[dakazu]

I found some concept art from the famitsu website.

The protagonist

Landscapes


Weapons and Armor

Enemies

[dakazu]

New trailer is out and I'm starting to get hyped up



Trailer reveals a couple of things

* Confirms the use of bonfires in this game
* Environments from the trailer include...
-a castle by the sea
-undead burg like area with trees growing through it
-a castle hallway with paintings
-area that looks just like Sanctuary Garden from Dark Souls 1 DLC
-a winter time Castle town
-An underground mine
-A forest of dead trees
-A castle archway gate
-Interior main staircase
-small tunnels akin to Stonefang Tunnel from Demon's Souls
-Nighttime ruins in a forest
-Interior lit up by 2 flaming pyres
-Castle on the mountain side
* Character movement looks very similar to Dark Souls. For the majority of the trailer he walks normally but if you look at 0:48 the player clearly has his shield raised.
* You can see the player wielding a sword, great sword, and 1 handed axe in the trailer but at 0:43 he's dual wielding swords.
* You notice a few enemies in the trailer, including...
-Horse drawn chariot rushing the player at 0:47
-Split second flash of a 2 horned demon at 0:54
-Flying dragon like creatures at 0:59
* Dead soldier bodies laying to the side of the mine tunnel
* Giant Skeleton of a dragon lying on the main staircase

That's all I noticed for now. Also dig the music in the trailer.

[CrossXhunteR]

IGN actually has a video with a few minutes of gameplay. Man does this game sure look like Dark Souls.

[dakazu]

Saw the IGN video.

I dig the idea of having enemies react to your strategies. I'll laugh if they create enemy AI that reacts to players trying to cheese the game systems for easy kills aka: grinding at the forest sanctuary.


I noticed that the player cycled between 3 weapons on the fly at 3:10(sword, axe, great sword). Hopefully means that you can preset multiple weapons for multiple encounters

There 2 small slots under the left hand inv space. I wonder what those are for. The one to the right of the bottom item slot seems to show another item. It doesn't look like slots for weapons because a bow should have appeared there before they switched from the shield. I don't think it's a magic slot either because that should be by the top slot.

LOL at the insta death on the wyvern bridge.

Looks like that chariot is a boss called Silver Chariot and that location in the trailer is a torture chamber/jail.

[Jenn04]

I dig the idea of having enemies react to your strategies. I'll laugh if they create enemy AI that reacts to players trying to cheese the game systems for easy kills aka: grinding at the forest sanctuary.

lol NO! That'd be BAD! I hate it when games try to implement systems like that, they always figure me out ...oh man I'm screwed.

I noticed that the player cycled between 3 weapons on the fly at 3:10(sword, axe, great sword). Hopefully means that you can preset multiple weapons for multiple encounters.

Love this though; it was annoying having to run away from battles to go into the menus all the time.

This game's a day one purchase for sure - very excited for it.

[dakazu]

Here's the IGN video

[dakazu]

E3 video shows off some character builds. I'm hoping they don't limit you to preset builds so I can build my own character. Everything looks pretty standard but the new dual wield sword guy shows that they'll be a real advantage in double fisting weapons.

[dakazu]

WANT NOW

[Jenn04]

SOON!

[dakazu]

Fate is awesome sometimes.

Work was canceled for Tuesday, March 11, 2014.

I'm going to pickup my copy at midnight and play the shit out of it all day tomorrow.

[LiQuid]

Why not play some Dota tho?

[dakazu]

Welp

Having some strange error message with my firmware update so I'm unable to sign into my PSN. Tried using a flash drive to update but it still didn't work. After an hour I gave up and just started offline.

So far the game is great. They've tweaked some animation priority so I'll have to adjust how I play. Currently, I find fast rolling away is the way to go. Seems like they've increased the frames of invincibility so even if you start taking hits you can roll away safely and save health.

Picked the Bandit class so I would start with a bow, but then I didn't have a shield. Found one once I got past the intro area so all is good. Love 3rd weapon/shield spot. They've upped the items to 10 slots as well. The menus are stat screens are still kinda clunky but you can hit select to bring up a help icon that actually explains everything clearly.

Jumping is easier then DS1. Moving it to L3 is fine and the jump itself isn't as vertical and hard to aim.

Kinda interesting how they've added consumable health items again like from Demon's Souls. Problem is that they SLOWLY regen your health over a long period of time. Not sure if Estus Flasks will work the same way because I haven't found any yet.

After only fighting for 1hr, I got a warning that my Axe was down to 30% durability. Looks like they've messed around with the settings to make things break faster. Haven't found anyone to fix my stuff or even level up but luckily I've found other weapons so I switched to a short sword.

