Dark Souls 2 or Scholar of the First Sin? Which is better?
>>741477830SOTSF with like 6 or 7 mandatory mods to fix the game and make it even remotely playable
>>741477932Name 3 of those mods
>>741478013I'd assume at least one would be to fix how durability is tied to framerate so playing on PC makes weapons degrade 4 times as fast.
i played vanilla once at launch and never again and i've played sotfs like three or four times but every single time i replay sotfs my brain has the enemy placements and flow of vanilla hard locked in. every room i have a brief moment as i realize 'oh, right, that was in vanilla that it was like that. it's different here'
>>741478130kek shitter doesn't know
I played DS2 at release and the mere existence of SotFS baffles me. Literally fucking why does it exist? How did this come to be?
>>741477830Scholar
>>741477830Aren't you able to kill the hollows before they get up in SotfS?
>>741478206Did you ever hear the tragedy of Dark Souls 2? I thought not. It's not a story Miyazaki would tell you. It's a Tanimura legend.>Miyazaki is told to work on Bloodborne >Apparently Tomohiro Shibuya was directing originally (no source but I remember reading that he actually works for Namco, not From) and once it became clear that he was fucking shit up they assigned Yui Tanimura (an actual From employee) as co-director to fix his shit>He apparently blew 3/4 of their budget>He was trying to make DaS2 a dragon age - styled open world RPG (a direction which Namco and the higher ups in Fromsoft had no confidence in), and had blown shitloads of money and time on custom-making an unworkable engine that would make the xbox360 and ps3 shit themselves (which Namco was insistent on publishing on)>Roughly halfway through the dev cycle, when Shibuya was fired and Tanimura took over, they were forced to scrap almost literally all of their levels and story, and had to cobble together any misc assets they had lying around into something entirely different>Downgraded for PS3's 7800GT. Which the 8800gtx ultra is 3x better than>Sony originally wanted the PS3 to use 2 Cell CPUs instead, doing all rendering on the Cell. They ditched it last minute, went to Nvidia who pawned off some crap that would be obsolete rapidly (especially when they moved to unified shader architecture), who then also charged Sony every time they wanted to update the graphics library. Not to mention it couldn't use a shared pool of RAM because the Cell required RAMBUS memory >Shibuya left or got fired from From after the whole DkS2 development situation>Tanimura in the Design Works interview basically saying "I would've scrapped the whole thing I was left with if it was up to me, but we had deadlines to meet." >Tanimura has a couple of months devtime to remake the entire game>Port the game to PS4/DX11 a year later, when they should have designed the game for PS4 from the start
>>741477830After playing both a lot I can say the only bad changes in SotFS are the removal of the heide knight (picrel), converting some sleeping hollows into awake ones, and the change to how the dragon skeleton wakes up in aldia’s keep.Otherwise it’s a vast improvement on top of the new content like the extra pursuer fights which are fun.
>>741478206yeah i was doing no death no bonfire runs and then the patch hit and all my progress learning that went out the window. it baffles me they changed everything, they have never changed the base game so dramatically before. and so many branch of yore spots, seems weird.
>>741478287It's still the bestSome talent right there
Vanilla > DS2 Lighting Engine SotFS > SotFS
There is nothing good to be found in 2, just skip it.
>>741478287Ah so DS2 was cobbled together from the scraps of a failed project then later they tried to have a do-over. Both versions are terrible anyway.
Dark SoulsBloodborneDark Souls 3Elden RingThere's your series.
>>741478287I had heard the state of the game was also related to the tsunami and Fukushima disaster right after, where they lost a lot of work that they hadn't yet backed upGot no proof of that via interview or anything, though
>>741478130No, you're shit if you think durability is an issue in DS2.>>741478013Lighting Engine is mandatory. Center Deadzone Mod for omnidirectional controls instead of jank trash 8 directional.SOTFS Configurable Camera to fix the nausea-inducing janky sluggish camera inertia effect
>>741478287>>741478453Also EVERY SINGLE ANIMATOR was outsourced, as well as a large amount of level artists and designers.This explains the embarrassingly bad enemy anims like the falconer.
>>741478453DSII started off under the direction of Tomohiro Shibuya. It was going to be even more open world. They got a lot done, but Bamco came down on them and forced them to scrap half the game. They put Yui Tanimura in charge who had to pick up the pieces 6 months from launch. Bamco originally designated DS2 to be a PS4 game and then decided that nope, we're actually putting it on the ps3, which forced the downgrade, Cell architecture, garbage gtx 7800 rebrand GPU and 256MB+256MB = PS3>Dark Souls 2 downgrade full comparisonhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59eLW1IGUCU>Dark Souls 2 Design Workshttps://peterbarnard1984.tumblr.com/post/113163062955/dark-souls-2-design-works-translation>How The Gutter Got Guttedhttps://youtu.be/t_YcEvpAafE>Dark Souls 2 Graphics - Network Test vs. Vanilla vs. Scholar of the First Sinhttps://youtu.be/eMKsouZ9CNI>The Archives - Repository of lore documents, interviewshttps://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MsqQvo7nQGzeifTMbAV5e0gL-5hshof_They tried to expand the engine with a new lighting system but it fell through and forced them to visually downgrade the shaders through most of the game. The project was rebooted almost entirely when Tanimura's team took it over. They had to rework the original, unfinished 'open world' version of the game and take what little bits of it were complete enough to use and put together a full-length game out of it. As a result, Drangleic is missing many, many of its intended areas, transitions were cut, levels were left unpolished and unfinished, questlines were cut, etc.Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring have a lot of Tanimura's ideas for Dark Souls 2
>>741478490WrongDeSDaS1BBBoom. It's the perfect progression of their works. DS2? Not as well designed. DS3? Absurdly derivative. ER? Just dogshit, every element that makes the above games good is done terribly here and it's new ideas are almost all terrible
>>741477830In vanilla, they all aggro at once, except the heide knight. In scholar, they don't unless you run around like a retard
>>741478597Falconer's are actually just broken in SOTF because they were given weapons they weren't meant to use and don't have a compete animation sets for. The game is having to guess at animations to load on the fly so they end up incredibly jank. The NG+ falconers in the opening ambush, that is - the only ones with falcons and the only time they're present in original DS2, will actually animate perfectly normally.
You know, ever since DaS2 released I always felt the backlash against it was so fucking meek and understated which is pretty hilarious considering its defenders think there was a crusade against it or something. Every fucking reviewer always ends up with the same milquetoast "uhm yeah DaS2 is totally still leagues above any of its contemporaries", even in the video indictment from the Forbidden One Matthewmatosis.The game is a fucking disaster and suffers from the same lack of originality DaS3 suffers, except at the very least DaS3 is fun to play.
>>741478287>>He was trying to make DaS2 a dragon age - styled open world RPG (a direction which Namco and the higher ups in Fromsoft had no confidence in), and had blown shitloads of money and time on custom-making an unworkable engine that would make the xbox360 and ps3 shit themselves (which Namco was insistent on publishing on)>Port the game to PS4/DX11 a year later, when they should have designed the game for PS4 from the startThis is what I think should have happened. I think it should have never been called Dark Souls to begin with, and they should have just made their Dragon Age and Elder Scrolls inspired game to begin with. The entire look and tone of DS2 is completely at odds with 1 and 3, and it feels like a game with only tenuous connections to the rest of the series. I really just want DS2 to have a horse, a field to run though, and a bunch of actual villages and cities to visit. I really wish Fromsoft would actually revisit this kind of setting again and give it a serious shot. Cuz if not, I'm gonna learn how to mod DS2, and just make my own game using their assets.
>>741478426>There is nothing good to be found in 2, just skip it.objectively wrong, and despite being very messy it has a lot going for it. In fact, it was extremely influential to both Dark Souls III and Elden Ring. Everyone talks about how DS3 is "remember DS1?" but they also rip off so much from DS2 as well. >one of the most unique NG+>power stancing >unique weapons that never show up again>completely unique art style and setting I think DS2 almost works when you're just running around. The second you show up in a boss fight, it's just some giant guy or periodically a giant woman, who just sorta slowly tracks you in a conveniently circular but otherwise plain arena. It breaks the illusion HARD that this is anything but something cobbled together.
>>741478605>DS3 and Elden Ring have a lot of DS2's ideasI feel like this is something a lot of people seem to overlook, granted a lot of people I know skipped DS2 and went straight to DS3 (or memoryholed DS2) so they wouldn't really know.It's a real shame too. If I remember correctly, a lot of the interesting world interactions make sense considering it's by the same guy who had a hand in Shadow Tower: Abyss, another From game that had some pretty novel gameplay ideas. Despite how the game turned out, I'm honestly still impressed by a lot of the mechanics that were in.
>>741477830When I played base game I thought it was pretty good and I already thought every area had a decent amount of guys and challenge.When I played Scholars my first thought when entering every single area was, "What the actual fuck? Why the fuck would they ever do this?"But, on the other hand:Scholars lets you access a lot of the game's content more naturally. Enemy placement notwithstanding, a lot of shit in DS2 is locked behind 2+ bonfire ascetics or MULTIPLE PLAYTHROUGHS.But in Scholars, most of that stuff is available on your first playthrough, one way or another.So it's the difference between getting rewarded a little for extra suffering or just base-level suffering in linear increments.
>>741480321>completely unique art style and settingIt's just a blander Lordran 2.0 bro, nothing unique about it.
>>741479825If Dark Souls 2 released for the original Xbox-Windows in 2005, it would be hailed as a hidden gem and a precursor to the souls series. As such, being released after the comparatively much more polsiehd Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, raised the bar too much. It's very obvious that something very badly went wrong in development and it's a rushjob they couldn't cancel.It's obvious that DS3 has many, many changes and it's a rushed mess, but the problems aren't as inherent as that. They always wanted it to be a game full of DS1 callbacks, with mostly linear hallways and warping with bonfires. The cut shit is mostly story and questlines. With DS2, it's the entire genre and the style of the gameplay.I think it was meant to look and play more like Elder Scrolls or Dragon Age, or even Dragon's Dogma.
>>741480321>completely unique art style and settingWhat the actual fucking shit are you people smoking. Base Dark Souls 2 is easily the blandest the series has ever looked and only the DLC picks up the pace somewhat, and even then outside of Shulva and a few areas in Loyce it's mostly reserved to the initial vistas when you enter because the actual levels themselves are the same visually bland environments you've grown exhausted with.
>>741478453>>741480565Here is a good shot of what scholar does to the image. Saturation, Contrast and Brightness have all been dialed upSo strange that they got rid of the distant blur in SOTFSScholar tonemapper is good in some places yeah but it goes hard sometimes very complicated to control , vanilla on other hand just gets all of its color from basic post processor and scene lighting
>>741480463>>741480463>It's just a blander Lordran 2.0 bro, nothing unique about it.Completely unique art style, and when DS1 assets show up they completely clash with it. I think they were going for a more grounded Skyrim art style which is not what DeS or DaS were about.
>>741480565>Heide's Tower of Flame>Dragon Aerie>Drangleic Castle>No-Man's Wharf (when lit)>Iron KeepLet's not get it twisted, it's art style is certainly a departure from the Souls series but the only people that call it shit usually refer to the typical unfinished examples like the Gutter. Sure the environments don't look as pretty as some in DS1, but I'm willing to give it a pass largely due to them having to basically abandon their original lighting engine which would've tremendously helped. In terms of actual style, it still is fairly unique for it's genre like the examples I listed earlier.Also art taste is subjective so if you still don't like DS2's overall aesthetic then fair enough.
>>741480679It seems more high fantasy and early medieval whereas Dark Souls Dark Souls also has a bit of a Greco-Roman flavor which the fanbase seems to have not picked up or noticed. Pinwheel has Greek theater masks for faces, the Hard Leather Set is inspired by Roman armor, and multiple Roman era weapons such as the Pike, and Caestus show up (mostly sold via Andre). None of this shows up in DS2. DS2 is also pretty incoherent with timeline - with armor sets that could easily be early medieval, then you get dudes dressed like the age of exploration a few centuries later.
>metal gauntlets>metal boots>plate metal chest piece>zero poise
>>741480679Maybe? Some parts definitely look out of place, but a good chunk of the armors honestly fit in with the souls aesthetic fairly decently. Honorable armor mentions such as Drakekeeper, Faraam, Alva, Royal Swordsman, etc. As for the DS1 armors clashing, I have mixed feelings since it wouldn't be out of the question for clothing and armor styles to change over long periods of time. At least that's my cope about it.
