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OK, OK, I'm in....

The dlc of ds2 shatters the height of the highs and plunged below the depths of the lows. Each dlc is very clearly separated into a good bit and a bad bit. This is done very clearly by having the bad off to the side behind a locked door. Then the good bit contains a intricate and well crafted level with lots of paths and loot. It always has clever design. The good bit also has 2 bosses both of good to great quality. The bad bit in 2/3 cases contains a small cave with tons of enemy’s and a short but frantic run to the boss. In these cases the bosses are a group of 3 enemy’s taken from somewhere else in the game and put into an awkward arena. For this boss you just glitch out the ai by running in circles in varying speeds. And the other boss is the smelter demon again but blue and with different timings on his attacks. In the 3rd dlc the bad bit instead has a huge open space with nothing in it. There is also a snow storm so you can’t see where you are going and nothing further than 2m away can be seen. It also has randomly spawning horse creatures that spear form nowhere and do way to much damage and have way to long attack lengths. Then the boss is just 2 of one of the dlcs other bosses. This one I didn’t do because actually getting to the boss could take 30 mins of attempts. And the boss is boring to do. The good bosses in the dlcs are amazing. The dragon fight is a nice challenge. Then the fume knight and sir alonne are my 5th and 3rd favourite bosses respectively. They are both fun fights and quite challenging. The old ivory king is an amazing encounter and cool team fight. The dlc is overall amazing especially since the bad bits can be ignored. But it just brings everything into question. Why do the bad bits exist. They are clearly sectioned of from the main bit in all 3 cases. It’s clear fromsoft new what parts of this game where bad int he base game. But then they went out of there way to make more bad stuff for the dlc for no reason. I can only assume they where trying expand upon ds2 buying having some great bits and then some out of place terribleness for no reason. So far this is the worst game in the series. But if you can get past the bad stuff and the weird systems the highs of this game are worth experiencing. It would be a shame if they were forgotten which seems to be what has happened with general public opinion on this game.

The levels are where the ugly side of ds2 shows it’s head. There are some good levels in the game. The starting one is alright and no man’s warf is one of my favourites so far. The first pass of heides tower was a very good early game area. Drangleic caste was also really good. Unfortunately that is where the list of good levels stops. There are some okay levels like the gutter being a less annoying blightown. The area with snake boss wasn’t bad either. Neither was the areas leading up to the lost sinner boss fight. The really bad levels come in the form of the gulch. Which is just a bunch of statues that spit poison darts at you. Hunter copse has a terrible boss run due to enemy spam. The iron keep has way to many enemies. I have heard in the original game this was a good area because they didn’t have so many enemies in this area. They just added a shit ton in the scholar of the first sin edition. There are levels where you force poisoned upon leaving the bonfire. The final area is just a long walk where you have to wait 20 seconds to start it as a door opens. The game does have a nice balance of long and short levels though which is a refreshing change.

The bosses in ds2 base game where on the most part really good. I realy enjoyed how well humanoid duals were done throughout the game from start to finish. I also think the group fights with multiple bosses were some of the best of that type in the series. Ruin sentinels was fun and a well designed fight allowing you to learn the boss before having to face 2 at once. Gargoyles was much better in this game than in ds1 even though there where many more. I also really enjoyed fights like the pursuer, the flexile sentry and the mirror knight. They are all really well designed duals and that type of boss isn’t found a lot in the other groups. Where the boss quality drops a bit is in the large monster style fights and the fights with lots of normal enemies. Bosses like the rotten and old iron king are very boring fights gameplay wise whilst they look cool. The skeleton lords and chariot are very easy and boring group fights. The giant fights are very slow. I did enjoy demon of song but it was very easy. The smelter demon was a boss I loved and hated. It was a hard fight but a 1 on 1 duel. The reason it’s good and bad is it feels satisfying when it works but he has many hitbox problems both in dealing and taking damage. Other bosses like the spider boss look realy cool but are very easy. And velstat is boring but a decent challenge. The only realy bad bosses are the royal rat authority and the ancient dragon. The rat is just an rng check st the begging to see if you can win the fight. He is also just a relay buggy version of sif without that check so boring as a boss and annoying due to the toxic rats you have to kill at the start before he comes in. Then the ancient dragon just has a huge health pool and has lots of 1 shot aoe attacks with buggy hit boxes. Either it’s a very hard fight with lots of rng involved or you just sit in his toes and it’s a very long boring fight. I enjoyed the triple set of final bosses at the end of the game. Whilst only the first was challenging they where all varied and it was fun to knock them out one after another. Probably my favourite ending bosses in the games I’ve played so far. The darklurker was a very fun fight with a very annoying boss run. The boss run takes about 5-6 minutes and costs a rare material to attempt it can also be very hard to complete depending on the build. Also to even unlock the boss you have to complete lots of annoying trials that kind of force cheesy builds in order to be possible. Overall the boss quality was much better than ds1 with many base game bosses reaching the heights of ds1 dlc bosses.

