What game are you playing?

[MFB]

Well, it was less than 24 hrs before I went back to the very place that hurt me, and made it thru to that bonfire; now that I have, I'm truly insufferable and running thru it to farm some souls. What was the bane of my existence for the last few days of playing is so quickly reduced to "just another area."

I got the request from what's her name to kill Midir, so I'll have to get to him shortly; not crazy about fighting thru another summoner dude at the swamp before him though.

 

[p0ke]

I got the request from what's her name to kill Midir, so I'll have to get to him shortly

Have fun with that, that fight took me something like half a year to beat and probably at least 500 attempts.

 

[p0ke]

I just beat the Dragon Rider in DS2 during my lunch break today. What an easy boss, it took me 3 attempts to beat because on the first 2 I had too low health when entering the mist. And surprisingly frequent bonfires after that too. Very unbalanced IMO, in the forest part there were only like 2 bonfires for a big area with many mobs and then there's an area like this with multiple bonfires and only like 1 enemy in between. Basilisks are a major pain in the ass in this game though, not because of the petrification or whatever they do but because they jump on you and make you fall over.

 

[MFB]

Have fun with that, that fight took me something like half a year to beat and probably at least 500 attempts.

I'm hoping my combined skills from platinuming Bloodborne and having beaten Elden Ring/Sekiro/DS3/DS1, it won't take me THAT many tries; the only reason that this part got under my skin so bad is that I was basically refusing to not kill any enemies in that area as I went thru it. Once I knew where they all were, I liked to clear them out so that I can feel like I really did "beat" that part of the map, for better or worse.

So far the only real boss that gave me legitimate trouble was Sullyvahn, and I'll admit to gimmick bosses like Ancient Wyvern because it's Dark Souls and I know constantly overthink fight mechanics

 

[p0ke]

I'm hoping my combined skills from platinuming Bloodborne and having beaten Elden Ring/Sekiro/DS3/DS1, it won't take me THAT many tries; the only reason that this part got under my skin so bad is that I was basically refusing to not kill any enemies in that area as I went thru it. Once I knew where they all were, I liked to clear them out so that I can feel like I really did "beat" that part of the map, for better or worse.

So far the only real boss that gave me legitimate trouble was Sullyvahn, and I'll admit to gimmick bosses like Ancient Wyvern because it's Dark Souls and I know constantly overthink fight mechanics

Yeah, DS3 was my second Souls-game and to be fair, I was pretty bad at it when I got there. I was also playing on Xbox One at the time, so the framerate was incredibly inconsistent, which made it even harder. I beat him in about ~20 tries once I got the Series X.

Also apparently you could cheese him by using the Pestilent Mist spell, but I didn't wanna respec to be able to use it.

 

[wankerness]

Well, it was less than 24 hrs before I went back to the very place that hurt me, and made it thru to that bonfire; now that I have, I'm truly insufferable and running thru it to farm some souls. What was the bane of my existence for the last few days of playing is so quickly reduced to "just another area."

I got the request from what's her name to kill Midir, so I'll have to get to him shortly; not crazy about fighting thru another summoner dude at the swamp before him though.

I'm going to heavily, heavily recommend you don't try to kill midir before gael. He's approximately fifty times harder and WAY less fun. The only reason to kill him first is to be able to turn in the quest for killing him at that NPC - but if you do gael first, you can still get the reward from the midir quest, you just get invaded by her and she drops it when you kill her, as opposed to you getting it as a quest reward.

I still have never killed Midir without using pestilent mist. The fight is my kryptonite. I've beaten every single boss in every single soulslike I've played (besides Ashen, cause the levels themselves were impossible with the game's trash AI instead of a human companion), but him with a melee weapon? Nope. The problem with him is 80% the camera and 20% his actual mechanics. You have to be in a very specific location right in front of him to avoid losing lockon and getting destroyed, and even if you're in the right place some of his combos make the camera spaz out so majorly that your character tracks around his head and then you are unblocked for his next hit and you get smoked. I think the only way to do it 100% of the time is if you fight him unlocked and roll through all his melee attacks and know exactly where to position to bait everything. And that requires SO much practice to learn everything he can do.

It seems like the easiest way to fight him should be to run behind him and chop at his legs (much like the IMO vastly superior dragon fight in DS2), since it's by far the safest, but they gave him like, MASSIVE damage reduction if you hit him anywhere other than the head with a melee attack (this is why pestilent mist is so OP - it does % based damage over time that isn't mitigated by armor, and he has scads of HP so it's actually just as fast if not faster to just hacking away at him). So, you can either try fighting him for about 20 minutes by attacking his legs and pray you don't get crushed by charges and tail swipes, or you can lock onto his head and stand right in front of him and make sure never to back up too far (which triggers some very hard to avoid attacks) or get too close where you get screwed by hitboxes or break lockon which is often fatal.

