Demon's Souls - Catch All

At about 2AM last night I managed to beat the armored spider, who was a total asshole until I figured out how to deal with his attack pattern. He manged to kill me a couple times, but I always recovered my body before he could kill me again, saving all my precious demon souls. It was a total rush taking him down.

I'm really doing well with the Templar, nice mix of armor, magic and weapons. I miss being nimble, but not enough to give up the toe to toe defense. My problem right now is that I can buy spells like "Hide" but I don't seem to have an item to let me actually cast it.

Certis wrote:

At about 2AM last night I managed to beat the armored spider, who was a total asshole until I figured out how to deal with his attack pattern. He manged to kill me a couple times, but I always recovered my body before he could kill me again, saving all my precious demon souls. It was a total rush taking him down.

I'm really doing well with the Templar, nice mix of armor, magic and weapons. I miss being nimble, but not enough to give up the toe to toe defense. My problem right now is that I can buy spells like "Hide" but I don't seem to have an item to let me actually cast it.

So, are you gonna do a detailed impressions / preview segment on next week's podcast? Sounds like it's gotten under your skin a bit, and has started hogging your free time.

Certis wrote:

At about 2AM last night I managed to beat the armored spider, who was a total asshole until I figured out how to deal with his attack pattern. He manged to kill me a couple times, but I always recovered my body before he could kill me again, saving all my precious demon souls. It was a total rush taking him down.

I'm really doing well with the Templar, nice mix of armor, magic and weapons. I miss being nimble, but not enough to give up the toe to toe defense. My problem right now is that I can buy spells like "Hide" but I don't seem to have an item to let me actually cast it.

I can't be the Phalanx dude.. I guess I need more fire attacks? I tried the flame weapon but that really didnt seem all that useful.. didnt last long enough to make any real dents in all his "minions"

Phalanx Boss Killin' Tips wrote:

[color=white]Ignore his minions. The main thing is just to get around behind him and whack away. Flame sword helps, but it's not essential. You'll find the minions sort of flow across his body toward you, so just wait for them to be on one side and then run around to the other. The actual Phalanx boss is that blue glowing bit in the middle of his body. He's like the minions, you gotta attack whatever part of his gelatinous mass is exposed. Just don't give him too much time to fill the floor with helpers if you can avoid it.

Running to the opposite side of the room and hiding behind a pillar is a good way to get the minions to all face toward you so you can make the end-around. Good time to heal, too.[/color]

Another tip wrote:

[color=white]If you have fire bombs, they're a good way to kill off a bunch of the minions so it exposes some flesh. I managed to basically kill off all the minions by just being patient and essentially doing what Certis said. The fight would've been impossible without the pillars.[/color]

Argh..had Phalanx down to 10% and I guess I took to long or something and he regained all his health.. MF'er!!

TheGameguru wrote:

Argh..had Phalanx down to 10% and I guess I took to long or something and he regained all his health.. MF'er!!

What are you playing as? Perhaps you should up your soul level a bit before you head in there. Just a point or two in magic or strength should be enough for you to get over the hump.

Oh, and in my little game, I've been trying to finish off the boss of 1-2, but since I died and only have 3/4 of my health, I can't seem to stay alive. I get him down to about a third of his health, but then I run out of herbs. Kinda frustrating. I've got to get a better rhythm down so I don't get stepped on/crushed as often . . . even if I'm only being partially hit.

garion333 wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Argh..had Phalanx down to 10% and I guess I took to long or something and he regained all his health.. MF'er!!

What are you playing as? Perhaps you should up your soul level a bit before you head in there. Just a point or two in magic or strength should be enough for you to get over the hump.

Can he upgrade his soul level before he defeats Phalanx? I didn't think that was possible.

Tyrian wrote:
garion333 wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Argh..had Phalanx down to 10% and I guess I took to long or something and he regained all his health.. MF'er!!

What are you playing as? Perhaps you should up your soul level a bit before you head in there. Just a point or two in magic or strength should be enough for you to get over the hump.

Can he upgrade his soul level before he defeats Phalanx? I didn't think that was possible.

Oy! You're correct. Doh!

. . . Try another character? Everything's easier the second time around. Or, well, 500th in this game.

Weird, I handled Phalanx pretty handily with my Thief and my Templar.

Oh, and in my little game, I've been trying to finish off the boss of 1-2, but since I died and only have 3/4 of my health, I can't seem to stay alive. I get him down to about a third of his health, but then I run out of herbs. Kinda frustrating. I've got to get a better rhythm down so I don't get stepped on/crushed as often . . . even if I'm only being partially hit.