I guess I should start with the changes from ds1 to ds2. This seems to be were a lot of players have problems with the game. The main difference is the use of an abundant healing source in the form of life gems. Either this change to healing shaped a lot of the game or this was added in order to make the game playable. This extra healing method is needed due to the much longer boss runs and runs between bonfires. With only the estus moving around the world would be to frustrating as there are so many more enemies to deal with. They are placed much closer together as-well. This essentially guarantees you'll take damage while doing boss runs and will run out of estus frequently whilst exploring. To save these from being frustrating life gems add pretty much limitless healing from the mid game onwards. I am personally fine with this healing system I like the combo of gems and estus. I do however think it was accomplished better in bloodborne. Another major change is the splitting of endurance into 3 stats. This means that you start out with almost no i frames on dodges. You have to spend more levels on endurance stats. But this is countered by levels being much cheaper early and mid game. Also healing takes along time longer than it should for a game of this pace. But again it’s a stat you can level up so you heal a bit faster. This is a weird change. It just makes the game more cumbersome whilst having the only significant difference be that soul level 1 runs are hard cause dodges have almost no i frames. Overall these changes were made so a faster paced game with enemy span combat could work. In ds1 the hardest parts where when multiple enemies had to be dealt with at once and the really leant into this idea in ds2. But again (in terms of normal enemies) I think bb did this better by having healing be fast paced as well.

This is a weird game. This game has some of the high points of my journey through the soul series. It also has many of the low points. There are lots of really good parts in the game and lots of terrible parts in the game. The weird thing is you can tell the developers new where the bad parts are. The bad and good parts are always separated. The bad areas are usually self contained and grouped together on the same part of the game as other bad areas. The bad areas have the weaker (in terms of design not difficulty) bosses and the good areas have the good bosses. The bad parts generally have weirdly placed bonfires just to make them playable. It’s honestly so polarising to the point that the only explanation to how this happened is that during development they got bored of making a good game and decided to have a competition on who could make the worst bit of content. Then they spent all there time maximising misery in these areas. When the deadline approached they realised half the game was bad and threw in random out of place fixes to make it barely playable.

Started new thread because I could only find a couple mentioning dark souls 2 news from like 8 years ago.

So many things in that list bring back memories. I used to love being able to play local multiplayer, on racing games especially, and being able to compete with your mates on the same screens when we got together, but so many games don't include it now. I used to play so mamy demos too!! I would buy 2 or 3 different playstation magazines purely because they had different demo discs, and if you liked the demo it would encourage you to buy the game. Now, if you're not sure about a game all you've got to go on our reviews and gameplay videos, and then if youre still not sure about it waiting until it comes massively down in price to get it so you're not too disappointed if you don't get like it.

I've got a week off the week of the PS open beta so I'll actually get to play it. There's no way I'm pre-ordering this game to get early access.

Pretty much all those reasons is why we all fell in love with games. Its why when a game comes out now that gets close to certain features of old, then we get a bit giddy and enjoy the nostalgia it reminds us of. Personally, I get we have to be careful of having too much wastage in this planet but I don't see why we couldn't still have Game Instructions and Game Guides for many AAA games. They were amazing to read, didn't blow away the experience, and in fact it made you feel like you'd sit and take it all in more so. I think its why a place Limited Run Games does so well, just a shame they are so expensive with all the additional accessories for the same game. I think the only rose tinted glasses one could easily be the Complete Games one. I agree with all above that I miss Complete Games and patches on Day One and barely full games aren't delivered are a pain. Two things with this one really. First is that we only get disappointed because we are promised a fully fledged game that is around 40 hours at least for most AAA games. A promise usually that is hard to deliver at the best of times. Secondly, we can easily forget that whilst we used to get complete games, it never tricked us that it was more than it was. Many games were just 5-8 levels of pure fun but could be potentially finished very quickly. The difference was it was on the box, so it never rarely missed our expectations by building it up to be something it wasn't.