And then even when you finally learn all his stuff, he breaks out the insta-kill laser flurries at like 40% and if you don't know exactly where to run to not get hit by that (or have the miracle that essentially gives you a second life), you're dead and have to start all over. And the damn runback is just spit in your eye! It's like 90 seconds, at least, and you don't fight any enemies, you just waste your time and get mad.

F MIDIR

Someday I'll beat him legit. But, that day is not soon. I have one playthrough stuck at him cause on that playthrough I bombed the mage guy's quest by not talking to him often enough between bosses so I didn't get pestilent mist. I got him to 40% a few times using the dragonslayer axe and the dragonslayer greatshield, but always SOMETHING would eventually go wrong. I suspect that if I tried learning him with dodging instead of blocking and just used a 2H weapon that might be the way to go, but I'd essentially have to relearn the fight to do that and I just don't have the patience right now!

 

[wankerness]

I just beat the Dragon Rider in DS2 during my lunch break today. What an easy boss, it took me 3 attempts to beat because on the first 2 I had too low health when entering the mist. And surprisingly frequent bonfires after that too. Very unbalanced IMO, in the forest part there were only like 2 bonfires for a big area with many mobs and then there's an area like this with multiple bonfires and only like 1 enemy in between. Basilisks are a major pain in the ass in this game though, not because of the petrification or whatever they do but because they jump on you and make you fall over.

Are you sure you're playing the SOTFS edition? Are you playing the Xbox 360 version of SOTFS??? That one had the DS2 vanilla enemy placement but was called that cause it came bundled with DLC.

Alternatively, did you just kill the dragon rider, head to the exit behind him, and miss the second boss in the area, the dragon slayer?? Heide's Tower leads to two different areas - one is the "No Man's Wharf" behind Dragon Rider, and the other is "Cathedral of the Blue" which is like a sub-zone with the Dragonslayer boss in it and another Covenant NPC.

I ask cause the area with Dragon Rider is pure pain if you fight him first, cause you get swarmed with Heide Knights (the guys that are initially asleep, and have really spastic swing patterns cause they're blind) as soon as you beat him, and they are mixed in with the huge packs of Old Knights (big stone guys). Getting around that level is a nightmare on SOTFS, especially with the actual dragon they threw in right before Dragon Slayer. As far as I can tell the only way to kill it is snipe away with arrows from really far away and hide every couple arrows so you don't get set on fire, since it has like infinite range on the fire breath.

If you missed Dragon Slayer it might be prudent to come back and kill him later when you're higher level - that place is so damn hard once the Heide Knights are active when you're low level.

If you're playing the SOTFS version, I really like what they did with No-Man's Wharf. They made torches actually useful - the level can be progressively brightened if you go around with a torch and light everything. Of course, if you're holding a torch you can't use anything in your off-hand or 2H your melee weapon, so I often kind of "leapfrog" by first lighting the torch off the bonfire, killing the first couple enemies, light that torch, put away my torch, kill some dudes, go back to the torch I lit to relight my own torch, etcetcetc. It's got about a million enemies in it but I like the area. Just be aware the giant spidery looking monsters are scared of fire but will totally mess you up if you DON'T have a torch out.

 

[MFB]

I forgot that I actually made it to that part of DS2, I keep thinking it's part of DS1, but apparently not! Fuck those Old Knights, that whole place sucks as it's just like, new walkway = new knight, you figure it out stupid. I think that was right around where I stopped playing, and looking at the list for all the bosses in DS2 + DLC - holy hell there are a lot!

 

[CTID]

and looking at the list for all the bosses in DS2 + DLC - holy hell there are a lot!

until you realize that 50% of them are just "a dude in armor"

there's some genuinely solid bosses in 2 but it definitely has the weakest selection of the 3, even with having more bosses than 1 and 3. imo of course

 

[p0ke]

Are you sure you're playing the SOTFS edition? Are you playing the Xbox 360 version of SOTFS??? That one had the DS2 vanilla enemy placement but was called that cause it came bundled with DLC.

Alternatively, did you just kill the dragon rider, head to the exit behind him, and miss the second boss in the area, the dragon slayer?? Heide's Tower leads to two different areas - one is the "No Man's Wharf" behind Dragon Rider, and the other is "Cathedral of the Blue" which is like a sub-zone with the Dragonslayer boss in it and another Covenant NPC.

I ask cause the area with Dragon Rider is pure pain if you fight him first, cause you get swarmed with Heide Knights (the guys that are initially asleep, and have really spastic swing patterns cause they're blind) as soon as you beat him, and they are mixed in with the huge packs of Old Knights (big stone guys). Getting around that level is a nightmare on SOTFS, especially with the actual dragon they threw in right before Dragon Slayer. As far as I can tell the only way to kill it is snipe away with arrows from really far away and hide every couple arrows so you don't get set on fire, since it has like infinite range on the fire breath.

