Dark Souls 3 hype thread!

[Laughing Man]

Did you notice the messages on the ground in the starting area? They show you basic controls, or are at least supposed to (I'm playing on PS4, don't know about the functionality on PC). Anyway, relying on the game ""tutorial"" to learn to play the game in Dark Souls is not the way to go.

Yes I noticed them and I read them but they where basic of the basic guidelines, like I said so basic that the marks on the ground didn't even explain how to dual wield, oh their is an instruction that tells you if you press this you can dual wield but it doesn't tell you that you need to unequip your shield then re equip a weapon and even then I wasn't even sure if pressing the shield button (which now had a sword instead of a shield, was actually doing anything). The issue isn't so much the info it gave it's the delivery. Most games will give you a new concept then give you a chance to apply that to some enemies before making it a mainstay features. This game gives you a whole bunch of commands in one short section a few enemies which are so basic that they are one hit kills and then sticks you in to a fight with a boss that stomps all over you. Like I said it was at this point that I knew the fun in this game would have to be found and worked on to gain and frankly that's not my thing.

It tells you how every stat value works on that screen, even if it's not going to be completely clear how you're supposed to understand how it works in-game.

Then in what way is that helpful? Here's some info about something but no info about how that applies to the in game mechanics... yes very helpful or as I indicated the game tries to be helpful but does it in a way that is utterly unhelpful. It comes across as them having gone full retard on this Get Gud nonsense here's the barest of the bare info and here's a guy to beat the living shit out of you before you have had a chance to learn or apply anything, huh Get Gud.. get fucked more like I'll keep my ?40 thanks.

 

[Fappy]

I'm nearing the end of the game and have enjoyed it so far. A few thoughts/criticisms:

- The combat is a very strange mixture of Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne, and it's taking a lot of getting used to. I didn't even really start using my shield until I was over 30 hours in. I am hoping the weirdness fades when I roll my next character.

- Magic sucks now. Maybe for some mooks it's fine, but for a lot of the bosses? Most of the bosses in this game are too quick and too aggressive to safely cast spells on. Most boss encounters seem heavily biased towards melee. Not only that, but your damage output is atrocious unless you completely min/max your casting stat. Apparently the scaling for magic items doesn't even kick in until you have at least 20 in the applicable stat. I am really feeling the nerf on my Dex/Faith build and just use miracles to buff and heal myself now.

- Hit boxes are all over the place. Not really much to add to that. I can't tell you how many times Dancer grabbed me/instant killed me with what has to be some kind of telekinetic powers. At one point I was already three feet past the back of her hand after dodging and I magically appeared in it. Ok. What?

- Too many bosses feel like Artorias 2.0. By that I mean that there are too many hyper aggressive humanoid bosses and they feel like their move sets feel more appropriate for Bloodborne than DS3. I spent half of these fights wishing I had health rally and that I could land more than one effing hit between boss combos. The fact that I died more times on Dancer than all the Old Hunter DLC bosses combined is testament to that. Orphan of Kos feels like a cakewalk compared to some of these guys.

An example of one of these bosses done right? Dragonslayer Armour. Besides the random fireballs from the sky the fight never felt too cheap. Pontiff? Fucking hacker is what he is.

- Bugs, bugs, bugs! And connection issues galore.

- Kinda spoilery, but you don't even get the Praise the Sun gesture until near the end of the game. Wtf?

- The new Blighttown is a truly horrible zone. Not because of the poison lake, but because the enemies are about x10 harder than OG Blighttown.

- Slow leveling and slow stat scaling makes it feel like you're constantly behind. You have to invest so much in a stat to get anything worthwhile out of it (except for Vigor). Neither Dark Souls or Bloodborne ever felt this way to me.

There are probably a few other things I am forgetting. I actually really like the game and will probably like it more in my next playthrough, it just has a few issues to iron out via patches and some... acclimating on my part.

