What are you playing?

[mormapope]

There's a attribute called Agility that affects invincibility frames from rolling.

http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/rolling

You have to light torches at bonfires, and/or there's a usable item that lights the torch right anywhere.

[Bebpo]

Ah, ok.  Will look into that.  With the rolling, it's partly about invincibility frames, which obviously feels a lot fewer than DS1 at the start, and partly just about the crazy lock-on.  For example the giant old soldiers in Heidi's Flame at the start with the big club.  Big slow dumb enemy, lifts up club slowly, smashes it down slowly.  In DS1 or Bloodborne or other games when he's lifting it up say past 50% lift up, he's locked on to smashing a specific spot and you just roll out of the way and hit him from the behind.  But in DS2 if you roll around him when he's like 75-85% arms and club lifted, he'll still be locked onto tracking you and will rotate with your roll to smash you whereever you are.  You pretty much need to wait until the very very last second to roll in order to not be locked and have the enemy's attack rotate and follow you.  Having just played DS1 last year and rolling through everything, this is definitely new and maybe it's not a bad thing because it makes rolling more challenging and you have to roll at the very last second or you'll still get hit.  Dunno, don't have a stance on it, just a big difference I've noticed as a roller.

The one thing I generally dislike about DS2 and feel like it does wrong straight from the bat is the way it does secrets.  Having very visible pharos locket stone faces at parts where you need to go BUY A KEY and then in return you get a SECRET AREA is fucking dumb.  Same with all the areas blocked by stone people that you need to find twigs or buy twigs to progress.  Even the secret walls where you have to hit A/X against them to open them rather than ones that just open by a slash and can trigger on accident when you're fighting is a pointless change.  Now I'm gonna go around hitting A on every damn fucking wall.  But yeah the pharoh locket and stone twig stuff is just artificial progress blocking based on SPEND SOULS instead of real secrets that you accidentally just find on your own (which are still in the game and that's cool, but it just doesn't need that other stuff).

Otherwise the level design seems solid.  I like some of these areas that are almost entirely based around a single bonfire using shortcut unlocks like No-Man's Wharf.  The boss fights have been lacking so far outside of the Last Giant which was a cool first boss.  Pursuer was pretty intense though.  But stuff like Dragonslayer, a medium-sized slow knight continually missing with a halberd is 

[mormapope]

For me, the setting, story, balancing, and build variety are why I enjoyed Dark Souls 2 a lot more than Dark Souls 1. Dark Souls 1 has better level design but the setting gets old really quick.

Dark Souls 2 is admittedly unlike the other Souls games except for core mechanics and assets.

[Bebpo]

For me, the setting, story, balancing, and build variety are why I enjoyed Dark Souls 2 a lot more than Dark Souls 1. Dark Souls 1 has better level design but the setting gets old really quick.

Dark Souls 2 is admittedly unlike the other Souls games except for core mechanics and assets.

Cool.  Yeah, I'm too early to comment on setting or story.  Build variety is something I'll appreciate but never have much of a say about since I only play these games once and either just use a mage (Demon Souls) or a dude with a good sword (Dark Souls 1; Dark Souls 2 so far).  Balancing seems...ok so far?  Forest, Wharf and Lost Bastille were easy, but the big ass knight dudes in Heidis Flame were tough in groups.  Bosses so far are mixed.

[brob]

the bosses in ds2 were the highlight for me, lots of good fights

tho i generally play these games with glass cannon type melee builds, so it might have been that the boss fights were real good for that specifically.

[Bebpo]

Made some good progress tonight in Dark Souls II.  Killed the dragon blocking the door in Heidi's flame to the Blue Cathederal.  Heard in the original DS2 it's just a knight or something and there weren't all this tough enemies in Heidi's flame.  Grrrr.  Still managed to kill them all, run up to the Dragon's feet and take him out while dodging.  Then took out Old Dragonslayer.  Then went to Lost Castille and finished exploring it, took out all the Pursuers who are now just easy 10k souls each time they show up.  Took me a while to figure out where the three Ruin Sentinels boss was, eventually found out it the reason I couldn't find it or the rest of Lost Bastille was because I needed to use a petrify stick on the statute in front of it.  So I bought one since I didn't have any for 12k souls and got in there and fuck, Ruin Sentinels do not mess around.  3 big ass dudes with long reach at once was intense, but beat it.

Tried taking on Lost Sinner again and it wasn't too bad.  Never ended up lighting the room because didn't realize the lights were BEFORE the boss, I was looking for lights on the side of the room mid-fight lol.  But basically I got him to do the jumping animation a lot which he follows up with a swing and then just sits open for a couple of hits.  With an upgraded +5 Bastard Sword he didn't take a ton of hits, so it wasn't bad.

Got to Luna Belfry, rang the bell and then walked into the boss room and NOPE NOPE NOPE six fucking gargoyles at once are you kidding me??!?  I had like 4 ganging up on me and was toast.  Not going back there until I'm a lot stronger. 

However, doing everything else got me about 25-30 levels to around lvl.75.  I read about stats online and how ADP is really important for invincibility frames during rolls, so I basically spent all my levels into ADP to get Agility to 100. 

I also realized that after hitting 20 on stats, the increase is so minor, might as well put it into stuff like ADP.  I realized that the only way to really increase my damage output is with weapon upgrades and rings and stuff because an extra 5 levels into STR = +5 to the stat realistically isn't going to be noticeable even if you have a STR scaling weapon.  It's just so minor, whereas upgrading weapons is major in damage each level upgrade.  So right now I'm sticking at about 23 STR/23 END/23 VGR/24 ADP/14 DEX/12 VIT and now that I've hit the ADP I need for 100 agility, and 12 VIT keeps me under 70% weight, I'll just evenly upgrade STR/END/VGR for a while. 

