I agree with almost everything SevenSpirits has said:
a) The world design is fantastic. I have included a panorama screenshot from the first larger area of the game:
Almost every place you see you will visit later in the game, which gives the great feeling of travelling through a coherent world.
b) Indeed, there are very few upgrade materials available in the early game. This means you should carefully choose your first major weapon because after upgrading you will be stuck with it for a while - or do less damage with another not upgraded weapon.
c) Difficulty is much more balanced than SOTFS (lol@early Pursuer boss to troll new players ). The most difficult non-boss enemies are often not blocking the main path but are usually a bit offside guarding areas with certain goodies, so most of the time it's sufficient to beat them once. Bonfires so far are very nicely placed.
d) Amazing graphics: Just watch the fire effects on max settings in this bossfight. It's close to a cinematic experience. (MAJOR SPOILER obviously):
I finally finished the game - turns out a simple strength build is much easier to play than a sorcerer ( Dark Sword).
IMHO Dark Souls 3 is the best Souls game so far. At the moment there are still plenty of players ready to be summoned should you get stuck at a certain boss or for PVP duels, so if you are still on the fence about buying the game, I can wholeheartedly recommend it.
I just finished it. Very good game, agree it's the best of them. The late areas retained the strength of the earlier ones and the bosses only got better. Also, holy shit, I think it's harder than DS1 and DS2 by a lot.
The main flaw that stood out to me was the very limited dialog capabilities of the various NPCs. They keep repeating the same line of dialog that doesn't make any sense for them to repeat, for a long time. And there are next to no reactions by them to you making progress through the game.
Some spoilery comments follow.
Yhorm the giant was complete BS. I looked up his trick online and I'm glad I did. Fighting him without it was not hard but it was super boring. (What happened to me was that I picked up the item in the room immediately, but the prompt showing me what I got never showed up because I guess I pressed the button twice. So I didn't see what it was and then I forgot about it before actually going back to fight the giant, since I assumed he was a later game boss because I did no damage to him. Even after reading online to use that weapon though, I would not have figured out that holding down L2 for a really long time would do something special, when just pressing L2 already did something special.) Even worse though, there was just nothing challenging about him at all. With only a little bit of experience it's very easy to never get hit by his attacks.
I totally cheesed Oceiros. He got stuck behind a pillar when he entered his second phase, the very first time I fought him, and I just took advantage by killing him with arrows. Hehehe. Every other boss took me several tries.
I summoned help for Dragonslayer Armor and the final boss because I was not enjoying them that much and wanted to be done. Other than summoning a player for the final boss, I played offline.
Pontiff Sulyvahn was probably my favorite boss. Fume Knight from DS2, transforming into this awesome guy who has a shadow that copies his moves in the future. So cool! Dancer was a great fight too.
I have no idea what happened to all my NPCs. Greirat seems to have gotten lost in Irythill, and I couldn't find him. Crestfallen warrior just disappeared wordlessly. Darkmoon lady and Finger man disappeared too. Pilgrim guy died. Anri seems to be lying dead in the darkmoon tomb for unknown reasons (I found her sword), and her companion apparently got lost in the catacombs. Never met onionbro again after he went to sleep after fighting the demon. I guess I will look this up.
I am now almost finished with my second playthrough, this time I went for a "Solaire build" with Strength/Faith.
In all honesty, faith is pretty underwhelming. There is exactly one gamechanger miracle which is "Tears of Denial" (resurrects you with 1 HP after death).
Other than two useful weapon buffs and one general buff, there are ~10 different heal spells, which are basically unnecessary in PVE because you hardly ran out of Estus and in case you do (certain boss fights) the casting time is usually too long anyway.
I feel FROM really screwed casters in DS3. One example:
My Dark Sword+10 has an AR of ~400 with 40 Strength. Today I found the end game miracle "Divine Pillars of Light" (shortly before the Prince bossfight).
My character has 35 Faith, yet I was unable to kill three rats in the Undead Village with it. This thing has a startup time of around 3 seconds - which gets you killed almost half of the time. Once it starts channeling, a pillar dealt around 130 damage, but the channeling stops if you take any damage - so even if a rat pokes you.
I also briefly tried a Sorcerer and couldn't believe how crappy the caster playstyle is. General consensus on the forums is that you need an amount of ~50 Intelligence until sorceries start dealing some serious damage. But if you spend some points to boost your HP, the game is 2/3 over by that point.