Also somewhat related, is anyone else running it on PC having weird graphical issue every now and then? I get between 50-60fps most of the time and the dips aren't too bad or too frequent, but I have experienced a surprising amount of texture pop-in and occasionally the environment will lag by a half second and I can see through it to the skybox. It's not constantly happening, but it's painful when I notice it. I am running the game on a GTX970 GPU and in 2k, and I am beginning to think the monitor might be the culprit. Perhaps the game doesn't play well with G-Sync or the refresh rate of the monitor is out of sync with the game somehow (144 for the monitor). I get this weird screen flicker and the monitor light turns off and on a few times every time I boot up the game.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

- Too many bosses feel like Artorias 2.0. By that I mean that there are too many hyper aggressive humanoid bosses and they feel like their move sets feel more appropriate for Bloodborne than DS3. I spent half of these fights wishing I had health rally and that I could land more than one effing hit between boss combos. The fact that I died more times on Dancer than all the Old Hunter DLC bosses combined is testament to that. Orphan of Kos feels like a cakewalk compared to some of these guys.

An example of one of these bosses done right? Dragonslayer Armour. Besides the random fireballs from the sky the fight never felt too cheap. Pontiff? Fucking hacker is what he is.

- The new Blighttown is a truly horrible zone. Not because of the poison lake, but because the enemies are about x10 harder than OG Blighttown.

I'm currently at Dragonslayer Armor myself, and I wouldn't really agree with that boss complaint. Aside from maybe the Abyss Watchers and the Pontiff, I haven't really felt like there were that many hyper aggressive humanoid bosses. The bosses have been for the most part really exciting (Yhorm was just spectacular), but there's definitely a sense of recycling here: Deacons of the Deep is just another Celestial Emissary and Crystal Sage is just Pinwheel all over again. If there's a giant dog boss monster, we'll have the trifecta. I do agree that some bosses are absolute murder. Aldritch and Dancer especially, though partly through cheap methods: Aldritch can come down to pure luck as to whether he will spam his mega-super-duper spells or go for melee attacks. Dancer has an instakill grab attack, which are always bullshit on toast.

Oh come on, Farron Keep is not that bad. At least there's not a constant risk of falling to your death or getting fucked over by the camera or shitty framerates, and there are way more safe spots to let your poison meter run out. IMO the harder enemies balance the difficulty out just fine.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The combat is a very strange mixture of Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne, and it's taking a lot of getting used to. I didn't even really start using my shield until I was over 30 hours in. I am hoping the weirdness fades when I roll my next character.

I'm finding the same.

I am using a shield a lot, but unlike Dark Souls were every enemy had at best a combo attack of three, here they just unleash a machine gun volley of attacks on you. And it's usually the bigger brute enemies that go nuts like this. Even with the strategy of 'raise your shield only during an enemy's wind-up', I'm barely making it out without losing half my healthbar. It seems even as a tank dodging is essential in this game.

Big props for giving the knight enemies a sidewards shield bash as a counter for trying to strafe behind them to perform a backstab.

 

[Silence]

Bosses are not that hard so far, but some of them feel like "hey, remember how we fucked up this boss last game? Here's how it was SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE."

And I quite like that.

Also the music is so fucking awesome. First game where I literally just started the game and listened to the whole intro song before starting to play. And during the bossfights, I just sit there as well. "Hey, I didn't get it first try, but at least I can listen to this awesome music."

 

[Fat Hippo]

I am using a shield a lot, but unlike Dark Souls were every enemy had at best a combo attack of three, here they just unleash a machine gun volley of attacks on you. And it's usually the bigger brute enemies that go nuts like this. Even with the strategy of 'raise your shield only during an enemy's wind-up', I'm barely making it out without losing half my healthbar. It seems even as a tank dodging is essential in this game.

This is what I've found as well. I'm still early in the game, but even those sawblade guys in the undead settlement will wreck your shit if you try to take their hits with your shield. You really need to avoid their attacks altogether. Sometimes their combos just seem downright endless. I've had this with a couple of enemies now, though it seems a bit dependent on their mood (aka RNG). Sometimes they give you a chance to recover, and sometimes they will just smash you relentlessly.

 

[Objectable]

Man, this game is so difficult! So difficult, it won't even launch! FromSoftware is so good at this!