Weapon-wise I'm pretty walled in on damage at the moment.  As mentioned, I'm using a Bastard Sword greatsword and I've got it to +5 or +6 at this point and now I need Titanite Chunks and I'm too early in the game to get any, so since like I said pumping a few points in STR isn't going to much, I'm basically damage-capped until I get to where I can get Titanite Chunks and then get the sword to +10.  I have the elemental infusion blacksmith available but everything I'm reading is infused weapons generally suck in DS2.  But I'll probably build a secondary infused weapon just for fun like a fire spear or lightning ultra greatsword or something.

So now that I've cleared Lost Sinner, I've pretty much completely cleared out all the areas so far outside of the Belfry Gargoyles which I'm gonna save for mid/late game.  I've got access to Huntsman Corpse, The Gutter (bought the falling damage ring and carefully fell down the well; but it looks like shitty sewer/poison area so will save it for later), and Shaded Woods now.  So next time gonna explore these new areas.  Did a little of each of these areas and honestly, the stages all seem pretty easy in DS2 so far.  Like in Huntsman's Corpse and Shaded Woods, everything's dying in 1-2 hits of my +5 sword 2H, just like they were in Forest of the Giants, Wharf and Bastille.  Really the only tough non-boss enemies have been the big old great knights in Heidi's Flame in the SoTFS version.  Bosses have been a solid/tough challenge though.  I guess I'm fine with easier levels since I'm blowing through it quicker and less of a headache. 

I like the throwbacks to DS1 bosses with Old Dragonslayer and the Gargoyles.  Kind of cool.

Oh and idk if anyone remembers because DS2 was a long time ago, but since I'm damage capped right now until I get chunks to upgrade my sword, are there any early/mid-game spells I can be using to buff my attack and increase damage more?  If so maybe I'll spend the next 20-30 levels on whatever magic stat I need to get the buff.  My INT/FAITH/ATN are like at 4/5 so it'd cost a bunch to get them up to something useable.

[qq more]

Been playing Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, trying to fill the whole Pokedex. I think I can do it this time!!

...Also might play Pokemon White 2 after I finish my replay on Ace Attorney Investigations 2.


And I've played Minecraft a lot lately... with the Pokemon mod. Uh, it's a really cool mod though!

[Trent Dole]

Shitty clicker shit, Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, Dynasty Warriors 8 XL Really Long Name Edition, PSO2, I'm only making this post so I can have a post on page 666.

[Positive Touch]

Trent you wouldn't happen to know where i could find a good guide to installing and running pso2 on ps4, would you?

[Bebpo]

Good Dark Souls II session last night.  Finished Huntsman's Corpse, Undead Purgatory, and made some way in Harvest Valley.  Also went back and barellllllly beat with the Luna Belfry six gargoyle fight within an inch of my life using a pine resin for extra electric damage.  Undead Purgatory Chariot boss was ridiculous until I got that it was a puzzle fight and I needed to be moving in one direction to a lever.  Got my first titanite chunk so Bastard Sword is +7 now.

What made it a good night was after getting to lvl.90 or so, I started trying to figure out min-max ways of upping my damage.  Did some research and learned about POWER STANCE dual wielding.  Had no idea about this mechanic where you need 1.5x stats but get basically 1.5x damage per hit compared to a 2H swing.  I never use shields and just close up roll evade anyways while melee-ing, so that sounds good.  To get it with my Bastard sword + 7 which has 15 STR/11 DEX requirement I'll need 30 STR / 15 or 16 DEX, so that's my next damage increasing goal.  I'm at 26 STR / 14 DEX, so just need another 6 levels and that should really increase my damage output.

Also started looking into magic buffing at this point to further increase damage output.  Not really liking any of the options tbh and may just stick to all physical dual-wield w/resins for this run.  From what I can tell here are my magic melee buff options:

Pyro: Flame sword = Need to beat Lost Sinner on NG+ to get this spell that adds 50 fire damage.  Doesn't require any stat investment, but good fucking luck me beating Lost Sinner on NG+ where he gets 2 Pyro mages spamming fireballs mid-fight.

Socery: Magic weapon = Smallest stat investment.  Just need to get INT from 4->10 (so 6 levels) and an attunement slot or the slot ring and I can get +50 magic damage buff.  Maybe after I've got my dual-wield build going I might be ok sinking some levels into this.

Miracles: Sunlight Blade = Needs 36 faith looool.  No fucking way I'm going from like 4 stat to 36 stat spending 32 levels just to get +50 electric damage buff.

Hex: Resonant Weapon = not sure stat requirements.  The fact it costs 2000 souls to buff dark on your weapon each time turns me off.  I like my souls.

It is kind of crazy how different the stat requirements are to get a +50 weapon buff in the different magics.  I mean 10 INT required for magic weapons vs. 36 Faith required for Sunlight Blade seems like a crazy difference when both just buff +50 and additional buffs on an infused weapon.

Anyhow in the scheme of things since I'm not planning on infusing my swords and will just try to get them to normal +10 dual wield.  At the end of the day an extra 50 damage is going to be a fairly minor buff.  Like an extra 10% damage output, so I don't really see much point investing stats to chase these.  I think for the rest of dark souls 2 first game run (and only since I'm not interested in doing a ng+) I'll stick to power stance normal dual-wielding and as I get my STR and DEX up I can dual-wielding bigger stronger weapons if I want.

