Dark Souls Catch-All

I've been replaying Dark Souls 3, and I think I'm coming around to it being my least favourite in the series.

There's no doubt about it being more polished than 2, but 2 feels like it was trying and failing, while DS3 is collapsing in on itself in a comfortable retreat. This video kinda nails it, and while it makes a good argument for Dark Souls 3 having a thematic coherence:

Playing something that feels so exhausted with itself is a bummer.

(Also, not going to lie, the relentless aggression of everything is kind of annoying. It feels like it's forcing you into specializing in a way the previous games didn't.)

Tasty Pudding wrote:

Agreed that the individual levels in Dark Souls 3 are the best in the series, but the fast-travel-from-the-start approach is unfortunate. The original Dark Souls is a great game and, imo, and even better experience - and being forced ever-onward in the opening half is a big part of that. We can all remember what it was like to go through the Lower Burg, then down through The Depths, then deeper and deeper still, through Blighttown and to the swamp at the bottom. It seemed like a never-ending descent - like with every step, you were moving farther away from safety and deeper into a nightmare.

Now imagine if you'd been able to sprint past the mobs to the next bonfire and just warp back to Firelink for a break every time you felt like it.

You can also argue that the initial warp in DS3 is no different than the warp in DS1 from the Undead Asluym via the crow.

Both have a starter area that teaches mechanics has a intro boss and then dumps you into the main game.

They both also have a cool "Hidden" return to the intro area with a beefed up intro boss

In the Soulsborne series, no games have an interconnected world like DS1 and BB do. It's such a great design, and I hope their "open world" with Elden Ring employs it.

Not sure I agree most of DS3 connects to each other. You can go from the undead settlement to the end of the base game without a warp.

The DLC I agree are both warps but one is at least to a different timeline.

TheGameguru wrote:

Not sure I agree most of DS3 connects to each other. You can go from the undead settlement to the end of the base game without a warp.

The DLC I agree are both warps but one is at least to a different timeline.

You're right that DS3 is connected, and so is DS2 for that matter, but when people talk about the great, interconnected world design of DS1, I see a lot of agreement that it's fairly unique to the series that way. In DS1 you're constantly unlocking shortcuts that lead you back to Firelink Shrine (and other places). It creates a sense that this is a real place, which many of us felt DS2 completely lacked. DS3 was better in that regard, but still not close to DS1.

BB on the other hand is pretty well-connected and logical. Imho it's no accident that many consider BB and DS1 to be the best Miyazaki From games.

Fedaykin98 wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Not sure I agree most of DS3 connects to each other. You can go from the undead settlement to the end of the base game without a warp.

The DLC I agree are both warps but one is at least to a different timeline.

You're right that DS3 is connected, and so is DS2 for that matter, but when people talk about the great, interconnected world design of DS1, I see a lot of agreement that it's fairly unique to the series that way. In DS1 you're constantly unlocking shortcuts that lead you back to Firelink Shrine (and other places). It creates a sense that this is a real place, which many of us felt DS2 completely lacked. DS3 was better in that regard, but still not close to DS1.

BB on the other hand is pretty well-connected and logical. Imho it's no accident that many consider BB and DS1 to be the best Miyazaki From games.

Not sure about a real place. The various unlocks are largely aided by the design of the world. In DS 1 much of the world is layers on top of each other so in some ways finding an elevator or route back up to an earlier place makes sense…but how often have you ever seen that in the real world as a real place? You can easily argue that traveling from NYC to DC and then finding a door that takes you back to NYC basically a warp. The way the world is laid out in DS3 it’s got several places that are logically laid out to each other and in some cases if it makes sense there are some shortcuts back.

Are there any cases in DS3 that you felt the world was not logical or well laid out?

I dig on the Metroidvania-ness of DS1, is what I'm saying.

Irythyll dungeon with the jailers was probably the least fun so far. Cool looking but jailers mechanic was awful. Just not fun. The giant boss at the end was a weird design choice too. Punishing you too use a certain item seemed strange.

Then got lost until I fought magic worm man? Okay fight except for how many attacks could one shot me

Then I won and was immediately warped to another room that started a boss fight. Which was odd. The dancer was fun though. Although like all grab attacks I hate hers. But that's cause I use a shield. And that all grabs seem to be one hit kills.

Still having fun. Approaching the end I think. Although I'm certain I missed a bunch of side stuff.

So apparently if you plan to go tank and use a shield leveling up your vigor would be smart. Played all the way until the last two bosses with 12 vigor or about 600 health with rings...

Honestly didn't notice. Although the last two bosses would have basically been impossible for me if I kept it that way. They'd be able to basically one-shot me constantly.

Honestly now that I'm done I'm not sure what I think of dark souls 3. It is definitely the most polished, and best designed. All, well almost all, the annoying things from other games are gone. Better checkpoints, less cheap deaths/traps, smoother game-play. Stupid walks back to bosses are still their though. If I have to go up one more elevator...

My only complaint is it felt a bit soulless (bah dum tish). The world felt more like fan service for hardcore dark soul fans then anything. With all the references and places to prior games. DS2 while flawed was definitely the more ambitions game. Still I had a good time.

I do worry a little about elden ring. The dark souls series was getting more linear and then they decide to go open world. I'm a little doubtful they have the skills to pull that off. Combat will be fun though for certain.

I'm amazed by the amount of work this person put into a meme mod. It's Dark Souls x Halo plus so much more, and it actually looks like it'd be fun to play.

The attention to detail is staggering. He even made the point down emote parryable Truly the Dark Souls of Dark Souls mods.

Speaking of meme mods... How about Dark Souls 3, but it's Pokemon?

