Honest thoughts on Dark Souls... 14 years later?
>>719967512Not too derivative, short, fun combat pace and encounter design.Pretty neat.
>>719967512This game ruined my life. I was a normal dudebro back then. The only games I would care about were Mass Effect and Fifa. I was really close from meeting the love of my life, get a stable job and graduate until this shit came out.
The last game I was genuinely excited for and enjoyed.
Demon's Souls was better
>>719968219This. also bloodborne
>>719967512Absolute ludo
>>719967512DS1 is the only good game in the franchise. Every game that released after this was essentially a flanderized disaster based around the marketing for the Prepare to Die release rather than what DS1 actually was.
>>719967512the PC release of dark souls ruined not only this board but also gaming in general for goodthe game itself is okay, but demon's souls was much better
>>719967512I thought it was ugly jank at first. I blame the PS3.
>>719967512It's a great action adventure video game with some RPG mechanics.
>>719968219>>719968273>Demon's Souls was betterExplain yourself
Poor worldbuilding, shallow characters and a boring story
>>719967512Still the best. Shame levels like Lost Izalith had to be rushed. Two and three both got hit with the deadline stick but we're lucky Dark Souls 1 came out as good as it did.
>>719967512Loved it and I still replay it to this day although it's greatness wasn't a surprise to me as I had played Demon's Souls prior.
>>719967512Great game, I played through it again recently and I enjoyed the whole thing. It really is the goat.
>>719967512Still the best.
>>719968682hoooly shit that fanart lol
>>719968493sure. the movesets are drastically better in Demon's souls for the most art. I truly hated when dragonbone smasher went from a weapon with tons of hyper armor, long lingers attacks, and being useful in both one and two-hand, to being one stance smash R1 for like epic giant dad. thisa isn't even the worse offense. what happened to estoc should be studied. I also loved how poise made the game retarded and rewarded playing like dogshit
ITT:
>>719967512Elden Ring better
>>719967512GOTYAY 10/10 will replay again
>>719969341DS1 had the best poise and armor system in the series thoughI'm still mad Elden Ring copied the inferior DS3 system
>>719967512The movement sucks. The player's speed and maneuverability is weirdly inconsistent. Where you attack and roll very fast. But your turning or ability to go up or down on the Y axis is retardedly gimped. You play like a race horse that can go in on direction really fast, but can't make a turn on the way.The controls suck. Kicking is bound to the player first having to totally stop moving, then correctly time pressing Forward+Attack, which at least 1/4th of the time whiffs and you do a normal light attack. There is no dedicated jump button, and you can't do it from standing still, regardless. So if you get stuck on any terrain, or want to move over a small obstacle, it is a pointless headache. The camera is dogshit. The game is set 90% in tight corridors, but the camera is set too far back outside of boss fights. So you're constantly phasing into the walls or having your camera start shitting itself looking for some place to stay. A properly made camera system would have moved in closer to hug the player's shoulder when in tight areas, and backed out when in open areas. Combat is okay. Enemies with shields are annoying before you learn the parry timings. Backstabs should be the counter, but as said most of the game is set in corridors that are too tight for you to usually get around behind enemies. Magic is pretty lame, with only Pyromancy having a few cool spells. Melee has a few fun weapons, but most lack anything fantasy about them. Bosses change a lot of the rules from most other mobs, so it goes from a game about slowly picking apart groups into a totally different challenge of reaction speed and timing. The easiest way to play is to just pump Vigor and Endurance and tank everything. Damage really doesn't improve that much with leveling attacking stats compared to weapon upgrades on their own. So you might as well just put everything into survivability.
This summer I played it for the first time since launch and I'd say it's still a really fun game.Replayed demon souls last year and I had way more fun with ds and ds2 (for the first time) this year.
>>719969549Just give it a few years. People will eventually start to have the nostalgia fall fade and admit to how the game is not that great
>>719967512First one is good. Sadly, it killed video games by making the shittiest trend of Action RPGs ever. The formula worked in Demon's Souls, the first DaS and Bloodborne (with some stretch).Nioh, Lord of the Fallen and others are all trash.
>>719970165Skill issue.
>>719967512SOVL>>719968219>>719968273some partsThe perfect From game would combine all the best elements of these three
>>719969341>I also loved how poise made the game retardedThat's probably the most fair criticism of the game. DS1 poise really is terrible, both for offense and defense. Your poise makes it possible to mindlessly ungabunga with any weapon indiscriminately, while enemy poise damage scaling means that weapon upgrades are the key to raping enemies who'd otherwise dogpile you. It's absolute dogshit across the board and massively weakens the game's integrity.
