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[Retropunch]

I don't know if DS2 could be more overrated and huge problems more overlooked. It would be hard for the franchise to be managed and supported worse than it has been.

I wouldn't go that far. Sure, some of the design decisions haven't been great, but I STILL think it's an awesome game and it's one of the few games lately that I've managed to play all the way through. Your list of things it does wrong can be said of pretty much every game - PC graphics are always lowered to fit current gen, matchmaking always sucks, nerfs are always too hard.

I admit more competition would be great, it's just that Lords of the Fallen looks like it hasn't tried to be competition but more like something that's just trying to grab onto the success as quickly as possible. It's like when toy manufacturers did (or maybe still do) produce all those similar looking/sounding toys which were always a bit less expensive than the real deal so that parents would buy those for their kids at Christmas rather either by accident or due to cost - except that's not going to happen with a computer game/steam sales.

Minimum spec stuff:
AC has always been almost a technical demo (I'm not a fan of the games, so I feel this even more so) and I'm sure most games coming out will be ok with lower specs. In recent years I've also seen Min.requirements a lot higher than they used to be. For me min.req was always 'the game will run, but only just' whereas min.req now seems to be 'what will run happily at medium settings'. I think this is probably just due to a lot of people complaining that they JUST fitted the min.spec yet it wasn't smooth.

[Stuebi]

Meh, seems like another generic overpriced AAA title to me (just like The Evil Within a few days ago... games which average people buy on release date because of all the advertising and then huge PC game give them a positive review while the game really is true garbage). I'm not interested at all. The reviews speak for themselves aswell.

[...]
I actually hoped it would be a bad joke. A fkin 2 Gig VRAM Graphics card? On MINIMUM requirements? A new Rig has been on my list since Shadow of Mordor, since it's struggling with a lot of new releases. But if those bleeding morons continue like this, I simply cant keep up with upgrading. Getting a new Graphicscard every year or two is fine. But it's getting f-ing ridicolous now.
[...]

Ahaha, awesome. Dude, we're in the same boat. For the past years I only had a netbook and a laptop. The netbook was mainly to browse and play DF in slow motion, the laptop was trash and didn't work well but at least could handle a few really old games. Got a new laptop last year and it's truely awesome to be able to play like everything right now, but the downside is that I have to stick to it for many years and can't upgrade it nor buy a new one (because of no money for such kind of things and because I'm still paying by installments).

Depending on how my jobsearch goes after my apprenticeship, I will be stuck around 3-4 years with my new one as well. So I really feel your pain.

Minimum spec stuff:
AC has always been almost a technical demo (I'm not a fan of the games, so I feel this even more so) and I'm sure most games coming out will be ok with lower specs. In recent years I've also seen Min.requirements a lot higher than they used to be. For me min.req was always 'the game will run, but only just' whereas min.req now seems to be 'what will run happily at medium settings'. I think this is probably just due to a lot of people complaining that they JUST fitted the min.spec yet it wasn't smooth.

I guess you're, right. And if all else fails there's still anything _but_ AAA. It's just a bit annoying when some of the big titles you looked forward to playing (A few months after release, on a sale), require your Rig to be fed by the souls of dead Techsupporters to run smoothly.

[Cthulhu]

I think it'll probably go down as we get closer to release, or at least the requirements won't be accurate.  Poor optimization and all that.

We're starting to see the bad end of the console vs pc war a bit.  I think the PS4 has like 10gb of VRAM, or just 10gb shared RAM, I don't remember exactly.  Point being since it's a dedicated system and runs non-games in a limited capacity, devs are free to eat up as much of that RAM as their hastily-written, unoptimized code can eat.

We don't have that privilege on PC.  That's why you need a Titan to get slightly a slightly furrier coat in Shadow of Mordor.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

I admit more competition would be great, it's just that Lords of the Fallen looks like it hasn't tried to be competition but more like something that's just trying to grab onto the success as quickly as possible. It's like when toy manufacturers did (or maybe still do) produce all those similar looking/sounding toys which were always a bit less expensive than the real deal so that parents would buy those for their kids at Christmas rather either by accident or due to cost - except that's not going to happen with a computer game/steam sales.

Could you explain what this is based on? What did I miss in the early marketing? This just came on my radar a few days ago & it was a pleasant surprise.

That also defies my understanding of triple-A games; I haven't seen extensive advertising, and this isn't a large studio. It's even lacking polish (pun) on things like lip-syncing, being a German/Polish title.


The negative reviews seem largely un-deserved. If DS is a 9, this is easily a seven or an eight. And in today's rating scales that means it should be an 8.5, not a damn 6.8.
It's really shaping up to be an under-rated title, which makes me sad.
DS-likes won't be a thing at this rate.