Will report back with more later. I'm kinda tempted to roll a magician to see how the magic works.

[dakazu]

Not a fan of the new animation priority. You have to be REALLY careful about breaking stamina. Even blocking seems to be less effective(though it could be because my STR is shit).

[dakazu]

Holy shit this new hollow handicap is worse then Demon's Souls

Edit: Nope, it's exactly the same and still sucks a butt

[dakazu]

I wish I wasn't so busy so I could play this game more

Last night I rolled a knight and the poise kinda makes a difference. Blocking in this game is strange. The previous games always had a certain weight to the blocks that felt satisfying but this game I barely feel the blocking.

[dakazu]

Hey stupids, stop spamming Ballista attacks when fighting the Pursuer because it does FRIENDLY FIRE

[dakazu]

Ok, time for a big update.

I ended up having to restore my PS3 back to factory default so I could finally update my firmware.

I rerolled a sorcerror and haven't looked back. Magic is definitely easy mode in this game. Not quite as broken as Demons' souls, but still really powerful. Took a while to get my strength up to 10 though, and after buying the eagle kite shield my blocking finally feels better. Stability and poise factor a lot into how well you block attacks and the eagle shield feels like a proper one. Too bad there are still problems with the extra frames of animations when raising your shield. It makes it really hard to block out of enemy combos. Rolling will always work. Hopefully I'll make it to STR 20 and be rocking a heavy shield.

Once I got my game online it's been way easier. Seems like a lot of boss encounters are designed to take advantage of multiplayer. In fact, the entire game seems to be much more difficult to solo.

Hoping to kill this boss

Spoiler: show

penetrator

and farm him for levels, but stupid teammates keep killing each other with ballistas. Crappy thing is that unless we're successful, I don't get the charges on my spells back and it wastes time.

Hopefully I'll beat him for myself and then I can move on to Hiedi's Tower

[dakazu]

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. Too busy enjoying the game

My character is now almost level 90. Rebuilt my long range god with spells, arrows, light armor and heavy shield. 20 STR for the heavy shields and 18 DEX to cover most normal weapons. Currently I'm pumping lots of points in INT so I'll have access to the best spells. Raising my ADP and using a shield with 100% phys block has helped a lot. Too bad most enemies have a lock on combo that is still easier to dodge then block Otherwise it's not that bad to deal with. I feel like they've countered magic users by having large mobs of enemies attack at once. No more kiting of 1 enemy at a time

I'm using a default staff +3 and a fire long sword +6 as my main weapons. Was using a halbard for a while but switched it out for a mace. Need to find an ember so I can build a good magic scaling weapon and take advantage of my high INT.

Been playing a lot of multiplayer and loving it. It's so much fun to join other people and fight bosses or show them secrets in a level. I even tackled an area that has a covenant defending it. PVP is ok. I win some, lose some. Not turning off my console like before because I'll get flagged for further invasion

I'll update my thoughts on the different environments in a later post. In general I really love all the areas I've been to.

[kenzo]

This thread is almost as lonely as me & the anime thread.

[darfox8]

Or me and my stream thread.

[dakazu]

Or Ko in the FF14 thread?

I'm posting here to have a record of my thoughts on the game at launch. I went back and read through my oddessy of DS1 recently and thought it was hilariously stupid.

[LiQuid]

Those are all lonely ass threads

[kenzo]

Those are all lonely ass threads

Yeah but none of them have anything on the "Whatcha Been Listening To?" thread.

[Konanda]

Or Ko in the FF14 thread?

Jen and Rodney post on the forums once in a blue moon and Voltic is only vaguely aware that this forum exists/has never been to it. The people who were playing it before from here quit for the moment because money or something and the rest of the FC is people who have no idea about the Geekbox. I also need to update the OP in that thread.

[CrossXhunteR]

Watched about 4 minutes of the Quick Look for the PC version. The frame rate looks too smooth. Need to bust that down to like 28 fps or something for that authentic Dark Souls experience.

[dakazu]

Running through the Gutter is the most fun I've ever had in a Souls game.

[dakazu]

3/4 Primordial bonfires lit! 1 more to go! Bosses I'm this game are pretty easy compared to previous games. Coop helps a lot. I'm going to do some Bellfry Covenant PvP for Titanite chunks.

I might use one of my respec items to move some points into faith so I can use Hexes. They seem really powerful.

[dakazu]

[dakazu]

Now that my PC version is up and running I'll be streaming my dex build on my twitch channel

http://www.twitch.tv/dakazu

[darfox8]

I saw the first installment of the playthrough. At first I wasn't going to watch because it'd prevent me from having a pure experience but I've always walked the Babies Souls path why stop now. Larry Butz was lulz.