You don't have any gems that restore you to your full body form? With my Templar I managed to take him down using the following method, took me a couple tries:

[color=white]Once you're done taking out all the crossbow men along both sides of the courtyard, you sprint down there and get right behind him/between his legs as fast as you can. At that point, it's just a matter of keeping his back to you and carefully avoiding his feet. It sounds like you've been doing that, so the other tip would be that when you take both his ankles out, he'll collapse. The targeting will lock onto his body, but what you really want to do is go for his head. He drops health like crazy when you hit him there.

There were times when I had to forgo attacking much when he was down in favor of healing up instead. You can even heal when he's standing, if you're careful on placement. Keeping your shield up (if you have one) helps too.[/color]

Thanks, Certis, but I've basically been doing all that. My problem is two-fold in that I ended up sticking with the Royal, which means my vitality is (was) low and my physical damage is (was) also pretty low. So that's why I moved on to 2-1 to get a bunch of souls and go up a couple levels. I think I should be able to finish off 1-2's boss with my higher stats. I was taking off so little every time I hit him that I kept running out of herbs, but hopefully that isn't an issue anymore.

Oh and one last thing about 1-2 wrote:

[color=white]I saw in a post somewhere that you can actually take 1-2's boss down from the parapets by just shooting him in the head with, in my case, magic. I might try that and see how long that takes.[/color]

Edit (about an hour later): The more I think about this game, the more I think I should play as a melee-focused character. It's much too easy to spam with the Royal (btw, I switched to a falcion since the rapier is terrible, imho) and while I did my first character as a melee-centric, I still found the Royal played much more to my liking. As such, perhaps the Hunter is what I want. A balance between range and melee since I found the Temple Knight to be too slow (and the halberd too unwieldy) and now the Royal is just too much of a pansy and I feel like I'm not learning melee combat as well as I should. Perhaps I'll just grind out the Royal some more levels and get it to a more melee focused character since I've sunk 5 hours into that character alone.

I love this game.

Certis wrote:

You don't have any gems that restore you to your full body form?

I had been saving them. I didn't realize I had three, I thought I only had one as I had given the others to storage by accident. Oh well.

Anyway, I took out the 1-2 boss and went through 2-1 and took out that boss (first try!!!!) in the space of a couple hours this afternoon. I had been holding onto all those hero/soldier/etc. souls and not using them, so I was able to jump up quite a few soul levels after turning them into souls. Makes life a bit easier when you're soul level is 20 and not 10.

Nice! Nothing like running a level clean to feel like a total badass. That's the balance I'm finding Demon's Souls manages to strike; no matter how tough it can get, you rarely feel like it's insurmountable and once you do overcome an obstacle, you feel like you've accomplished something.

Certis wrote:

Nice! Nothing like running a level clean to feel like a total badass. That's the balance I'm finding Demon's Souls manages to strike; no matter how tough it can get, you rarely feel like it's insurmountable and once you do overcome an obstacle, you feel like you've accomplished something.

Agreed -- notable is the fact that "cheap" deaths are few and far between. I think every time I've died, either it's because I did something stupid, or because I got overconfident and pushed ahead too fast without gauging the strength of my enemies. Conversely, there's no feeling like having made it all the way from the Armored Spider to Flamelurker, and killed him, in body form without dying.

One note -- if you're looking to grind for souls:

[color=#FFFFFF]4-1 (Shrine of Storms) is the place for it. Once you get the hang of its inhabitants, you can pick up as many souls in two minutes as you would in a full run-through of 1-1.[/color]

Also, for those wanting to play offline, which is a good idea when exploring new territory in body form, just make sure that you sign out of PSN before you load your game. It'll offer you the opportunity to log in, but just keep canceling until it tells you you're playing in offline mode. Saves you from those pesky black phantoms until you know the territory well enough to take them on.

Another note for those who care about world tendencies -- it's better to play in offline mode while you're trying to get pure black or pure white WTs, since there have been online bugs in the past that occasionally reset all your world tendencies to neutral without warning. I don't know if they've been fixed yet.

I really need to get back into this game again. It's been easily over a month since I last left my knight, broke from a recent death but still determined to press on. I tried the royal and thief first, but didn't really like either. The thief was definitely more nimble, but weak as a kitten.