-E
Oh hey, got to play a few more hours last night, got clued in: you have to charge suspected secret walls. Which means start sprinting before raising your shield.
Also, them spiders mostly deal poison damage. Take advantage of the paused inventory to switch out armor if you encounter one.

-e
Today I learned spell-phantoms HAVE WEIGHT. 

[Sonlirain]

One of the head guys said they will need to sell half a milion copies to break even... this does not qualify the game as an AAA title since those still (according to the devs) bleed money after selling 2-3 milion copies.

I have a hunch they will break even easely but can't guarantee this becoming a longlasting franchise.

[Retropunch]

I admit more competition would be great, it's just that Lords of the Fallen looks like it hasn't tried to be competition but more like something that's just trying to grab onto the success as quickly as possible. It's like when toy manufacturers did (or maybe still do) produce all those similar looking/sounding toys which were always a bit less expensive than the real deal so that parents would buy those for their kids at Christmas rather either by accident or due to cost - except that's not going to happen with a computer game/steam sales.

Could you explain what this is based on? What did I miss in the early marketing? This just came on my radar a few days ago & it was a pleasant surprise.

That also defies my understanding of triple-A games; I haven't seen extensive advertising, and this isn't a large studio. It's even lacking polish (pun) on things like lip-syncing, being a German/Polish title.

Just that it's so, so similar. Instead of trying to do something unique (and I'm not saying it needs to be completely original, because nothing can be) they've just tried their hardest to get a quick win by copying pretty much every element of DS. Even if they had tried to make a unique story, or set it in a different theme, or even just had different classes it'd be something.

I'm not saying that it's absolutely awful, just that I feel the stagnation we get from pretty much copy-pasting successful formulas harms the industry. It's like horde mode in shootery games - now all games just do a cheap copy of that for multiplayer rather than actually thinking up something exciting/different.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Do we say the same things of roguelikes?

It's been three years since DaS was released, and what are the closest contemporaries? Dark messiah? That's more akin to mount & blade. Maybe the witcher? Next-closest are the myriad of combo-fest hack-n-slashers.
DS is rather unique in the ARPG scene, perhaps enough so to support a small sub-genre.
Interpreted this way, LotF did most everything right- they kept the core formula & made meaningful changes just about everywhere else. The loot upgrades, the narrative, the aesthetics, the tweaks to combat & respawning mechanics. It feels very different from DS yet exactly the same.
It's a derivative done right, and of good source material.

[Retropunch]

Do we say the same things of roguelikes?

It's been three years since DaS was released, and what are the closest contemporaries? Dark messiah? That's more akin to mount & blade. Maybe the witcher? Next-closest are the myriad of combo-fest hack-n-slashers.
DS is rather unique in the ARPG scene, perhaps enough so to support a small sub-genre.
Interpreted this way, LotF did most everything right- they kept the core formula & made meaningful changes just about everywhere else. The loot upgrades, the narrative, the aesthetics, the tweaks to combat & respawning mechanics. It feels very different from DS yet exactly the same.
It's a derivative done right, and of good source material.

I'd say the same about an RL that copied the formula so closely, but most try to add something really different - DCSS is very different from Nethack, which is very different from ADOM even though they are all fantasy RL's. I definitely agree that DS has created a small sub-genre, and it should be filled, it's just that to me, LoF comes across as an attempt to cash in rather than to really improve/do something great.

It's just my opinion though, I'm sure others will find it sufficiently different.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Ah well, fair enough. Thanks for discussing.


Gravity is still OP.
Finally perma-lost some experience, the cliff-side stairs in the area before the annihilator are brutal.
Fell to my death trying to jump onto the wall it borders.
Then died just before reclaiming it- trying to smack the spell-dude, I managed to initiate a jump-attack (No-NOOOOO) right through him.

About 40 minutes later lost another batch in the same spot-
Tried jumping onto the big-guy's anvil, turns out it was just as much of a deathtrap as it looked.
On my way back, the same damn spell-dude stunned me in the middle of an R2 combo and my guy staggered 3 feet to the right, headlong into the chasm.
~80k XP combined.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fuck those stairs.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And FUCK that spell dude.

Spoiler: Stairs & Dude in question (click to show/hide)

Mm, welp. I finished the game a while back, played a couple hours in the NG+. But moved on shortly after.
The gameplay itself is fun, the exploration combined with the loot was good as well. But the story really did fall flat. They've got multiple endings, sure, but they don't really explain the choice well enough for it to have meaningful weight. And they leave quite a few loose ends- it's like they're pausing the story right after introducing the characters. Future installments? Maybe.
But knowing what to expect, I'll wait out the price a bit more if those come along.
The lack of multiplayer really did kill its chances for a dedicated community, a pity.
The gameplay's an 8, the story's a 4, the aesthetics are a 7. Game time is 15-30 hours.
Overall I'd call it a 7.