Dark Souls

It's a top 3 contended for GOTY. Get it!

Mixes survival horror, with a deep RPG leveling and item system, with real time 3rd person melee combat.

It's rewards people for being cautious, approaching situations differently, and even running away to regroup and rank up. Hack and slash, and you'll die quickly and frequently.

Great tough game...many deaths await you lol.

I should be getting the game today from Gamefly and frankly, I'm a little intimidated.
I usually like to "run & gun", or for these types of games "hack & slash", so I'm gonna have to make an effort to play more cautiously. If it becomes too frustrating it's no big deal to me as I easily have a dozen other games in my backlog...

If anyone is having trouble early on, here's a good way to farm souls to better beef up your character.



My recommendation for Noobs is find a decent shield and find a spear early. Attacking from afar and leaving yourself room to retreat with a long range weapon like that helps a lot. Did in DS, and will in DKS too.

If you can find the "graveyard" early on, try doing a speed run around it to grab some items. You'll find that the enemies are too tough to take on (and very fast!), and you will die, but any pickups taken from there remain in your inventory after death. because of that, it's worth trying to grab the items there when you have little to no souls to lose. Keep going back until you've cleaned it out and found something useful. Just run around and away from the enemies to get the loot.

Do this first before you start trying to explore, collect souls (XP), and play. That way you don't lose anything for trying /dieing there, and you get some good loot.

Also, Here's a good Noob start guide. Linked, not embedded, cause of NSFW lang:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c21w40cHQdE

I played Demon's on the PS3 and the Dark Souls thread over on the PS3 forum is a lot more active because the original only released on that platform. It is worth owning a PS3 just to experience that game IMO.

I decided to go with the 360 version this time around as I just have more friends on that system to socialize with.

Needless to say the game is quite excellent. This is also one game I'd highly suggest buying the guide for. Not to cheat past levels but to help you understand some of the finer points of the game and also find some of those hidden nooks on a replay. The guide is really gorgeous and well written.

I'll be spending more time with the game over the weekend as I feel it demands at least 2 hours of your time a sitting. The game is demanding but highly rewarding.

Anubody knows if this new version will be as difficult as the first one? Without save points? At least two are enough, but no save points like the first one would be almost impssible to play.

I'm sorry no save points? You could save progress whenever you wanted in Demon's Souls by heading back to the Nexus.

This game is freaking amazing. I find it a LOT less hard then Demon Souls. Actually, at times, on the easy side. Bosses are tough but doable. New loot, items, weapons, etc. are really nice. I like how souls are now used for leveling up and not really used for special things in the game like the first one. But having to use souls to also buy items blows as it prevents you from leveling up as fast.

Graphics are amazing, stunning at times. Lock on is questionable as even the soul arrow, that has a homing feature, misses a LOT you have to also adjust your character position in addiiton to locking on, kind of lame and hopefully gets patched.

All in all, a solid B+ game. Well worth the purchase and SOOOOOOOOOOOOO addictive.

Dark Souls now has bonfires where you save your progress, level up, and autmatically replenish all your health potions. However the negative is all enemies in the area (except bosses) respawn.

This game really intrigues me but I'm a bit hesitant to pick it up due to the extreme difficulty level. How far apart are the bonfires placed on average? I hear it is very easy to die in this game and to lose all your accumulated souls.

So many good games coming out in the next few months. Not sure I can find time for this one right now but it looks like it is a good value based on the amount of gameplay offered.

If you do die a mark is left where your physical location was 5 seconds before that death. You quickly run to the spot, tap A, and absorb all the lost souls. I always take the 5 second mechanic into mind when playing. If I'm dying I try to retreat to an area without enemies, so that when I respawn I cam easily get the souls and rethink my approach.

The game is not as difficult as they make it out to be you just need to understand the games systems and mechanics. The atmosphere, music, and gameplay are so top notch. I'd also suggest picking up the guide to a first timer. It does a great job explaining these systems in more detail.

Agreed. I'd say that the main difference between Demon/Dark Souls and other 3rd person hack 'n slash games is that here you're not a super karate ninja soldier who can take out wave after wave of mindless drones with a mere flex of your steroid-laden bicep. You're a puny human taking on hordes of superior, stronger, deadlier enemies. Therefore, you need to win through patience, strategy, and superior tactics. I wouldn't want to play games like this all of the time, but it's a great change of pace from the norm.

I haven't played it yet, but based on various reviews and the statements here, I'm inclined to agree that this game seems to be quite punishing and intimidating by today's standards. Since there's so much hand-holding and "it doesn't matter if you die" in modern games, well, this one could be a bit of a shock for folks...