I think since I played Demon's Souls as a pure Soul Arrow caster, Dark Souls as a Pyro flame buffed DEX Katana 2H slasher, and now Dark Souls 2 as a dual mid/heavy sword-wielder, when I play Dark Souls 3 down the line I'll try to do a real magic melee infused weapon build with an even split between INT or Faith and STR or DEX. 

Otoh, since Dark Souls II lets you respec a couple of times, I might change to a magic melee infused weapon build before I finish if it starts getting repetitive and I want to freshen it up.

[Trent Dole]

Trent you wouldn't happen to know where i could find a good guide to installing and running pso2 on ps4, would you?

I'm not a PS4 owner (yet) but I'd generally say Bumped is a PSO2 playing gaijin's best friend.
http://www.bumped.org/psublog/pso2-guide-list/ has a registration and downloading guides along with most anything else basic you could need. The OP of the /vg/ thread in 4chan actually always has a ton of useful links in it too for building gear along with the better JP wikis, etc.

[Bebpo]

oh man, Dark Souls II did not go as well as I was hoping.  Turns out dual-wielding after getting it was pretty shit and it's way slower and eats up a lot more stamina and barely does much extra damage.  Just ended up being a waste.

So I didn't really have any way to up my damage output and my bastard sword + 7 with only about 330 atk was starting to struggle.  The first 1/3rd of the game had been pretty easy, but then Harvest Valley/Earthen Rock areas with poison everywhere was a really shitty area.  Afaik, there's no real way to avoid being poisoned in these games as the poison resistance buffs just buff resistance and don't complete make you immune.  The Medusa boss of Earthen Rock was a huge pain in the ass since I was constantly poisoned HP going down so had to dodge attack dodge heal, was just real shitty.  Really frustrating did not like that area/boss at all.  Then Iron Keep was tough, the arrow dudes everywhere while being ganged up by all the katana soldiers was a real challenge and intense with my sword the way it was.  Smelt Demon was holy fuck what, giant dude small arena, huge attack radius, kills me in 2-3 hits.  Ended up co-oping it and still we barely barely beat him.  So yeah game got real hard tonight.

So then I started fucking around with all the weapons looking for SOMETHING that I could use that's better than my bastard sword + 7 while I'm waiting to get to a spot where the game starts giving me titanite chunks to further weapon upgrade.  I ended up messing around with the LARGE CLUB and honestly it wasn't that slow coming from the bastard sword and the damage with its S scaling on STR was much better.  I was at like 430 atk or something and could basically 1 hit kill most enemies with the 2H R2 attack.  So suddenly the game became more manageable though my club was still stuck at like +6, but because of the S scaling on STR I was getting like +5 atk every point I put into STR, so I focused on buffing my strength.  Pushed on through Iron Keep, did the Belfry Sol bit, took a short break and did Grave of the Saints don't ask me why, the RAT GROUP Boss was pretty annoying.  In fact, actually the rat group boss is where I discovered the LARGE CLUB because my bastard sword dual-wield build was swinging above the rats and missing too much and I couldn't win, so I changed to the large club to pound down those rats and buffed it with resin and realized I actually liked the large club and it was pretty good.

Anyhow back to the 2nd half of Iron Keep, I got to OLD IRON KING and holy shit that was scary, got killed a couple of times (2nd time would've beat him but his hand knocked me into a lava pit on the only time he hit me the whole fight ><) and there's a lot of pressure because the run from the closest bonfire to the boss has a lot of guys and you gotta play it slow and careful each time.  Also the run is lengthy enough that you get about 1 soul level worth of souls each time you get to the boss so there was a lot of pressure to get to the boss and pick up the green since the souls were adding and adding up.  On the 3rd time I'd gotten the hang of his patterns and he was actually pretty easy and doable, so was able to beat him and then had A LOT OF SOULS.  Got STR up to 40.

So now I've got My lvl+6 Large Club w/Str 40 and I'm doing about 900 damage per hit and can get a bit more with resin buffing.  My END is like 33 and at this point I've realized I don't really need any more END because I mainly dodge and then get 1-2 hits in and run away on bosses and I don't need any more Vigor (its around 26) because my Estus can't even heal most of my HP bar, so having more HP doesn't really matter.  So I really need to figure out what to be spending my levels on at this point.  I could put some more points into VIT to increase my equip load and allow me to equip heavy armor with better protection.  Not totally useless concept.  I could invest in miracles and get magic weapon spell so I don't have to buy resin.

But here's my debate:
If I want to use magic weapon I need to boost my INT from 3->10 and attunement from 4-10.  That means 13 soul levels.  I'm lvl.112 and each level is almost 20k now.  So that's like 250k souls to get unlimited supply of magic buff to my large club.

Otoh, I could just buy a bunch of magic resin for 2000 each and use them on bosses for the rest of the game.  For the same 250k, I can get 125 resins, which using about 1-4 per boss, I'm pretty sure will easily get me through the remaining bosses.

So I think I should just avoid magic at this point.  But then...what do I spend my levels on?  If I had 13 soul levels right now, I'm not really sure what I should spend it on.  Any STR past 40 is only giving me +1 damage boost, any END past 33 is just giving me +1 endurance which is so little, like I said my HP is enough already, and I have enough VIT to just stay under 70% with my setup.  There's nothing for me to really buy except resins when I'm low on them.  So yeah, kind of unsure where to go with my build.  It's good enough for the Iron Keep and mid-game, and in endgame when I have access to titanite chunks and can get it to +10 it'll probably be good enough for that, so that's probably the plan.  Maybe when I get to the guy who sells boss weapons for boss souls I'll find a stronger weapon and focus on getting it as closer to +10 as possible.

