but Havel's Armor/Poise made him not too hard.

As I suspected after doing the DLC, the remainder was a bit of a let down.

Overall, solid game with some serious flaws that tries new and different things. Visually stunning. Atmospheric as all hell.

Things I'd like to see improved:

1. a little bit more interaction with npcs beyond "press x to listen to shitbag lie to you"

2. less hidden story. apparently there's an alternate tooth serpent that I never even met? not sure why this game hides its story so much. I actually wanted to know what the fuck was going on but the game refused to show me.

3. some sort of in-game explanation for what all the stats do, the mechanics, etc. I hate how opaque that shit was. I had to play the game with a ton of advice from you guys + a wiki open (just for mechanics, no spoilers of any kind) to even start to understand what "str scaling C" meant.

4. faster movement. faster rolling. faster estus drinking.

overall, I would probably put Dark Souls in my top 20 games ever played. It's great and I truly do appreciate what it does well.

thanks for all the help and advice and for getting me to play it in the first place. I'll probably pick up DS2 next.

[Destynova]

Congrats.

Yea, the other serpent is so easy to miss, even more annoying with the auto-saves. His main function is to enable PvP for those interested but since a lot of time has passed, Darkroot iand perhaps The Kiln are the only real spots for reliable PvP.

Stay out of Blighttown for PvP or it turns into Lagtown

So your pup tumbled down the steps and just shook it off for a facelick?

[Friday]

So your pup tumbled down the steps and just shook it off for a facelick?

I spent 5 minutes trying to figure out what you meant by this. I was like "Is he talking about Sif? I don't remember Sif falling down any steps but maybe he's talking about those fucking asshole dogs in lower burg?"

and then I was like OH YEAH MY SIG

[beatbandito]

1. a little bit more interaction with npcs beyond "press x to listen to shitbag lie to you"

This plays into (2) but there was a good amount more going on in Sieg's story, and at least a bit more with your sunbutt bro. But yeah, the 'honest' NPCs tend to be harder to find. 2 Probably has the best standard for npc interation, with a good number of people out in the open sharing their feelings about shit with you. Then 3 is basically 1 except each npc gets exactly one line of dialogue so you better fucking enjoy it.

2. less hidden story. apparently there's an alternate tooth serpent that I never even met? not sure why this game hides its story so much. I actually wanted to know what the fuck was going on but the game refused to show me.

Not much to say here (except that I specifically told you you should probably not talk to dick king but you insisted on giving him items to practice for deepthroating you. I like the hidden stuff but you can see from the direction the other two games took things that's not he most popular opinion.

3. some sort of in-game explanation for what all the stats do, the mechanics, etc. I hate how opaque that shit was. I had to play the game with a ton of advice from you guys + a wiki open (just for mechanics, no spoilers of any kind) to even start to understand what "str scaling C" meant.

There is absolutely no explanation of even remotely advanced mechanics like counters or even poise in game which is dumb. But I refuse to believe you are not capable enough to hit select on the stats screen and realize that A is better than B. Although that will make it seem like resistance is remotely useful. which is a bigger lie than the pendant.

4. faster movement. faster rolling. faster estus drinking.

Buy a PS4, mother fucker. Both the souls to come are a good clip faster, but Bloodborne is pretty literally "dark souls, but a focus on action instead of reaction".

overall, I would probably put Dark Souls in my top 20 games ever played. It's great and I truly do appreciate what it does well.

thanks for all the help and advice and for getting me to play it in the first place. I'll probably pick up DS2 next.

you don't know how many terrible VG lines / memes I couldn't find proper recordings of to respond to this.

[Yoji]

2. less hidden story. apparently there's an alternate tooth serpent that I never even met? not sure why this game hides its story so much. I actually wanted to know what the fuck was going on but the game refused to show me.

3. some sort of in-game explanation for what all the stats do, the mechanics, etc. I hate how opaque that shit was. I had to play the game with a ton of advice from you guys + a wiki open (just for mechanics, no spoilers of any kind) to even start to understand what "str scaling C" meant.

I'll defend Armored Core until the cities are but dust, and I'll be the first to tell you that From Software needs to use their words. I only found out like two months ago what the difference is between Arm Maneuverability and Arm Stability, but I couldn't tell you what fucking unit they're using for rate of fire. And after 20+ years of playing as Nameless Mute Protagonist, I don't think it'd kill them to have the hero show a little personality.

I've only played Dark Souls for about four hours, and I'm already feeling like it has the same problems.

[Rico]

I'm pretty okay with the level of hidden story, but it could be slightly less hidden and still be okay.

Mechanics, though? Ain't no fucking reason to play coy with mechanics even half as much as From does, and they need to cut that shit RIGHT OUT.