next »

[Belimoth]

Good, fresh meat for invasion

[Moczan]

I'm in Blighttown right now too, the framerate drop is pretty annoying, but not to the point of being unplayable. It's nice that there are actually enemies that I can't 1-hit right now.
Is there a shortcut to Firelink (or other above-the-ground area) somewhere there? I want to do some stuff I've omitted before, but I can't be assed to backtrack through Depths.

[Dragonmaw]

There is a shortcut to Valley of Drakes, and there is an elevator there that takes you to the very start of New Londo. You can then go from New Londo to Firelink via another elevator.

[zalzane]

don't you need the master key to use that shortcut, or can you just open the door if you're opening it from the valley side

[Tumetsu]

You can open it from valley of Drakes side with key you find near the top of the wooden structure in Blighttown just before you enter valley of Drakes.

[flowerthief]

Another thing about this game that I've been appreciating lately (at least on ps3) is that it doesn't force you to wait in front of a "Now loading" screen every time you enter a new area like so many other games do. Lack of loading intermissions helps give the world's geography the seamless and interconnected sense that the developers were doubtless aiming for. I think the only times you see a loading screen are when first loading up your character, when teleporting to a faroff place (homeward bone, lord vessel, etc), or when you die.

In a real way, the loading scheme is integrated into the game's system of rewards and penalties. Death is (almost) always fairly deserved, and the penalties for death are already so significant that the loading time after death is something you hardly pay attention to. It's like icing on a cake that you yourself took responsibility for eating. Besides which, you are probably using that time to rethink your strategy for the next attempt.

This is such smart design. Why can't more games handle load times this way?

[Ben_Hurr]

It's fine by me. What I want is even more outfits for my chars to wear, being the type who chooses what to wear based on its fashion value rather than whatever statistical (dis)advantages it gives in combat. I know I'm not alone.

Yes.  Compare how many outfits are fancy platemail, versus just about anything else.

[SundownKid]

This is such smart design. Why can't more games handle load times this way?

Being on a PC with 16 gigs of RAM, load times only take a couple seconds, so it's not really much of a problem  

It's fine by me. What I want is even more outfits for my chars to wear, being the type who chooses what to wear based on its fashion value rather than whatever statistical (dis)advantages it gives in combat. I know I'm not alone.

Yes.  Compare how many outfits are fancy platemail, versus just about anything else.

I would much prefer if you could customize your armor more than you can now when you just find new suits of armor lying around. Right now, using the cool-looking armor puts you at a disadvantage simply because of an arbitrary number that may or may not reflect how the armor would actually work. As interesting as being able to go through the game at level 1 is, the light armors need to give you more benefits than they do now.

[Glyph]

I could have all the defense, poise, and ninja flips I wanted if I would just wear that Hollow Soldier Waistcloth.

But I won't.

[Ben_Hurr]

I'm not even sure why a torn conan cloth gives you poise in the first place. 

And yeah, armor customization would be cool.  Right now its just adding more defense across the board, booooring.

[zalzane]

SKELETON DOGS

WHY
WHY
WHY
 

[GamerGuides]

Love this game so much. Second time through and even ignoring the DLC pack I've yet to try, there's SO many new areas I've yet to explore it's insane.  Really like the Dark Knight Sword this run, got it off the first DK so has been a massive help so early on. Can't beat a bit of parrying to make them so much easier 

[J-Snake]

The further I play, the uglier the game gets, mechanics/gameplay-wise.

It has a nice artistic touch but the actual "play" is heavily flawed. Still one of the few stand-out games to me.

[Glyph]

The mechanics in the game, the leveling/upgrading system, etc are all centered around PvP, so I guess if you're not into that you could view it as flawed. The only real problems I have with it are forced material grinding (they should let you buy humanity, hate farming that stuff) and a few relatively cheap tactics in PvP (I'm looking at you, stunlockers!)

[baconman]

It may have been joked about a few pages back, but now I'm genuinely curious what a slapstick/cartoony title with this kind of trial-and-error, respawn-heavy title would be like. It would almost fit naturally with how often some people get smashed early on.

[zalzane]

the actual "play" is heavily flawed. Still one of the few stand-out games to me.

could you elaborate on this? For me, dark souls has been like a home run in proper game design  up to this point.