 

[EvilRoy]

I am using a shield a lot, but unlike Dark Souls were every enemy had at best a combo attack of three, here they just unleash a machine gun volley of attacks on you. And it's usually the bigger brute enemies that go nuts like this. Even with the strategy of 'raise your shield only during an enemy's wind-up', I'm barely making it out without losing half my healthbar. It seems even as a tank dodging is essential in this game.

This is what I've found as well. I'm still early in the game, but even those sawblade guys in the undead settlement will wreck your shit if you try to take their hits with your shield. You really need to avoid their attacks altogether. Sometimes their combos just seem downright endless. I've had this with a couple of enemies now, though it seems a bit dependent on their mood (aka RNG). Sometimes they give you a chance to recover, and sometimes they will just smash you relentlessly.

I found those guys really clever, I kind of hope these different ideas keep going on with other enemies as well - they get upset and throw tantrums, and their attacksets don't always track your character. You can jump back or around them, and chew into their side while they work out their issues on a bare patch of ground.

I am surprised at how useless the shield has been for me thus far as well though. Parrying does good work - but it doesn't work on everything. And generally even with an upgraded shield I'm getting chipped pretty badly when I let attacks connect. Its like a little extra insurance to make sure an attack doesn't outright kill you, while still punishing you for getting hit at all. It took a while to get used to, but it does make lighter shields suddenly more useful since you aren't going to get 100% physical block anyway so you may as well angle for either parry shields or faster movement.

 

[Fappy]

The combat is a very strange mixture of Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne, and it's taking a lot of getting used to. I didn't even really start using my shield until I was over 30 hours in. I am hoping the weirdness fades when I roll my next character.

I'm finding the same.

I am using a shield a lot, but unlike Dark Souls were every enemy had at best a combo attack of three, here they just unleash a machine gun volley of attacks on you. And it's usually the bigger brute enemies that go nuts like this. Even with the strategy of 'raise your shield only during an enemy's wind-up', I'm barely making it out without losing half my healthbar. It seems even as a tank dodging is essential in this game.

Big props for giving the knight enemies a sidewards shield bash as a counter for trying to strafe behind them to perform a backstab.

I've found that the best way to tackle knights is to dodge into/past them during their combos and to line-up a backstab before their animation is finished. They are highly susceptible to kick + reposting too if you bait them.

That said, the upgraded Lotheric knights you fight later are probably the hardest normal enemies in the game D:

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Has anyone figured out the estus mechanics? Why do I sometimes get extra estus charges? I mean, not that I'm complaining, it's saved my ass a few times, but I'd really like to know what makes it happen? Is it random? Is it because I killed a certain enemy? A certain number of enemies? Is it based on the luck stat?

I've been googling and I haven't found a definitive answer.

Also, is it just me or do the menus in this game totally fuck the framerate? I'm playing with an nvidia 980 and I'm getting 60 frames with everything maxed out, but the moment I pick up an item from the ground my framerate drops to 20 frames and then jumps back up to 60 within the span of a second and a half and it's really annoying. Same with opening and closing the menus quickly. If it's not just me then I think it's going to piss off a lot of speed-runners.

 

[EvilRoy]

Has anyone figured out the estus mechanics? Why do I sometimes get extra estus charges? I mean, not that I'm complaining, it's saved my ass a few times, but I'd really like to know what makes it happen? Is it random? Is it because I killed a certain enemy? A certain number of enemies? Is it based on the luck stat?

I've been googling and I haven't found a definitive answer.

Also, is it just me or do the menus in this game totally fuck the framerate? I'm playing with an nvidia 980 and I'm getting 60 frames with everything maxed out, but the moment I pick up an item from the ground my framerate drops to 20 frames and then jumps back up to 60 within the span of a second and a half and it's really annoying. Same with opening and closing the menus quickly. If it's not just me then I think it's going to piss off a lot of speed-runners.

I think its if a message you left gets rated positively, you get an extra estus charge. Its happened a few times for me, usually with a popup "someone has rated your message". I seem to remember the same thing existing in the other games, but it rarely came up when I played because there were messages six deep in some spots.

