Dark Souls II - Editorial @ Forbes

Forbes Contributor Erik Kain has a new article for Dark Souls II where he talks about what he thinks are the real problems of the game. Here is a small snip of the article.

You can read the first part of my Dark Souls II review here. See my commentary on the lighting and graphics downgrade controversy here.

As we’ve already discussed, Dark Souls II has sparked controversy. Some of it is simply gamers upset at changes to the gameplay. Not everyone is fond of despawning enemies or the dwindling health bar, for instance.

The major controversy surrounds the apparent downgrade of textures and lighting effects. There’s no doubt the lighting was entirely overhauled for the release. I’m less certain as to whether the texture replacement was for aesthetic reasons or something else. Bandai Namco and FromSoftware have not commented.

As I noted previously, I’m not really bothered so much as perplexed by these graphical changes. The game still looks and plays about like I’d expect. The graphical changes haven’t diminished my experience.

However, I would like to talk about some of the things that I do find truly bothersome or disappointing in the game (so far.)

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More information.

Despawning Enemies Make the Game Harder

On the one hand, despawning enemies make it less tedious to get to a boss. Then again, so would a well-placed bonfire.

The real problem with despawning enemies is that once they’re gone farming souls becomes more difficult and valuable item drops disappear. The dogs in The Lost Bastille are a great source of Human Effigies. When they despawned for me, they all disappeared at once. Not the usual one-at-a-time I was used to. So much for farming.

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Wait… Am I reading this correctly?
Someone dared to write that no endless respawns made the sequel - HARDER? And it's like… A negative thing? Since when?

It is logical, for "bad" players the re-spawns in dark souls I where necessary because they needed to keep farming souls to get stronger and beat the boss.

For really good players, it was never an issue because they beat the boss anyway and moved on, and never bothered about any re-spawns.

Well, good players farm too. They just farm titanite or humanity. Upgrading weapons or armor even once or twice can give you damage and resistance bonuses equivalent of 10-20 sl. I suppose the players that can go through the game naked and using only fists wouldn't need to farm anything but who cares about those 5 people.

Also souls are use for everything not just leveling, so limiting them could be a negative. I know I've spent well over 100,000 souls just absolving sins and much more than that on supplies and such.

Beyond farming though it will be weird going through a souls world that is empty. In DS1 even low level enemies could be a threat if your not paying proper attention. I guess that's why they let you warp all over from the begining now.

I have the button pressing issue in DS1 with mouse and keyboard. Very rarely but sometimes my guy will flip without me touching the key. I've gone of a couple ledges because of this.

I'm not sure what he is talking about with lock on. When I lock on my guy is always facing the enemy. I thought that was the point of locking on so I'm not sure how he is hitting In a different direction.

Some of the changes concern me but since I'm getting the pc version, hopefully the kinks will be worked out by then or maybe the changes won't be as bad as I think in execution.

sakichop said:

Well, good players farm too. They just farm titanite or humanity. Upgrading weapons or armor even once or twice can give you damage and resistance bonuses equivalent of 10-20 sl. I suppose the players that can go through the game naked and using only fists wouldn't need to farm anything but who cares about those 5 people.

Also souls are use for everything not just leveling, so limiting them could be a negative. I know I've spent well over 100,000 souls just absolving sins and much more than that on supplies and such.

Beyond farming though it will be weird going through a souls world that is empty. In DS1 even low level enemies could be a threat if your not paying proper attention. I guess that's why they let you warp all over from the begining now.

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You can restart your bonfire though by burning a certain object there. Ofcourse it will have the effect of making the enemies tougher and have alternate, possibly more aggresive AI routines. The item drops will also be better though so that should work nicely for those looking to farm a particular object.

sakichop said:

I'm not sure what he is talking about with lock on. When I lock on my guy is always facing the enemy. I thought that was the point of locking on so I'm not sure how he is hitting In a different direction.

Some of the changes concern me but since I'm getting the pc version, hopefully the kinks will be worked out by then or maybe the changes won't be as bad as I think in execution.

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I believe they changed the lock to a soft lock. Meaning that you do get locked on an enemy but when you hit you actually have to "target" the hit by pressing the analog stick in the correct direction to get a hit?

No idea how that will work on PC.
(Unless they made it to facilitate fighting groups while locked. So to hit the enemy you are locked on you need to press the mouse button plus forward, while you could hit enemies on the left and right by pressing mb and A or D or even S ? That makes it a very useful change if so!)

I do expect them to release a balancing patch before long in the consoles (I believe they did for #1 too ?) hopefully they will increase the effigies drop rate because (although I've long since stopped looking for news etc. I am not even reading this one ) I hear a lot of people complaining about that…

JonNik said:

You can restart your bonfire though by burning a certain object there. Ofcourse it will have the effect of making the enemies tougher and have alternate, possibly more aggresive AI routines. The item drops will also be better though so that should work nicely for those looking to farm a particular object.

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Yes I've heard that as well, I don't know any specifics though as I'm also try to find out stuff without finding out STUFF.:lol: if you know what I mean.

Such as how available are these objects?, how many times can you reset the bonfire?and will it get harder every time to the point of being impossible.

JonNik said:

I believe they changed the lock to a soft lock. Meaning that you do get locked on an enemy but when you hit you actually have to "target" the hit by pressing the analog stick in the correct direction to get a hit?

No idea how that will work on PC.
(Unless they made it to facilitate fighting groups while locked. So to hit the enemy you are locked on you need to press the mouse button plus forward, while you could hit enemies on the left and right by pressing mb and A or D or even S ? That makes it a very useful change if so!)

