Here is the first trailer to Dark Souls. Demon’s Souls may be the finest gaming experience I’ve had this console generation.
[http://www.chud.com/34654/mcp-namco-band…ark-souls/](http://www.chud.com/34654/mcp-namco-bandai-illuminates-dark-souls/)
Hello 360 port. Thank you for being.
You played this on the PS3, right, Justin?
[http://www.chud.com/34654/mcp-namco-band…ark-souls/](http://www.chud.com/34654/mcp-namco-bandai-illuminates-dark-souls/)
Demon’s Souls was one of the best games I’ve played in years. I don’t normally buy games on release day, but I’ll be going out of my way to do so for this one.
Likewise this will probably be the first collector’s edition I buy.
So. Fucking. Psyched.
So Demon’s Souls has the reputation of being punishingly difficult. Is it really all that hard? Or is it more that you have to actually think about what you are doing rather than plunging headfirst into everything?
It doesn’t require any special skills that you likely don’t already have - It just punishes you severely when you fail, which makes taking down the game’s big enemies much more rewarding. You’ll die about 20 times during the opening level, and then once you figure out how blocking and rolling works, you’ll croak a cumulative 20 times during the rest of the entire game.
You have to take every fight seriously. Even a basic grunt can kill you if you’re not blocking and maneuvering. If you die, you lose all unspent XP unless you can make it back to your dead body. You get one attempt at this.
I’ve probably died 100 times in Demon’s Souls, yet kept coming back from more. The sense of triumph you feel that Trevor alluded to is spot on, the enemies and bosses are very hard, but fair and never deal out cheap kills. The only one I’ve yet to beat is the False King. I managed to kill the dragon outside his castle, but that old bastard kills me every time.
Looks like the same engine for Dark Souls, which is exciting. The intuitive combat was part of what made Demon’s Souls such a great experience.
From Software needs to roll their own physics engine for Dark Souls instead of using Havok like they did with Demon’s Souls. I can’t tell you how miserable I felt everytime I needed to hop down somewhere from a high ledge to a slightly lower one. Also, NBGI needs to exercise a little publisher control and license E.S. Postumous For Every Single Music Track In The Game.
Just found out this is coming to the 360. Based souly on the raves I heard about Demon Souls, am very much looking forward to this. The developers apparently want to make this even more challenging than it’s predecessor.
AI’m playing through Demon’s Souls at the moment. I have mixed feelings about it some elements are great, like the combat with stamina and somewhat realistic weapon swings.
However, other elements are annoying, like enemies that can be cheesily killed with range attacks (eg. Red Dragon) or that particular areas are so much more beneficial for grinding (Shrine of Storms).
I think they are on to something good here with the learning curve and difficulty, but the game does need more polish in places.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kriegaffe 
I’m playing through Demon’s Souls at the moment. I have mixed feelings about it some elements are great, like the combat with stamina and somewhat realistic weapon swings.
However, other elements are annoying, like enemies that can be cheesily killed with range attacks (eg. Red Dragon) or that particular areas are so much more beneficial for grinding (Shrine of Storms).
I think they are on to something good here with the learning curve and difficulty, but the game does need more polish in places.
GTFO, Demon’s Souls is polished as hell.
AMaybe ‘polish’ isn’t the right word. I just think there are a fe elements that frustrate me and could easily be improved.
I beat three bosses today by standing in a safe spot and hitting fire arrow over and over till they died (red dragon, armor spider, the one from the tutorial that shows up midway in Shrine of storms). In a game where 90% of the fights are earned with through challenging combat, those were really cheap victories.
Another thing that bothers me is the mechanics around ledges and falling. I suppose it’s generally fair, but the physics feel wrong. It’s less like a person jumping and more like driving a car over an edge.
Finallly, I got to the point where I wasn’t making much progress, so I looked up a wiki. It turns out that the game becomes much easier if you get items in a certain order. Eg. The Blessed Mace+1 in the Valley of Defilement makes short work of the skeletons in Shrine of Storms, significantly improving the ability to grind. It would have been nice to discover this organically, but it could have taken hours/days to know I needed that item and find where to get it.
The game sort of fluctuates between too hard when you don’t know what you are doing, and then too easy when you do.
So a couple stores in Japan broke the street date, and FROM Software came up with an interesting way of “punishing” the early buyers. They are invading their games with high level Black Phantoms and killing them off. " rel=“http://files.chud.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif”>
I don’t think my body is not ready for this game.
FYI: If you preorder now, you get bumped up to the collector’s edition for free. If you’re getting this anyway (as I am), you may as well get the upgrade. I’m a sucker for art books.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Trevor
FYI: If you preorder now, you get bumped up to the collector’s edition for free. If you’re getting this anyway (as I am), you may as well get the upgrade. I’m a sucker for art books.
Unfortunately most of the collector’s edition extras are provided via code to download off the internet. The US version is getting gimped.
AGot mine on order as well.
This looks like it might be even more brutal than Demon’s Souls, I just read an article which said that now there are some pretty tough common enemies which don’t drop any souls when you defeat them. Another blow is that whenever you reach a save point now, if you choose to save, all the enemies will respawn.