I dunno about the framerate though. Mine seems tied to how much of my characters face you can see during rolls and movements... I STILL have not found a full mask helmet.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Has anyone figured out the estus mechanics? Why do I sometimes get extra estus charges? I mean, not that I'm complaining, it's saved my ass a few times, but I'd really like to know what makes it happen? Is it random? Is it because I killed a certain enemy? A certain number of enemies? Is it based on the luck stat?

I've been googling and I haven't found a definitive answer.

Also, is it just me or do the menus in this game totally fuck the framerate? I'm playing with an nvidia 980 and I'm getting 60 frames with everything maxed out, but the moment I pick up an item from the ground my framerate drops to 20 frames and then jumps back up to 60 within the span of a second and a half and it's really annoying. Same with opening and closing the menus quickly. If it's not just me then I think it's going to piss off a lot of speed-runners.

I think its if a message you left gets rated positively, you get an extra estus charge. Its happened a few times for me, usually with a popup "someone has rated your message". I seem to remember the same thing existing in the other games, but it rarely came up when I played because there were messages six deep in some spots.

I dunno about the framerate though. Mine seems tied to how much of my characters face you can see during rolls and movements... I STILL have not found a full mask helmet.

That's definitely not it because I haven't been bothering leaving messages and it still happens to me. Sometimes if happens after killing a tough enemy, but not always. I just had it happen to me in the middle of a boss fight, just suddenly had 2 extra flask charges for no reason.

There's a whole reddit thread about it here and everyone seems stumped:

https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/4eorjm/randomly_getting_estus_lets_figure_it_out/

 

[Fat Hippo]

That's definitely not it because I haven't been bothering leaving messages and it still happens to me. Sometimes if happens after killing a tough enemy, but not always. I just had it happen to me in the middle of a boss fight, just suddenly had 2 extra flask charges for no reason.

There's a whole reddit thread about it here and everyone seems stumped:

https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/4eorjm/randomly_getting_estus_lets_figure_it_out/

Yeah, I've been wondering about that as well. As far as I can tell, it only happens when I'm in ember form. I haven't left a single message either. It's quite peculiar.

I found those guys really clever, I kind of hope these different ideas keep going on with other enemies as well - they get upset and throw tantrums, and their attacksets don't always track your character. You can jump back or around them, and chew into their side while they work out their issues on a bare patch of ground.

I am surprised at how useless the shield has been for me thus far as well though. Parrying does good work - but it doesn't work on everything. And generally even with an upgraded shield I'm getting chipped pretty badly when I let attacks connect. Its like a little extra insurance to make sure an attack doesn't outright kill you, while still punishing you for getting hit at all. It took a while to get used to, but it does make lighter shields suddenly more useful since you aren't going to get 100% physical block anyway so you may as well angle for either parry shields or faster movement.

I was so bad at parrying in Dark Souls 1 that I kind of gave up on it. So instead, I am still using a shield with 100% physical block, but one which lets me use my weapon arts without switching to two-handed mode first. For the Lothric knights, I tended to use the longsword skill which bats their shield aside, followed by another attack, which does good work on them. For some other enemies, I've quite enjoyed the weapon art lunging, since it allows you to clear great distance forward and deal a lot of damage. As a knight, I figure I might as well use my focus on the trickier enemies.

 

[Casual Shinji]

That said, the upgraded Lotheric knights you fight later are probably the hardest normal enemies in the game D:

Are you talking about the big mace wielders in the cathedral that house the giants? The guys that perform miracles? Because I chugged through 7 estus just to take out one of those guys. They're fucking crazy tough.

Right now the shittiest enemies to me are those leech bastards, where seeming just touching them means spending the next 2 minutes suffering from blood loss.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

That's definitely not it because I haven't been bothering leaving messages and it still happens to me. Sometimes if happens after killing a tough enemy, but not always. I just had it happen to me in the middle of a boss fight, just suddenly had 2 extra flask charges for no reason.