How about a challenge run? Can you beat all named bosses in alphabetical order? Including DLC bosses, of course. So after the first boss, "Asylum Demon", the second would be "Bed of Chaos", etc.

Can you possibly do enough sequence breaking to get to Bed of Chaos before several others, especially Ornstein and Smough?

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Can you possibly do enough sequence breaking to get to Bed of Chaos before several others, especially Ornstein and Smough?

Watch the video!

Spoiler:

YES, it's possible to get to Bed of Chaos as the second boss! The challenge run is almost completely possible. There's a single boss that breaks it, sadly, but it's still an amazing feat overall.

Hello to my fellow Undead! I haven't posted in quite a while, but I've recently chosen to turn a newly aquired PS5 into a FromSoftware machine and I have many many reactions to the amazing games I've been playing!

In the last few months I have: played Bloodborne (minus DLC) for the first time and gone on to Platinum it; replayed Dark Souls Remastered, rolling a Pyromancer for the first time; tried Sekiro but bounced off of it; played the Bloodborne DLC to completion; played DS2 for the first time (Scholar of the First Sin Edition); tried Sekiro some more and bounced off even harder; and I'm currently 10-15 hours into my first playthough of Dark Souls 3. Oh, and I have the Demon Souls (Demon's Souls? Demons' Soulses??) Remake sitting on my SSD for after DS3.

What can I say... What a time to be alive?! What a great series of games to have slept on (apart from DSR) and get to plough through en masse!

So what's the code of conduct for this thread? Is it just for DS1? If I wanna compare DS2 or Bloodborne to DS1 do I go find their respective threads?

Tldr: Hey do y'all like Soulsborne games? You wanna talk about them?

Stevintendo wrote:

Tldr: Hey do y'all like Soulsborne games? You wanna talk about them?

We do and we do. Each game has a thread, each one dozens of pages long.

Don't forget Elden Ring.

And not From games but a few of us enjoy Nioh series as well.

Stele wrote:
Stevintendo wrote:

Tldr: Hey do y'all like Soulsborne games? You wanna talk about them?

We do and we do. Each game has a thread, each one dozens of pages long.

Don't forget Elden Ring.

And not From games but a few of us enjoy Nioh series as well.

Hello Stele! Glad to see a familiar 'face' still kicking around!

I'll hunt down the other threads cause I'm dying to see what people think of the differences between these games! Oh and Elden Ring is 1000% on my watch list. Gonna get through DS3 and DeS before I start it though cause sounds like a significant evolution of the... Eh... FROMula.

Sticking with DS Remastered...

This game is still so good!!! Playing through again three years after my last playthrough and it's every bit as good as I remember.

For this playthrough I decided to mess around with some minor sequence breaking, as well as trying to follow guides to complete some NPC quests.

Solaire and I managed to team up to kick the Old Man's ass, but even following a guide I still managed to mess up Seigmire's quest... I went to Lost Isaleth before Blightown and didn't realise that the specific Chaos Eaters (?) that relate to his quest don't respawn... Guess I'll have to play through again eh?

Curious if anyone went through Seig or Solaire's quests without a guide? They're so specific!

I finished Solaire's questline in DS1 regular, but not Siegmeier's. I tried to finish Solaire's questline on my SL1 run, but somehow failed.

My wife is very nearly done with Elden Ring, which I am currently on an extended break from, as is my wont.

Our ten year old has beaten Elden Ring NG+1, DSR, and is currently tearing through DS2 SOTFS.

I completed Lautrec's quest. That feels like it doesn't count though. Break him out of jail, do nothing as he kills the most important fire keeper, what's this stone doing?

Oh yeah I got through Lautrec's quest on my first playthrough alright! Now I just kick that asshat off a cliff the second he shows up at firelink!

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Our ten year old has beaten Elden Ring NG+1, DSR, and is currently tearing through DS2 SOTFS.

That's impressive! When I was ten I played Pokémon and Super Mario! Is that the order they played through the games? I'd love to hear what a 10yo made of the transition from Elden Ring back to DSR.

My 12 year old has been playing souls games for a few years. He has completed 3, DS:R, Sekiro, Bloodborne amd has played 2 and Elden Ring. I think my disdain for 2 has rubbed off on him because he is not a fan. And he doesn't have a copy of Elden Ring for his consoles, but he has played it on my PC a bit. I'm sure he would be done with it if he had a copy. Bloodborne is his current favorite.

Again, very impressive!

And Bloodborne is a great choice for a favourite. I'd choose DSR over BB every time, but I really like BB too. I'm looking forward to seeing if Elden Ring shakes up my personal ranking, cause so far I don't think DS3 is gonna knock DSR off the top spot.

I was thinking about something that makes DSR so special. It's not just that individual areas are designed to loop back on themselves in fun and interesting ways, it's the world as a whole. Like, how many areas can you get to directly from Firelink? Or get to by going through just one other area? I think it was such a good decision that you can't warp from the beginning of the game, cause it forces you to really get to know this amazing interconnected world.

Totally agree with the interconnectedness of DS1 being special.

Elden Ring took my house by storm. My wife is going to beat it soon. My daughter even played a session or two, then went back to reading. It's similar to what happened with Breath of the Wild. My wife finished that one before me, too.

They all sampled DSR years ago and dropped it, but after Elden Ring I guess my son is a Souls addict? He's currently stuck on the boss of Undead Crypt in DS2 and considering taking a break to explore the past in the form of Super Mario World.

Dark Souls 2 (SOTFS) PC multiplayer servers have finally been re-enabled, along with a client fix.

So, saw this video in my youtube feed and thought I'd share. Point for FROM and Miyazaki. Sif isn't that, uh, unrealistic?

That's totally awesome!