>>719969973>DS1 had the best poise and armor system in the series thoughIt didn't. it was terrible and overpowered and catered to shitters, no to mention it just ignored the tenants of basically all the other games:>hit and don't get hitin dark souls it's:>hit, and don't get hit, unless you have a lot of poise, than ignore what the enemy is doing and mash since it's literally the best strat :^)
>>719968096same bro, i was 14 when Dark Souls 2 came out it's the game that cemented me into becoming a loser. Tried being normal but the damage is already done i will die alone and alcocholic, probably in the next 10 years
>>719968273>bloodbornebloodborne maps were worsemainly because hub + teleport from the start
>>719969973It was bad. Poise on armor needed to be heavily nerfed.
>>719967512Fromsoft games have become parodies of themselves. DS2 and Bloodborne were the last true ones... 10 years ago
>>719972315The map isn't worse than Dark Souls 1, mainly because there isn't a bunch of dogshit levels, but yes, removing teleport would've been better.
>>719970165dogshit takemovement and controls are very tightcamera has a non collision optioncombat take is delusional, you wouldn't scrutinize other games the same wayin fact, you have none to do so
>>719972373>says they become parodies>lists two parodies
>>719967512Delete Lost Izalith. That is all.
>>719972434I'll say that Yarnham and the forest are 10/10but the shortcuts are meaningless because of the teleports
>>719967512A great if spotty game that the devs were never able to replicate despite never willing to evolve beyond its very basic mechanics.
test
>>719967512It used to be one of my favorite games, but I hate how its influence ruined modern action games.
>>719967512We should have been able to save Quelaag's sister and Priscilla should have become our wife.
>>719972254It's the only game where wearing knight armor actually makes you feel like a knight. If the devs had any talent they could have made a combat system built around hit trading instead of rollspam sims where a light breeze makes you flinch while wearing platemail.
>>719967512One of the greatest games ever made.
>>719971692Nioh has better combat than Souls.
>>719972337Defense calculations were fucked up too. You always see people saying armor was better in DS1 but it's only strong in the early game because defense is so heavily weighted towards low-damage attacks. By endgame you can only achieve like 30% damage reduction at absolute maximum.
>>719968493Latria is peak, and From have never managed to recreate its greatness
>>719967512Still the only good Soulslike
>>719967512One of my favorites. Still waiting for a true sequel but after ER i've kinda given up on that.
I didn't enjoy Undead Burg, Catacombs, Depths and Blightown very much. Started picking up more in Parish, Darkroot, Sen's Fortress, Anor Londo. Last half of the game would look amazing if the content was finished.
Don't know why anyone would hate on ds1, it refined what demon souls was and wasn't just "forgive me...x" crap like elden ring.Last boss was a bit anti-climatic though seeing you can just parry him
>>719972465They're not tight. The maps are covered in random garbage and detritus with collision, but the player's ability to get around it is limited with no pay off. Slants and angles result in inconsistent and awkward sliding around at any angle above 15 degrees or so. Changing the camera collision doesn't fix the issue at all.Either method is bad. Without collision, the walls constantly eat your screen and the object transparency is either too slow to activate or not transparent enough to see what is going on. Anything regarding moving the camera around corners sucks. This is compounded by the very short lock-on distance and it trying to snap to other enemies automatically, even with the option turned off. A good early example is the caster in the Undead Parish with the 3 Balder Knights below him. If you want to spell cast or shoot arrows at him, the game freaks out with the lock on and constantly tries to snap down to the Balder Knights the entire time. And even if you kill them first, the short distance the lock on works for makes hitting him still annoyingly difficult, particularly for magic users that don't have the sniper mode archers do. Why wouldn't other games get the same critiques as Dark Souls? Cyberpunk 2077 is full of bullet sponge enemies throughout the early game that discourage exploration and feel like dogshit to fight. Melee is just as bad because it is very floaty and lacks a sense of weight or mass behind attacks. There's another game's combat criticized. Dark Souls has mediocre combat because of what I listed. Not terrible, not great. And the split between how one fights mobs and bosses results in a feeling of unevenness. Bosses aren't tests of what you learned in the levels leading up to them. They're a separate game from the mobs that work with different rules.
>>719973781This guy is a verified idiot but he thinks he's smart.
>>719973895You can call me dumb, but I would still be correct.
>>719973953You'd think you are for sure.
>>719967512Its a shame that the sequels dropped the focus on exploration to focus on multiplayer and meme difficulty. Also its an even bigger shame that the soulslike that got famous were all just meme difficulty ones, almost none were focused on exploration.
>>719967512Seath will never be a real dragon. no scales
>another Dark Souls thread with zero webms that make this game look good
>>719974076Elden Ring has better exploration than Dark Souls 1.
Aged like milk
>>719974136How do i record video on my xbox and then make a webm of it? Tell me how, ill post webms, if not shut up you little faggot
>>719967512Definitely the best of the three. Rough around the edges, definitely, but this is From trying their best. 2 and 3 are clearly just an afterthought and just something to keep milking Bamco to fund their other projects.
>>719974895oh i'd love to see these webms lol
>>719968319What made DS1 great for me was the world and not the combat or difficulty.