>>741480995>Called rogue, which is stereotyped in fantasy as the nimble thief-like type.Also to be fair, DS1 had some odd examples such as hollow soldier armor giving a hefty amount of poise despite being barely pieced together.
>>741477830What would other souls games be like if they got the SOTFS treatment?
I dunno I beat 2 on release and didn't like it, I played SOTFS years later and liked it. I'm not saying SOTFS is better, I couldn't even tell you any of the differences, DaS2 just aged really well for me overall.
>>741481060Imagine the development nightmare a SOTFS of Elden Ring would be.
>>741480840Those are all nice-looking areas (except the Wharf that area is dogshit, and Drangleic Castle as pretty and cool as it is when looking at it from outside is boring as fuck when you actually go inside), but besides Dragon Aerie and Shrine of Amana, which literally feels like the only area where all hands were on deck except for the gameplay guy, but that's about it. They're hardly unique or spark the imagination like something like Tomb of the Giants or Ash Lake does, or have the evolving level progression something like The Depths and Blighttown have that makes them feel so much bigger and complex that they initially seem.
>>741480998Most of the medium to heavy armor sets that are unique to DS2 make no attempt to have any historical grounding, and look pretty high fantasy. They literally look like absolutely NOTHING.Then you get a few sets that look like they come from the Crusader armor (which to be fair, Solaire's armor also looked Crusader themed), then others from the age of exploration (a few helmets are spanish or portugese themed).Then most of the metal armor sets look like literally nothing grounded ever. What in the hell is the Hollow Infantry supposed to be? It looks closer to the Paladin set, but the idea is that Paladin Leroy is some elite of elite weirdo with a unique armor set.A lot of the Dark Souls generic class armors were pretty grounded like Knight, Chain set, or Fluted Knight. Even sets like Iron or Black set were highly exaggerated but they looked like something that was historically produced. The pure fantasy armors were few and far between. DS2 increased the pure fantasy armors tremendously.
>>741481045>>741480995They do this in DS1 and DS3 as well - some armor clearly has a fair bit of metal but it give syou zero poise. But the Rogue set is frustrating since it was probably just a game designer and artist not talking to each other since he's wearing a brigandine (ie plate armor) but it has no poise points. Brigadines were given to people like archers, since it gives a higher degree of motion. But it was metal armor.
NOt talked about as much as it should but DS2 has a much nicer character creator and you can actually make unique looking characters that look human.
>>741481442I fEEEEEEEl fantAAAAAAAAAAstíííc!
>>741477830Dark Souls 2A lot of the annoying and nonsensical enemy placements were introduced in SotFS, it has those petrified statues everywhere, and fucked up lighting plus a sickly green tint filter on the whole game is a classic of pointless remasters. The benefit to playing SotfS is having earlier access to some weapons for pvp.
i made this collage of my character in 2014
>>741478287Almost everything you spit out here is a lie.MIYAZAKI IS WORKING ON DARK SOULS 2 TILL HE WAS REMOVED FROM IT.This is SOMETHING THAT HE HIMSELF admit in the interview and happens after Artorias DLC went gold and before Sony approach him for next gen exclusive game.
>>741481748Nothing in DS2's final build was Miyazaki's work. The first director was Shibuya, then Tanimura. The game was shit because Shibuya wanted an open world game and Bamco screwed everything up so they had to salvage the game to a playable state.But I don't even know why I'm responding since you are just shitposting.
>>741481798I think Bamco was thinking too short term. There is no rush and you can get your 3 Dark Souls games at a slower pace since it's confirmed the series has sales appeals now.They should have made it a new IP, and made it PS4 ONLY. A proper open world fantasy title would be neato.
Will From ever make a game the way they actually intended from the start and not a mess of parts cobbled together in a rush?
>2012+14>/v/ still talking about Dark Souls 2
>>741478229THIS is what the thread is crying about btw
>>741477830But... you don't fight them all at once?!
>>741481748Post a link to the interview or fuck off.
>>741481850It's actually part of their secret financial success. They are cutting corners and finding ways to release their games without major delays.Square-Enix and Western companies have had as major if not more issues with their games in development, but they responded by delaying their games and bloating up development costs. It led to many of their series becoming stale because they had so few releases. For instance, FF13 came out in 2009, and FF16 in 2023. Meaning between 2009 to 2023, there was only three fucking mainline FF titles. Between 2009 and 2023, Fromsoft released DS, DS1, DS2, DS3, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring. 7 games. You either release or you die. We keep hearing about Fromsoft's woes because they actually released their games and rushed to complete them. Square and other companies were delaying them instead, and spending years to polish and fix them.
>>741482004>This makes "intellectual" DS2 haters seetheMauler and his ilk have done so much damage to this games reputation with their retardation.
The whole game is pretty meh but it's the game I had the most fun doing PvP arenas. Whoever designed this little bridge deserves all the praise in the world. DaS2 PvP was broken fun. DaS3 gay blue castle wishes it was 1/3 of what the lava bridge was.
>>741481842>tfw Bamco and From could've made an open-world soulslike much earlier than ER>ER but with DS1/2 gameplay and storytellingI'll be honest, I'm kinda sad this wasn't the timeline for such an outcome
>>741482085>I'm gonna count only one series from SE and compare it to the entirety of FromSoft release catalogueMeanwhile, in reality SquareEnix released over 300 games between 2009 and 2023
>>741482085I mean, all of their games look pretty bad but they are really good at masking the ugliness with art direction. Elden Ring raytracing is super broken it might as well don't exist at all, they didn't make the game thinking about implementing it from the start. Dev studios seem to be more focused on adding all that shit to attract zoomers.
>>741478572>Center Deadzone Mod for omnidirectional controls instead of jank trash 8 directional.Imagine being a shitter who needs to cheat. lmao.
>>741482293Ironically, despite being the biggest departure in terms of Soulslike combat, it had the best PvP balancing out of every soulslike to date except Bloodborne. Almost every weapon could be made viable, while still having both meta picks and the funniest weapons/builds possible (ladle, powerstanced Avelyns, smelter hammer, etc). Imagine my shock when discovering shield-only builds were an absolute monster in PvP due to having block frames on their attacks.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P1eKThZG-g
>>741482293DS3 misses the point of invasions entirely by making them so opt-in with such low payoffs. Demon's Souls had the best invasions, long areas where the invader becomes the main threat.
>>741477830It is a known fact that it's better to not play ds2.
>>741482562>DS3 Dark Wraith: "Heh heh heh. I'm gonna be a bastard, and murder and plunder those weaker than me!">invades some dork's world>is then immediately beset by like 6 blue and white niggas beating you mercilessly to deathIt literally punishes selfish antagonistic behavior.
>>741482070Bloodborne 4gamer interivew, here a couple of relevant cerp>4Gamer: It was SCE that came to you with that proposal?>Miyazaki: Yes. I think it was around the time that development for Artorias of the Abyss Edition of Dark Souls settled down, and it was still before the initial PS4 announcement, but the idea of working on new hardware was very appealing to us, so we eagerly agreed.>4Gamer :One thing thats always seemed strange to me is that you removed yourself from the development of Dark Souls II. How did that happen? I assume that since Dark Souls was so successful, a decision was made to develop a sequel. Not only that, but the sequel would be a big title that could ultimately decide the fate of the company and yet you decided to put someone else in charge of the project. That seems like a pretty crazy business decision for the company to make.>Miyazaki: I understand what youre saying.>Im not in a position to say what kind of decision the company made at the time, but my personal thought on that matter was that the Dark Souls II project could be a huge chance for even someone other than myself.Fyi Dark Souls 2 start development in 2011 alongside AotA DLC, Project Beast started in July 2012.
From really struck gold with the whole convoluted storytelling thing. They can always put something together in a hurry to meet deadlines and fans won't even notice because they expect to be confused.
>>741482173nobody fucking watches your sloptubers, everyone just realized it was shit by playing it themselves
>>741482070Also an interview he done prior specifically for Dark Souls 2>https://www.4gamer.net/games/196/G019660/20121222001/Some cerp>4Gamer: Why did you step away from the development of Dark Souls II in the first place?>Miyazaki: That decision came from the company.>When it comes to Dark Souls, I have a lot of affection towards it and things to gain from it. Being so attached to the title, it would be a lie if I were to say I’m not a bit sad.As you can see, the Bloodborne interview is actually the second time he admit that he was removed>Miyazaki: However, I don't look negatively at the decision to change directors. While I hesitate to say this myself, I think that Dark Souls, as a game base, has immense potential, and a change in directors will give it a chance to be released from narrow frame or limitations that I imposed upon it. As someone who created the game base of Dark Souls, I would really like to see what that potential is.He mentioned the position that he was removed from
>>741477932>PC shitter is using cheats again, pretending they are ''mods'' to ''fix'' the gamelel
>>741477830DaS2 because I wasn't going to pay again for the same game but with some (not all) of the shit they showed in initial marketing but cut from the game.
>>741483094>t. low iq who got filtered by fog wallsDS2 is the best. Cope and seethe.
>>741483120>>741482807It's pretty clear that Miyazaki wasn't happy with Dark Souls 2 and Elden Ring is his spiritual successor
>>741477830SOTFS fucks up a few areas (Heide & Lothric Castle) but every other area is an improvement. Having the DLC keys and preorder items found naturally in the world instead of being teleported into your bag at the start of the game is good too. And the new dark areas requiring more torch usage is kino. The area in that screenshot is a total non issue. If you ever died or struggled there you must be really bad at games.
>>741479825I played the whole series last year and DS2 was a lot more fun to play through than 3, the dlcs were great to explore while the ones in 3 were almost insulting other than freide's which was ok3 had lots of shit zones (tons of dogshit swamps, even the boreal valley city was a fucking swamp) and I thought ringed city was complete ass apart from gaelalso powerstancing was fun as fuck i dont know why they got rid of it in 33 did have that kino dark flame sword however that said i had the most fun in nightreign and bloodborne anyways, well and sekiro but that one doesnt count
>>741482930Yes, I noticed this when I was doing some digging into the development of Dark Souls 1. Fans will turn one enemy placement or one item as a peice of the puzzle in some convoluted fan theory when they were rushing and changing thigns on the fly. My theory is that they had a solid backstory for the world (the cgi intro) but they were having troubles with the actual story for the player character, where they came from and how they start this quest to save the world. So much of the world and story are totally jank, half-finished, and make no sense. >The Painted World was one of the first things created, and it looks like it was an initial tutorial area. >The Undead Asylum was one of the last things made. >Andre initially was in firelink, and moved the statue giving access to the Kilm at the end of the game>Oscar of Astora lived, and it looks like his Undead Asylum dialogue was taken from a bad-end for his quest-line where you didn't protect him and he dies >many, many, characters notably do not actually say where the hell they are, meaning they could easily have been moved around at some point in development>the Firekeeper may have not been in a cell initially, and was sitting where the Crestfallen warrior was>Lost Izaleth was initially a swamp, possibly the only poison swamp at that point>Bloated Hollows that shoot fire, a pyromancer King, and a Zombie Dragon make no sense in the Painted World, but would fit a swamp Lost Izaleth perfectly>They may have not wanted two swamps, and created Blight town after Lost Izaleth, so hastily deleted the initial design, jammed the enemies into the Painted World
>>741482807>>741483120Huh. It's kinda hard to believe he was forced out as director considering he was made company president just a couple of years later even before Bloodborne released. Maybe he was more interested in the new project beast or it was some company politics thing that he can't talk about.
