Dark Souls II Catch-All

master0 wrote:

Since then the only boss I had issue with was the

Spoiler:

old sinner.

Mostly cause it was so dark, and his chip damage. That and losing lock on. Not a tough fight in a good way.

The Belfry Key lets you unlock the side doors to that chamber and light the torches. That will illuminate the room and prevent you from losing lock-on.

In the original release, the Belfry Key was after that absurd gargoyle fight, so it wasn't really worth getting. In SotFS, it's on a corpse in the Servent Quarter.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
master0 wrote:

Since then the only boss I had issue with was the

Spoiler:

old sinner.

Mostly cause it was so dark, and his chip damage. That and losing lock on. Not a tough fight in a good way.

The Belfry Key lets you unlock the side doors to that chamber and light the torches. That will illuminate the room and prevent you from losing lock-on.

In the original release, the Belfry Key was after that absurd gargoyle fight, so it wasn't really worth getting. In SotFS, it's on a corpse in the Servent Quarter.

Probable had it and just didn't realize. Wasn't that bad a fight just sort of annoying pattern.

Cleared what feels like a lot. Dealing with black gulch right now. It's pretty painfull. Not truly difficult. Just annoying. The whole poison statue thing is unfun.

NSMike wrote:
r013nt0 wrote:

In SotFS you can actually grind some enemies to the point that they will no longer spawn. So if there are areas that are annoying to get through, you can actually do something about it if you want.

This is true of the original Dark Souls 2, as well.

Huh, I forgot about that. I haven't played vanilla since release, I guess.

And I finished the last boss today. Technically there's the extra final boss I read on the wiki but don't really care. I stand by most of my initial reaction about the beginning. This is a dark soul game for dark soul fans. I would never recommend it to first timers.

I will say I enjoyed the second last boss which was solid. While the final boss was sort of meh. Also the mace seemed a bit over powered or easy mode-ish. It hits like a tank, and stuns nearly everything but bosses. Perfect for my play style but it sort of meant all the loot I gathered was a bit pointless. Most bosses were either easyish or had something annoying about them. Bosses with minions were the most annoying, but just summon someone and those go away. Actually my worst enemy was that stupid ogre thing that flops around. That stupid grab is an instant kill even with my crazy health bar.

Also since I actually beat it. I guess the pacing is better or it holds my interest better or something. Might go back to dark souls one and load my old character and try to push through it. Overall fun, but yeah that beginning is still kind of awful. That and a few level and design choices were nonsense. Otherwise I got my money's worth.

Dark Souls One! Dark Souls One!

Not sure who doesn't have it but DS2 on playstation is $10 for now. Holly jolly cooperation y'all and praise the Sun. Horse?

Return to Drangleic folks! Let's get some GWJ love going here! I have made Carly Rae Jepson Character

Call Me Maybe (although I wish I had done it "Maybe, Call Me" but we'll see if I decide to abandon this in favor of another.)

Let us all meet at Drangleic gates and forget why and how we got there!

Speaking of Souls games where I have unfinished business...I'm on the final boss of the 2nd DLC in SotFS.

Hobear wrote:

Return to Drangleic folks! Let's get some GWJ love going here! I have made Carly Rae Jepson Character

Call Me Maybe (although I wish I had done it "Maybe, Call Me" but we'll see if I decide to abandon this in favor of another.)

Let us all meet at Drangleic gates and forget why and how we got there!

I might as well dive back into it! It is my favorite in the series, after all.

I just started replaying DS3 a few days ago - first time in a Sorcerer build, after watching a speedrun of it. I want to finish this run, but then I might jump back into DS2 for a spell, as it were.

I still haven't played through the Scholar version. I might be willing to give it a try.

I have forgotten how much weight there so to every move in this game. So slow with each action. I think I need to go away and come back to the pursuer. Last giant was no problem.

I picked up a save where I was already in Iron Keep. Made short work of the Smelter Demon on my first attempt solo, and then took about three shots at the Old Iron King since in one attempt I clipped through the floor into the lava and in another I rolled off the platform.