There's a whole reddit thread about it here and everyone seems stumped:

https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/4eorjm/randomly_getting_estus_lets_figure_it_out/

Yeah, I've been wondering about that as well. As far as I can tell, it only happens when I'm in ember form. I haven't left a single message either. It's quite peculiar.

It's happened to me outside of ember form. That boss fight I mentioned, I was on my second try, so I had just died and was not embered.

Right now the shittiest enemies to me are those leech bastards, where seeming just touching them means spending the next 2 minutes suffering from blood loss.

Use fire on them, any kind of fire, it stuns them into oblivion. Even a torch is super useful against them.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

That said, the upgraded Lotheric knights you fight later are probably the hardest normal enemies in the game D:

Are you talking about the big mace wielders in the cathedral that house the giants? The guys that perform miracles? Because I chugged through 7 estus just to take out one of those guys. They're fucking crazy tough.

Nah, pretty sure he means post-Dancer Lothric Knights.

@Fappy: I really don't think any of the bosses in this game are that tough, but I feel you on how some of them feel more appropriate to Bloodborne in their commitment to hyper-aggressiveness. Despite that, I haven't hit a real roadblock on any of them, having completed both NG and NG+ at this point.

 

[sageoftruth]

I just came off the "Thoughts on Dark Souls 3" thread. Opinions are very positive. It sounds awesome. Alongside port reports, brief lets plays and Steam reviews, I think I've more than filled my quota of consumer caution. As soon as I get to a stopping point in Dark Souls 2, I'm jumping right in.

 

[Diablo2000]

Been loving it so far. In a lot of aspects it feels like Dark Souls 1, rather than 2 which is a positive for me. Though I am sad that they nerfed Pyromancy even harder this time requiring both faith and intelligence to even be able to cast it. (Dark Souls 2 it scaled with those attributes but didn't require them to)

I am about 14 hours in and just finished up beating the Abyss Watchers. Now I have a cool tip for the first half of the fight...

Spoiler

When the other two Abyss Watchers come, don't engage them, dodge them... They can and most likely will hit each other or even the main Abyss Watcher and they will starting to fight each other giving a nice opening to get a hit or two in the boss. It's cool that developers not only think of that, but they showed it that can happen right before the boss fight with the Dark Wraiths and those other things.
Keep in mind though, that once one of them die, the survivor will aggro on you again.

 

[Fappy]

That said, the upgraded Lotheric knights you fight later are probably the hardest normal enemies in the game D:

Are you talking about the big mace wielders in the cathedral that house the giants? The guys that perform miracles? Because I chugged through 7 estus just to take out one of those guys. They're fucking crazy tough.

Nah, pretty sure he means post-Dancer Lothric Knights.

@Fappy: I really don't think any of the bosses in this game are that tough, but I feel you on how some of them feel more appropriate to Bloodborne in their commitment to hyper-aggressiveness. Despite that, I haven't hit a real roadblock on any of them, having completed both NG and NG+ at this point.

I don't know, Gundyr Champion destroyed me last night. I kept getting him down to a sliver of health before he 360-no-scope-kicked me into oblivion. A lot of my issues probably stem from how much Bloodborne I played, as the only bosses outside of Aldritch I had difficulty with were all Bloodborne-y bosses. A Bloodborne PC would completely wreck these bosses, shield be damned.

For the record, those bosses include:

Abyss Watchers (4-5 deaths) - Died mostly due to O&S lock-on syndrome. Also was barely using my shield at this stage in the game, which would have helped enormously.

Pontiff (7-8 deaths) - Couldn't get his phase 1 combos down right and oddly had an easier time in phase 2. In fact, I think his phase 2 only took me two tries.

Aldritch (8-10 deaths) - I didn't see that she spawns magic missiles in her phase 2 teleport until the 5th time I died that way. They would hover off-screen so I had no idea they were there until one time when I rolled away during a teleport and watched her spawn them from a distance. That's my bad, really. Otherwise, her phase 2 arrows are basically instant death if you misjudge when they'll end.

The above three I'd consider fair. For the most part it was my fault, though Pontiff's reach is a bit too ridiculous on his thrust attacks. The bellow two, however....