I do expect them to release a balancing patch before long in the consoles (I believe they did for #1 too ?) hopefully they will increase the effigies drop rate because (although I've long since stopped looking for news etc. I am not even reading this one ) I hear a lot of people complaining about that…

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Yep, by the time I played DS1 there were a few patches I believe. I won't be able to wait as long to play DS2 though.

I'm very curious to see how the pc version turns out. My brother plays the console version. He said the changes were pretty jarring at first but he's used to them now and is having a blast. I'm going to have to get him a copy of the pc version so we can hopefully co-op some stuff. I heard it's supposed to be easier to find each other to co-op but still not guaranteed, not sure why though.

P.s. You were right about DS1 dlc it's excellent. Still trying to beat Artorias and the dragon instakilled me. Time to maybe look for better weapons I've only been using the bandit knife and demon spear which atorias laughs at.

sakichop said:

I'm very curious to see how the pc version turns out. My brother plays the console version. He said the changes were pretty jarring at first but he's used to them now and is having a blast. I'm going to have to get him a copy of the pc version so we can hopefully co-op some stuff. I heard it's supposed to be easier to find each other to co-op but still not guaranteed, not sure why though.

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Very nice to hear (about your brother) lots of people seem to be really getting into it which is encouraging

sakichop said:

P.s. You were right about DS1 dlc it's excellent. Still trying to beat Artorias and the dragon instakilled me. Time to maybe look for better weapons I've only been using the bandit knife and demon spear which atorias laughs at.

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Yeah, I just love Oolacile. I think it is indicative of the shift in design that we are going to experience in #2. A bit lighter, more colorful and organic overall, but also with enemies much more aggressive and snappy on the attack. Artorias being a fine example (and wait until you get to bloody Manus. Unless you beat the hoary old bastard already).
(Edit: Erm ofcourse not you just said you are working at Artorias… Or is it possible to go down there before defeating him? … I thought you could not go up to Gough before that either… I plead old age )
(Edit 2: Oh wait you have not actually gone to Gough yet. You just went down to the Gorge... You have some cool stuff coming up after you beat Artorias a nicely done part imo)

Might I suggest a flame upgraded (or better yet regular +15 if you have the high dex) scimitar or other quick, slashing DEX based sword ? I don't think its out of character for a thief…

Hehe, yeah, Kalameet is a fun fight! I ended up just ditching my shield to dodge his attacks instead. I stripped down to light roll - thought that worked better and gave him a taste of my Black Knight Greataxe. Plenty of ways to take him. Just make sure to learn his attack patterns properly.

JonNik said:

Very nice to hear (about your brother) lots of people seem to be really getting into it which is encouraging



Yeah, I just love Oolacile. I think it is indicative of the shift in design that we are going to experience in #2. A bit lighter, more colorful and organic overall, but also with enemies much more aggressive and snappy on the attack. Artorias being a fine example (and wait until you get to bloody Manus. Unless you beat the hoary old bastard already).
(Edit: Erm ofcourse not you just said you are working at Artorias… Or is it possible to go down there before defeating him? … I thought you could not go up to Gough before that either… I plead old age )

Might I suggest a flame upgraded (or better yet regular +15 if you have the high dex) scimitar or other quick, slashing DEX based sword ? I don't think its out of character for a thief…

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I'm going to look at all these boss souls and see what they make. I just started the catacombs today. Found great scythe and lucerne ( I think). I might have waited to long to go to the catacombs only died once because I thought I could make a jump but couldn't and pinwheel was a joke. Got some good loot and I'm on to the tomb of giants. Also made quelaags sword and got uchiganata +10.

Weapons make a huge difference. ( Duh) :lol: After tomb it's back to the dlc much more equipped.

Is there any reason to not consume the other boss souls? I won't have the strength to wield the weapons anyway. I also won't be doing NG+. I think I'd rather start another play through with a different build rather than keep going.

Having the ritual for DLC land is definitely a good idea too.

Generally speaking you are correct in thinking that the Boss weapons are not really worth it most of the time for vanilla. Although I did find the Moonlight horn useful for a time as a fall back weapon on my mage build.

Do keep in mind though that some Boss souls will actually give more if you feed them to Frampt (the Iron Golem's and Quelag's i.e ? not 100% sure).

I definitely agree that the best way to enjoy DS1 is new builds. Little point in NG+ imo. They might have that a bit changed for #2 as SirJames was saying. We'll see…

P.S. As you are keen on daggers: Don't consume Artorias' soul outright when you defeat him. Leave the arena and come back. There may be something there that interests you. (I have no idea how useful the actual reward will be but it is a cool little moment to see regardless)

Yet another Dark Souls II news-bit that has gone off-topic. If anyone needs help take the discussion to the forums. This news-bit is about the Forbes article.

This might sound mean but this has happened on most of the other news-bits, and I have been way too lenient on allowing it to continue.

I direct everyone to this new thread from now on.

Link- http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1061246386#post1061246386

In DS1 the DLC areas are far superior in art direction, concept, combat design, atmosphere and lore than most of the rest of the game imo. It's my personal favorite. Standing on the rooftops of the sinking ruins of Oolacile, looking down into the depths, listening to the cold wind as it carries distant screams in a seemingly abandoned city... chills me to the bone.

On topic: I read the article, but I find 70% of it nitpicking and general console issues. Most of the rest is a matter of taste in design. Other stuff (like DS1 boss challenge rising constantly or how bonfires were better placed or how despawning is bad) is outright misinformed and misinforming in turn.

My greatest gripe with the game is that there's no more good co-op for friends because of the time limit that I totally, totally, totally despise. This is something that probably not a lot of people miss though, so I understand the 'why' (I still hate it though).

Couchpotato said:

This might sound mean but this has happened on most of the other news-bits, and I have been way too lenient on allowing it to continue.

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Not mean Couch, just doing your job and cleaning up. Apologies for the constant derailments