Dark SoulsFollow

Pretty excellent so far. Archery in it feels much better than in Demon's Souls; the aiming is much improved. I like the campsite mechanic much better than the central hub of DmS, and I like what they did with the magic system.

No real gripes so far. I started as a Wanderer, then rerolled as a Thief. Pyromancer looks fun too, so I might roll one too.

Not gonna lie, I totally want this game. But my to-play pile is huge, and I barely have free time as it is. :/

Is it worth picking it up now, or will waiting for a price drop be fine?

Well, it seems to have fixed a fair number of my gripes with the first one (the Nexus being a good example), which makes me hopeful. :P

I've heard that it can be useful, but also dangerous--some doors early on hide really strong foes.

All the items can be acquired in the game, like in the first one. It's really just about the starting experience.

It's like Demon's souls, it doesn't really matter after a few hours.You can upgrade any way you want. Your warrior can cast magic and your sorcerer can wear heavy armor and a 2-handed sword if that's what you want.

You will have an easier time at the beginning with some classes and other like the deprived(they start naked) will be pretty hard until you find some armor but there's no long term disadvantage whatever you chose.

I think the knight is the exception since their selling point is that they have the best starting gear. Other classes like the thief starts with crappy gear so you will have more opportunity to upgrade along the way.

I'm starting to lean towards buying this. :/

That's not okay. Especially since I'll be selling my soul to Bethesda on November 11.

I wish I could say that. Alas you can't sell something to them that they already have.

You have that much self control? I envy you. I'm going to be foaming at the mouth by Nov. 8t...

I'm pretty much planning so that I can drop everything and do nothing but play Skyrim. :P It's a Friday, so that should work out. I only have one class...

Okay, after a few hours of playing (and many, many deaths), it's quite clear that I'm not quite meant to be a thief. Or at least, not a parrying one. I've found parrying to be a little...unreliable, for some reason. Switched to my old mainstay, spear and big ol' shield, and that worked much better. I'm much more comfortable hiding behind a big shield and poking things to death. I like the master key though, so I'll just revamp my thief a bit to make it work. It seems like I'll be doing a lot of situational weapon switching, though.

I had an epic battle with Havel that lasted about a half hour. I kept dying because of an obnoxious glitch: sometimes, when I tried to attack, my character would instead freeze, and drop his guard. After a split second I'd have control again and retreat, but then if I approached again, my character would instantly try to perform the old attack, as if it had been queued up.

He pancaked me about 4 times because of it.

Edited, Oct 6th 2011 12:15am by Eske

Parry/riposte is harder this time around. Enemies have multiple attack patterns. You can't really anticipate what they will do, you need to react in a split second. Backstabbing is a lot harder to pull off also. Some mob will keep their backs against the wall, like those annoying skeleton with a shield and a long spear.

I'm completely obsess about this game. I'm at work right now and I can't stop thinking about it. 4 days week-end coming, I'm so gonna play the hell out of this game. I just hope I can keep my sanity.

The problem for me isn't so much anticipating the attack, but that the window for the parry itself is really hard for me to gauge, and seems a bit finicky. I can't tell at what part of my character's motion the parry window begins and ends, and sometimes it actually seems like the window changes. Plus sometimes it works, and sometimes, even though I'm sure that I got the timing right, the enemy attack goes right through it, even when it's just a normal attack.

It was a bit too unwieldy and high-risk. Best to keep things as predictable as possible with Dark Souls combat, I'm finding. So big fat shield it is. Plus, this way I do less rolling, which means less embarrassing fall deaths.