>>741483642>In fact, paintings suddenly being portals to other universes is created whole cloth >enemy placement makes little sense on the return to the Undead asylum: Torch Hollows act like they're waiting for you, Black Knights can't fly and wander Lordran so why is he there?>Why is Priscilla's lost doll in your cell? Who put it there? >Why does Quelag's soul create the Chaos Blade, a weapon she does not use?>Shiva of the East has an entire cut storyline about the Chaos blade>Also, it makes no sense he is at Blight town>Astora and Quelag have full audio which fits their intro cutscenes perfectly but is cut for some unknown reason>Vamos has unique attack animations, and may be a repurposed mini-boss>Blue hellkite dragon mini-boss was entirely cut from the game>The Gravelord Sword is very obviously a boss weapon using the transposed soul of Nito>Bed of Chaos has animations for moving and attacking>Stone Dragon has animations for moving and attacking and may be a cut boss >Claw Hollows and "brain bugs" are fully completed functional enemies meant to be in Lost Izaleth but were cut. >Petrus was initially trapped in the Catacombs and had to be rescued first>Way of the White is the only Covenant with no progression and no rewards
>>741483439If anything its the dev that have to salvage the DkS2 that weren't happy themselves. Ya know, a good chunk of them who would then make Elden Ring. >>741483649Miyazaki is actually a pretty green director in FromSoft.He got into Demon Soul development because he is experienced in making 3d action game with Armored Core. His appointment into c-suite happen after Fromsoft was bought by Kadokawa which I think his popularity were taking into account for that decision.
>>741483642>the Firekeeper may have not been in a cell initially, and was sitting where the Crestfallen warrior wasActually and on theme here : Pricilla was originally your level-up lady and inheriting her lifehunt was the entire reason your nobody-special protag can fell godlike beings and undead for certain in this world. Of course they shoved her off into the painted world as well despite the entire plot seemingly hinging on her (And Seath by extension.)
SotFS is the only souls game where I seriously just had to run past multiple encounters
I always liked the movement in dark souls 2, its strange to describe but I can actually like "feel" my characters feet moving around the environment
>>741483642>>741483672Have you seen the prototype maps?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwFePCwjQnchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSUwLZlX55g
>>741483672Oh and on the topic of swamp Izalith, both the Blighttown wallhugger and King Jerimiah are one as the same being - with internal names Prince Izalith and King Izalith. This is also white the Parasite guards a pyromancy.The concept art for the latter even features small white parasite-wormlike bits peeking from under the wrappings.
>>741483672>>741483907There was supposed to be a zone between Sen's Fortress and Anor Londo. Just look at the Golem's boss room. There's a obvious gateway behind it. Miyazaki did this again in Elden Ring. They clearly focused on Limgrave as the first impression and rushed out the rest of the gameIt's most visible in areas where they clearly cut corners and rushed it. ESPECIALLY with those shitty butthole teleports all over the fucking map.>Four Belfries have four teleports taking you to completely arbitrary nonsensical places with dead ends.>Said Limgrave bridge has a lazily placed teleport ON A SLOPE so it's halfway into the ground, like a badly implemented mod, because the bridge is supposed to be whole.>There is no natural way of getting to the Haligtree. If it was at least some Grand Lift level of unique asset, it would be forgivable, but this is YET AGAIN the shitty butthole teleport.>Radahn castle and arena having those butthole teleports again.>Shortcut to Maliketh in Caelid is a shitty teleport hidden in some bushes.
Honestly I stopped giving a shit about DS lore after dataminers found out there originally was supposed to be an Ice Stray Demon where Priscilla is but they swapped it last minute
>>741484108I'm really baffled why they even put the teleporters except for Haligtree and the Chapel. They were completely unnecessary and took away from the anticipation and spectacle of getting into those places naturally. Like literally what was the point?
>>741484108>idk something shows up and flies/warps you to the other placesis comically transparent. DS3 was supposed to have "God's Grave" as a whole zone connecting the starting part of Lothric Castle to the Undead Settlement but instead you just get flown out by bat demons...And Dreg Heap was originally a "final zone" type map that got repurposed for DLC so yet again, it concludes with an arbitrary flight to the Ringed City. Demon Prince's soul originally went as far as saying you'd just slew the last demons only to get grabbed by batwing demons 10 steps away...>>741484169I heard the Fire Sage Demon is actually referred to as an ice variant in the files...And ironically, it does pure magic damage rather than fire. Like they reskinned it but forgot to change the damage types. There's remnants of multiple, breakable floors in Pricilla's area too. You can imagine the butt slam gradually breaking the floors and over-use of bait and punishing this move could result in having to fight on a bottom floor submerged with...Idk, poison maybe. There's no evidence for it but I'm sure they'd have had an interesting idea if they'd chose to pursue it.
>>741484360>I heard the Fire Sage Demon is actually referred to as an ice variant in the files...And ironically, it does pure magic damage rather than fire. Like they reskinned it but forgot to change the damage types.Miyazaki specifically states that it was the prototype level, which in development terms does not mean that it was designed as the first area. He also states that he was glad they managed to find a way to fit it in, which suggests that the original plan was not to use it in the final game at all, so it was likely just designed as a test area rather than ever being intended to be included in the final game, and later he found a way to incorporate it. Priscilla as 白半竜 is named "heroine" in the game files and intended to be the Maiden in Black of Dark Souls
>>741484169Sounds like a placeholder boss until they came up with something better. Actual game dev and prototyping must be like gazing into the abyss for you.
Miyazaki: We drew a great deal of concept art for the painted world. It was actually based on the map used in the dark souls prototype. Of course the prototype is your chance to really get across your vision for the game so we spent a long time on the area. So much so that I really wanted to use it in the full game but I couldn't find a way to make it fit with the other areas. In the end I cheated and put it in the painted world.
>>741483907Man, seeing the cut content for DaS1 always gives me a strange feeling of anemoia that I don't feel about their other games. I like that they hadn't quite figured out yet what kind of game they were trying to make and threw in a lot of different ideas. It's very soulful.
>>741477830scholar continues the theme of dark souls 2's standard of "one step forward, two steps back." for every genuine improvement it does, there's something else they made super retarded for no reason. it's ultimately a "pick your poison" scenario imo. i couldn't recommend one over the other.
Reminder Miyazaki himself stated that he wasn't happy with Dark Souls 1>Miyazaki shares an interesting comment regarding Anor Londo. While many players have their breath taken away the first time the gargoyles land them in this area and they take in the grandiose sight of this amazing level, Miyazaki doesn’t feel that first moment resonates throughout the zone.>“I like when you first enter Anor Londo, but unfortunately the impact and excitement felt when you first enter Anor Londo didn’t last through the whole gameplay experience, so this is more of a regret in the design.”>Since I had the opportunity, I had to ask what Miyazaki’s least favorite zone from the franchise is as well. The answer should come as no surprise to fans of the series – it’s the lava/dinosaur nightmare known as Lost Izalith in Dark Souls. Miyazaki comments “Don’t want to elaborate on this very much. There was a different person assigned to this area, and although I was involved, I don’t want to pose very many negative comments for his sake. It can be a learning experience for all of us.”>“All of Dark Souls 3’s design is basically based on my own personal preference,” he declares when I ask him about the difference between Dark Souls 3 and the previous two titles in the series. That speaks to Miyazaki’s role as an auteur, too, in an age when games driven by one central, publicly visible figure seem to be less frequent. That, I suppose, is why Miyazaki looks so at home watching over this Souls event from above – this really is his baby.
>>741484693based miyazaki throwing some poor intern under the bus
>>741484676>Man, seeing the cut content for DaS1 always gives me a strange feeling of anemoia that I don't feel about their other games. I like that they hadn't quite figured out yet what kind of game they were trying to make and threw in a lot of different ideas. It's very soulful.DeS, DaS1 and Bloodborne are pure passion projects in every sense of the word
>>741484360No evidence for the intended implementation I should say, the breakable floors concept is at least proven to have been implemented in some capacity before being stripped out.Nobody mentioned King Jar Eel yet either but I suppose he isn't much to work with. He's just a reskin of Allant from DeS with some visual connection to the Four Kings. Cut so early there just isn't much to grab.I guess at this point I'll just take the torch and run with it.>Chester was an elite-ranged variant of a cut/unused Fat Official DeS carry-over enemy. The whole enemy class was cut but his set was too cool to waste.>You can actually find the DeS Fat Official's axes in the burning piles throughout Undead Burg>Andre has a collection of the DeS battleaxe at his forge, even though you yourself can't get it here.>Beatrice was a full-on NPC, possibly with past/present variants since there's concept art and model of her as a much younger girl>A lot of the Oolacile enemies and content had early prototype variants built and left in the files before the DLC launched>Blighttown Ghouls are repurposed from an unused Hyena-Man enemy from DeS>>741484521I don't have a source on it on hand but I recall there being some mention of Nito actually serving as a placeholder boss for the zone during early test periods. The Stray Demon variant and breakable floors points to being a bit past placeholder phase and I think having it here would have been more interesting than the Fire Sage variant+placement that made it into the final game. Still, nobody can deny they did something different and memorable with Pricilla in the end.I really see it as a testament to their competence that the games end up being as great as they are even when the cohesion breaks down and the vision changes so rapidly and so late into development.
>>741484859>>A lot of the Oolacile enemies and content had early prototype variants built and left in the files before the DLC launchedThey've done that with all of their games. Brume Tower was supposed to be part of Iron Keep. The Ringed City assets were supposed to be from God's Grave >>741484360. Shadow of the Erdtree and Nightreign are full of Elden Ring's cut contents.
>>741479825I feel like its the opposite. Back on release the game was getting scrutinized, if anything its magnified since then. I could certainly replay the game and probably find some level of enjoyment with it but theres just no point.
DS3 Alpha...
>>741484990Irithyll is my "That part" of DaS3, it's such a terrible area and the atmosphere makes me want to quit playing right there.
>Her name was "Pursuit Heroine" (same as the Dancer boss internally) but in her AI code shes called "Pursuit-tan">lore indicates the ponitif sent them to stop the Ashen.>The "Cemetery of Ash" and "Untended Graves" are the same map just with a different "Ceremony" parameter applied before you arrive>there was once a path connecting the entrance to Irythill Dungeon directly to the Demon Ruins>unused boss in Dark Souls 3, originally called "Wolf of the Eclipse". Was fought somewhere between Crucifixion Woods and the Abyss Watchers. In the end, it was removed and replaced with the Old Wolf covenant NPC>At one point you were supposed to fight a huge ass bat in DS3 that would then segue into the fuck huge Sandworm>The entire lower portion of Catacombs was supposed to play host to bat fight, initially it was going to harass you until you got into the 'safety' of the Demon Ruins, and then you would get to the giant ballista to turn it back on and wound the bat to keep it from flying all over the place, then you would go back down and fight it properly.>The game originally actually dealt with the Serpents with them possibly being the true final boss in the cut true "End of All Things" endinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-ILkLGZQUQIt really makes you think about what this game would've been like had all of this cut content were finalized.
>>741484859Oh, elaborating a bit more on the fat official because that link to DeS interests me in particular...>We find a Channeler in the Burg and they litter the Duke's Archives. The iron boar is also found nearby both, with a fat official's axe asset found near the first boar.It seems that the Channelers inherited the Fat Official's position of abductors/jailers and the boars were armored and left as standalones.We also know that the Channeler's were originally designed as part of Gwyn's 4 knights before being set as an elite/rare enemy so it's not unthinkable that they simply inherited their current role when they've been left with no meaningful ties to Gwyn or Anor Londo. >>741484937God's Grave assets apparently got peppered everywhere in the end, I can't even keep track. A lot of them made it into Road of Sacrifices, some into Ringed City, some elsewhere yet...Many apparently still found use even in Elden Ring, which contains a lot of unused content from Bloodborne as well as DS3. The Land Squirts are probably the most notable and immediate carryover, as they're an unused BB enemy.Brume Tower is a pretty interesting case though. Iron Keep as a whole was redesigned and we functionally play a backwards version of the zone (It's why Eigil's giant bull statue is such an amazing set piece placed...Behind the character.) The files left in DS2 are more of a prototype combo of Iron Keep/Brume Tower before they were split up and Brume Tower was decided to be its own entire area.>>741485151I can keep up all day for DeS, BB, DS1 or DS2 cut content/unused assets/prototyping but man, DS3 is such a scrambled mess in this regard even I get overwhelmed trying to keep this stuff mapped out. Somehow even DS2's scrambled development has a more cohesive timeline with clearer explanations for the cuts.Still. I can add on for a few of these in a follow-up.
>>741485353>Many apparently still found use even in Elden Ring, which contains a lot of unused content from Bloodborne as well as DS3QRD?