Also what's up with those pharoh locket secret points that do nothing and just waste your locket?  I found one in Earthen Peak that just filled the pool in front of it with poison wtf, one in Grave of Saints seemed to do nothing, and one in Iron Keep just filled a pool in front of it with water.  Don't get it.  I'm assuming there's enough lockets in the game to open every pharoh secret?  And enough twigs to unlock all petrified people?  I'm good on twigs right now, have 3 of them and only know of 2 petrified people still frozen that I need to go unfreeze.

Oh and another question for Dark Souls in general.  How the fuck are you supposed to run on the lava fire rocks to get the treasure chests on them?  I could have sworn in Dark Souls 1 I used the pyro water spell that creates a water splash on you and it was fine, but in Dark Souls II I bought that water spell and tried using it on the Iron Keep and even with it on the lava rock still kills me in like 1-2 seconds.  What am I supposed to be equipping/doing to get to those treasures?

[The Sceneman]

Saw this on Facebook lol



re: fire chests, you gotta use a blend of of buffs, items and environmental water items (like vases to douse your guy) to get em. Check some guides/google. And the Pharos locks which suck are just there to piss on your chips I think. BUT the one that fills the pool with water, well get your guy wet in that and get some fire resistance for a bit. Rest of your post is tl;dr lol. I never got too deep into DS2 but I'm planning on getting back in there soon

[larrydavid]

on some weird setting where this is only page 600 and don't even know why

still playing astroboy which just keeps getting better. i'm probably going to read manga for the first time because of this game.

[Bebpo]

Dark Souls II gaming until 5am night after working until midnight.

The Gutter - Fucking Blighttown again blargh
Black Gulch - Worst.Section.Ever, luckily it's really short and once you learn it it's no problem at all, but those first couple of times dealing with the tar pits + giant snake worms + multiple red phantom invaders while being poisoned spit from every direction was total fuck fuck fuck.  The two giants hidden underneath were a good challenge fight to get the key to the forgotten doors (rocking Havel's armor +5 now)
Shaded Woods/Ruins - The fog can't see anything section was super dumb.  Rest was alright.  Most of the areas in DS2 are really short compared to DS1 areas.  But I guess there's more areas in DS2.
Door of Pharos - Ok, short, Rat boss was ok.  Flooded water with movement with a million pharos locks to waste your stones on are dumb.
Brightstone Cove - Just got to the first bonfire on this.  Tomorrow will finish up the last old soul and then I can go to Dragon Castle wooooooo

One thing I realized that's dumb about Dark Souls II is it actually made a goddamn mechanic reliant on multiplayer.  When I play souls games I avoid all that stuff because I'm not interested in PvP one bit.  I don't join convenants, I don't invade anyone and somehow I never seem to get invaded by actual humans and it's always just cpu red phantoms (I get human invaded like 2-3 times per game max).  But I was faq-ing a bit and I saw that while there are an equal number of tree branches for petrified statue people in the game so you can access all the areas they block, there's nowhere near enough Pharos Lockets for all the Pharoh Stone secrets and the way you get more is doing dumb covenant stuff.  Blargh. 

So I got the boss trading weapon blacksmith and I've been saving all these boss souls, but honestly I don't really want any of these weapons for this run.  Thinking about just using all the boss souls and getting a shit ton of souls and gaining a whole lot of levels since that would be more helpful than any of these weapons.  Will wait a bit and see if I need the levels.  I've got enough STR to dual-wield the Large & Great club together (42 STR), so at this point just building VGR/END very slowly.  Leveling has definitely slowed down a ton at this point around SL 120.  When it takes 20k+ souls to gain one level and you're only gaining like 2 levels per area+boss, yeah.  Pretty much done leveling at this point and got my Great Club to +10, so just time to do this last Old Soul and then endgame -> DLC stuff. 

Oh and I really like the concept of bonfire ascetic where you can make specific sections NG+ at any time for farming or replaying them.  I can imagine this can make a real NG+ run pretty impossible since then you're at NG++ for that section, but for a first play it's a neat concept.

[Rufus]

on some weird setting where this is only page 600 and don't even know why

still playing astroboy which just keeps getting better. i'm probably going to read manga for the first time because of this game.

If you do, read Naoki Urasawa's Pluto after. It's Astro Boy fanfiction in a way. Very sentimental (as all of Urasawa's stuff), but pretty good.

[Bebpo]

Dark Souls II

Shrine of Amana - fuck that shit SO HARD.  Only section in the game that's really frustrated me.  As a melee character the running through water while tons of casters shoot homing magic missiles at you why fast little gremlins rush you and follow you everywhere while lance stabby priest chase you with 3 hit slash combos oh and if you're not using a torch and walking REALLY SLOWLY you can walk off the invisible edges into the abyss and instant death.  Eventually through trial & error and learning roll timing to just constantly roll under every magic missile I got through it, but what a piece of shit section.  The boss was pretty terrible too where you can only hit him when he sticks his head out and if he lands an attack it does 90% damage to your HP.  His patterns were fairly easy luckily, but 2 bad luck hits and you're dead.  Or and right in front of the bonfire before him is an equipment melting giant mushroom that you have to deal with each time.  Yuck yuck yuck.  Hopefully it was the worst area in the game.  At Undead Crypt now and only a handful left in the main game and then the DLC.

