Dark Souls Review

[Boro]

Actually, I knew it wrong. What humanity scales with are chaos weapons, not even pyromancies. Pyromancies only scale with the upgrade level of your flame. Yay. Also, note that pyromancies are fire damage, and there is an equivalent in this game to "act 4" of Diablo 2, with lots of fire resistances.

As for death, sorry for the misunderstanding on my part, I'm not familiar with CYOA stuff. Although, you could say I'm the cause of all of them, since I inspired you to get started with this "choose your own deaths adventure".  I watched a playthrough of two characters narrated through a hungarian text to speech device and copious editing, which I enjoyed immensely, but that was enough for me of the first game.

Regarding counterintuitive, I'd say its something from the early time of of games, heck even Diablo 2 had it with some mechanics, like the old pindle portal or crushing blow where you had to look for either the arreat summit / chaos sanctuary or look up other players' experiences. Or black deaths and shrines in diablo 1. Demon's/Dark/Blood/Ninja/Elden Souls are really just a throwback to those days of design.

Good thing it's easy for you to play offline. You can probably imagine how bad the multiplayer is for the PC, with hacks as bad as diablo 1's days or worse.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Actually, I knew it wrong. What humanity scales with are chaos weapons, not even pyromancies. Pyromancies only scale with the upgrade level of your flame. Yay. Also, note that pyromancies are fire damage, and there is an equivalent in this game to "act 4" of Diablo 2, with lots of fire resistances.

As for death, sorry for the misunderstanding on my part, I'm not familiar with CYOA stuff. Although, you could say I'm the cause of all of them, since I inspired you to get started with this "choose your own deaths adventure".  I watched a playthrough of two characters narrated through a hungarian text to speech device and copious editing, which I enjoyed immensely, but that was enough for me of the first game.

Good thing it's easy for you to play offline. You can probably imagine how bad the multiplayer is for the PC, with hacks as bad as diablo 1's days or worse.

If From Software weren't so sadistic, they'd put the fire resistant enemies between Fireball and Laurentius!  I've no experience with Diablo.  The closest I've come is Borderlands and Torchlight 2.  I know there's an "indictment" system in Dark Souls to deal with invaders, but is there any punishment for hacking on PC? 


You obviously haven't read my Choose Your Own Adventure thread and have a lot of catching up to do.  It's got a dolphin drill sergeant, coconuts falling on my head, and much more!  Dark Souls's traps for new players remind me a lot of those books. 


Are you Hungarian?  I can't think of any other reason to listen to Dark Souls 1 via Hungarian text-to-speech. . .


Back to the game. . .


In my inventory, I found some items called Transient Curse, which would allow me to fight the ghosts in New Londo Ruins.  Several attempts later were unsuccessful.  There were many ghosts, their attacks could hit hard, and Transient Curses expired at the worst moments.  It would have been better if From Software had simply made it a key item gained after a boss.  Can you make a "walking dead" save file like in Sierra adventure games if you use them all up before completing this dungeon?  At least Pyromancer managed to kick a ladder down somewhere.


The prisoner from before gave me a useless (?) Sunlight Medal as a reward.  Going through Darkroot Garden was more successful until encountering Moonlight Butterfly.  This bug flew out of range of my attacks, launched magical attacks that penetrated shield blocks, and only rarely landed so I could attack.  Darkroot Basin had ice golems and a door that wouldn't open to the castle.


While on the street level of Undead Burg, I found the other side of the sewer door, so I could come back to Firelink Shrine easily.  There was also a merchant who sold items like Homeward Bone, status cures, and Transient Curses.


Capra Demon destroyed Pyromancer several more times until I upgraded my armor and gained several levels.  Even then the fight was still horrible because of the camera angles.  (That's why I'm never trying this game with a low level!  Dark Souls mechanics aren't as polished as in Dead Cells.)  Pyromancer swung his gargoyle tail axe and cast several Fireballs to finish the fight.  All Estus Flask charges were gone by the end, and at least a couple of Fireballs missed despite lock-on.  Capra Demon surrendered a Key to Depths upon dying, as well as a free Homeward Bone.


Level 39

Vitality:  28
Attunement:  19
Endurance:  12
Strength:  17
Dexterity:  15
Resistance:  13
Intelligence:  10
Faith:  8
Humanity:  3

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

In today's Dark Souls session, some knights were gathered around a praying woman in Firelink Shrine.  They weren't interested in Pyromancer.  Near the Capra Demon arena was the door to the Depths.  Enemies were suspiciously easy to kill at first, mostly just zombies with swords and torches that died in one hit to axe swings.  Then I died to a tag-team "wolf" and "butcher" combo.  (From a distance, I thought the "butcher" enemy was an NPC I could talk to.  Oops!)


After killing the butcher, Pyromancer found a Large Ember to give to the Undead Parish blacksmith.  Unfortunately, I didn't have a Large Titanite Shard for  my axe.  Some annoying camera angles almost cost me the battle with another butcher, but Estus Flask saved Pyromancer.


Laurentius was trapped in a corner filled with barrels.  Because I was paranoid that the axe would kill him rather than freeing him, I dodge rolled instead.  After backtracking to Firelink Shrine, I told him that I wouldn't be offended by Pyromancy.  He sold upgrades to the Pyromancy "glove", as well as new spells!  After much time spent fighting the safe enemies at Undead Parish, I upgraded Pyromancy Flame to +5 and bought Combustion, Iron Flesh, and Fire Orb.  Flash Sweat sounds like it would be useful for getting past the dragon on the bridge, but I didn't buy that yet.  Was Combustion originally meant to come earlier in the game during development?  It's a melee spell with 16 uses.


With my new spell charges, Pyromancer returned to Moonlight Butterfly and singed its wings with Fireballs from a distance.  When it landed, Pyromancer roasted it with Fire Orbs.  Dodge rolls helped avoid some of Moonlight Butterfly's projectiles, but my higher level reduced damage from the previous encounter.  Good thing Dark Souls gives you a defense boost every time you level up! 


The boss dropped Soul of the Moonlight Butterfly, which can either give you more souls or a special weapon.  Chances are the souls are more useful for this character, unless the weapon is an axe.  So far it's still in my inventory.  A small tower near the Moonlight Butterfly's bridge had the item to create divine weapons, a key to the watchtower basement (?) and a Homeward Bone.  (I think I accidentally deleted the Switch screenshot showing these prizes.)


Level 41

Vitality:  28
Attunement:  19
Endurance:  12
Strength:  17
Dexterity:  17
Resistance:  13
Intelligence:  10
Faith:  8
Humanity:  4


Dexterity gives me more physical attack points than Strength right now, and I need a backup plan for fire-resistant enemies.

[Boro]

here is the hungarian playthrough's first vid, has subtitles you can auto-translate. its mostly serviceabée.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RpyWQ40C08o

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Years ago, I had played through 95% of Dark Souls 2 and then just forgot about it. I picked it up yesterday on a whim and finished it. The game was still quite enjoyable, but part of what I loved about DS1 was how interconnected the map turned out to be once you started exploring. I did not get that same sense of cohesive level design in DS2. The bosses were also inferior I think.

I also had played about 20 hours of DS3 years ago and forgotten about it, so I'll probably go dust that off too.

I kind of want to finish DS3 before I catch Elden Ring on sale and drop 100 hours into it.

[Boro]

elden ring is more interconnected, due to being open world. Dark Souls 3 is perhaps the most linear of them all, not even a pretense of choosing in which order you do things.