Freeman76
Member
This guy is such a breath of fresh air, in a world where so many people think they should write reviews which end up saying the same shit as another 20 reviewers said before.
Dark Souls III Review Thread
- Thread starter HoJu
- Start date
This guy is such a breath of fresh air, in a world where so many people think they should write reviews which end up saying the same shit as another 20 reviewers said before.
It's not playing the game poorly when you are aware the option exists but choose to go the harder route to enjoy the challenge. It's just another way to play the game.
Shieldless play can be good, but learning encounters and enemy patterns will be rough. It's just part of the overall defensive toolkit, and you need to really justify not using it.
In Souls games, your defensive toolkit is...
- Max HP
- Self-healing
- Roll distance
- Roll quality
- Running
- Shield blocking
- Parrying
- Damage reduction from armor
- Zoning
Not using a shield is sacrificing a bit a bit of roll-distance for almost completely removing Shield Blocking, which is a 100% reduction in most circumstances, or ~90% in others. You're losing a lot, and even occasional blocking tends to justify their weight for beginners.
You're not trying to convince everybody that the game is harder at its default, or that the entire game is as hard as Dark Souls 2's Hard Mode.
Options are good, but I think it is wrong to try to convince people that the weaker options are the norm.
but the lighter means also the weakest..
it is such a predicament, because evading is fun as hell, but 2 hits can totally kill in DkS with such weakness..
I never found something good to evade and take hits.
I find myself evading a lot more in DkS2, even if it is futile and the damn enemy tracks my position to land a perfect hit.
Is that bullshit still in DkS3? I think that's the only thing I hate of DkS2
iRAWRasaurus
Banned
The world is more "similar" with demon's souls IMO.
Not everyone is wired the same, I could see how that would frustrate people. There always seems to be a DS4 mod out fairly quickly for these games, it's a simple texture replacement after all.
Hopefully we will see native support become more ubiquitous going forward.
It's viable, but I wouldn't recommend a shield on the first play through. That's more like a challenge run.
Karak
Member
agreed in many ways thats the mastery of the design. Almost everything in the game is a push pull.
For those worried about rolling, don't worry: Armor reduction is so fucked that you're probably going to end up light weight, because heavy armor almost never justifies itself.
There's a lot of tracking still, but there was also a lot in Bloodborne. Like BB and DS2, it differs wildly from enemy to enemy.
One of the later bosses has some pretty hilarious mid-jump rotation and tracking.
There's a lot of tracking still, but there was also a lot in Bloodborne. Like BB and DS2, it differs wildly from enemy to enemy.
One of the later bosses has some pretty hilarious mid-jump rotation and tracking.
plasmawave
Banned
No. If you dodge roll too early then yes they will hit you.
Yeah, it's a trade off. I've done 2 playthroughs - one with shield and one without - and both were completely doable and easy/difficult in different ways
Gormless Noodle
Member
On streams of the first area, I saw some pretty crazy tracking from some of the bigger enemies like this fat dude wielding a giant axe. But to be fair, those were usually slower attacks that kind of baited the player into rolling early after which they got smashed. So I think it's more a matter of waiting properly for the evade on those.
jacksepticeye
Member
I think a lot of the Souls community gets split between that. You either love the hub system or the interconnected world. I personally love the latter more but probably because I played DS1 as my first Souls game, I can definitely see the appeal of the hubs though
FaintDeftone
Junior Member
"need to put some points in chicken drumsticks"
generic_username
I switched to an alt account to ditch my embarrassing tag so I could be an embarrassing Naughty Dog fanboy in peace. Ask me anything!
i-frames are not linked to a stat in DS3 correct? God I hated that about DkS2
I don't want to spoil anything but you're forgetting another big exception. And Dark Souls 3 lacks in shortcuts between different areas as well, there's no Forbidden Woods> clinic for example. The progression is very linear for most of the game, it opens up a bit going forward but the consensus is that it's definitely the more linear souls game, and rightly so. Most of the areas are fantastic though, despite being a bit tropey
They removed the stat and removed soul memory, which were two design decisions that were heavily criticized.
No. Roll distance is inversely linked to equip load. I still haven't worked out if this adds i-frames too or not but it does make dodging much easier regadless.
Strictly talking about non-optional content BB is more linear. There are exactly 3 orders that can be taken to complete the game and they all only vary by the order of the first 2 bosses (CB,FG,the rest or FG,CB,the rest or FG,BSB,the rest)
It really isn't like Demon's Souls. I'd honestly say that is the worst analogy for the world design. There's definitely some lineage of BB, DS1, and DS2,
(vague structural spoilers)
- The journey actually goes somewhere unlike being stacked on top of itself, like Dark Souls 2 more than Dark Souls 1 or BB
- It's mostly a series of connected zones, with slight offshoots for optional stuff or choice parts along the way, like a single path from Majula in Dark Souls 2.
- Bonfire placement and appearances after bosses or being right after is a mix of Bloodborne and Dark Souls 2.
- You can see pretty much every zone from the end of the first real zone, like Dark Souls 1.