Indeed, but that's it's charm. It's not unfair, not at all, it's just punishing for the careless or mistake prone.

Take last night. Cleared almost a full level, some with some heavy duty knights, and ran out of the fire bombs I was using against them. Was going to call it a night, but decided to go around one more corner staircase. Read a comment on the ground to expect one right around a corner, and decided to try my soul arrow magic instead of backtrack (care free since the path back was cleared of enemies mind you) to the merchant to stock back up on fire bombs.

Well, it didn't work out so well.

Soul arrows are blocked by tha enemy type, where fire bombs eat these guys up. He trapped me in a corner and made mince meat out of me.

10,000 souls now waiting to see if I can get back to them, from my own impatience.

LOVE IT

I'm already stumped on the "graveyard" level with the huge bird.

Was gaining a few souls by letting the dragon guarding the bridge toast those undeads over and over.. At one point the dragon started flying down and flaming the baddies then it just died.. I didn't see what happened but I gained 10k souls.

I wish they made enemies killed by falling give no souls...

Really enjoying the game so far.. Had to restart once because I maimed the first merchant..

Seriously thinking about getting this game. Good to know about getting the guide. Is there more to the online play than just leaving messages for another player?

Bonefires are pretty close. You also can buy/find items that let you instantly travel back to the last bonefire you used. In addtiion, there is a spell/ability that lets you fast travel to any bonefire in the game. So once you get these, it is reallllllly much easier. Just re-kindle a bonefire to max level and then you can walk around with a TON of potions, fast travelling back to it to get more. Game is not nearly as hard as they seem to of made it out to be.

I rented it from Redbox this morning (couldn't sleep), and it's DARN annoying. I can finally toss spells, but with no aiming assist I can see (where I 'look' seems to be where I shoot, but that doesn't always line up as I expect.)

Not sure I'll spend $58 more dollars on it, but CHEAP is a maybe...

1. You can lock on to enemies by clicking the right stick. At least that's how it is in the PS3 version.

2. This is the only game I've paid full price for this year. That will certainly change with the ridiculous fall lineup, but DS is def. worth your hard earned cash. I consider it a vote with my $ to get more games like this made.

Yes, I did discover lock-on, and it does help a LOT but unless I'm sort-of pointed at the target the bolt will still miss.

Too much retrying on that first boss for my tastes, though. One more restart as a Pyromancer, and if I don't do better it's done...

Another one bites the dust

Unlike DS, you can be forgiven by paying a priest a little later on to "forgive your sins". So if you hurt a NCP, run away and wait until you reach that point. Still, negating the merchant so early will make things harder. I've been buying firebombs by the dozens from him to burn up some undead zombies.

Yup, but right now it seems borked for me.

Basically you have two forms unhollowed (body/human), and hollowed (zombie/undead).

When you're hollowed you can put down a sign to that other players will see and bring you into their world as a white phantom. you get souls for defeating enemies, and beat the boss and you get +1 humanity that you can use to become unhallowed at a bonfire.

You can do the same as unhollowed if you want, but as unhollowed you can also see others souls signs and invite them to help you clear the level and boss. Or alternatively you can invade (PvP) other's worlds as a black phantom and kill them for souls and additional humanity points.

But right now, either because of the level requirement, new P2P servers, or a bug, I'm not seeing nearly as many people throwing down MP offers. I'm hoping its a bug that will be patched, as DS always had tons of Coop & PvP play.

Firebombs are your friend. Also, run away (door back left of room) and collect your weapons first.

Learn to use the falling strike from jumping from a high place you'll find, it will take away 1/3-1/2 his life. Pretty sure you can repeat that too.

If you want to take him out on the ground, you need to learn his attacks. Staying close and behind him he'll do a butt bounce move. Run when he starts it, run back in and take a swipe or two. Repeat, and he's toast.

I don't know anything about this game but hear lots of good. Probably get it through gamefly. But, can someone explain to me what is happening in that video TyrantII posted in #5 comment.

You walk around people and you level up? That's what it looks like and that seems horribly cheesy.

There's a dragon on that bridge behind the people. He sees you, and fry's the crap out of anything on the bridge.

If your timing is right, he'll see you before the undead knights get a swipe in, and you can run downstairs as he kills the enemies for you. The fireplace is a checkpoint that respawns level enemies and replenishes your health, so in essence it's a quick and dirty way to level up a little bit in the beginning of the game.

I was a little turned off by the forest farming tactic. I hope they patch that. The allure for easy souls is hard to not abuse. I just got cursed for the first time. That's a real smack in the face heh.