Dark Souls One and Three Thread

I liked the Sunken King DLC in DS2 and would definitely say it's the best part of the game. Didn't really get on with the others though. And chalk me up as another one not having played the Ringed City for DS3. I had played the game 3½ times when it came out, and helped a console friend with most of the bosses as well, so had just kind of moved on by that point. Will go back at some point though.

Finished my run of DS3. First time I played it since release (aside from a couple years back when I had small run up to cathedral of the deep).

I don’t know if it’s the Elden Ring affect but i didn’t remember the game being as lean as it is, there’s no or little fat here and almost feels like a boss rush game at times, they come thick and fast especially in the latter half of the game. I’ve been a little down on Elden Ring’s open world but I’m now a little more appreciative of it, it’s nice to have that down time and decompress. Still a bit too big but I did miss it. Some of the enemy placements can be quite brutal (iythril valley and the run up to anor Londo especially and they’re quite difficult to overcome, even for seasoned souls veterans) and it does make the game feel quite claustrophobic or brutalist/unforgiving in that regard.

As for the bosses, they’re fantastic. Maybe a fair amount of them do fall into a rhythm of dodging, getting your attack in, dodging etc etc but they certainly get your adrenaline going. It’s nice to feel that adrenaline pumping up as you near the end of a fight and then have that buzz and euphoria of beating a boss. I don't think I felt that once in ER. I probably did, but I can’t recall it, and only a couple of bosses from that game stick in my mind, whereas as this! Highlight is probably boreal - which is interesting as it’s quite similar to ancestral spirit from elden ring in how it feels moving around the arena - and that was my favourite from that game. Sounds a bit wankery but it feels a bit like the ocean in a way it seems to draw your energy out and in.

In ER the bosses frustrated me but with this I was charging back in and wanting to engage with the mechanics of the game.

So good stuff. Nice to go back and it’s good to have some of my opinions about ER challenged a little bit but also reconfirms a few issues I have with that game.

On a side note, it was almost a non estus flask upgrade run (as in using bone shards). Completely forgot about it for some reason until it didn’t. 30 hours in mind you 😂

Going back to ds games i feel clearly blood borne and sekiro are peek. Ds1,2,3 are still epic games but bb and sekiro just streamlined every aspect perfectly. ER is somewhere in the middle. Like just this week I’ve beaten mohg, Melania and the big secret dragon almost immediately via using max level weapons and mimic. In bb and sekiro I felt I had to learn the bosses to beat them so it gave me reward. This week of er has given me no reward and the same can be said about the dark souls series. You could just over level things and beat a boss.

I can't tell you hardly any moves of melania or mohg but I could tell
you all of genichiro or Gascognes moves.

Well yeah if you are very good at games or the game lets you over level. Everyone else needs to learn to bosses moves.
Your average gamer won’t just beat sekiro bosses freestyle.

I mean, ER is as hard as you make it. It's got enormous freedom not only in how you explore the world and when/if you engage with all the content, but also in setting your own difficulty, and I love it for that. You can use summons, but you don't have to. You can farm, but you don't have to. You can travel around and do a lot of stuff and collect items and level up before going for the next demigod, but you don't have to. You can avoid the Tree Sentinel right after leaving the tutorial building, but you don't have to.

On my first PT, I used everything on offer, Mimic Tear, rune farming, bows, sneaking past, etc. And while I did have a lot of fun, after beating it I felt like I still didn't really know how to play the game, it let me get away with being terrible many times. Also, while I still think using summons is a perfectly valid way to play the game in whatever way one has the most fun, one thing about them is not ideal--bosses have great trouble dealing with multiple enemies, and instead of actually engaging with their moveset that the devs spent a ton of effort on, typically that just falls apart when it goes after the summon and you can just blindly hack away at its butt. I did find that not very satisfying.

I recently watched a YT video of someone who'd played through ER also using every tool in the box, and after beating it kinda forgot about it. He had a revelation afterwards when playing DS3 because it forced him to "git gud" and was having a blast, and consequently advocated DS3 as the better game. I had a similar experience, only that I did it in a second playthrough of ER. I didn't like how I felt that I still didn't know how to play the game, so I decided to change that and challenge myself. I decided to play without summons, rune farming, ranged attacks, and eventually added shields to that list too. And no sneaking past anymore, whenever I saw a threatening enemy I had to confront and kill it.

It was a fresh--and imo more engaging and rewarding--experience, I really had to learn the game now. It was after this second PT that I played the DS trilogy, and it prepared me pretty well. Because if you play these games the same way in this fashion, ER is actually the hardest, at least when it comes to boss fights. I had to learn a lot of boss patterns, most of all Malenia's as it took me some 10+ hours to beat her the first time. There just was no boss in the trilogy that even came close, and so I had to learn them less than I had to learn many ER bosses.

Morgott is another interesting case, because even if you don't use all the tools, you usually encounter him overlevelled and most people will find him kind of a pushover. But if you challenge yourself and have to really learn his moveset, you'll see just how complex and intricate his design is, and actually I think he's one of the best boss designs in the game.

This whole thing actually does remind me of Mega Man--you can use the weapons and boss weaknesses (and E-tanks, Double Gear, etc), but you don't have to. And I find a good Mega Man game is actually most fun if you don't use boss weapons (and other tools) at all, as you'll have to really engage the bosses and their patterns instead of more or less cheesing them.

I still think DS3 had the best boss fights overall--at the very least when talking about their average quality--but I don't think it's fair to dismiss ER bosses based on how easy you can make them. Sure, one could argue about if and how giving you those tools was a good idea, but it's not like the complex and challenging movesets aren't there. If you want to find them you can, and if you want ER to be harder than the other Souls games, it's easy to get that.

I just thought I'd roll a new character in dark souls just to see if I could get lucky with the black Knight halberd. 3rd attempt. Come to daddy!

photos.app.goo.gl/tqZERCmTov31BDYHA

I’ve used it a bit but I prefer the standard Black Knight Sword

The Black Knight Weapons have hidden modifier for extra damage to demon enemies - does that include Manus then?

It's only 20%, so not world-changing, but against Manus, it would help to only have to hit him 20 times instead of 24 times. But apparently, it doesn't. Anyway, BK weapons are still good against him, because they are all phys damage and hit quite hard. Lightning supposedly also works good against him, but I don't think I've reached him yet with my lightning faith char.

I have the same feeling with great club overhead or jump smash. Just whump and most of the enemies lie flat on the floor.

Especially against Darkwraiths. Oh you're doing your fancy spinning combo shit? That's cute. WHUMP!

Haha, have you seen the insane damage the great club does when you make it chaos and have 10 soft humanity on you? Look at this ffs!

photos.app.goo.gl/JLoLdxjVnAU93j3f6

wunty someone wasn't around when curses used to stack and you'd be scrambling around trying to find the cure with 1/8th (I dunno if it went further) HP...

(Also, one curse halves your HP. Exactly the same as DS2's max penalty and Demon's Soul Form penalty)

I'd say the Gaol area in Bloodborne. It upsets me