So after a good 15 hours....
I can safely say I like the game.
I can see why some veterans are saying it's an easier game. It feels easier, although maybe that's only true for people that played DS1. Having to not learn all the lessons from DS1 over again has certainly made it feel easier.
But there's a lot of good usability tweaks, even if they come with downsides.
-Repairing happens when you hit a bonfire. The trade off is, almost all weapons deteriorate faster.
-Hollowing isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. Maybe it accelerates later in game, but it takes more than 10 deaths to hit less than 75% health. Ring of Binding means that's the lowest it will go. (Which is why you do Heide's as soon as you're able.)
-Waypoints make the game soooooooooooo much faster to play.
-There are way more healing options early game. Using lifegems still feels a bit like cheating.
-Extinction is not as bad as described. Maybe, again, it happens faster in later game areas. But right now it appears only a select number of enemies goes extinct. So as long as you only explore to the degree you've seen everything, instead of repeatedly full clearing as you go, there remains quite a few guys to kill. As an example, the 2nd mob in Heide's went extinct after only 5 or so kills. Yet the guy in front of him continued on for at least another 20. On the one hand, yes, less farming. But on the other, it makes getting through areas faster and eventually easier. For someone who basically quit playing Dark Souls because they couldn't stomach doing several hard mobs before an incredibly hard boss fight, this is kind of a blessing. I may not be saying that later when I've hit a wall and there's little I can go back to fight.
-Smithing and reinforcement seems to have been streamlined.
-Character models look so much better than the previous games. I love love love the slow transformation from your character to a moldering corpse.
-I don't feel nearly so penalized for being hollow in Dark Souls 2. In DS1, I basically forsook all the benefits of humanity because I was dying so often and didn't want to constantly grind for more humanity just to lose it again. In DS2, I'm still hollow the majority of the time to some degree. But you're not being penalized in 5 different places like you were in DS1.
Other things:
-Good gear seems to come at you way sooner. It was a while in DS1 before I was sporting Elite Knight armor, and yet it was one of the first purchase I made as soon as it became available in Majula.
-I've done a lot of enemy cheesing in DS2 to date. Whereas I only did it to a select few mobs in DS1, I've killed like 3 big guys at this point just using my shortbow and exploiting their tethers. Occasionally I feel bad about it, before I remember what game I'm playing.
-There are indeed not a lot of weapons with a good Heavy --> combo. That has screwed me on several occasions, as the delay between the heavy swing and the light is quite noticable with some weapons.
-I too miss Kick. I've gotta a Shield Break off once on a guy, but it is nearly impossible for me to hit the timing marks consistently.
-Parrying generally seems more forgiving than it was. In a lot of cases I still take the damage even though the parry goes off.
-Some of the early bosses are a complete joke compared to the first thing they threw at you in Dark Souls.
Killed the Heide Knight with 5 Witch Orbs and a sword thrust. Black Knight wouldn't have taken that shit!
-I'll probably play this offline mostly. Just seems the way to do things for a first playthrough. Other than covenants and summons, I can't see a benefit for being online. And at least I can build my character exactly how I want without having to worry about getting slapped around by griefers at SL100.
-I think...aesthetically while DS2 is much prettier, I'm liking the area designs less. Dark Souls never really bothered to explain why things are themed the way they are or why they fit together, and neither does DS2. But the areas in DS2 somehow feel arbitrary. There's no sense of unity in the levels like Upper Burg --> Lower Burg --> Blight Town, or how Darkroot Gardens and Basin and the Waterfall all went together, sitting at the foot of the Burg. Put another way, playing DS I could almost visualize how the city would have been put together. In DS2, things are impossibly put next to each other it seems like. One minute I'm on the coast in a giant pillared holy district ala Anor Londo, the next I'm several miles underground in a cave. One minute I'm in a forest, the next I'm in a huge fortress that you only barely knew was there. Teleporting everywhere probably doesn't help forge any of those mental links either.
-Torches seem poorly implemented. I haven't used them much, but their design seems confusingly based around lighting the torch at very specific points. I'm sure it will come into play more later on, but right now they seem more like a gimmick than some fundamental or useful part of gameplay. Put another way, when your character emits light in all areas except where they're explicitly not allowed to, torches have little point.
All in all, I think this is definitely a more approachable game than the previous one (as far as any Dark Souls game is approachable.) I haven't yet encountered an enemy that makes me go "How am I going to beat this?" The Pursuer is the closest I've gotten, but even then I can see how he can be beaten, with the right gear. No doubt there's another incarnation of Fat Ass & Jerk Wad in the game somewhere. But I've already made way more progress in my first 12 hours in DS2 than I ever did in DS1.
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Topic: Dark Souls 2 - PC Controls are the final boss. HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. (Read 91437 times)