Scholar is better
>>741485353>Still. I can add on for a few of these in a follow-up.Please do
>>741485151>>741485425>The "bat" in the Demon Ruins was just the demon prince/Demon from Below.>Gundyr was originally the king of Lothic and would've had an extra phase where the Pus of Man consumes him entirely. This was repurposed into the Ulcerated Tree Spirit in ER>The winged knights in Lothric wear wings in tribute to the primordial serpents, who are depicted with angelic wings and feathers in statues all over the castleWolf of the Eclipse was seemingly placed in Abyss Watcher's arena. Either as an additional phase to the fight or a "surprise" boss if you returned to the area. Hawkwood ambushes you here in his questline and it could derived from this.>Almost every boss was rotated to an alternate area of the game. >Wolnir was meant for profaned capitol and his jewelry links him to the zone>Oceiros is a wise and sagelike dragon who should have appeared in the zone full of meditating dragons>Yhorm is a fit for the coffin in the Cemetary of Ash, though this is a bit more tenuous.>Sulyvahn's model was originally a final boss and is deeply linked to the tress of the Painted World (lore exists in the final game to support the connection but it's rather strange.)Sulyvahn in particular stands out before for such a hyped up, central figure to the game's lore he's introduced with no cutscene and no NPC even acknowledges when you've felled him. Originally the Fire Witch was a boss enemy with an expanded moveset meant for his arena before getting demoted to an elite caster enemy.I'm kinda just riffing on some of the other anon's points as things come to mind. DS3 is spaghetti. They were playing musical chairs with every enemy extremely late into development.>>741485394Uh. Well TLDR what comes to mind is the land squirts, the ulcerated tree spirits and a ton of map geometry from God's Grave in DS3. Rykard seems inspired by the unused Snake Ball boss in Bloodborne but I don't think there's actual asset reuse on him. I couldn't get into ER so idk much there.
i am tree
At this point it's fucking intentional>come up with wildly different ideas for your game>begin development and try to implement those ideas>obviously a lot of them don't make it>no problem, put some of them in the dlc>fans stumble upon cut content, they wonder, "man imagine if this game had the time to implement everything">the next game comes out with cut contentI'm on to you Miyazaki.
>>741477830Reminder that Original Dark Souls 2 is superior to Shit of the First Scholar:1. SOTFS ruined the lighting system, cranked up exposure and ruined the entire aesthetic of the game.2. SOTFS enemy TYPE placement is nonsensical and illogical, it ruins immersion and environmental storytelling.3. SOTFS healing upgrade item placement (estus flask shards and sublime bonedust) are inferior to that of the Orginal Dark Souls 2.4. SOTFS ruins the progression, flow and exploration of the game by adding a lot of shitty petrified statues blocking off areas for no good reason.5. SOTFS nerfed many bosses and their damage, turning the game into a casualized garbage game. 6. SOTFS nerfed a lot of the encounters with the normal enemies too, only a few encounters were made harder in SOTFS. Contrary to popular belief, as a whole SOTFS is much easier than the Original Dark Souls 2. SOTFS is a casualized garbage game.
>>741477830>>741486040What happened to the Sun and Moon in Shit of the First Scholar version?
>>741482518it's not a cheat. only pc version has scuffed movement and the console versions have built in omni directional movement. pc version had its controls designed for keyboard and mouse due to the feedback received from dark souls pc port's bad pc controls. you can do very precise movement by mouse steering in ds2 pc version which negates the 8 directional movement. controller having 8 directional movement on pc is just an oversight and should be fixed with a mod.
>>741484990Shit a lot of what I had to say was already posted in this image and I forgot about Aldrich being in Cathedral of the Deep.Well, I can still chime in to say everything in there is entirely reasonable. Though I think the idea of Smouldering Lake was more along the lines of>Asshole Demon Prince won't stop flying around and breathing fire everywhere, so you have to ballista it to get a proper boss fight out of it. My guess is that it'd have fallen in the arena where you currently fight the Old Demon King since there's evidence he was originally placed in different arena that was cut from the lowest area of the zone. I have no clue or theory how the Carthus Worm played into any of it at this point in development.>>741486040Can I offer a counterpoint? In base DS2 Navlaan asks for the Sunset staff, as it's an item only Felkin could possible have and he wants it as evidence you've murdered the man....And then it's in the very next mimic. In the same zone. About 15 seconds away. No reason to even interact with Felkin.Scholar's got some goofy shit but it's not like base DS2 is free of glaring flaws either.
>>741477830I usually recommend the original version to anybody going into the game for the first time, if only for the fact that SOTFS decided to lock part of the tutorial behind a fragrant branch of yore for some reason.
>>741481672i bought SOTFS on sale recently (never played DS2 in any form), but is there a mod that restores the original's lighting? because that is quite a downgrade in the webm
I tried out the path tracing mod earlier but might uninstall it. it makes everything so dark that you basically have to have a torch in your hand 90% of the game.
>>741478287>>741478453>>741480036Bamco's desire to make an open world, Elder Scrolls-esque game should be no surprise here. Demon's Souls was the reworked remnants from the same kind of project; they were literally told to create an Oblivion competitor. Didn't pan out. Miyazaki took control, and him and a team rebuilt the whole thing into what became Demon's Souls. It was fairly low risk; a large portion of time and money was already spent on the failed project, what was spending just a bit more to make something at least shippable to recoup costs? The rest is history.
>>741480036>Cuz if not, I'm gonna learn how to mod DS2, and just make my own game using their assets.delusional or clueless concept, theres no mod tool for going even 1/10 as far as you need for that in DS2you are objectively better off trying to make your own game like that. Even if it was a feasible mod project it would be retarded because being non-profit practically guarantees failure
>>741487415>Cuz if not, I'm gonna learn how to mod DS2, and just make my own game using their assets.Folks have already ported DS2 to Nighreign https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9kOIpicvgA
Every souls game should have a horse fuck valley level. Kinda like what Miyazaki does with swamps.
>>741482675And then they made it worse in Elden Ring. Being an invader in that game means you are going up against at least two people minimum. So invaders gravitate towards meta builds, which reduces PvP interest, squashes the existence of "off" or funny builds, and heavily incentivizes quick, gimmicky nonsense over strategic play.
>>741487717Frozen Outskirts really is a fun level when you remember these are RPGs and remember to prepare/gear accordingly.
>>741486040Hell yea fellow vanillachad.Such a shame to see so many tasteless fucks itt claiming scholar of the first tax writeoff is somehow better
>>741477830they are literally the same game, people who use this "muh vanilla didn't have ganks" excuse are genuinely mentally retarded and deserve death, as do people who complain about said ganks no matter the version>>741487785prepare/gear accordingly: buy 99 lifegems and repair powders to survive the horse rape scenario
>>741487847Nothing wrong with that. But with a blunt weapon it really shouldn't take more than 1 repair powder to clear the zone.
>>741486661https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/1146Don't think there's one specifically for restoring the look of original DS2, but you can play around with this
>>741477830Neither
>>741477830Scholar has more enemies but generally gives you more options and ways to approach encounters without being ganked. In the vanilla example you're getting jumped no matter what.
>>741477830Original. The only thing Scholar has is it doesnt have the annoying fps bug that occurs if you die while online on SteamOS/Deck.
>>741484990>tfw they cut the hollow bonfires and Frampt as final boss under 6 months from releasesteam denied my refund for false advertising and im still mad
Reminder that DS1 has dozens of sleeping skeletons right at the start of the game and if you run around and aggro them all then obviously you're just "retarded" and "bad", but doing the exact same thing in DS2 is the game's fault.
>>741478597It doesn't make sense to me why they would try to reinvent the wheel and blow the budget on new animations instead of improving the DS1 animations. I mean, they changed parries, ripostes, walking, running, attacks, etc. for no real reason. They could have spent those resources on better level design, story, and worldbuilding.Miyazaki seems to have understood this mistake, which is why DS3 has refined DS1 gameplay and improved animations.
>>741489509>if i play like a retard i can aggro all enemies in the levelwow, amazing point. One queston: why are you playing like retard?
>>741489616>missing the point
>matthew matosis remembers his password after like five years>video already has four times as many views as the indian ds2cuck’s seething response to an eight year old video
>>741489701his new vids have nothing to do with DS2 thoughlebeit.
>>741478287>>741480036>still blaming the PS3 when we had the network test
>>741489701i'm a newfag, context please?
>>741489835it was combination of ps3 and bamco. bamco demanded 60 fps because they got so many complaints about blightown.
>>741489872he made a video shitting on ds2 and our fav schizo firelink conspiracy made 200 videos about why he is wrong.
>>741477830>hurr durr, dark souls is ez, I beat da first gaem >enters FoFG >carelessly runs into the middle of the area, waking up every hollow possible>gets immediately ganked to death>WTF??? GAEM BAD!! The only actual criticisms of DS2 are the obtuse windmill burning & how the level design setting-wise has sporadic, poorly tied together landscape, but otherwise the rest of it is intentional bad faith cope from being unwilling to learn the game's mechanics.
>>741489940Blighttown was borderline unplaybe, even on PC and it was fixed within 10 minutes by some guy.And the network test was different from the final product.DaS2 isn't even bad because of the perfomance or anything like that. It's shit because of the design choices and SotfS feels more like a passive aggressive tantrum because of the player feedback
>>741490069>shit because of the design choicesie i cant iframe through fogwalls anymore and the enemies do things now
>>741478572>No, you're shit if you think durability is an issue in DS2.I had to use repair powder mid-boss fights due to going from full to risk of breaking during my last NG+ run. PS4 version btw.
>>741490324>PS4 versionnot him but DS2 was notorious for the "next gen" ports having the durability bug because they for some ungodly reason tied weapon wear to FPS when they built the Scholar ed.On OG2 and PS3/X360 this didn't happen.
>>741490324This only happens during sinh. Which is a cool gimmick to the fight.
>>741490395It happens to Aava as well on PS4 and PC. Ironically I think Aava is even worse about weapon degradation than Sinh.
>>741477830Elden Ring: The Convergence
>>741490395No it also happens on all bosses of a certain size as the game reduces durability for every frame the weapon spends inside the enemy model. I remember needing one power of Aava and more than one for Lud/Zallen (I was screaming).
>>741489967I'm sorry, who?
>>741490434Are the runback areas fun? Are the bosses fun? This is important.
>>741490485>>741490528didn't happen to me
>>741490587When has anyone ever called a runback "fun"? You're not supposed to find runbacks fun.
>>741490324>>741490528What weapon? You make it sound like you were glued to a single weapon for the whole run. Some weapons have inherently lower durability or naturally degrade at faster rates. Be wary of any weapon with "old" in its name.
>>741490614It only becomes an issue on NG+ and beyond and also depends on your weapon. Slow weapons that do more damage per swing need less frames inside the boss per kill so assuming the same durability the slower weapon has less of this issue.
>>741490391>for some ungodly reason tied weapon wear to FPSit's because durability was spent when hitboxes connected. more frames more hitbox overlap frames.
>>7414779326 7
i just feel blessed that i can enjoy dark souls 2 because i went into it unbiased when it launched on ps3 after doing hours upon hours of darkroot pvp. it has its problems for sure, but i can still come back to it like every other souls game(not you dark souls 3). i also still don't know what people hate about sotfs
>>741490656If the area is fun with fun encounters you are more compelled to fight your way through instead of running through the enemies. This also allows you to snowball souls and homeward bone out once you want to cash out on levels and such.
>>741478572>Lighting Engine is mandatory. kill yourself
>>741490878This has never been true. An area can be fun and you still aren't going to want to runback through it
>>741490704I 2h’d my Heide Knight Sword for Aava and Lud/Zallen.
>>741490968The levels are the meat of the game, atleast they should be, so why would I ever skip them especially when they give me souls? If I wanted a brainless boss rush I’d play DaS3.
>>741490836Blessed with low standards yeah, enjoy yourself trash panda.
>>741490836Bought 2 on release day and had a pretty miserable time with a few highlights. SoTFS version felt even worse, like a badly made mod where they put random statues across the world and intentionally fuck with mob placements to make them a lot more obnoxious.
>>741491182If you just played Scholar the mobs dont feel intentionally obnoxious. It just feels like how the game was meant to be. And the statues make exploration fun and rewarding. It's fun to get an item and go back a previous area or progress forward. This is classic adventure game design.