- The zones virtually never reconnect, which is similar to Dark Souls 1.
- There are some VERY large zones, that connect within themselves in cool ways, like some of Bloodborne's levels.
- It's mostly a series of connected zones, with slight offshoots for optional stuff or choice parts along the way, like a single path from Majula in Dark Souls 2.
- Bonfire placement and appearances after bosses or being right after is a mix of Bloodborne and Dark Souls 2.
- You can see pretty much every zone from the end of the first real zone, like Dark Souls 1.
- The zones virtually never reconnect, which is similar to Dark Souls 1.
- There are some VERY large zones, that connect within themselves in cool ways, like some of Bloodborne's levels.
I don't really see anything like Demon's Souls.
He nailed the conversations part.
Cracked up in the office
Karak
Member
There are a couple that drove me nuts here. Not a ton but one or 2.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
A.I is closer to BB, so yeah. Lower stamina consumption helps with that, but enemies has more movesets to punish rolling
Karak
Member
Some of them close the distance BB fast as well. Which took me by surprise the first few times lol. I was like "oh HELLO!" as they suddenly were right there in front of me.
you will have to point out some examples for me, don't remember that in BB at all.
Not even DkS1, this thing is nuts in DkS2, I haven't been able to dodge anything, even worse with a enemy wielding a mace, it almost always crush me by that perfect tracking, in BB it wasn't like that
oh, but that's actually nice, enemy tracking isn't bad, what I consider bad is that the enemy tracks until the very last second of a hit, hitting almost always because of the little frame the player has to make an action before the hit.
indeed, that is some of the things I really digged about DkS, also one of the things why it is so replayable.
and also taking into account that BB, which is focused on that evading aspect, has more invincibility frames with the evading, right? because I found that DkS is muh more tight to land a good evade.
CrocMother
Banned
The way these games are designed, I take any claims if linearity or lack of "secrets" with a grain of salt because odds are someone reviewing this game at launch missed tons of content.
The nightmare-ish tracking in BB was mostly in the Chalice Dungeons. The zombie looking dudes had the most insane tracking of the franchise.
As for i-frames, I've seen no real studies yet. Honestly, it could be correlated with weight slightly, but I've seen no studies, and that would be surprisingly difficult to parse out based on videos because you are changing two things at once. But it generally seems lower than BB, by a fair amount.
that is exactly some of my concerns about the reviews, and not only because of areas, but also in terms of magic, miracles and weapons, these games usually have a ton of content that is not visible to people until later playthroughs or even help of other people who already discovered it
The nightmare-ish tracking in BB was mostly in the Chalice Dungeons. The zombie looking dudes had the most insane tracking of the franchise. For Dark Souls 2, the early Mace fatties you encounter are one of the most notable enemies where they "lock" fairly late in their animation. 95%+ of enemies don't lock that late.
As for i-frames, I've seen no real studies yet. Honestly, it could be correlated with weight slightly, but I've seen no studies, and that would be surprisingly difficult to parse out based on videos because you are changing two things at once. But it generally seems lower than BB, by a fair amount.
There is one side zone that I guarantee 95% or more of players playing blind will miss. Probably closer to 99%, in a like WTF kind of way. (It's also not connected at all, so it doesn't really counter most of the reviewers' arguments about connectivity and linearity, and is purely endgame).
We already know of one big sequence breaking secret
Karak
Member
Ya as I said in my review few games known how to say "this attribute does this" but then still somehow has mystery about how it works within the entire build. There is a lot of initial explanation in statistics backed up by a good deal of healthy experimentation within the game design. Thats only helped by hor the enemies interact with the games levels.
Hibiki Kurosawa
Member
Spoke too soon.
CrocMother
Banned
The Souls series is old school in that it really takes an entire community(s) to fully flesh the game out.
It really feels like I have more at very low weights but it's completely non-scientific
Yeah, it is very difficult to concern. ADP was easy to prove because it was a completely isolated variable, but the moment you start making your character move faster, the study falls apart. That's been my perception, but "effective invulnerability window" could be described as a function of speed and i-frames, so, yeah, really hard to discern.
LowlySmokeGuy
Banned
Optional content is a huge component of Bloodborne more so than any Souls title, so it's not really fair to use non-optional content as a qualifier when only 8 bosses are required.
shortsFortallPeople
Banned
Or they can review it whatever way they choose. Why is that comment a problem?
oh the chalice dungeons, you might actually be right, yeah, those dudes were really annoying.
Still, BB relied more on swarming the player that using a single enemy to crush you, so even if one or two enemies had it, I never saw the issue as prominently as I'm seeing it now on DkS2.
there is nothing about this I don't love
I always find funny that people ask about the decisions in an NPC line and never truly trust the internet answers, there is always that mystery of fucking up something because of the so many variables playing in the game that nobody can see for sure.
I always go about getting the answers and asking them again if I don't fuck something up if I follow that. I don't trust these games ha ha ha
Opus Angelorum
Member
The Dark Souls franchise isn't universally appealing.
I know, that's my point, does that alone mean they should score 7's?
Some reviewers appearently think so.