[demi]

I'm at the end of Dark Souls (1) myself - marathoned it all day yesterday and today. Just doing some last minute achievements. Contemplating going for the 1000 but really can't be bothered to replay the game again.

I think you can be given items, so maybe I can find someone to donate the Boss Souls / Slabs / Boss Weapons I need down the road.

[demi]

Update: I have beat Dark Souls (1) - Solaire FTW

[Bebpo]

Did you do all the DLC stuff too?  Assuming you did, the next step is to read up on all the lore and find out DS1 has a crazy good detailed story.  There was this awesome comic strip essay that told the story with chibi art and stuff that was probably the best of all the story summaries that I found after beating it.  I searched around a bit now to try to find it for you but it's not coming up for some reason and the main Dark Souls Wiki I used last fall is currently down for some weird reason: http://darksouls.wiki.fextralife.com/  I'm currently using the fextralife wiki for Dark Souls II in my run.

[Bebpo]

Ok, yay, found it. 

Read this demi.  You'll get a lot out of it:

https://thedcgamer.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/the-history-of-dark-souls-by-deddan-on-rdarksouls/

[demi]

I didnt play the DLC

[Bebpo]

I got to the end of Vanilla Dark Souls II today.  Only thing I have left are the:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ancient Dragon & Vendrick

[close]

Optional bosses + The 3 DLCs & then the final boss rush.

The last 1/3rd of the game is pretty junk.   Like Dark Souls 1 after Anor Londo is kind of ehh with some weak unmemorable areas like Dinosaur Lava World, Catacombs, Tomb of the First Giant, etc... but Dark Souls 2 ups the ante by adding a lot of stupid shit in the endgame after Dragelic.  I mean Amana Shrine is awful, Undead Crypt is ok but kind of annoying, Alda's House is pretty empty outside annoying golems and acid baths, Dragon's Aerie with LEAPING SUICDE MUMMIES THAT NOW BOMB BREAK ALL YOUR EQUIPMENT is just goddamn awful and I ended up running it naked because of it, Dragon's Shrine's neat looking but hardly an area, The memories with their 5 minute limits and super super short couple of hallways are pretty pointless and then just final boss rush.  Even Gutter/Gulch/Shaded Woods/Earthen Peak/Harvest Valley were kind of weak.  In fact, thinking back on the game I think I mainly just enjoyed the first 1/2 areas like Forest, No-Man's Wharf, Lost Bastille and Iron Keep.

Anyhow I hear the DLCs are the best areas, so looking forward to playing them.

[Bebpo]

I didnt play the DLC

Well it's an alright 5-8 hour extra area with a good boss fight at the end, just when you read the lore stuff it's a big part of the DS1 story.  But you can just read about it, don't need to play it.

[chronovore]

Started Super Meat Boy. There is no way I'll ever finish Super Meat Boy.

Continuing to solo Dead Rising Off the Record, and am always feeling behind the eightball for time.

Playing some Disney Infinity, trying to get the remaining online Achievement before fickle AF Disney pulls the server plugs.

[tiesto]

Started and finished Suikogaiden vol 1, part 1 of a 2 part series detailing Nash, a Harmonian soldier sent to the Jowston/Highland region for recon. It has a lot of Suikoden 2 references, but at its heart it's a visual novel, with few choices, and it's over rather quickly. Still wanted to get it done as part of my series playthrough.

[Bebpo]

Did the optional bosses in Dark Souls II.  Ancient Dragon took me HOURS.  The most difficult boss in the game for sure, although now that I now his pattern, how to bait him, and more importantly THAT I NEED TO TURN HIM 180 SO I DON'T RUN OUT OF ROOM AND GET FLAMED TO DEATH I could probably do it every time but I'm glad its done.  The other optional boss was pretty easy after getting the 5 giant souls and just dodging at the right time.

Did the first of the three DLCs, Shulva, The Sunken City.  By the end was a solid area, good challenge but not too bullshit, the end boss fight Sinh is fantastic and the optional one is intense but doable with 2 NPC phantoms.

[demi]

Against my better judgment I decided to play Lords of the Fallen to see how "Dark Souls" it is


This is not Dark Souls ROFL

[Bebpo]

I was sort of debating doing that after I run out of souls games after DSIII.  Yeah, I feel like it'll just be really lame.

[demi]

I bought it when it was on sale for $9 (a price mistake at the time) on XBL, and it looks short enough to just run through

Using this handy dandy guide

http://www.trueachievements.com/lords-of-the-fallen-walkthrough.htm?page=3

[demi]

Speaking of "Games better than Dark Souls"

Apparently the Kings Field and Shadow Tower games on PS1 jumped up in price while I was sleeping

Kings Field (PS1) - http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=kings%20field%20ps1&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc&_trksid=p2045573.m1684

Shadow Tower (PS1) - http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=shadow%20tower%20ps1&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc&_trksid=p2045573.m1684

Kings Field (PS2) - http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=kings%20field%20ps2&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc&_trksid=p2045573.m1684

[Bebpo]

Went through the second Dark Souls II DLC tonight.  The Iron King.  Stage was very challenging at parts but pretty solid.  I think level design-wise I prefer the Sunken City, but this was good.  Boss fights though, I know everyone apparently loves Fume Knight but I have a feeling whether you "love" a boss has a lot to do with the build types you are rolling.  For my slow ass club motherfucker the fight was really annoying.  I respec'd my character when I focused entirely on dual-clubbing and I don't have the DEX stat to use basically any other weapon; bad idea in retrospec.  The club swings are just slow and stamina draining to the point where the fight was brutal.