>>741491123i enjoy more games than you, thus i am happier. bear seek seek lest>>741491182i don't know man, i liked it and i still do. i played and enjoyed king's field 1 to 3 and they are objectively jankier than ds2 so i don't think disliking it was ever in the cards for me
>>741478130That is fixed in scholar
>>741491343>It's fun to get an item and go back a previous area or progress forwardYea that's how it felt in DaS2, in scholar it's overdone and the statues are on some incredibly strange spots
>>741490836I bought 2 on release and thought it sucked. Guess what nigger, it still sucks.
>>741484629It's pretty obvious that it was the 6th archstone from demons souls(probably dlc), but when they decided to expand the project into dark souls they shut up about the connection for legal reasons.
>>741491565We've seen the 6th archstone prototypes and if anything it seems like Frozen Outskirts in DS2 is more what they had in mind for that.
>>741491527I think it's better in Scholar because now every area has fragrent branches. You can just go and do whatever you want and you're guaranteed to come across them, while in vanilla if you're dead set on unlocking Straid or Rosabeth you're effectively forced down certain paths.
>>741477830Scholar, obviously. The only reason people even say they prefer vanilla is to be massive contrarians. Scholar is better in almost every way beyond some annoying enemy placements like Iron Keep.
>>741491565>>741491745Painted World was the test level. It's basically what the Northern Limit from Demon's Souls was supposed to be like.Crossbreed Priscilla was always intended on being the bonfire girl, and rather than scrapping the whole thing, they threw it into a secret area.>http://soulslore.wikidot.com/das1-game-no-shokutaku>Isomura: The Boob-Queen, the Spider Princess and Otoko no Ko ("boy", refers to Gwyndolin: "Otoko No Ko" [男の娘] is a fetish regarding cute boys that look like girls): they have their own covenants, but why doesn't Priscilla have one? The boob lovers, mutant lovers and "otoko no ko" lovers have their own covenants, but it's wrong that we, gentlemen, have no place to vow to protect Priscilla!>Miyazaki: When it's said this way, it sounds like a date-sim game… Boob-Queen… oh, Gwynevere. Spider Princess and Otoko… oh. The reason Priscilla doesn't have a covenant, well, that's because there are so many. The inside-story is that she was initially the heroine.>Miyazaki: Now, we have the Fire Keepers, but that was initially her role. There was a time when she was the first heroine you would meet and it was like that for while. Back then, it wasn't about covenants but more like the The Maiden in Black in Demon's Souls. It was like that for a long time but then we couldn't make more covenants. There's a theme about big women, that's why Gwynevere is so large. That's why Priscilla is big, too. Kinda wanted to do a "Moe Big Girl". We couldn't do that, though. Now, about Otoko no Ko… His voice is clearly male. Why is he being called Otoko no Ko? In the game data:-Priscilla = Heroine-Mass of Souls = Bigjelly-Lord Gwyn = FirewoodKing-Gwyndolin = ImperialMother-Ornstein = Griffith-Smough = FourKnightC-Bounding Demon of Izalith (aka Dragon Butts) = DraZonbiLegs
>>741491797No, the reason people prefer vanilla is because it's easier. It destroys their fragile egos when they have a game that can't be beaten by rolling again and again and again... and again and again and again. Scholar was an IQ test for spatial awareness and route planning.
>>741478605>Dark Souls 2 Design WorksLeads to a 404.
>>741484108I understand they wanted to give people early access to bestial incantations and, for some retarded reason, wanted to make that corner of Caelid have super endgame scaling to hint at things to come.but what they created was a peninsula of powerleveling that handed out end game resources like candy and completely breaks the careful flow they have for character progression.
>every From fan shits on DaS 2>meanwhile I played Sofas and found it to be best Souls game, improving upon 1 and utterly wiping floor with shitty 3Amazing.
>>741492373What does DS2 do better than DS1 and DS3?
>>741478130Patched in 1.02 please play the games you're crying your little pussy out about instead of having fat, furry capeshit fans spoonfeed you bullshit.
>>741492485More open and less linear world (especially when compared to 3, which is painfully linear), better atmosphere (subjective), better and more fluid combat, dual wielding working correctly, SM (controllable in SoFC) working better than SL due to much wider ranges, which leads to vastly more freedom in builds without being locked out of coop, coop itself, enemies vanishing after being killed set number of times (reversible and/or blocked with certain covenant), 4 ring slots, more open and better designed locations overall.
>>741492485gameplay
>>741477830What all these comparisons never mention is that OG Dragon Shrine is 100000 times more brutal and retarded compared to the more balanced SOTFS version
>>741484108The teleports have ruined ER exploration for me.Usually when you see some out of reach item in Souls games, it means you haven't fully explored the area. And you could intuit how to get there by drawing a mindmap. That's what makes Souls exploration so memorable. I must have spent hours trying to get to some ''rare'' items in ER, only to find out later that you had to teleport there. And then it was just a fucking arturia leaf. Fucking hell.
>>741492863Half of those are untrue, and the other half are flat out negatives.
>>741478605>designated DS2 to be a PS4 gamethat sounds bullshit to me but i'll believe you
>Dark Souls 2or>Dark Souls 2 for tryhards who cannot imagine their assholes unplugged for even a single second and always make sure to leave no enemy cock in the vicinity unsuckedthe answer is clear to me
I can't believe they had the gall to make Iron Keep even worse.
>>741492334Actually, dDragonbarrow and Caelid are one of the most genius additions to the game. It gives a challenge and ease of character building for experienced players who already know where everything is. It is aggressive enough to shoo away new players and correct them to the right path.
>>741478130>/v/irgin crying about video game knows nothing about video gamewoah
>>741492485You can choose the order of which of the four linear paths you can go down firstDon’t forget the minor gameplay mechanics that don’t matterIt also looks so pretty in the four area that don’t look like a Chinese MMO from 2005
>>741477830Never actually played DS2, but always thought a lot of the concepts and lore/story elements seemed cool/interesting.
>>741478572>Center Deadzone Mod for omnidirectional controls instead of jank trash 8 directional.>SOTFS Configurable Camera to fix the nausea-inducing janky sluggish camera inertia effectwtf is this shit? You're literal genetic trash if you have any of these issues
EpicNameBro (remember him?) who had real contacts inside From Software at the time believes DkSII was originally supposed to be a King's Field game. But when From negotiated with Scamco to make a trilogy of Dark Souls games when the first game was ported to PC they had to redesign the entire game to become a Dark Souls game instead.This explains why movement in II feels so different compared to the other games. It was originally supposed to be a first person game that was retrofitted into becoming third person.
>>741493473nokill yourself
>>741477830DS2 is so absolutely fucking based that it has produced thousands of schizophrenics homosexuals whose entire raison d'etre is to talk shit about this game.
>>741478287Dark Souls 2 started development before Dark Souls 1 even released. Shibuya was an old vet at Fromsoft, not a rando. But yeah, something about what he was doing didn't work and Tanimura had to be brought in as Miyazaki's fixer to patch everything together.
>>741481748>>741493807Miyazaki was never really working on DS2. Fromsoft was confident in Dark Souls and had already started work on the sequel before DS1 released. They actually did the same with Dark Souls 3 as well. That started development before DS2 released, with almost a year of development overlap. Which is why there are not a ton of references between the games.
>>741493012>no, your arguments are not real arguments!Really?
>>741477830I beat every Souls game and DS2 is the only one I bothered replaying. That should tell you everything
>>741493296>It is aggressive enough to shoo away new players and correct them to the right path.It's an open world game and it's meant to be ultra hard. Noone would think they are not supposed to be there.
>Play DAS2 Scholar for the first time>Most areas are okay except for No Man's Wharf, which is a stand out in design for me (Shulva is my favorite but it's DLC so I don't count it)>Find out later that the bridge shortcut was only added to Scholar and it wasn't in vanilla DAS2This game SUCKS
>>741494026Bases on your opinions I don't respect you enough to bother with actual discourse on the matter. This is the most effort you merit. Sorry, pal.
>>741493525most well-researched /v/ rebuttalstill more credible than ENB's uncle-at-fromsoft lore though
>>741482004this filtered all "youtubers"
>>741481672It's why the PS3 version of SotFS is the best. You get the improvements but with the original enemy placements.
>>741494157>it's meant to be ultra hardLimgrave, the starting area, is there to tell you the correct powerlevel you should be in. Not only that, but Caelid makes it extremely clear that it's another area by changing the sky color and basically everything else, and filling the main path with enemies several times harder than any other normal enemy in Limgrave.Though I guess you could get confused with the trap chest.
>>741482004>using cheese mechanicsdishonest
>>741494417Yeah, suck my dick too.
>>741477830ds2 doesn't have input buffer so it's the best in the souls series
>>741491423No it wasn’t. It was an issue even on console versions of scholar until 2015.https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/dark-souls-2-durability-bug-fix
i fucking hate soulshit and its' fans so much it's unreallove from belgorod
>>741494670c'mon nothing in caelid is as hard as the big filter margit
>>741490324You should be carrying more than one weapon. It incentivizes it with damage types being heavily punished or rewarded depending on what you're fighting, giving you six weapon slots, and not having hard breakpoints for rolling so it's easy to equip a second weapon. And of course by having durability matter so you either need to have a way to repair your weapon, or carry more than one and swap between them depending on the situation.
>>741477830This was the moment I lost all interest in scholar, that dude sitting there was a vital part of the atmosphere and they don't even respect his presence?
>>741495158e-retards aren't fans of games
>>741492334That was intentional, anon. It's something you take advantage of on repeat playthroughs. Exactly like how Dark Souls 1 is designed so you can get endgame worthy armor, rings and weapons in 10 minutes.
>>741482480Because Squeenix is also a publisher, whereas From is just a dev studio. FF is a fair comparison because it's one of the few "alive" in-house franchises for Squeenix.
>>741495326I carry a chime and a longbow in addition to the sword at all times, obviously. I obviously need either repair powder or another weapon for these bosses but the point is I shouldn’t. Normal sized bosses don’t pose a problem in this respect nor is durability management a part of the series.
>>741493296If only they had repeat playthrough in mind for the rest of the gameI guess their genius ran out
>>741495045underrated commentnonds2 games also eat your input at times
>>741480956>Dark Souls also has a bit of a Greco-Roman flavorHalf of that stuff is just straight up lifted from Demon's Souls though.
>>741495651https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faLtZv6tIWIit's insane how many people pretend this issue doesn't exist
>>741495326did dark souls 2 change it so sub-equipped weapons don't count towards your weight limit? I forget
>>741495576Why shouldn't you care about durability? It's a mechanic in the game you have to make choices regarding with multiple ways to deal with it built in.>nor is durability management a part of the series.It is a part of Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2.
>>741477830Both shit compared to III
>>741495045dark souls 2 has massive input buffer wtf are you talking about
>>741482004It's not hard, just much less interesting than walking into that mysterious knight just resting by a tree, challenging him or not being up to you.
>>741495790I think most people casually playing dark souls 1 never really experienced durability management because it's mostly relegated to a select few weapons (esp. weapons with special moves)
>>741495282A single one of those giant crows is honestly harder than Margit alone, but you can cheese/skip most of the Caelids with Torrent.
>>741495576They obviously tried making it more of a mechanic in DaS2, they managed to fuck up with the fps durability interaction but the game had more to do with durability than previous games.
ds2 chads we won bigly
>>741495790Because their implementation of durability has never amounted to more than an annoying chore that they let you bypass anyway with Repair Powder.
>>741495790Durability exists in all games prior to DaS2 as a way to enable durability breaking gimmicks like acid. In the case of Dark Souls 2 you have weapons breaking due to incompetent implementation of the durability system, forcing you to interact with it regardless if that gimmick is intentionally played by the developers (Sinh) or not (Aava, Lud/Zollen).
>>741481680cute!! did your egg crack yet?
>>741495993eh, I think it's fair to say they really wanted to lean into durability being a concept to care about, otherwise they wouldn't have swapped wall smacking with doomguy wall humping to open hidden paths
>>741495976
>>741495976average ds2 fanaccording to /v/, this is indian
>>741496032Try inviting him to your groomer discord to up the pressure
>>741495993Nonsense. Obviously Dark Souls 2 puts a heavier emphasis on maintaining durability, but it also makes it easier than before.>forced to interact with a game mechanicGod forbid.
>>741477830Aldia alone is worth it for SOTFS, and NPCs are the best reason to play DS2.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9TadzQb1Ec
>>741495790DS3 fans want an action game. It all makes sense when you realize they hate RPG mechanics and would rather there were none.
