Walter said:
When I first played the looking glass knight in NG , he only summoned 1 NPC . After a bonfire ascetic he summoned 2 players to the fight. Seemed overall harder.
The pursuer felt harder too. Just my impressions.
Dark Souls II
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When I first played the looking glass knight in NG , he only summoned 1 NPC . After a bonfire ascetic he summoned 2 players to the fight. Seemed overall harder.
The pursuer felt harder too. Just my impressions.
The bosses will definitely be harder with increased bonfire intensity, but what you are describing is not the NG+ effect.
It is true that all enemies + bosses do more damage, and you do less damage, as the bonfire intensity of that area increases. (both NG+ and ascetics increase bonfire intensities) but there are other things such as new boss mechanics (on some bosses) , new enemies and new enemy placements in the entire area, and merchants selling new stuff, that only happens in ng+ (or in the case of at least 2 merchants ng++ is required).
The enemy drop rate greatly increased for me as well on each playthrough, but I don't know if that's bonfire intensity related or a ng+ specific convention.
Also, as I mentioned earlier, with NG+ you get a lot more coop and pvp (especially pvp since everyone can do coop from early on even in NG). If you fight the looking glass knight on ng+ or higher when the game is still relatively popular, chances are very very high that it won't be NPCs he's summoning.
It is true that all enemies + bosses do more damage, and you do less damage, as the bonfire intensity of that area increases. (both NG+ and ascetics increase bonfire intensities) but there are other things such as new boss mechanics (on some bosses) , new enemies and new enemy placements in the entire area, and merchants selling new stuff, that only happens in ng+ (or in the case of at least 2 merchants ng++ is required).
The enemy drop rate greatly increased for me as well on each playthrough, but I don't know if that's bonfire intensity related or a ng+ specific convention.
Also, as I mentioned earlier, with NG+ you get a lot more coop and pvp (especially pvp since everyone can do coop from early on even in NG). If you fight the looking glass knight on ng+ or higher when the game is still relatively popular, chances are very very high that it won't be NPCs he's summoning.
Kompozinaut
Sylph Sword
Jaze1618 said:
I thought I noticed this as well, but I'm not so convinced. I've had some pretty amazing drops on a single character in NG. It might just be a nice RNG. I also only have one character outside of NG at the moment (NG++).
Kompozinaut
Sylph Sword
Power went out last night so I got to thinkin' about some Fashion Souls I wanted to try out. Got a good one to share with the forum. It's by no means perfect but...
My attempt at the DkS2 version of Skull Knight. I would have used the visible Aurous chest piece for the spikes around the helmet, but I don't have it, nor do I have the desire to farm that set and the invisible version doesn't do the image justice.
Also, what's this?!
It appears Skull Knight has prepared the Yobimizu no Tsurugi for God Hand slaying action!
Anyway, sorry for the terrible quality pictures. I'm using my camera phone because I don't have fancy capture card equpiment, nor do I play on PC. Just for clarify I'll post below the equipment I used.
Sword: Thorned Greatsword (It's quite a bit bigger than SK's sword, and looks nothing like it, but I had to go with the rose theme)
Shield: Blossom Kite Shield
Head: Dark Mask
Chest: Throne Defender Armor
Hands: Dark Gauntlets
Legs: Dark Leggings
Let me know what y'all think!
My attempt at the DkS2 version of Skull Knight. I would have used the visible Aurous chest piece for the spikes around the helmet, but I don't have it, nor do I have the desire to farm that set and the invisible version doesn't do the image justice.
Also, what's this?!
It appears Skull Knight has prepared the Yobimizu no Tsurugi for God Hand slaying action!
Anyway, sorry for the terrible quality pictures. I'm using my camera phone because I don't have fancy capture card equpiment, nor do I play on PC. Just for clarify I'll post below the equipment I used.
Sword: Thorned Greatsword (It's quite a bit bigger than SK's sword, and looks nothing like it, but I had to go with the rose theme)
Shield: Blossom Kite Shield
Head: Dark Mask
Chest: Throne Defender Armor
Hands: Dark Gauntlets
Legs: Dark Leggings
Let me know what y'all think!
Kompozinaut
Sylph Sword
Actually, Ornifex can craft it with the Mirror Knight's soul. It's got special attacks on the R2's which is pretty nifty, too, though not as cool (imo) as the specials the Mirror Knight does in his battle.
Nice build. Looks awesome. Pity that for PVP most builds are quite useless ;) At least I always struggle a bit with my dual wielding build when in PVP
O
Obscure
Guest
Hey guys. Hadn't played Dark Souls II for a while so I decided to boot it up, and I was greeted by this message:
I have no idea why this happened. I was playing in Dragon Shrine and exited the game through the menu. Had 25 hours on a mage and over 200 hours on my faith/strength character. I have been playing since release and have had a great time with the game but now that all my hard work is gone I don't think I'll play the game again for a long time, if ever
Just want to remind you all to back-up your save data, same goes for all auto-save games!
I have no idea why this happened. I was playing in Dragon Shrine and exited the game through the menu. Had 25 hours on a mage and over 200 hours on my faith/strength character. I have been playing since release and have had a great time with the game but now that all my hard work is gone I don't think I'll play the game again for a long time, if ever
Just want to remind you all to back-up your save data, same goes for all auto-save games!
Kompozinaut
Sylph Sword
Geez that's terrible. I feel ya, maybe after some time away you'll be able to come back an enjoy it. I know time away from DkS1 always made me appreciate it more when I eventually returned.