If you missed Dragon Slayer it might be prudent to come back and kill him later when you're higher level - that place is so damn hard once the Heide Knights are active when you're low level.

If you're playing the SOTFS version, I really like what they did with No-Man's Wharf. They made torches actually useful - the level can be progressively brightened if you go around with a torch and light everything. Of course, if you're holding a torch you can't use anything in your off-hand or 2H your melee weapon, so I often kind of "leapfrog" by first lighting the torch off the bonfire, killing the first couple enemies, light that torch, put away my torch, kill some dudes, go back to the torch I lit to relight my own torch, etcetcetc. It's got about a million enemies in it but I like the area. Just be aware the giant spidery looking monsters are scared of fire but will totally mess you up if you DON'T have a torch out.

This should be the Xbox One version of SOTFS. If it was the 360 version the dashboard would show a 360 logo on it and quick resume wouldn't work, so I'm pretty sure that's not it.

But yeah, I went to No-Man's Wharf. I realize there were forks in the road and I just picked one way, didn't check the other yet.

 

[p0ke]

Got through No-Mans Wharf, but couldn't quite get the Flexible Sentry. I had 0 estus left and only 2 lifegems when I got there, so I was surprised that I even got close to defeating him. I think I was 2-3 hits away. Then I just tried to run there a few times and of course got crushed by the millions of Varangians on the way Oh well, better luck next time.

 

[wankerness]

Ds2 has a lot of weak bosses but I love the levels and the build/weapon variety. Almost all the bosses are like, stick right on them and circle around to the side, maybe roll occasionally, and they’re no threat at all. Pursuer, the big frog with arms in its mouth, and throne watcher/defender are the only ones that I remember dying to more than once pre-dlc. I used to have a tough time with smelter/blue smelter until I realized how easy they are to just go after with a 2H weapon and roll through every attack. Oh and I guess the ruin sentinel trio and the gargoyle redo have killed me a few times. The latter in particular is bad news if you don't have a good build/weapon. And I guess the giant rat that's like a janky Sif reskin - that's mainly hard cause of wacko hitboxes.

Some of the other ones might have been difficult if the game didn't heavily encourage you to use summons..duke's dear freja or the scorpioness for example. That's another thing I like, though. The game's NPC quests are mostly progressed via summoning them for boss fights, making boss fights mostly feel like teaming up with your buddies. I never summon for more than one or two of the DLC bosses because the summons tend to just make them harder and there are no quests attached, but base game? Like half the bosses have a good summon available.

Anyway, I finally got the platinum on lords of the fallen, only took FOUR playthroughs on the same character. I hate that the game punishes you for making new characters by locking all the achievements (like kill all optional bosses, bosses tied to sidequests, etc) on ONE CHARACTER, not accountwide. The new character class unlocks seem really fun and would lend themselves to replay value if not for the fact if you're someone that cares about achievements you'll be burned out on the game before you're even able to play a second character! Overall it's a decent game but has a lot of issues. They need to add some basic QOL features with patches or something. Things like inventory sorting and buyback from vendors. I'm hopeful they'll release some good DLC at some point, but currently the only thing planned is crappy randomizer modes that wouldn't be enough to make me replay it. Overall Lies of P is the radically better big-budget soulslike of last year.

Now I'm playing Like a Dragon: Gaiden. So far I am not too keen on this, the combat doesn't feel as good as the previous few games and they seem to have inflated the playtime with a lot of grindy BS (the mini-quests that seem to be randomly generated all over town nonstop which are mostly like "bring me a specific item from a store on the other end of town!"). Also I'm REALLY weirded out by the hostess club being actual video of actual women, it's very off-putting!!

 

[CTID]

Also I'm REALLY weirded out by the hostess club being actual video of actual women, it's very off-putting!!

Infinite Wealth's segments of that were very creepy and offputting to me and my wife too. Maybe it's a cultural thing and videos like that are more common in Japan? I have no idea.

In fact, the whole "Tinder-like" dating thing in IW is kind of creepy and (yes, I know it's rated M but let's be real here) teaching the wrong lessons to people. It's funny and goofy but if you step back from the presentation of it, it's pretty fucking weird.

 

[gabito]

Ds2 has a lot of weak bosses but I love the levels and the build/weapon variety. Almost all the bosses are like, stick right on them and circle around to the side, maybe roll occasionally, and they’re no threat at all. Pursuer, the big frog with arms in its mouth, and throne watcher/defender are the only ones that I remember dying to more than once pre-dlc. I used to have a tough time with smelter/blue smelter until I realized how easy they are to just go after with a 2H weapon and roll through every attack. Oh and I guess the ruin sentinel trio and the gargoyle redo have killed me a few times. The latter in particular is bad news if you don't have a good build/weapon. And I guess the giant rat that's like a janky Sif reskin - that's mainly hard cause of wacko hitboxes.