>>741495976>average ds2 hater - a tranny that actually exists in the real world>average ds2 fan - a photoshopped caricature of a man that doesn't exist
>>741478646Remove Demon's Souls. Its a failed experiment.
>>741496248Yeah, Dark Souls 2 does do NPCs right.
>>741495326>the game being shit is actually good!i think dark souls 2 is a pretty okay game but i fucking hate you cultists so much and wish you all got ass cancer and died horriblyhey nigger here's how you do it: get as many strike weapons as possible and when one gets at risk just swap to the next exact replica and continue steamrolling Big Guy in Armor #34626 because he's weak to strike damageyou big dumb faggot nigger brained cocksuckerit's impossible to honestly discuss this game because of you subhumans
>>741477830>>741478362Wait a second, I played SotfS and I know there was a sleeping, wounded Heide knight in the very first area that wouldn't aggro if you left him alone.
>>741498476Depends on which Scholar release did you play.The 360/PS3 SotfS is basically just a GOTY version that includes the DLCs on disc.The PS4/Xbone SotfS came with changed enemy/item placement, updated graphics and some other additions like a new ending.
>>741498476>Wait a second, I played SotfS and I know there was a sleeping, wounded Heide knight in the very first area that wouldn't aggro if you left him alone.That's the PS3, Xbox 360, or DX9 Windows version
>>741498938>>741498961I played on the 360. It's not backwards compatable so I haven't touched it in a long while.Are you telling me there's an entirely different version of SotFS that I can go play? And if so, is it worth it? This whole thread makes it seem like a downgrade.
>>741498280>when you engage with the mechanics, the game gets easierwowee, you got it all figure out, big boy
>>741499957I can't believe you missed the point that hard, that anon was right. You are the faggot making any discussion about games impossible because you pollute the entire internet with your brain diarrhea
>>741499536>Are you telling me there's an entirely different version of SotFS that I can go play?>And if so, is it worth it? This whole thread makes it seem like a downgrade.There are two Dark Souls II versions:>Dark Souls II (2014)PS3, Xbox 360, Windows DX9>Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin (2015)PS4, Xbox One, Windows DX11The differences are that Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin (2015) includes DLCs, new enemy and item placements, and runs at 60fps on consoles. They also messed with the lighting >>741486040 >>741486075Scholar effectively replaces the original and that the Dark Souls 2 servers on PS3/Xbox 360 have been shut down since March, 31, 2024
Is there a mod to restore the old NPC layout?
>>741500137I remember how good the lighting and colors were on DSII (360 version) and being stunned playing DS3 and PtD and thinking how much of a downgrade what I presumed was a new engine was. Now I'm thinking of getting the more recent SotFS, but if it also messes with the lighting...
>>741500137The QRD on Souls releases>Dark Souls (2011)>Dark Souls PTDE (2012)>Dark Souls Remastered (2017)Dark Souls PTDE includes Artorias of the Abyss DLC.Dark Souls Remastered runs at 1080p/60fps on consoles.Many graphics effects are broken in Remasteredhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlvOzgm1CJg>Dark Souls III (2016)>Dark Souls III The Fire Fades Edition / Game of the Year Edition (2017)Includes DLC. >Elden Ring (2022)>Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree Edition (2024)>Elden Ring Tarnished Edition (2026)Includes DLC.
>>741500406>I remember how good the lighting and colors were on DSII (360 version) and being stunned playing DS3 and PtD and thinking how much of a downgrade what I presumed was a new engine was. Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, Elden Ring and Nightreign run on the same engine, just improved upon.Dark Souls 2 was on a new engine that was built around the torch and dynamic lighting
>>741500619>>741500406
>>741500619>>741500702So it's not just nostoglia, DS2 really did look better?Why did they abandon an engine that looked this good? Imagine how nice Bloodborne chalice dungeons could have appeared.
>>741500839das2 looked better and worse, depending on what part you're looking atthe real good thing of das2 is that it runs so much better
>dark souls 2 criticism>look inside>"it's too hard"
>>741500839The lighting is legitimately great in that game. A shame that it wouldn't work well with Elden Ring's day/night cycle.
>>741501048>>741500839Tanimura was brought in extremely late into DS2 and was responsible for shifting things around to get it done, not from designing the core combat of the game, which was already done via a new engine made specifically for it (which was so garbage they threw it away for future games). The fact that ER mechanically plays almost identically to DS3, means that From thinks that is the best combat of the series so far, otherwise, they would have made it play like DS2, with a much slower pace, huge emphasis on stamina management, and sluggish movement. DS2 obviously had impacts on ER, because it brought back things like power stancing, mid rolling under 70% and immediate bonfire warping, but DS3 was clearly the biggest inspiration for the tempo of the combat. Tanimura was the lead director for DS3 too, not a minor secondary one that came in when 80% of the game was done like in DS2, so using Miyazaki bringing him in to help him co-direct the game is more of an argument for him liking the combat and level design of DS3 more.
>>741501076The lighting is pretty nice in some select spotsIt's such a shame that the rest of the game is doodoo garbage.
>>741501207the fluidness of das3 gameplay I feel is really good, there's no reason it couldn't be as slow as das1, but they sped everything up in response to players getting very good at the genre in my opinion
>>741501302Here, let me jog your memory.
>>741501076ER has prebaked trickery that could be done with the DS2 engine.I suspect they abandoned it because it couldn't do the large scale areas well without much extra work.On a sidenote I wish there was a way to lock the time of day in place in ER. Evening and morning looks so good but it's too short.
>>741501851>>741501602Post the most beautiful lighting and zones in Souls
>>741501912>>741501851Hunter's Dream
>>741500839Better anti-aliasing* as well.*Using Nvidia Inspector and flipping compatibility bits to enable Sparse Grid Supersampling Anti-aliasing (SGSSAA). One the best AA methods to ever exist, and was also created by accident. Can only be used - with some exceptions - on games that run DX9 and earlier, i.e. Dark Souls II. Part of the change with SotFS was that the game was updated to use DX11, thereby making SGSSAA no longer an option. The change in DX version is also the major reason why >>741501048 accurately stated that the DX9 version had better performance overall.Now every developer uses some form of temporal AA; most zoomers have never seen crystal clear image quality in a game, and MSAA - let alone SGSSAA - has been forgotten. Only one game natively supports SGSSAA: The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak. And this game happened to be ported by PH3 Games, which was founded by Durante, the guy who made DSfix for Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition.
>>741501602>cherry picking
>>741501983Would it be possible to add 8x MSAA or 8x SSAA to Souls games?
>>741501912Liurnia is my favorite blue zone
>>741501602
>>741502232Dark Souls 3 had some ugly levels
>>741477830Vanilla will always be superior. Scholar is SOULLESS dogshit.
>>741502274I'm so happy I just sprint past every enemy from Road of Sacrifices to Carthus Catacombs. Abyss Watchers is a pretty cool boss at least.
>>741500071>ARRRRGHHH NIGGER FAGGOT NIGGER FAGGOT REEEEE>Ugh... it's so hard to discuss anything these days...Begin by writing a post worth replying to.
>>741483576Most of the complaints about ganks in DS2/Scholar is just Frombabbies not being used to actually doing anything more demanding than 1v1 fights. The idea that they can play unlocked and use actual movement and positioning, instead of just timing when to press the X button when a single enemy attacks, is unfathomable to them. (It should go without saying that I'm not even advocating for item/ranged spam here. You can do all of this with just pure fundamentals.)I doubt they can even 1CC the first Streets of Rage on easy or the first Final Fight on lowest arcade dips.
>>741502517>troon cant handle a redpilled post
DeS had top tier attention to detail
Stonefang Tunnel
>>741502742>every single DS3 screenshot has different levels of gamma/brightnesslel
>>741502710
When the original looks better than the remake
>>741484108>. They clearly focused on Limgrave as the first impression and rushed out the rest of the gameI'm pretty sure Limgrave has at least half of all enemy types in the game. Most of the rest are scattered in all the areas accessible up until Morgott. Beyond Limgrave you start to see a ton of reused enemies and/or reskins.Once you beat Morgott and unlock all the areas blocked by the golden fog gates, there's only like maybe 3-4 completely new enemies in the unlocked areas. So for example, take the giant legacy dungeon spanning Miquella's Haligtree and Elphael.Miquella's Haligtree has only one (1) new enemy, which is the Giant Oracle Envoy (and even this is arguably as to whether or not it is truly new, since it's just a bigger version of the smaller Oracle Envoys you met earlier in Leyndell). Once you move onto Elphael, the place has literally ZERO new enemies. It's all reskins or reused enemies from other areas.
>>741502114SSAA should work with just about anything, but is extremely taxing and therefore depends on your hardware.MSAA is trickier, since it requires engine-level support to work. The primary reason you don't see MSAA around as much is because most developers have moved from forward renderers to deferred renderers; think of forward as an assembly line of instructions, and deferred as taking a part off the assembly off to put it back on later. This is done with lighting. Forward had a problem where developers were limited to 2-4 dynamic lights before framerate collapsed, hence DEFERRING the lighting pass to a later process to increase framerate. However, this also means that transparency can't be done, so in a deferred lighting system they MUST use a forward pass on transparent objects anyway. The move to deferred is also the primary contributing factor as to why you see so few reflections in modern games.Anyway, the forward rendering issue was solved a while ago, via clustered shading, which works in both forward and deferred. However, developers have relied on deferred for so long now that a lot of tech (ambient occlusion, screen-space reflections, etc.) is now "optimized" for deferred and unoptimized for forward without adjustments. It's also worth bearing in mind that deferred renderers have inherently higher latency that cannot be entirely removed, have lower performance all-else-equal, and is in every fucking thing. Unreal 5 has both, but the forward renderer there only exists for mobile and VR support, and gets absolutely none of the features that Unreal always touts.Hopefully visibility buffer renderers become the norm sooner than later so that we can get out of this technical shitstorm.
>>741502902>I-IS THAT... A CASTLE?>AAAAAAH, NOOOOOO, I'M LOSING MY MIND. QUICK, MAKE IT GOTHIC AND PUT A BUNCH OF MEDIEVAL GREEBLING ON IT. BIG BANNERS, HOARDINGS AND POINTY ROOFS.
>>741502742It's a big joke that the game with the most swamps had no Rusted Iron Ring.Then again, if the ring actually was in DS3, it would be an almost permanent mainstay and occupy an entire ring slot for like a third of the game.
>>741503178Here's your PS5 remake
>>741503178>>741503269Why are modern artists so afraid of simplicity? They just HAVE to overdesign EVERYTHING.
>>741503151QRD on dead rising remaster? Is this an RE engine issue?
>>741477830I like vanilla a lot more. The only scholar change I think was for the best was dull ember being earlier. Even visually Scholar is way uglier, but I guess that's not as relevant nowadays anymore with lighting mods and shit.
>>741503331Bluepoint was obsessed with cramming shit in to show off le power of ze ps5.
>>741503625And for all the shit they've done, they got shutdown. Boo fucking hoo. They butchered the artistry of Demon's Souls, made the community insufferable because now you have tons of PS5 fanboys bootlicking the demake despite it being shit, and now Bluepoint got what they deserved.At least they never managed to touch Bloodborne. I can't imagine how they'd butcher that.
>>741503754>>741503625>"There are only five unbroken stones in the Nexus," said Gavin Moore, creative director on the remake. "And that's the same now, as was in the original. So there's no new Archstone and there's no new world." That's certainly a bummer, but it follows with Bluepoint's philosophy on remakes: stay as true as possible.>Moore said that the developers are taking their Demon’s Souls duties seriously, and that “nothing goes into this game without being scrutinized in detail.”>Miyazaki and From Software, gave their blessing and they were happy for us to go forward and make this game. I mean, they gave their blessing, but they didn't get involved in the actual day-to-day production of the game. Now, all of that development was handled by Worldwide Studios and Bluepoint Games, but we made sure that we stayed true to their original vision. That's incredibly important. We're massive fans of Miyazaki's games, and so making sure that what we created was true to his vision, that was the gold standard.>For example, if you look at the environments on the PlayStation 3, they're very sparse and there are two reasons for that. One is because the PlayStation 3 didn't have enough memory to furniture those environments. And the other reason is that there could be a story told by the way that those levels were furnished. >One of the things about a remake is that what you're doing is you're not remaking the game note-for-note. That's not what you're doing. What you're doing is remaking the game the way that the person who played it before imagined it to be. So we hope that when the original fans who played the PlayStation 3 version see the game and play the game, they'll go, "Oh, wow. This is how I imagined it. This is so cool. Yeah."constantly switching from ''we're SOO big on sticking to original'' to ''but we just couldn't help changing this and this because we could''.