Had a handful of invaders in the area but managed to fend them all off. Discovered the Belfry bit but recalling how freakin' annoying enemy and invader spawns were in there, I decided to leave that for another time.

The Belfries were such a cool and unique design. Just one more part of why DS2, despite being the black sheep of the series, had the best PVP.

Please FSM let Elden Ring have some awesome ideas for multiplayer! I'll be happy if they just have summon signs and invasions, but I want to see more interesting area-based PVP like this, and new ideas for Covenants.

Are there any other dedicated PVP areas in the series, not counting arenas? I can't think of any. There are multiple bosses where players can be adversaries, which is also cool. Man, there is so much great design innovation in these games!

Hobear wrote:

I have forgotten how much weight there so to every move in this game. So slow with each action. I think I need to go away and come back to the pursuer. Last giant was no problem.

You just finished up Bloodborne, right? Dark Souls always feels so slow and heavy after I've been playing a lot of Bloodborne.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Hobear wrote:

I have forgotten how much weight there so to every move in this game. So slow with each action. I think I need to go away and come back to the pursuer. Last giant was no problem.

You just finished up Bloodborne, right? Dark Souls always feels so slow and heavy after I've been playing a lot of Bloodborne.

Yep, feels like click......3......2.....1....and move. Although I am dual wielding and mostly sheidless so far. Pretty fun change to it.

Did Belfry Sol - or was it Luna? - the one without the boss at the end. Noticed that servers for all FROM Software games have been on the fritz for a day or so, as well. Wonder what that's about...

I'm not doing a fresh character, but I have put a little more time into the DLC areas so far. I've only finished Sunken King.

I've made it to Tseldora after farming some Alonne Knights for Black Steel Katanas (my favorite weapon in the game). Playing DkS II is like visiting with an old childhood friend; it is warm and familiar yet large enough that it still surprises me - whether due to memory failing, or simply the random events and interactions that can take place -, and it always makes me feel good.

I can't think of any other game that quite does that for me like this specific entry in the series does.

I still haven't finished my DS3 Sorcerer, but I decided to jump back into DS2 for RtD anyway, for the zeitgeist. I created a Sorcerer (which I also haven't previously played in DS2), and yeah, it's really hard going back to DS2 after DS3. DS2 is not a bad game, by any stretch, but there are a lot of refinements DS3 brought that I really appreciate, in retrospect.

So, have been generally breezing through the main game without much issue. I'm so familiar with the game that I haven't really died to bosses much at all. In facto, aside from the Old Iron King and the Chariot, no other boss has gotten me yet.

I might tackle Vendrick tonight. Might even let him have his full defenses to see if I can make it.

I'm all the way to the Dragon Aery (sp?) now.

Did starting as the wanderer make this harder? I am having a rough time. Should I reroll as another start as I am still only in fallen giants.

Hobear wrote:

Did starting as the wanderer make this harder? I am having a rough time. Should I reroll as another start as I am still only in fallen giants.

Imho DS2 has the hardest start of any Dark Souls game - except maybe that DS3 asks you to beat a boss almost immediately.

I also had a very hard time progressing beyond the first lantern in Bloodborne at first. Both of these experiences were despite hundreds of hours played in the series.

Fedaykin98 wrote:
Hobear wrote:

Did starting as the wanderer make this harder? I am having a rough time. Should I reroll as another start as I am still only in fallen giants.

Imho DS2 has the hardest start of any Dark Souls game - except maybe that DS3 asks you to beat a boss almost immediately.

I also had a very hard time progressing beyond the first lantern in Bloodborne at first. Both of these experiences were despite hundreds of hours played in the series.

Don't give up, skeleton!

Depending on what class you've played in other Souls games, the "wanderer" (Deprived? Explorer?) might feel more difficult, sure. There's no shame in trying another class out for a while to see if it fits better. I typically go for the Knight start (or is it Warrior?), for the sword & shield, if I want to play melee. Don't overlook the Sorcerer start, either; sorcery, pyromancy, and faith builds are really strong, but typically more of a glass cannon - be prepared to dodge-roll a lot.