Some of the other ones might have been difficult if the game didn't heavily encourage you to use summons..duke's dear freja or the scorpioness for example. That's another thing I like, though. The game's NPC quests are mostly progressed via summoning them for boss fights, making boss fights mostly feel like teaming up with your buddies. I never summon for more than one or two of the DLC bosses because the summons tend to just make them harder and there are no quests attached, but base game? Like half the bosses have a good summon available.

Anyway, I finally got the platinum on lords of the fallen, only took FOUR playthroughs on the same character. I hate that the game punishes you for making new characters by locking all the achievements (like kill all optional bosses, bosses tied to sidequests, etc) on ONE CHARACTER, not accountwide. The new character class unlocks seem really fun and would lend themselves to replay value if not for the fact if you're someone that cares about achievements you'll be burned out on the game before you're even able to play a second character! Overall it's a decent game but has a lot of issues. They need to add some basic QOL features with patches or something. Things like inventory sorting and buyback from vendors. I'm hopeful they'll release some good DLC at some point, but currently the only thing planned is crappy randomizer modes that wouldn't be enough to make me replay it. Overall Lies of P is the radically better big-budget soulslike of last year.

Now I'm playing Like a Dragon: Gaiden. So far I am not too keen on this, the combat doesn't feel as good as the previous few games and they seem to have inflated the playtime with a lot of grindy BS (the mini-quests that seem to be randomly generated all over town nonstop which are mostly like "bring me a specific item from a store on the other end of town!"). Also I'm REALLY weirded out by the hostess club being actual video of actual women, it's very off-putting!!

The game is good (and short), but Judgment has better combat I think.

I wouldn’t get too obsessed with the mini missions from people asking you to do something though, there’s a million of those and they are kind of worthless. Akame’s missions are the equivalent of the usual sub stories, but she delivers the missions to you instead of you having to find them.

The video hostess thing is super cringey.

 

[Lorcan Ward]

This brings back a lot of memories. Looks like they did a great job keeping the core look and feel of the game. At $30 I can't justify the price. If only they had mixed jedi knight 1 and 2 in as well.

 

[wankerness]

This brings back a lot of memories. Looks like they did a great job keeping the core look and feel of the game. At $30 I can't justify the price. If only they had mixed jedi knight 1 and 2 in as well.

They’re also releasing battlefront 1/2 on March 14. My girlfriend grew up playing the first on Xbox and it’s one of the few couch coop shooters out there (the damn new ones tried to force you into online and removed all the bot options). So we’re looking forward to that. Dark Forces was not a well regarded shooter even at the time (I distinctly remember bad reviews for it many places, mostly focusing on bland graphics and environments). I would still replay it, but meh, 2 and the follow ups were way, way better. Too bad aspyr screwed up the console ports of those.

 

[TedEH]

At $30 I can't justify the price.

The original is still playable, and could be had for much cheaper. As much as the remake looks cool, it kinda sits in that weird "did it really need a remake" category. Maybe it's worth it for the visual improvements, QoL stuff, etc., but in my mind remakes/remasters make the most sense when there's some accessibility problem for the original - not being compatible anymore, some obscure driver requirement, outdated controls, being released on hardware nobody has anymore, etc. But this is just a dos game that'll run on anything.

Although, bonus points for the very "don't dead, open inside" title. I too would like to play Star Dark Forces Remaster Wars.

 

[wankerness]

The original is still playable, and could be had for much cheaper. As much as the remake looks cool, it kinda sits in that weird "did it really need a remake" category. Maybe it's worth it for the visual improvements, QoL stuff, etc., but in my mind remakes/remasters make the most sense when there's some accessibility problem for the original - not being compatible anymore, some obscure driver requirement, outdated controls, being released on hardware nobody has anymore, etc. But this is just a dos game that'll run on anything.

Although, bonus points for the very "don't dead, open inside" title. I too would like to play Star Dark Forces Remaster Wars.

The point is the console versions! Pc, maybe they’d get it up to at least the level of the original Mac port. That was the thing with the Mac versions of DOS games - we barely got any ports, but the ones we did were always WAY higher resolution and any time I’d play them on windows I’d be revolted by how pixelated and bad they looked (Dark Forces was a big example). Or by the midi instead of properly recorded soundtracks (ex Descent, Duke Nukem 3d), etc. it was bad being a Mac gamer back then, but we did get by far the best versions of some games.

 

[TedEH]

I tend to forget not everyone has a PC or uses one for games.

The OG works on cell phones though, so that's a thing. Not that I'd recommend that.

 

[TedEH]

Finally got to the end of BG3. Probably don't need to say much about it, 'cause it's well known enough. Took 150 hrs, ish, which I think might be my record for a single playthrough of something.