>>741502174Based Imagine living there
>>741502274Speaking of ugly, I genuinely don't get how Dark Souls 3's blood splatters look more like mud compared to the beautiful red splatters of Bloodborne. How the fuck do you go from the lovely red of BB to the muddy color of DS3?
>>741477830Anyone saying ds2 vanilla has better enemy placement is delusional
>>741503801>For example, if you look at the environments on the PlayStation 3, they're very sparse and there are two reasons for that. One is because the PlayStation 3 didn't have enough memory to furniture those environments. And the other reason is that there could be a story told by the way that those levels were furnished.Was he high? Demon's Souls visually aged better than later games
>>741503801>One of the things about a remake is that what you're doing is you're not remaking the game note-for-note. That's not what you're doing. What you're doing is remaking the game the way that the person who played it before imagined it to be. So we hope that when the original fans who played the PlayStation 3 version see the game and play the game, they'll go, "Oh, wow. This is how I imagined it. This is so cool. Yeah."They did get that one right. Most players do miss subtle world building and storytelling through things like environment and clothing design, so the remake just removes that and now the game never had that story in the first place, just like how they remember it!
>>741503942They triple prestiged the brown quota
>>741503349>QRD on dead rising remaster?It's absolute dogshit. Outsourced to a Chinese studio called NeoBoards, they censored and malapdated the entire thing. Too much to get into, just watch this: https://youtu.be/31LpUdgIjDU. The Demon's Souls remake is still much worse, though.>Is this an RE engine issue?Yes, but also talent. I imagine the old guard who work at Capcom know how to do such things, but anyone who has worked there less than 10 to 15 years likely has never implemented reflections outside of toy projects. Your image of RE4 does not use RE Engine, and uses textures to show reflectivity. Such things, like pre-baked lighting, are a dying art in the industry with the ore-reliance on out-of-the-box solutions like Unreal and Unity. Similar to how so few movies use animatronics and (to a slightly lesser degree) practical effects, since the people who were good at those things have largely left the industry at this point and why you'll never get another Jurassic Park.
>>741504050>delusionalI'm pretty sure most of them just fell for the psyop.
>>741504120this looks like an out of bounds call of duty zombies area, og demons is ugly as shit and the only way to tell the gloomy bloomy dark areas apart is by their color coding
>>741477830OgScholar feels like those fan mods that add ridiculous difficulty just for laughs. Mobs on top of mobs, mini bosses everywhere. Its just not fair.
>>741504050Anyone saying scholar has better enemy placement likes Elden Ring
>>741503269Post tower of latria
>>741504208Speaking with an open mind, the only reason to pick vanilla over Scholar is for certain speedruns and/or you prefer certain item placements. Maybe if you're deranged you might like the original enemy placement but its clear that it was a rushjob. The DLCs don't have a difference between version and those weren't rushjobs like the base game was.
>>741504420Being a rushjob is not an argument. Demon's Souls was a failed project on a shoestring budget rebooted mid development, changed camera perspective and director, and it's still one of the best in the series. Elden Ring had the longest dev cycle in the history of the company, the highest budget, and it sucks balls.Now of course those are subjective opinions and you can disagree but what you will never see is someone saying "How can you like Demon's Souls more than Elden Ring? It was a rushjob!"Completely irrelevant. The DLCs are also wildly inconsistent in quality, Eleum Loyce is garbage. Shulva is fantastic, however, and Sinh is the best dragon fight in the series to me.
>>741504420Agreed.Scholar of the first sin is quite literally just better.
>>741504654>Eleum Loyce is garbage.Only if the Frigid Outskirts are taken into account. Otherwise, the level design is very good.
>>741504120cool early PS2 game
>>741496208Aava and Lud/Zallen obviously weren’t supposed to eat weapons but they do due to the retarded implementation of said mechanic.
>>741501971Also tied with Majula for best theme tune
>>741492949Ermm skill issue?Sotfsniggers got the dragon aerie shortcut handed to them tooAnd a shortcut got added in no man's wharf too lmaoAnd the dull ember is right next to lenigrast lel, cause sotfskids need early infusion to beat the gameScholar = pussy mode version
>>741504951Why would part of the DLC just magically not count if it's not a rushjob?
>>741501971Is this just a reshade or a more substantial emulator lighting mod? The game's color grading does not look like this on the PS4 at any point.
>>741505712It can just simply be a terrible idea but also not be rushed. Not every bad area (or idea) in a game is bad because of a rushed schedule.Sometimes devs just have bad ideas.
>>741504654>b-but what about these OTHER games?nigga the argument about Dark Souls 2 SEPCIFICALLY, demon's Souls and Elden Ring are their own thing.
>>741480036Anon, Japanese developers are incapable of making RPGs.
>>741504992
>>741505803I agree. Which is why I like vanilla more than Scholar and think being a rushjob is irrelevant. I also disagree with Scholar coming out a year after the original and a year before Dark Souls 3 and right after the company just shipped Bloodborne not being a rushjob, they did not have any extra time or staff, people did that shit on no sleep, but, again, I don't think it's a relevant argument anyway.>>741505817The argument is about being a rushjob making it objectively worse, illiterate faggot.
>>741505892You shall obtain the demon soul...and power beyond human imagination
>>741484108ER has a lot of problems, but I will defend the Four Belfries in that they're supposed to be little "tourist" spots to show off parts of the game players might have missed, the exception being the Chapel of Anticipation. Also, they all offer unique items very early on such as the Pearldrake talisman or the Golden Twinswords/Greatshield. But yeah, they did overdo it with the teleporters.
>>741484108>There was supposed to be a zone between Sen's Fortress and Anor Londo. Just look at the Golem's boss room. There's a obvious gateway behind it.There's also collision mesh data of some rudimentary corridor pointing from Darkroot to the Crystal Caves.
>>741483672>enemy placement makes little sense on the return to the Undead asylum: Torch Hollows act like they're waiting for you, Black Knights can't fly and wander Lordran so why is he there?>Why is Priscilla's lost doll in your cell? Who put it there?The crestfallen dude actually tells you that the crow took someone away if you talk to him.
>>741494214LMAOVanillacucks never mention this
>>741507012>There's also collision mesh data of some rudimentary corridor pointing from Darkroot to the Crystal Caves.New to me. QRD, screenshots?
>>741478572>Lighting Engine is mandatory. Just installed this recently, it's so good. So many kino moments in this game that are so dependent on lighting, like the Lost Sinner fight
>>741507214>>741478572QRD on lighting engine
>>741484108When I first played DS1 I went down the catacombs and got to a dead end, which royally pissed me off. It would have been super cool if they actually connected Tomb of the Giants with Ash Lake.
>>741507152because it's not a big deal?
>>741507313It just makes the game look a lot better, look up "dark souls 2 path tracing" and check out some comparison videosI kept seeing it on Instagram reels, and it looked really good, so I installed it
>>741507214>>Lighting Engine is mandatoryLink please, I'll check it out too
>>741478370>>741479825It's the complete opposite, in any other series or without the other Souls games, it would be hailed as a 10/10 cult classic hidden gem, but people have preconceived expectations based on the previous games, they just blindly hate when 2 does anything different, not to mention a metric shitton of false information spread through disingenuous sloptuber video essays.Meanwhile borderline shovelware Dragon's Dogma gets a free pass and is endlessly sucked off here
Dark Souls?It's all pure artistic skill.Most of the models are very basic (by today's standards), and are only covered with a simple "photo texture".Some were given a basic Bump map + specular map to give more glossy, metallic vibe, but nothing fancier than that. Water has some simple Planar reflections and refraction, that was old news at the time as well.All that's then coated in mostly pre-baked lighting, with some dynamic light sources. Smaller, self-contained "rooms" obviously help keep the things within the console's RAM budget.Because strong hardware limitations breed invention and polish.
>>741507619>Meanwhile borderline shovelware Dragon's Dogma gets a free pass and is endlessly sucked off hereNigger I'll fight you, how can you even say that when it does so many cool things
>>741507175it's not really THAT much but some protruding mesh-geometry
You know, DS2 isn't perfect and all but legit don't get how it's the black sheep of the series when 3 exists.
>>741507672Post more Dark Souls dev kino
>>741507668No, the fuck it doesn't. The balancing is fucking awful, your pawns are worthless sacks of shit, and the combat is incredibly repetitive musou-tier dogshit. The first time you climb a cyclops and slash his eye, it's kinda cool. The 50th time, not so much. Every single encounter with big enemies is just a slog, it's the same braindead tedious loop of 'climb on monster, mash repeatedly on weak spot until he throws you off, repeat'Also the game seems to swing between complete pushover before you get randomly one shot out of nowhere, bosses seem to have absolutely massive healthbars but extremely simple and exploitable movesets, and healing items are incredibly cheap and can just be spammed nonstop with zero drawback. Not to mention it's an extremely janky and ugly game full of clipping, buggy physics, poor pathfinding, and tons of other technical issues.About the only thing it does well is the sense of adventure and dungeon crawling (which is severely hampered by the issues above)
>>741507887Demon's souls was great, dark souls was great. Trailer for 2 dropped and hype was at an all time high. Then 2 came out and it was worse in so many aspects compared to the previous games, it also tried new stuff that just didn't land for a lot of people. At least for me personally I never really got that excited for 3 so it was just a one time playthrough game to me.
>>741507586https://youtu.be/J5oax-iNgOY?is=1FHB9PS7bCWYbrduhttps://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/1146
>>741477830I own both and I play boththey're both good games and I have fun with both
>>741507960>Every single encounter with big enemies is just a slog, it's the same braindead tedious loop of 'climb on monster, mash repeatedly on weak spot until he throws you off, repeat'What the fuck are you on aboutYou quickly get tools to get out of this phase or do it way more easily Did you just start a fighter and never even get a single skill>your pawns are worthless sacks of shitI genuinely have no idea how anyone could think this unless they explicitly only used the generic capcom ones and never even swapped them>Also the game seems to swing between complete pushover before you get randomly one shot out of nowhereDo you cry about the catacombs in DS1 too
>>741477830I hardly remember Vanilla but SotFS is pretty good I hadn't played it in so long, but after playing Elden Ring and then going back to SotFS, holy hell, it's so much easier than Elden Ring, you do so much more damage and everything is slower
>>741504127What am I supposed to learn from this image? Is the bottom left the way the equipment looks in the remake? If so it should say so.
>>741477830Non-scholar had too many places that were fucking empty for some reason.
>>741504654>>741504951Frozen Outskirts is great and Eleum Loyce is peak, gitgud.
>>741509895NTA but the Venerable Sage set was originally the cleric set dyed black, given a hood and with the religious jewelry replaced with generic medallions. This is because Freke was a cleric who turned away from faith and turned to studying the demon arts rather than condemning them blasphemy.The remake redesigned both sets and ultimately they now share nothing in common with each other or the original attire. Also that render/redesign of Freke is a complete joke.
>>741507960>combat is repetitive>same braindead tedious loopUnironically you just don't get the game. If you think hunting big enemies is a slog my guess is you wouldn't like monster hunter either, which is kinda the reason why DD is enjoyable. Also the whole thing about climbing monsters and taking long times to kill them is part of the enjoyment; it's that feeling of actually taking down a fuckhuge creature through pure determination.>pawns are worthlessYou are unironically retarded if you your pawn is worthless in combat. You either do not understand the game's way of combat and never bothered working on your companion, or your companion is worthless because you yourself are shit at the game since main companions are coded to actually learn and mimic your actions during combat. Everything from spamming jump attacks to looting mid-battle, renting and observing one's pawn can tell you something about the owner.>balancing is fucking awful>healing items are incredibly cheap and can just be spammed nonstopYeah, that's fair. The first game is worse than the second, not like it means much since it's still easy to get exponentially powerful in both. At least the sequel fixed the healing issue by adding max HP reduction from taking damage over time.>extremely janky and ugly game full of clipping, buggy physics, poor pathfinding, and tons of other technical issuesEverything here is what a lot of people say about DS2, yet you still hail the game for what it is despite it's faults. Also keep in mind you said in >>741507619:>Meanwhile borderline shovelware Dragon's Dogma gets a free pass and is endlessly sucked off hereKeyword, "here". It's fucking 4chan, a place where we usually form communities around games that actually stick. DD has a cult following, meanwhile Soulslikes are always being made and thus the community will shift and change opinions over time, only to degrade into the shithole that is /erg/ today.