>>719967512like all FromSoftware games it suffers from only having like 4 NPCs and they're all the same person, also the Bed of Chaos singlehandedly ruins the game.
>>719967512>Best Souls game>Best Fromsoft game>Best SoulslikeStill the GOAT of its genre. If you disagree you simply have awful taste and shit opinions.
>>719967512Fuck the hellkite drake, it's honestly such a shit design (if you plan of fighting it legit one on one) with instant kill moves, health regen, SHITBOXtm fire spam. but I do understand you were never really supposed to fight it in the first place it's just an obstacle more than anything. Invaderfags are still babies, even to this very day
>>719972254>RPG lets you become a tank>this is bad because muh git gud mindsetshut up faggot
Replayed it recently for the first time since release. Still a lot of fun. Played the DLC for the first time and wish I skipped it. By the time I wrapped the game up it felt overlong.
>>719972254>It didn't. it was terrible and overpowered and catered to shitters>>719972337>It was bad. Poise on armor needed to be heavily nerfed.You guys don't get it. Some armors had too much poise and if you have pre-existing knowledge of all armor pieces you can build your character to facetank through the game HOWEVER those are balancing concerns regarding individual pieces of heavy armor. The armor and poise system, in regards to how it functioned, was by far the best in the seriesDS3 and subsequently Elden Ring swapped basic defense values on armor for predetermined defense values on armor slots with each piece of armor giving different absorption. That is not only worse than DS1 but also unnecessarily complicates the system by giving you an additional vague stat between the cause and effect of your armor piecesAdditionally the implementation of poise is worse in both of those games with DS3 having no real poise at all, similar to Demon's Souls, but instead giving you hyperarmor that can range from anywhere along useless to even more overpowered than DS1 poise. And Elden Ring kind of brought poise back but tied everything to 3 breakpoints which have to be surpassed to tank one additional light hit before getting staggered. This is such a cheap and lazy way to handle poise because nothing ingame suggests these breakpoints exist (despite them being as important as equip weight breakpoints) and any point you put into without hitting a breakpoint value is just utterly wasted. I bet a ton of players tried equipping a few pieces of heavier armor to see if it helps with staggers and then thought it was completely useless because they didn't reach the invisible magic number on their equipment. Likewise a lot of people probably think you need to go full bull-goat to avoid getting staggered on light hits because that armor set has a lot of blue numbers in the equipment comparison screen and when testing it you're obviously very tanky
>>719968219Over the summer I replayed demon's souls in rpcs3 then played das1 remastered immediately after. I used to think demon's souls was a better game and I think if we're comparing the ps3 versions of both games it probably is, but dark souls is honestly such a well designed world and feels so much better to play when you have experience with the genre that I think it slightly edges out over des.
>>719976694There's a subset of people that would prefer if FromSoft removed all the RPG mechanics and just forced the player to play naked with a longsword.
>>719978424Those people are fags that are too scared to play truly difficult action games
Salt and Sanctuary > DS1
>>719974895Just record it with your phone
>>719967512DS3 is better in everyway, but retards are too stubborn because muh old=good elitism and muh videoessays
>>719967512Masterpiece
>>719967512I think DS1 has my favorite art direction of a From game, the crushed blacks and cubemap reflections do a lot to sell the dreamy look. The newer games look a little too modern for my taste, idk DS1 just sells itself and its world really well.
>>719979473was going to post the same thing. very painting-like art direction and melancholic ruins lend it that 18th century painting look. firelink shrine is dead but looks very serene (pic unrelated)
>>719967512Excellent game. Takes all the good stuff from Demons Souls and fixes or at least mitigates most of the bad stuff. One of the all-time great map designs. The final third really isn't as bad as people make it out to be.Suffers from intermittent Fromsoft jank or general quality control inconsistency; stuff like Capra dogs, wheel skeletons, lock-on issues, that infamously slippery root bridge at the bottom of Blighttown, etc etc that are overlookable on their own but could build up on a bad day.Awful, awful, terrible fanbase.
>>719976194Once you learn what to do it's just free 12k souls very early on
>>719967512It's really great, just as good as Demon's Souls if not better. It's a real shame what the series became later down the line.
>>719969549I played this game for the first time two years ago. It isn't nostalgia, the game is just good and everything that followed it has failed to live up to it.
>>719976194It pissed me off trying to do covenant stuff recently how 3/4 of the time I invaded people would just DC
>>719981096yeah it happened a lot when I was doing forest invasions, to a point where I just farmed covenant items, the only one that was easy to get was sunbro
>>719972946Idk i played it and it's worse than Demon Souls, maybe Nioh 2 is better but I just gave up on teamninja after how terrible WoLong was
Great game but still has a lot of flaws that are hard to ignore in hindsight.
>>719968219FPBP/thread
>>719967512the only time rollslop wasn't slop