Ouch, that happened to me in Ds1 , and a couple of times in Shogun 2 total war and fall of the samurai ( lost my avatar and MP armies)
I hope you'll have a good time making a new/different build. Its sad when we invest so much time and energy into something like that.
I hope you'll have a good time making a new/different build. Its sad when we invest so much time and energy into something like that.
Kompozinaut
Sylph Sword
Walter said:
I can definitely agree. Generally, I like the weapons more in DkS2, and thus making builds has been more fun for me, but it's lacking in almost everything other way. Still having a ton of fun with it though.
O
Obscure
Guest
Thanks for your input guys! :) I may come back once I've gotten a friend of my into Dark Souls, it might stir up some motivation. 
I felt the same after beating the game. The easy difficulty of the end-game (
) and the
cop-out left a bad taste in my mouth. The game got a lot better and challenging in my subsequent playthroughs. Still I completely agree with you, DS1 had things going for it which it's successor couldn't accomplish.
Walter said:
I felt the same after beating the game. The easy difficulty of the end-game (
Nashandra is a joke compared to Gwyn
''everything is a cycle''
Skeleton said:
Even apart from its ambiguousness, I found it lame.
Obscure said:
Yeah the final few bosses are huge pushovers, and I don't think it's related to my level (125). They just suffered from the same weakness of circle strafing to avoid their swings. Whereas bosses like Manus, Artorias and Gwyn (if you didn't cheese him) truly tested the skills you'd accumulated up to that point. In general, I found the boss designs to be rather uninspired in Dark Souls 2, with the exception of a few (Pursuer was memorable and Last Sinner was fantastic, but pretty much Artorias Round 2)
I'll be writing a comprehensive review this weekend when I can find the time. But in short, it's not a bad game. It's just not a very worthy successor to Dark Souls, and as I suspected at the outset, it's a result of its lack of cohesion in world design, and a few missing elements to make the lore interesting (which even though I haven't pieced everything together, I'm not liking what I've assembled).
They said that they weren't going to dumb down the difficulty in DS II, but the bosses are so easy. Some of the fights feel like exploits, not skill.
I killed the rotten with just a bow . The dragons were also ridiculously lame. You just had to stand between their legs.
Bosses overall, felt like they had much less variety in their behaviours and pathfinding. Only one I died a bunch of times was ruins sentinel.
I struggled so much in DS with some of the bosses. And most of the fights felt more elaborate and epic. I felt sorry for Killing Sif and Artorias. Ornstein and Smough had me on my toes. Even the demons in undead asylum left with me with a bigger impact
Bosses overall, felt like they had much less variety in their behaviours and pathfinding. Only one I died a bunch of times was ruins sentinel.
I struggled so much in DS with some of the bosses. And most of the fights felt more elaborate and epic. I felt sorry for Killing Sif and Artorias. Ornstein and Smough had me on my toes. Even the demons in undead asylum left with me with a bigger impact
Doc said:
It's what I feared would happen, but I thought that was merely being pessimistic until I played the game. Then it slowly started to sink in... I think it was exploring Heides Tower of Flame that initially made me feel like something really wasn't right. The zones are like island chains instead of one big land.
Even though most of the game's producers were carried over from DS1, they needed his vision to make this world feel cohesive. Still, it's not all bad. Though DS2 does have an undeniable B-tier feel to it compared to the original, the combat and menu refinements were fantastic improvements.
Kompozinaut
Sylph Sword
Sankari said:
Now that you mention it, none of the bosses have left a lingering fear in me. I still get nervous thinking about fighting the Centipede Demon in DkS. It took me about a year + of off-and-on playing for me to feel really comfortable fighting all the bosses. In this its been what? Almost 3 months, and I can confidently handle every boss (except maybe
Darklurker
But I wonder how much of our reception of these bosses (or the game in general) is skewed by becoming proficient in DkS1 first. Or at least, that's my excuse for the game seeming easier in comparison.
It would be interesting to hear someone's take on the difficulty of both games having started on 2 and then playing 1.
Walter said:
Just out of curiosity, how would you have felt if they'd reverted to a 'hub-like' setting, as in Demon's Souls? Would that have been more forgivable than DSII's ersatz open-world? Or would it have been seen as a step back?
I did notice a problem with 'quality over quantity' in DSII, chiefly with the bosses. They seem to be spread too thin in this game and it makes for a much less memorable and charming experience.
Delta Phi said:
I'm sure that's a huge part of it. But it goes beyond that, into the design of the boss fights. In DS2 you can mostly apply the same strategies in all boss fights (exception being the huge ones that don't really move). Not so in DS1, which required you to adapt to several different types of boss equilibriums.
Griff will eventually be able to provide that perspective. He started on DS2 around the same time I did, but he's yet to play more than a few hours of DS1.
Doc said:
I've never played Demon's Souls so I can't really say with any authority. But my problem is less that the worlds don't physically link together (that's more of an annoyance to me), and more that the art style and overall atmosphere of the zones don't match up very well. As if they're completely different worlds. There's no bleeding effect in the transitions between zones -- small touches like those made DS1 feel so real. Also, there's no overriding theme to the game, unlike DS1 which was all tied together by Gwyn and his knights (same argument could be made about Vindrick here, but only in terms of its bosses...), and the fading flame of the world. There's nothing like that driving the design in DS2, and that bugged the shit out of me.