>>741502046No need to cherrypick, 90% of Dark Souls 2 looks like that. Meanwhile you're a dishonest faggot posting Demaster screenshots at max brightness
>>741510847
>>741504257Demon's Souls looks great. Kill yourself subhuman golem
>>741481748yea source or dumbass retarded
Every DS2 hater argument:>Adaptability is weird>the why world structure doesn't make sense>some of the background areas aren't super detailed (never mind that DS1 and 3 both have similar problems that can be pointed out)>gank encounters are mean (never mind that every fromsoft game does this)Is that fucking it? And you lose your minds over this shit? DS2 derangement syndrome needs to be studied.
>>741493389You never played it so you're making up stuff to be mad about.
So, should you level ADP?
>>741511617I think the ganks feel pretty bad in 2 since not only is there quite a few of them, but the AI is still as aggressive as it was in DS1 where they'll all just mob you simultaneously. I think in DS3 the AI was adjusted to not always mob the player, while in ER it's much more noticeable.Granted, much like DS1 there's ways to avoid getting fucked over but most players I know don't even bother with half of the tools the game offers.
I wish DOOL WIELDING wasn't ruined after 2
>>741511849The parry + repository animations and sounds are also the best in 2.
>>741511806Yes, thought some mage-caster classes can get by with substantially less since AGL is the important stat and is influenced by Attunement as well as ADP.
>>741493389It feels like shit because it is shit.
>>741477830The enemy placement in the original makes sense and seems intentional, whereas Scholar feels like a romhack. Not one that's more difficult or even worse necessarily, but one that just feels "off", like it wasn't in line with the original intent of the developer.It's not even the specific placements, as much as the specific enemies: the original game segregates lots of enemy types to specific areas or encounters, while Scholar just kind of spreads every enemy type out more evenly. It makes most of the areas/zones/whatever feel less unique IMO.I wont go into hyperbole and say Scholar is soulless, but it definitely feels substandard to me.
>>741512353works on my machine
>>741483907>Firelink Bridge restored!I interpret this a bit differently. I think the bridge was always broken, but the little room may have been there. It may have initially been where the Undead female merchant was, but it was too easy to miss for players so they put her on the shortcut back to firelink. >>741484082That makes waaaaaaaay more sense. The Prince and King get turned into gross monsters after the bed of chaos incident like the daughers of chaos did. In the final game, he's a completely random invader with a weird goofy headset. The "Necromancers" you see in the Catacombs did not exist in original designs! They are undead Pyromancers from Lost Izaleth and they got repurposed as necromancers. Both to recycle the designs, and probably because play testers complained about the respawning skeletons. Lost Izaleth enemies:>"brain bugs">craig hollows>undead pyromancers>King Jerimiah>Prince Izaleth>bloat head hollows>undead zombies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk_6jr9I_38
I kinda feel like playing again out of spite, idk who im spiting but I hope its at least one
>>741513501
>>741483907>>741513369Fun fact: the wall they put in front of the exit at the Capra bridge has no weapon collision detection.
So what non Souls, Souls-likes are actually good?
>>741514356Last Hero of Nostalgaia
>>741514356Lords of the fallen (not the older one)
>>741514356Lords of the Fallen 2023, Nioh (if it even counts at this point)
>>741514356Lies of P is unironically better than the entire trilogy, and gameplay wise is superior to elden ring too, by a large margin.
>>741478287Despite all this is still manages to be better than ds3... damn
>>741514356Code Vein 1 (not 2)Mortal Shell (if you prefer slower pacing and tight design)Thymesia is solid but doesn't offer much replayability outside of the extra endings.Khazan : The First Berserker if you want something that's all about boss battles and intensity but overall it's much closer to Nioh design than traditional Soulslike.I wish I could say Lords of the Fallen 2023 but truthfully it's impossible to recommend that game. It has lots of good points, but I think they've maimed and ruined the game with their lack of direction in the constant patching and overhauls. You have to be careful with recommendations of this one because it's entirely possible that every person who's played it has played a drastically differing version of the game. They even replaced the final boss of the Radiance route in a patch with a completely new one. Originally it was cited as being too hard, then they nerfed it to be comically and trivially easy, I mean, one-shotting bosses on your first encounter level of trivial. Then they patched to to be less blatantly stupid, then they rebalanced it for co-op. "then, then, then" and so on. I want to like that one but every patch really does feel like 1 step forward, 2 steps back. You really need to play this one yourself somehow before committing to it.
>>741515001>They even replaced the final boss of the Radiance route in a patch with a completely new one.And then they had to patch THAT one because he was a fucking mess, lol.
>>741508893>>741510856I played offline only and don't care to excessively micromanage my pawns considering the game's combat systen isn't compelling or challenging or well-balanced at all, and there are no additional difficulty modes. You acknowledge that the gameplay of every big monster is the same braindead repetitive loop of mashing attack on their weak spot, but just give it a free pass despite being repetitive and overly playe out just because >"woah big monster cool!!!" I used fighter and some other clas and the entire combat was just spamming the same 1 or 2 abilities over and over like a shitty musou, there was never incentive or reason to use anything else and I got through everything just fine and never felt the game was difficult in the slightest.The combat system itself is just really underwhelming even before getting into the extremely repetitive monsters that you approach the same way, thus the musou comparison, this is nothing at all like Souls where you actually need to use different tactics for each enemy or pay attention to your environment.And /v/ is just a contrarian shithole, the community will turn on a dime on a series as soon as it gets popular (even retroactively hating on prior titles). Witnessed it in real time with Souls after Elden Ring and RE after Requiem. The difference really is night and day, this board went from universally praising Souls to universally shitting on it and decrying it as rollslop just in the span of a few years.
>>741515001Oh, right and if you're the type to care about "woke" content LOTF2023 is unfortunately still kind of saturated with it. It's true that they patched "body type A/B" to male/female and this triggers all of the trannies, journalists and Resetera people but the game is still full of girlboss type characters, pathetic and impotent men and random diversity casting. Damarose checks off every box at once, being massively strong and independent black lesbian dropping F-bombs every other line. The original 2014 protagonist shows up just to moan about how useless and pathetic he is before you kill him unceremoniously or assimilate him into a meat-wall.You can probably ignore it but I know a lot of people can't or won't or end up feeling sorta betrayed since the game has it's "based chud" reputation nowadays and that shifts expectations.>>741515123Oh yeah, they're still patching it to this day to work out all of the bugs. When they first added it, you could fall through the map loading in, or the boss himself would die instantly from the same. Sometimes he wouldn't show up at all. His AI would fail to trigger and he's just be stuck standing in place. Sometimes he'd die and the fight would never "end."It's clear that 0 playtesting was done for that initial addition despite it being such a significant change and I'm not ready to forgive them for that no matter how many times it's "fixed."
>>741514356Nioh 1 and 2. That's it>>741514869lol
I'm going to remake Dark Souls 2 with the Dark Souls 3 engine, and make it open world and there's nothing you can do to stop me.
>>741515735They already did that four years ago.
>>741514869If only it wasn't another parryslop rhythm game
>>741478130It was even worse if you hit a friendly summon or a corpse. It was like 8x or something retarded. I remember an anon posting a webm of him breaking his sword in like 10 seconds by hitting multiple phantoms. That was some whacky ass shit
>>741514356I liked ai limit although i still havent gotten around to finishing it.
>replay DS2 years later>this time I look up what each attribute actually does and what I should take>game becomes the easiest FromSoft game I've ever played
>>741477830I would say 2 just for the fact it doesn’t have like a dozen petrified fuckers you have to wake up.
>>741515001Do you actually mean "one shotting" or just killing on the first try? One shotting without heavily building my character towards it and knowing what I'm doing would be a problem yeah, but killing on the first attempt is no different from most Bloodborne and Sekiro fights to me and I love those games. Difficulty isn't everything.
>>741511063>every accusation a confessionNice max brightness screenshot you got there.
>>741478646Does anyone know how to get this man to go explore blight town? The first time the prompt appears i don't tell him about it because i need to buy all his pyromancies and get the glove to +10 first, but after a fully upgraded ascended flame i can no longer get him to ask me about the spider fireball.>why do you want to kill himI simply complete all the quests before going to new game+.
>>741514356Dolls Nest is pretty good if you like PS2 Armored Core.
>>741516248Turn off sweetfx or whatever is this weird ass sharpness filter, man, you're ruining one of the few pretty vistas in the game.
>>741507313imo you should disable the bladerunner fog because it looks like shit
>>741516287You completed his quest, you got the ending where you don't tell him to go to Blighttown and he lives, you can't choose to tell him now.
>>741507960>No, the fuck it doesn't. The balancing is fucking awful, your pawns are worthless sacks of shit, and the combat is incredibly repetitive musou-tier dogshit.You say this when DS1 to 3 are R1 spam? Bloodborne was the first game to switch it up by introducing trick weapons, and then elden ring refined the system with ashes.DDDA had the superior combat system simply because it had skills, but that is no longer true after bloodborne. Sekiro is not a souls game but its combat mogs a lot of capcom games too.
>>741511147No, the fuck it doesn't You disabled Nostalgaiafag
>>741516456Oh so that's why he no longer asks. I always thought his final outcome was dying, since nearly every single other NPC croaks at the end of their questline, except for the dude in new londo who doesn't even speak anymore after moving to firelink.
>>741477830Vanilla DS2 unpatched was the last time I enjoyed a magic (hex) build.
>>741512353When I last replayed DS1/3, walking on thin beams was fucking impossible, because I would jitter and fall off(thanks stickdrift).I wouldn't be surprised if that square deadzone in DS2 was a weird way of fixing this. Pressing up makes sure your run straight forward. If you want to adjust you just use the other stick.Also 8 way movement in DS2 is a blatant lie, it's omnidirectional.
>>741516226Literally clearing a boss health bar from full to dead in one attack. or a single attack string on the first encounter. It was genuinely that bad in 2.0. It was a comical kneejerk reaction and overreach to the initial scathing reviews whining about difficulty.They've adjusted it since, so it's not as bad now. I still find bosses are still on average comically squishy for how they're designed. You can still trounce them before they even have time to shift into their 2nd or 3rd phases.>>741516318Ah, I left out Doll's Nest. Yeah, I've got to second this one. It's very subject to personal tastes but it's great and follows the Souls formula much closer than you might expect from a glance. I think this is actually a positive case of a game that was jank on release being buffed out into a much better title as it was updated.
>>741516590Hey, keep me>>741514391Out of this, please...
>>741514356Wuchang Fallen Feathers is peak.The world design is the best since DS1.
>>741483203To be fair, durability loss was tied to framerate.
>>741516982I've got no kb sky bro
>>741516248It's not max brightness at all, that was either 1 or 2 brightness actuallyNice disingenuous shit image tho, do I need to show you how bad Huntsman's Copse looks yet again?
>>741516248>>741517591
>>741516248>>741517591>>741517656
>>741516248>>741517591Now stop posting your shitty disingenuous image already, Darkroot Garden runs laps around dogshit ass Huntsman's Copse visually
>>741517591Cute character. I love Huntsman's copse and its atmosphere. You can shoot an arrow from here and knock down that Torturer in the distance. Sometimes he can even find his way around to you even with such a large gap in the level progression. He can drop a Bloodied Whip which is actually a great weapon. Whips in general in DS2 are the best they've been in Soulslikes and it's the only game where a Belmont run isn't a handicapped "challenge" run.
>>741517591>right shoulder and possible left with plate pauldrons>chain mail underneath skirt, implying the entire thing has chainmail underneath>no poise >hard leather set
>>741517914you know one can tell you manipulated the brightness because it also affects the UI, right?
>>741516952>>741516248I love Dark Souls 2, but this isn't how you defend it.You defend the idea that 2 was going for, which we peroidically get a glimpse of during gameplay. It alternates between the initial vision, which is super cool, and the slapped together mess we got.
>>741518530DeS battle axe detected