On this playthrough, I am doing all bossfights on my own:
- Even though he is considered an easy boss I had huge problems with the Crystal Sage. It took me probably 20 tries until I killed him. The clones would just deal massive damage and once the Sage was low he strangely went berserk more than once and killed me from 80 to 0 with a combo...
- Agree that Pontiff Sulyvahn is an awesome fight with great graphics - took me many tries, though.
- Champion Gundyr was awesome as well, no time to heal or do anything. I was so startled when I stood behind him and he did a backward kick...
- Aldrich is a real b*itch, I died so many times to the arrows in phase 2, it was not even funny. I know I am supposed to run, but if you run out of stamina you lose at least half your health. I only managed to kill him, because on one try he used arrows in phase one only.
- Strangely, I had no problems with Dragonslayer armor, killed him twice on the first try. I believe if you use an upgraded Greatshield (Black Iron Greatshield) it makes the fight much easier, since you don't have to dodge very often. I just blocked most of his hits and healed the damage with Estus.
- Still have to kill the two princes and the "Nameless King". So far I am getting slaughtered in phase 2.
The area I hate the most is the "Smouldering Lake". I still can't find my way around and if you die to the freaking "Knight Slayer Tsorig" (because you want his Sword and Shield), you have to fight through all the mobs again...
Having read some criticism of the game, apparently:
* Poise doesn't do anything. Like, literally the only thing it does is that if you have more than zero of it, your huge weapons' attacks can have hyper-armor. But beyond that it does absolutely nothing. Boo.
* Basic swords (not great- ones) are pretty overpowered compared to everything else.
Finished my 2nd run and finally beat all bosses on my own.
Lorian & Lothric: For me the hardest boss in the game. I needed about 30 tries to beat the encounter. I am surprisingly bad at dodging the white "Sword Lazor of Doom".
Nameless King: Would probably be even harder, but I had made the wise decision to trade the Dragonslayer Armor's soul for the Dragonslayer Greatshield, which features 100% physical reduction as well as 95% lightning reduction and makes the fight a lot easier. I had the most problems with the camera in phase 1, holy cow that was annoying...
Soul of Cinder: If you have a shield with decent fire resist, it's no that hard. I took a few tries until a learned to avoid the 5-hit combo and the grab in phase 2, but then it was not that difficult.
I felt a strong urge to necro this thread for a few reasons. First off, a completely crazy person recently pulled off arguably one of the most impressive gaming feats ever in playing all 5 Soulsborne games to completion in a row without taking a single hit of damage, streamed live.
I'm in awe. In related news, all these years later I'm finally playing Dark Souls for the first time. I finally got past Ornstein and Smough the other night. Granted, I cracked and did it with help rather than solo, but life was too short trying to win that fight solo with no ranged attacks or OP equipment.
(March 26th, 2019, 13:46)scooter Wrote: I felt a strong urge to necro this thread for a few reasons. First off, a completely crazy person recently pulled off arguably one of the most impressive gaming feats...
Indeed, it sounds completely crazy. If you have ever played one of the 5 games in question, I would assume one would be sceptical about finishing even one game without getting hit, let alone all 5 in a row.
At the same time, I wonder how healthy this sort of livestreamed 16-hour playthrough is. I've heard of one time charity gaming marathons, but this repeated challenge seems rather extreme.
Quote:In related news, all these years later I'm finally playing Dark Souls for the first time. I finally got past Ornstein and Smough the other night. Granted, I cracked and did it with help rather than solo, but life was too short trying to win that fight solo with no ranged attacks or OP equipment.
What do you mean, life is too short? Happy Hob just played 16 hours of Souls games without getting hit once and you can't even manage to beat Ornstein and Smough solo???
Git gud!!!!!11111
Nah, just kidding, sometimes a bit of "jolly cooperation" is definitely in order.
I actually think I quit the game in the freaking Giant Tomb where I couldn't see a darn thing, but I remember being disappointed by O&S earlier since I somehow managed a kill after 3 tries or so and had expected them to be incredible difficult (IIRC the key was to burn Ornstein down quickly).
Then again, I have a tendency to fail on supposedly easy bosses, so I guess nobody's perfect when it comes to Dark Souls (well, except Hob ).
). The most difficult non-boss enemies are often not blocking the main path but are usually a bit offside guarding areas with certain goodies, so most of the time it's sufficient to beat them once. Bonfires so far are very nicely placed.
(
Dark Sword).