When he does the dark magic into the ground shit, that basically kills my character since I have no magic defense at all.  When I finally beat him it was because I killed him so fast he never even got the chance to do the dark magic stuff.  I realized I couldn't dodge dodge dodge his 2-3 short sword swipes -> 1 giant ass sword swing combo because I don't have enough stamina, but I'm SO GODDAMN STRONG and armored like a tank I can just stand in front of him and hit the 2-3 short sword swipes and then just roll dodge the 1 big sword swipe and counter with a dual-clubbing and then dodge next attack and heal, repeat.  Was tough in an unfun way with my character.

Then the optional Alonne fight in the Memory of the Iron King was pretty rough too, but his swings were slower than Fume Knight and sometimes he'd do really dumb stuff like jump stabs which are easy to dodge and give plenty of time to counter after.  Would've been a better fight if you didn't have to go through the section before him each time.

Missed the Iron Passage and Blue Smelter Demon.  Gonna do that next time and the Ice Palace DLC.

*edit* gave the Blue Smelter Demon a shot and took him out after a couple of tries.  Main issue was his giant blue magic blade doing insane damage in the last 1/3rd of the fight, but used a magic def+3 ring and magic def buff item and basically nullified it and was pretty easy.

[Cerveza mas fina]

goddamn uc4 looks amazing

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Dark Souls II

Shrine of Amana - fuck that shit SO HARD.  Only section in the game that's really frustrated me.  As a melee character the running through water while tons of casters shoot homing magic missiles at you why fast little gremlins rush you and follow you everywhere while lance stabby priest chase you with 3 hit slash combos oh and if you're not using a torch and walking REALLY SLOWLY you can walk off the invisible edges into the abyss and instant death.  Eventually through trial & error and learning roll timing to just constantly roll under every magic missile I got through it, but what a piece of shit section.  The boss was pretty terrible too where you can only hit him when he sticks his head out and if he lands an attack it does 90% damage to your HP.  His patterns were fairly easy luckily, but 2 bad luck hits and you're dead.  Or and right in front of the bonfire before him is an equipment melting giant mushroom that you have to deal with each time.  Yuck yuck yuck.  Hopefully it was the worst area in the game.  At Undead Crypt now and only a handful left in the main game and then the DLC.

I haven't played it, but this is apparently the section of the game that got reworked the most in Scholar of the First Sin. It's absolutely horrid in the vanilla version, yeah.

[Joe Molotov]

omg, Bravely Second has a built-in clicker mini-game. What a time to be alive.

[Bebpo]

Dark Souls II - Finished the frozen city DLC.  Was alright, I liked it the least of the 3.  I spent like an hour on the Burnt Ivory King boss with human co-op and we could never win because of the infinitely respawning side guys.  Then I googled it and saw you were supposed to go through the whole area again and unlocking the 3 support knights.  Yawn.  Didn't really care to be forced to go through the area again, would've liked it to be optional exploration.  Once I found the support knights and tried the fight again, it was probably the easiest boss in the 3 DLCs.  Yeah not really a big fan of a boss fight that revolves around an out of fight trick.

Then I tried Frigid Outskirts... :'(  Place was 10x worse than Amana Shrine.  I googled a bit since I can't even survive until the boss with all these respawning horses in the blizzard and apparently it's the most hated area in all of the Souls games  :'(  Watched a youtube of a run through and the re-skin bosses and yeah after an hour of trving, I'm just gonna skip this optional challenge area and go beat the game now.  I feel pretty good that I made it through the challenge areas + bosses of the other two DLCs, but the fact there's no quick way to the boss in Frigid Outskirts and you have to waste a lot of time over and over again to just try to get to the boss fight and then maybe die and do it all again...eh, it's just not worth my time for the completion sense.

[Bebpo]

Dark Souls II - Did the final bosses and finished the story, was an ok end.  I like the game's lore but I think the "story" was more whatever than normal.  Figured out how to get to the bosses in Frigid Outskirts each time and tried fighting them for about an hour.  Got close one time and killed 1 boss and got the other down to maybe 2 hits to go and even ran around for 30 seconds until their bullshit hypermode aura was over...and then they killed me anyhow.  fuck.  After that didn't even get close a few more times and after an hour of attempts just walked away from that one boss.  Too much of a pain in the butt.

Gonna spend some time reading up on the lore of DSII beyond what I already have and then I'll take like a 6 month break and play Dark Souls III after the DSIII DLC comes out.

[Bebpo]

I popped AC Freedom's Cry back in and it's telling me FREE 16 MORE SLAVES TO UNLOCK NEXT STORY MISSION.  Uhhh, I think they're sort of missing the point of dealing with slavery when they make it a bar filling mechanic.   

[Kara]

I popped AC Freedom's Cry back in and it's telling me FREE 16 MORE SLAVES TO UNLOCK NEXT STORY MISSION.  Uhhh, I think they're sort of missing the point of dealing with slavery when they make it a bar filling mechanic.   

Press X to jump in mass grave.

[archie4208]

I've went back to Enter the Gungeon and I'm starting to slowly warm up to it (mostly because I'm sucking less at it).  The game could use a few QOL changes (I'd love to hold down the trigger button and fire at max rate because my fingers get tired after constantly tapping them for 30 minutes).