This thread radiates a dull light. The conversation seems nearly exhausted, but exhibits an eerie resilience. Perhaps this is its ordinary state?

I mentioned this in the DS thread, but I am a massive Dark Souls Remastered fan who recently played DS2 (SotFS) for the first time. I have many thoughts, and I don't think I've fully settled on my final opinion of the game yet...

I don't think DS2 comes close to the quality of DSR, BUT I do have a love and affection for DS2, BUT I think a lot of significant parts of it are very disappointing / frustrating, BUT the final battle of the third DLC is one of my top moments from any Soulsborne game... It's all very complicated...

I know it's old news for a lot of people, but have others dealt with similar reactions to DS2?

I dislike DS2 so much that I don't even consider it when talking about Souls games.

Stevintendo wrote:

This thread radiates a dull light. The conversation seems nearly exhausted, but exhibits an eerie resilience. Perhaps this is its ordinary state?

I mentioned this in the DS thread, but I am a massive Dark Souls Remastered fan who recently played DS2 (SotFS) for the first time. I have many thoughts, and I don't think I've fully settled on my final opinion of the game yet...

I don't think DS2 comes close to the quality of DSR, BUT I do have a love and affection for DS2, BUT I think a lot of significant parts of it are very disappointing / frustrating, BUT the final battle of the third DLC is one of my top moments from any Soulsborne game... It's all very complicated...

I know it's old news for a lot of people, but have others dealt with similar reactions to DS2?

I think that's a perfectly ordinary response to DS2. It had a lot of ambition and a lot of jank and had to be re-tooled halfway through. The DLC:s is where it really got to shine, because they knew what game they were making.

I played SotFS right after DS:R, both of which were my first encounters with the game. I did like 2.5 playthroughs of DS:R before moving on. And I think I spent about the same amount of time just getting through all the SotFS content once. I like SotFS quite a bit. It’s still my least favorite of the ones I’ve played, but I find it has a lot of interesting elements. It’s so odd at times.

I'm stuck on the final boss of the second DLC in SOTFS. Happily, my son will soon be there to bail me out.

So two things that stood out to me as negatives for DS2 were 1) that in a lot of cases the difficulty/challenge of the gamecame from massive numbers of basic enemies, as oposed to crafted encounters. I felt like that philosophy started as early as Forest of the Fallen Giants and carried on basically throughout the entire game. I also felt like they leaned on this with boss battles a lot too...

And 2) the controls felt off compared to other FromSoftware games. I thought about this a lot, and I think the issue was that in DSR and BB I was used to being able to 'queue up' inputs, but I couldn't do that in DS2. So in DSR it felt like block-attack-attack-roll, buy in DS2 it felt like block-wait for animation to completely finish-attack-attack-wait for animation to cometely finish-roll. Does that make sense? Did anyone else have that issue? It took me so long to get used to, and even when I did it still felt worse.

It's so easy to rant about the problems in the game! Don't get me started on needing to level up to get good at DRINKING FROM A BOTTLE!!! lol

I don't hate the game or anything though, it just left me scratching my head a lot...

EverythingsTentative wrote:

I dislike DS2 so much that I don't even consider it when talking about Souls games.

I guess that not everything is tentative? Was there anything that you particularly that you disliked?

Alien Love Gardener wrote:

It had a lot of ambition and a lot of jank and had to be re-tooled halfway through.

I actually looked into the development after I finished it and I think that story explains a lot. I only played SotFS, but even in that edition it doesn't feel like a fully formed whole.

steinkrug wrote:

It’s still my least favorite of the ones I’ve played, but I find it has a lot of interesting elements. It’s so odd at times.

I think this sums up how I feel pretty well!

Fedaykin98 wrote:

I'm stuck on the final boss of the second DLC in SOTFS. Happily, my son will soon be there to bail me out.

Oh that was a real stand out for me if I'm thinking of the right one! Probably the toughest fight I encountered, but lots of gun once I mastered it. I chose yo do the trick to force him straight into his second phase so I had less attacks to memorise. Do you know that one?