[color=#FFFFFF]
I downed Phalanx and the Armoured Spider pretty easily, and was in the process of gearing up for the 1-2 boss. I was looking towards a particular upgrade for my Winged Spear, and from what I've read the blacksmith in 2-1 is the only one who can do it. I went to Stonefang Tunnel and cleaned the entire level out, twice, but could not find the guy anywhere. I was on my way out when I noticed some treasure sitting just out of reach on a ledge. I jumped over without even thinking, the "treasure" ended up being some herb or item that wasn't even worth the effort. It was only when I tried to get back that I realized there was no way to jump or climb. After several minutes of searching, I decided to suicide myself and lost over 10K souls from an earlier death. Sucks, but not really a big deal since all I have to do is run through a couple of the earlier levels again. Absolutely love the game though, even though it can be extremely frustrating at times.
[/color]
Dixie_Flatline wrote:

[color=#FFFFFF]4-1 (Shrine of Storms) is the place for it. Once you get the hang of its inhabitants, you can pick up as many souls in two minutes as you would in a full run-through of 1-1.[/color]

[color=#FFFFFF]You do rack up the souls pretty quick, but man those silver skeletons can be a real pain. They were cleaning my royal's clock, as I could not kill them fast enough and pretty much one hit meant instant death for him. They've killed my knight a few times, but learning to properly block and dodge has made it much easier.[/color]

I haven't had black phantoms invade any of my games yet, but I may just be lucky. My knight is actually high enough now that I'd like to try and fight one just to see what happens and what you get.

Glycerine wrote:

I really need to get back into this game again. It's been easily over a month since I last left my knight, broke from a recent death but still determined to press on. I tried the royal and thief first, but didn't really like either. The thief was definitely more nimble, but weak as a kitten.

[color=#FFFFFF]
I downed Phalanx and the Armoured Spider pretty easily, and was in the process of gearing up for the 1-2 boss. I was looking towards a particular upgrade for my Winged Spear, and from what I've read the blacksmith in 2-1 is the only one who can do it. I went to Stonefang Tunnel and cleaned the entire level out, twice, but could not find the guy anywhere.[/color]

Ed's location:

[color=white]Ed can be found using the elevator at the every beginning of 2-1 (after it's activated, obviously). The elevator that's behind the merchant at the very beginning.[/color]

ATLUS has just announced that their US pre-order releases will also have a full soundtrack bundled in.
October can't come soon enough!

The early adopters here.. do you think you will be on different servers because its the Korean version?

Irongut wrote:

The early adopters here.. do you think you will be on different servers because its the Korean version?

Yeah. NA release will be on separate servers.

Arggh - your cool gameplay stories are making it really, really hard for me to wait for the NA version.

I wonder why they decided to hold it back, when the Asian/English language version sounds like it could be released here with little modification? If they'd dropped it now, in the midst of the summer drought, it could have been a big hit.

When it releases in two months, I think it's just going to get buried in the glut of AAA titles with huge marketing budgets. In addition, whatever buzz is generated is just going to motivate people to buy the Asian version.

KillerTomato wrote:

Arggh - your cool gameplay stories are making it really, really hard for me to wait for the NA version.

I wonder why they decided to hold it back, when the Asian/English language version sounds like it could be released here with little modification? If they'd dropped it now, in the midst of the summer drought, it could have been a big hit.

When it releases in two months, I think it's just going to get buried in the glut of AAA titles with huge marketing budgets. In addition, whatever buzz is generated is just going to motivate people to buy the Asian version.

I know exactly what you're talking about. Have they LOOKED at what else is coming out in the Oct / Nov timeframe? Tons of stuff!

The game does sound really good, though. Maybe I'll ambush GameGuru when he's in the neighborhood and steal his copy (because, of course, he'd bring it with him. That makes total sense).

Tyrian wrote:
KillerTomato wrote:

I wonder why they decided to hold it back, when the Asian/English language version sounds like it could be released here with little modification? If they'd dropped it now, in the midst of the summer drought, it could have been a big hit.

When it releases in two months, I think it's just going to get buried in the glut of AAA titles with huge marketing budgets. In addition, whatever buzz is generated is just going to motivate people to buy the Asian version.

I know exactly what you're talking about. Have they LOOKED at what else is coming out in the Oct / Nov timeframe? Tons of stuff!

To be honest I don't think Atlus concerns themselves too much with what else is coming out. They aren't exactly competing against Modern Warfare 2 or anything. This is a niche title that will have a niche audience.