[Cerveza mas fina]

Thought id be playing UC4 all evening cause the wife is out, but instead I stopped that and am playing tropico, so nice

[Cerveza mas fina]

I popped AC Freedom's Cry back in and it's telling me FREE 16 MORE SLAVES TO UNLOCK NEXT STORY MISSION.  Uhhh, I think they're sort of missing the point of dealing with slavery when they make it a bar filling mechanic.   

the setting is so gorgeous though

[archie4208]

Got my first ever Gungeon win. 

[archie4208]

Dragon Age Inquisition is extremely boring. 

[Bebpo]

Yeah, always looked like it was the zzz type of sandbox gaming.

I popped AC Freedom's Cry back in and it's telling me FREE 16 MORE SLAVES TO UNLOCK NEXT STORY MISSION.  Uhhh, I think they're sort of missing the point of dealing with slavery when they make it a bar filling mechanic.   

the setting is so gorgeous though

Yeah, once I hit the seas pretty much everything is forgiven.

It is pretty telling how near-unplayable the old AC games are after Unity's change to the controls.  Going back to AC4 the character feels really slow and heavy and movement traversal just sucks going in the wrong direction and getting caught on stuff.  If AC4: FC didn't have the boat stuff, it'd be hard to say it's worth sticking with.  I tried Rogue once and felt the same way about the movement.  While I have major issues with Unity and don't like it overall, the movement improvements are just night & day.  At some point I'll get around to playing Syndicate and I look forward to the smooth controls it will bring. 

Also one thing that I'm torn on in Freedom's Cry is when sailing there's no singing.  Like I get because FC is a lot more serious content about taking down slave ships and stuff it might've not fit, but that was straight up my favorite part of sailing in AC4 was all the great shanties while riding the waves.  Now the silence while sailing just feels empty.  Hopefully if I ever get to playing AC Rogue the singing is back while sailing.

[Bebpo]

Wow, finished ACIV Freedom Cry really quick.  The story is another one of the AC storylines that jump around and you watch a cutscene, walk out a door, turn around and enter the door again and now there's a cutscene acting like it's months later; so basically it's a mess like all these AC stories.  Otherwise there's some good powerful moments.  There's one scene where you have to save everyone on a sinking slave ship that's been shot down by the french owners as they escape, and then escape from the ship without drowning.  That and the aftermath is powerful stuff.  Some of the music is really good too and there's a few great ship battles in raging storms with fantastic music playing.

But overall the gameplay...man, it sucks!  80% of the missions are on foot in one small town despite having a big ocean and continents/islands to sail around.  There are more shitty eavesdropping missions than there are ship missions wtf.  Basically it doesn't use ACIV engine's strength almost at all and focuses on terrible on foot missions that highlight some of the worst AC gameplay there is.  Instant-fail conditions and stuff.  Was either not fun, annoying, or frustrating 75% of the time.  But the setting was unique and I wanted to see the story play out so I pushed through it.  AC is so hit or miss on decent enjoyable gameplay.  I'd like to blanket statement that all AC on foot gameplay and mission design is bad, but then every few games they'll make a good one, so there are definitely some good talented designers somewhere in the 1,000s of people who make yearly AC and you just gotta get lucky and land those people.  I have a feeling no one gets fired at AC besides Patrice, so the bad designers probably keep their jobs and that's why we keep getting bad design every few games as well :|

Now just gotta decide whether to play AC:U DLC Dead kings, AC Rogue or AC Syndicate the next time I get an itch to play an Assassin's Creed game.  Oh and I still need to try the China/India 2.5d ones at some point.

[eleuin]

Prologue of Metal Gear Solid V was nonsensical metal gear as fuck but I'm really enjoying an overall better peace walker

[CatsCatsCats]

Decided to preorder the new South Park game so I'm playing through Stick of Truth for the first time

[demi]

Its so good

[chronovore]

XCOM: Enemy Unbeknownst is free with Gold, so I downloaded it. I'm trying to figure out how it's 7.1GB and the only thing I can think of is HD prerendered video with a shit codec. There is no way this game should be that large. HDD-getting-full-again complaints aside, this is a well-designed UI and plenty tense. I'm playing on Easy because I have no desire to get into high blood pressure fits and have a fucking stroke, because I can tell already that is a place this game would happily take me.

[Positive Touch]

finished Shenmue 2 and am really in a Dreamcast mood right now. i looked at old games on amazon and like every other used game nowadays they're like 20 bucks and up for most anything good. then i remembered that hilariously Dreamcast had fuck all for piracy protection, so basically I'm about to party like it's 1999 in here. soon as i find me some burnable cds its time to fuckin PARTY

[Positive Touch]

also


You hit the man in the back
You fight the leather attack
You hit the man in the back
Because I'm down with drinking

[demi]

Played the new Platinum Turtles game for about 2 levels before I stuffed it back in the envelope.

[CatsCatsCats]

I lost my shit doing the Simon says game on the visitor's ship

[Bebpo]

Tried playing Dead Rising 2 Off the Record and wasn't really feeling it after an hour.  I think DR3 made some improvements that make it tough going back, or just other games have.  Frank moves REALLY slow at the start, like it's so slow the game isn't fun.  I know when I get more stat points into speed it'll be better, but it's painful at the start.  Also the survivors are awful here.  I read that OTR is "a tougher, more challenging version of DR2" and that survivors are less able to survive.  But in the first hour I had to restart a checkpoint 3 times just to try to get a single survivor, armed with a weapon, across one mall section since she would get grabbed every 10 seconds and I've have to keep running back and freeing her.  Again, not fun. 