Dancer (20+ deaths) - The hitbox on her grab is straight up broken. I would have to either dodge away at the very start of her telegraph or dodge twice mid-way through after finishing my attack animation. Ironically I had the most success attacking her at the start of the animation and panic dodging just as her hand came for me. But that's just phase 1.

Phase 2 is just odder BS. I really don't mind that she has really tricky moves with misleading tells. That's fine and honestly pretty cool. However, she simply does too much damage per hit. She has multiple ways to kill the player for making a single mistake. That's just too much. Considering how tricky her combos are, you should be able to tank a little more of her hits than that.

She was much more frustrating for me than Ludwig was in BB, and that's saying a lot.

Gundyr Champion (12-15 deaths) - Basically Gwyn on crack. I actually got incredibly good at fighting him, the only problem is that he perfectly highlights how wonky and broken enemy tracking is. In order to beat him you have to predict how spot-on he's going to land his punishing moves (kick and shoulder check, mainly). Sometimes he can spin like a ballerina and hit you 1/10th of a second after finishing another attack animation. Other times he biffs a shoulder check so hard he's actually out of range for a counter attack. He could have been a really interesting boss if they chilled out on the auto-lock tracking bullshit and just gave him more circle-strafe punishers.

The rest of the bosses in the game went down in 1-2 tries (Dragonslayer Armour kept knocking me off the cliff though LOL). That said, I think I may have 1-3 more left. I just beat the big dragon in the secret area (which was a goofy fight) and ended there for the night. Pretty sure I just have the rest of that zone and the Archives left.

EDIT: Hilariously, some of these difficult bosses are a complete joke in co-op. I have solo'd them all so far, but have sunbro'd plenty. I co-oped the Gundyr fight a few times after beating him last night and he was literally x20 easier, if not more.

EDIT #2: I could also be at a disadvantage due to my build. I went Dex/Faith thinking it would hold up like it did in DS1, but I am starting to think that's not the case. First of all, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, to get decent damage out of spells you need to completely commit that stat over all others which basically fucks hybrids. Okay, that's fine, I get a lot of use out of Lightning Weapon + Oath, but it would be nice to have an opportunity to re-buff at any point during the harder fights. Some of them (especially Gundyr) offer no chance to re-apply any kind of buff, which kind of throws a wrench in my build. I can get them to phase 2 faster! Great! That's usually when they're at their hardest! D:

Considering they made the combat so much faster you'd think they would speed up more of the spells than they have. In Bloodborne you can buff your weapon in a 1 second animation, and it doesn't even root you!

 

[EvilRoy]

That's definitely not it because I haven't been bothering leaving messages and it still happens to me. Sometimes if happens after killing a tough enemy, but not always. I just had it happen to me in the middle of a boss fight, just suddenly had 2 extra flask charges for no reason.

There's a whole reddit thread about it here and everyone seems stumped:

https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/4eorjm/randomly_getting_estus_lets_figure_it_out/

I think it must be a multiplayer element, where someone "near" you on the server does something like on previous dark souls. Aside from that, if it isn't a message then I'm stumped too. Now I have no reason to leave the comment "guts!" everywhere I go.

I was so bad at parrying in Dark Souls 1 that I kind of gave up on it. So instead, I am still using a shield with 100% physical block, but one which lets me use my weapon arts without switching to two-handed mode first. For the Lothric knights, I tended to use the longsword skill which bats their shield aside, followed by another attack, which does good work on them. For some other enemies, I've quite enjoyed the weapon art lunging, since it allows you to clear great distance forward and deal a lot of damage. As a knight, I figure I might as well use my focus on the trickier enemies.

Parrying got way worse in DS2 and in DS3 it seems to be better again... Problem with it is that there are just about zero bosses that can be parried, so best case it is a nice little way to speed up getting through an area but won't actually help with the really tough stuff. I wasn't aware there were shields that let you use the skill without two handing, I might have to look at that. Got myself a sweet axe from an old fashioned douche that has a warcry, but I only remember to use it after I've already gotten my ass handed to me.