[SundownKid]

Besides some "cheap" enemies and spells, especially magic in PVP, I wouldn't say that the gameplay is flawed at all. Or are you just raging because it's difficult?

[Ben_Hurr]

the actual "play" is heavily flawed. Still one of the few stand-out games to me.

could you elaborate on this? For me, dark souls has been like a home run in proper game design  up to this point.

I would like some elaboration on this too.

[J-Snake]

A noticable amount of bosses can be beaten in a messy and/or cheap manner. That is not a property of good game-mechanics and action-design. Then there is not much variety in your move/action- set, it's like slow, slower and slowest applied on every sword I observe. Then there are nonsense concepts adding only repeated quantiy but no quality to the game, like repairing equipment. It costs almost nothing and you are just manually clicking on all the stuff to get it repaired, it is not what I call gameplay.
Then regarding progress-design I have to know that keeper in the ghost-mansion in order to get the key to the vessel in order to progress. If you don't know it you are stuck without any possible indication left since you cannot make notes. I see the minimalist appeal in this but it is still an easy way to make things hard, like this always works.

Things like that just accumulate. If you think it is great you haven't seen a good game yet.

[Raptor85]

Besides some "cheap" enemies and spells, especially magic in PVP, I wouldn't say that the gameplay is flawed at all. Or are you just raging because it's difficult?

I honestly would say if anything the only "cheap" thing in pvp are weapons that were kinda brought out of banalce with the others by speed changes... like the gold tracer or murakumo, which both cause stunlock far beyond what any other weapon their speed/size does (mura in particular swings far too fast and uses next to no stam for a sword with the same stun level as an ultra greatsword), magic may seem OP in pvp if you're a character that primarily blocks or tanks hits but magic is absurdly easy to dodge on a fast roll character, making it useless against light armor, which actually balances it out quite well. Pretty much every single spell in the game you can simply roll TOWARDS to take absolutely no damage from it, this includes WOTG, dark bead, and pursuers. true, hornet ring users are annoying with  the level of damage they tend to do but i wouldn't even call that OP anymore, now that they reduced the damage buff it's more sane now and giving up a ring slot is a good tradeoff.  I'd honestly say DkS has the most balanced, properly designed gameplay i've ever seen....yeah it can use a few improvements (get rid of invincibility during criticals, make the stun break bar visible, allow parties to travel with you indefinitely and easier player matching....and FFS use dedicated servers) but I'd say i'd love to see other games take notes of how to do it properly like this.

As for bosses beating in a cheap manner...yeah, once you learn to abuse the mechanics that works....on easy mode....but name a game that DOESNT work on?  I actually think it's quite clever game design and probably intentional to make easy ways to kill the bosses first loop if you really think about how the bosses act, It'll only take you so far in the game though, as none of that stuff will help you in NG+ or in pvp. For no variety in movesets and slow weapons...I have no idea what you're talking about there, 90% of the weapons in game have their own unique movesets....that's why there's so much weapon variety even in online play, everyone has their own preferences, yeah most swords within the same weapon class act fairly similar but there's subtle differences that often make a weaker sword preferred over a stronger one, and there's plenty of light weight LIGHTNING FAST weapons, especially in the dagger, fist, and curved sword categories.

Repair mechanics actually i thought worked quite well, it makes a tradeoff for light equipment that it has to be repaired more often....heavy weapons or bashing weapons in general you could do the entire game without worrying about but cutting weapons like kananas or smaller swords you have to keep the edge sharp...dragon weapons and special weapons wear out fast in battle from special use so there's repair powder to repair them (or the repair spell as a mage). The menus in the game in general could have used some work though, like a "repair all" for repair menu, or a "give 10/20/30" humanity button for the covenants, but that's a relatively minor UI issue.  As for not knowing to go talk to the guy in new londo ruins...when you place the lordvessel it TELLS YOU that one of the lord souls is down there, plus it's a very tiny area so you'd come across it quite quickly just exploring randomly.  I honestly don't see how people get lost in dark souls unless you're just completely ignoring everything everyone tells you (And i do know some people who play like that...skip all dialog first time plaything through a rpg to "get on with the game"....then complain that they don't know where to go..), you're told and shown where to go at every turn, and told what items you need, it does everything short of hold your hand and put a giant arrow on your screen to lead you there.