On top of that, OTR is different from what I thought it was.  I thought it was a DR2.5, where they used the original map and assets and created a new story with completely different bosses, survivors, missions.  But reading a little on it, I found out it's literally just DR2 with different cutscenes for Frank and a couple more weapons, a new little area and like 1 new psychopath.  I have zero interest in replaying DR2 so eh, not gonna bother.  Will just look forward to DR4.

On the plus side I do like the camera PP system being back and it makes me look forward to DR4 since I'm sure it'll be back as well since it's Frank again.  Taking pictures is always fun.  But for me the fun of Dead Rising games are exploring the map, finding all the psychopaths, doing the various missions and getting all the cool weapon combos (which since the combo system's introduction basically makes all non-combo weapons pretty much worthless).

Also I was thinking that they should tie-in Dead Rising and Resident Evil's canon at this point since they're both Capcom zombie series and it'd be neat if there was like cross-over stuff.

[Bebpo]

Playing Beyond and whoo boy, now I see why it gets the flak it does.  Writing aside (often really awkward, especially when you make choices and the rest of the scene reflects something totally different), the main issue that is a REALLY BIG issue is the controls are fucking terrible.  Like the worst part of Farenheigt/Indigo was the stupid simon says matrix fighting at the end, Heavy Rain had very little action and was more a walk around investigate adventure game and the controls weren't a big issue from what I recall, but here, in Beyond Cage is trying to make an ACTION GAME out of these contextual controls and all of the fighting, driving, running, shooting etc... controls like total shit and it's some of the worst QTE stuff I've seen in a long time.  The walk around and interact with stuff part is fine, but story-wise those tend to be the more boring parts. 

The story is kind of interesting and the game looks really nice, so I'm definitely on board to see it through, but yeah I get the hate.  I really hope Detroit has very minimal action and is more just a standard adventure puzzle game.  Action just does not work with these adventure game-ish control schemes.

[chronovore]

Tried playing Dead Rising 2 Off the Record and wasn't really feeling it after an hour.  I think DR3 made some improvements that make it tough going back, or just other games have.  Frank moves REALLY slow at the start, like it's so slow the game isn't fun.  I know when I get more stat points into speed it'll be better, but it's painful at the start.  Also the survivors are awful here.  I read that OTR is "a tougher, more challenging version of DR2" and that survivors are less able to survive.  But in the first hour I had to restart a checkpoint 3 times just to try to get a single survivor, armed with a weapon, across one mall section since she would get grabbed every 10 seconds and I've have to keep running back and freeing her.  Again, not fun. 

On top of that, OTR is different from what I thought it was.  I thought it was a DR2.5, where they used the original map and assets and created a new story with completely different bosses, survivors, missions.  But reading a little on it, I found out it's literally just DR2 with different cutscenes for Frank and a couple more weapons, a new little area and like 1 new psychopath.  I have zero interest in replaying DR2 so eh, not gonna bother.  Will just look forward to DR4.

On the plus side I do like the camera PP system being back and it makes me look forward to DR4 since I'm sure it'll be back as well since it's Frank again.  Taking pictures is always fun.  But for me the fun of Dead Rising games are exploring the map, finding all the psychopaths, doing the various missions and getting all the cool weapon combos (which since the combo system's introduction basically makes all non-combo weapons pretty much worthless).

Also I was thinking that they should tie-in Dead Rising and Resident Evil's canon at this point since they're both Capcom zombie series and it'd be neat if there was like cross-over stuff.

Wow, I'm surprised at how different our experiences have been with DR:OTR. I do think the survivors are substantially less durable than in DR2 with Chuck, but I have still had decent luck with them when I give them shotguns. I've lost a few Survivors on this run, but I can't be bothered going back to re-do them. The time constraints are pretty much keeping me on my toes to the point where I'm always tense when scavenging. So far there's an important Psycho change on the first day, and I'm not sure how many more changes there will be. I'm digging it.

[Bebpo]

I think the biggest part of it is just finding out that it's essentially just DR2 director's cut edition.  See the worst part of every DR game is when you're low level.  You're slow, you don't have access to good weapons, you're missing essential moves.  But that's when you explore and feel out the map.  Then once you're decent level the rest of the game is fun and when you replay it over and over to get the other endings and do all the stuff you missed you're doing it at high level where it's fun.

I'm ok with starting at lvl.1 and working my way back up again in a new game where it's fresh.  But doing the grind back from lvl.1 just to re-experience DR2 is simply not that enticing for me.  Also I know you said you were playing it co-op and that always makes it a lot more fun.  I did most of DR2 original in co-op with duckroll and had a great time.  Now I'm playing OTR solo and the start is just kind of slow and hard and boring.

*edit* ok played some more and it's growing on me again, as I gain some levels and get combo weapons.  Still kind of have this sad feel that there's not gonna be any new combo stuff to look forward to and even the stuff I'm used to in DR3 isn't here.  I feel like DR since they keep adding more to the formula is a game where it's easier to go forward than go back.

[qq more]

also


You hit the man in the back
You fight the leather attack
You hit the man in the back
Because I'm down with drinking

Everywhere I go today, I see people talking about Shenmue.

Since I have my CRT, I think I'll start playing that game again after I'm done with a few games.

[Positive Touch]

i wish i would have remembered Dreamcast was so easy to pirate bc i would have played the Japanese Shenmues with subs instead of having to listen to the shitty English dubs