Chris Kohler did a pretty indepth look at what the hell is going on this fall/christmas and he has this to say:

Note that the games that are left, after this mass exodus, fall into three different categories:
1. Yearly sequels. EA isn’t exactly going to bump Madden 2010 back into, uh, 2010. Also, since all of Activision’s series are now Madden inasmuch as its stated goal is to exploit each on a rigid yearly schedule, it can’t really delay anything other than new IP, which it only produces in small quantities (and indeed, it delayed Singularity already).
2. Big games — but not too big. Halo 3: ODST yes, Halo Reach no. Dragon Age yes, Mass Effect no. New Super Mario Bros. yes, Super Mario Galaxy 2 no. Assassin’s yes, Splinter Cell no.
3. Games so quirky and/or niche that it just doesn’t matter when they come out. Muramasa is not about to be delayed over concerns that it will sell more at some unspecified time in the future.

I put Demon's Souls in the third category and as such the timing has little relevance. If anything with the amount of delays of other games into 2010 Demon's Souls has a somewhat better chance of selling well.

Certis wrote:

At about 2AM last night I managed to beat the armored spider, who was a total asshole until I figured out how to deal with his attack pattern. He manged to kill me a couple times, but I always recovered my body before he could kill me again, saving all my precious demon souls. It was a total rush taking him down.

One thing I've been wondering about. When you know you're heading into fight a boss or other deadly encounter, do you feel the urge to grind out enough souls to bump up a level or buy gear? So when you inevitably die in the big fight, you don't cry so much if you don't recover your body?

Hoboy. I'm now officially stoked about this game.

The sad part is that i know it is going to piss me off but I'm going to play it anyway.

In college I once broke a keyboard in half over dying in angband. Hopefully the cost inherent in a PS3 will force me to contain my rage.

Tyrian wrote:
Certis wrote:

At about 2AM last night I managed to beat the armored spider, who was a total asshole until I figured out how to deal with his attack pattern. He manged to kill me a couple times, but I always recovered my body before he could kill me again, saving all my precious demon souls. It was a total rush taking him down.

One thing I've been wondering about. When you know you're heading into fight a boss or other deadly encounter, do you feel the urge to grind out enough souls to bump up a level or buy gear? So when you inevitably die in the big fight, you don't cry so much if you don't recover your body?

Pressing on to the boss battles is usually the better idea. If you feel underpowered the whole level then by all means head back. I've done it, but once you make it to the boss, you usually feel competent enough in your character to press on. That's kind of what this game is about. Just. Keep. Going. And rely on your skill.

But in some instances (like the first bosses in worlds 1 and 2) there are shortcuts that pretty much take you right to the boss battle. In those times, going back and unloading your souls and leveling up a bit (btw, you rarely buy armor and weapons, but do "level" them up) or getting more herbs is pretty easy as you'll only have a few enemies to get through before the boss. And other times there's a merchant somewhere close to the end where you can pick up more herbs if you need.

Oh, and ArtofScience, I have yet to become so frustrated as to want to break a controller. I have that tendency and this game has never once gotten me close to that. Sure, sometimes it's a hassle to have to go ALL the way back through to get to the boss, but not in the break-the-controller way.

TheArtOfScience wrote:

Hoboy. I'm now officially stoked about this game.

The sad part is that i know it is going to piss me off but I'm going to play it anyway.

In college I once broke a keyboard in half over dying in angband. Hopefully the cost inherent in a PS3 will force me to contain my rage.

Certis' description on the conference call, and the remarkable array of goodies included in the special edition convinced me to preorder. I'll delude myself into thinking that the strategy guide will help me to get further into this game than I did Etrian Odyssey, another game that in turn excited and shamed me (hey, it's just like dating all over again!).

Unlike Mr. The Art of Science, however, I won't likely lapse into violence when this game confronts me with my own failures... I'll just sulk and descend deeper into self-loathing.

So, yeah. Pretty stoked about this one, and am already searching for therapists to help me deal with the inevitable fallout.

The funny thing is that I LOVED the Kings Field series. I beat the hell out of that game on the PS.

The older I get the less tolerance I have for sucking at a game though.

SF4 has utterly frustrated me in that regard. I was elite at SF2 in the arcade and I can't even manage a dragon punch anymore.

Oh well. Ryu and Ken can just GTFO of my lawn.

Reading here and listening - looks cool. The Gametrailers preview looks nice also. Wife may shoot me if I get this though, so we'll see. No import for me - I've got enough to play from then until now.

Reading the thread, the game sounds very, very impressive. Probably the only reason I'm not importing is the server issue and backlog of games right now. Also, they are completely doing preorders and deluxe editions right and I want in on that.