I booted up streets of rage on the megadrive last night with the CRT I picked up recently and it looks surprisingly good. I always thought that graphics had come on leaps and bounds but honestly the 16bit era holds up incredibly well with the right set up. The other thought I had was the time spent waiting for each level to load, there was nothing.... I know there is a lot more data to load with modern consoles but it wasn't all that long ago that Sony were bragging about having next to no gaming load times, then I played the megadrive yesterday and was like 'oh wait they are basically copying Sega 😄 ' I think one thing that I probably miss and appreciate at the same time is the evolving of game guides / in game information (waypoints)etc. It's all made easy to speed up our gaming time, as I have gotten older I have less and less time to actually game so this allows me to complete games. However I look back at the Final Fantasy games on the PS1 as my favourite era and at that time I used relatively little to no guidance. This brought more to the experience though, the exploration and the discovery. In fact the first time I play FFVII I missed Fort Condor completely, imagine my surprise finding it years later! The other thing is I sometimes feel obligated to play with friends, if I get a message of an evening 'do you want to play clubs' or 'is anyone up for battlefield' I feel a little obligated to join them (especially if I haven't gamed with that person or group for a week or so). The other thing is, developers need to realise bigger does not always mean better. We have seen it a lot with ubisoft games and the likes of Just cause over recent years. I would much rather they spend time on much more crafted smaller worlds. Now that I have my retro set up, I am just sorting out my gaming storage to make things more accessible but I can see it taking up some more time in my gaming schedule going forwards, there is a lot more uniqueness.

@GazzaGarratt have you got @Baabcat and @Plumbers Crack numbers and I can add them to the whatsapp group 🙂

Good man!!!!

C'mon peeps, just need one more entrant to get this up and running 😁😁😁

I'm currently reading through the latest DnD book Journey to the Radiant Citadel, and also The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Martyr by Anthony Ryan and Will Save The Galaxy For Cash by Yahtzee Crowshaw.

Happy Birthday @Stretch616 @Deep_diving_in_Lake_Hyrule !! 🤘

Yeah because when its this good, I don't want to rock the boat as i'm sure we'll have rocky days ahead still! 😅 I don't blame you. Conte has probably one of the best chances i've seen since Poch was there. He's even got Dier playing really well for him too.

It wasn't mentioned, but your 100% right. 👍

Microtransactions too - at a quick glance, I'm not sure if it was mentioned in the article.

I pretty much agree with everything in that article. The one big thing is complete games. It was always a big deal when someone came up or heard of a "cheese" or "easy way" to beat a boss or pass a level and have it still be there to use if needed. The pause trick in Mega Man 1. After shooting your electric shot, rapidly pause the game when it first hits an enemy/boss and the damage will tick every time you unpause the game. It made some boss encounters in that one a breeze. Challenge I'm iffy on. Some games back then were flat out cheap as oppose to hard. I look at games like the Souls series, Elden Ring, Sifu and all of those have learning curves that once learned, make the game more manageable. Some retro games had the same formula, but due to the tech at the time, still ended up being really heap with respawning enemies if you move off screen then come back. Ninja Gaiden... Castlevania... I've actually been on a retro style fix lately. Live A Live, Odin Sphere, TMNT, Mega Man, and some retro style current games like The Messenger. There's just something about that style of graphics that tickles my sweet-spot in just the right way.

I finally started reading Dune. Just finished the first book and started reading Dune Messiah.

I had to dump two books in a row, which was disappointing. But I finally found what I needed to read right now: Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey and The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski. Enjoying them both right now. One of my friends and I are planning on reading The Witcher books together, so we can have our own mini book club. I.e. we squawk at each other through text messages.

I'm about 100 pages into Kites, by Romain Gary. Has 'Great Expectations' vibes so far but for such a celebrated writer I'm not impressed personally with the writing.

Love how it changes! But also i'm a big fan of the start too. You could do a hell of a lot of background music for so much stuff with your ideas dude. Have you thought about doing that for other things?

If any of you guys are a fan of Dave Grohl or Foo Fighters I would massively recommend his book The Storyteller. I am only a third of the waythrough but I am really enjoying it. He combines stories from the recent years with the Foo Fighters with some from when he was growing up, and it works so well. It's really funny at points and he also shares some very personal stories from his youth. Deffo worth a read for any fan of his 🙂