Again, thx gamespot for the youtube-vids! these videos are actually watchable. you should upload all the videos you make yourself to youtube as well and then just embed them in the articles. muuuuuuch better than your weird flash player.... thing.
@jayskoon93: depends on your preference. outlast is kind of a very scary walking sim, whereas in resident evil you still have to do stuff and figure stuff out. it's just the question of what you want. of course having no tools, weapons whatsoever is scarier than actually being able to defend yourself or having tools at your disposal, but personally i prefer the resident evil way.
after 3 months there's still one side feeling betrayed and angry and one side saying the game turned out to be the exact (boring) game that was promised.
@swisdwag: the dragonslayer armour bonfire is unnecessary. if you wanna help with that boss you can walk back from the archives. all it does is make it more convenient for the players which isn't a thing a souls game should do.
honestly though i think one of the devs has ocd and just had to put a bonfire in each bossroom. is there a boss in ds3 that doesn't have its own bonfire? wyvern isn't really a boss and i can't think of any other right now.
@texasgoldrush: in general: in ds2 you basically had 1 straight line to the boss. levels were really short and often didn't make any sense in the order they would appear (you take an elevator UP to the iron keep that is filled with lava??? how does that work?). heide's tower of flame has like what, 10 enemies? and 2 bosses and is a very very small area.
the original (demons')/dark souls was just so inspiring with its design, you would walk through multiple levels and after hours would finally arrive back at firelink and just think "wow". also levels were a challenge by themselves and a bosses were more special because there weren't so many of them, yet each was well though-out. think brume tower in ds2, which was exactly what i'm talking about. a huge, awesome and challenging level, with a lot of side areas and backtracking. that's why it is my favourite part of ds2, but it's not part of the maingame. the 3 crown dlcs actually all were very good and if ds2 would have been like that it would have been one of the best games i ever played. it would still have had soul memory though :(
and sorry if it feels so many people are "bashing" ds2. personally i think it's a very good game and certainly better than 99% of all the other games out there. it was just disappointing as a souls game. i still put countless hours into it and had a great deal of fun.
compared to the last third of the original dark souls: you mean places like the duke's archives and izalith? what exactly do i need to explain? they were huge and awesome. have you ever tried getting the avelyn in ds? ;)
ds3 has its own weird level design. in some levels they did a good job, like the cathedral of the deep or irythil, which both kinda focus on 1 bonfire that you keep coming back to via shortcuts. on the other hand you have stuff like the dragonslayer's bonfire and the archives bonfire being right next to each other with exactly 1 titanite chunk between them and nothing else. in ds3 the most tiring aspect is the linearity of the game which is why it sometimes feels like a chore to me to make progress in a ng++ or higher run, because there's only that one way to go. i loved the aspect of being able to choose different routes at the beginning of ds and ds2 and i really miss this in ds3. the only two options you really have is saving the cathedral of the deep until you reach irythil (but what's the point?) and doing yhorm before aldritch or the other way around (again what's the point?).
so a lot of text, sorry for that, but you wanted an explanation.
p.s. i also think i might be getting tired of the genre in general since i've played it since demon's souls and the game's no longer have that same effect on me that demon's souls or dark souls had. i burned out really fast on bloodborne (2 months?) and now when i contemplate about starting a new ng+ cycle in ds3 i really ask myself "do i wanna go through all that again?"
@texasgoldrush: it depends on your personal preference. the original dark/demon's souls had the optimal system imo. sure you get invaded by someone with a lightning greatsword +10 right before the gargoyle boss. but so what? let that pitiful bastard kill you and then proceed to kill the boss and be on your way. i never understood why people cared so much. you get invaded once in dark souls and then it takes quite some time before you can get invaded again. enough time to clear a whole level and beat the boss. i gotta say i never experienced that as a problem personally. soul memory totally destroyed the online component of ds2 for me though, because the game was basically telling you "level up as high as you can, otherwise you can't compete". i love making builds and making decisions about where to put in your levels and have a max build at 120. it can be very powerful but it the game will still be challenging. for me there's really no point in being able to use a ultra greatsword, cast css and sunlight spear and all that fancy stuff on 1 character. it just feels stupid to me.
what i do appreciate about ds2 in retrospective though is that it just tried a lot of stuff, some of it worked (powerstance!!!) some of it didn't. future souls games can only be better because of ds2. otherwise ds3 might have had soul memory. not saying ds3 is the best souls game either, but it could have been worse if it wasn't for ds2.
@GunEye: ds2 certainly had its pros. while the leveldesign was underwhelming, the fact that all the levels were really short meant a lot of bosses and therefore a lot of weapons and spells. the variety for builds in ds2 is unmatched. and it had the glorious powerstance! sad though that one little thing like soul memory can ruin it all, because pretty much everyone was running around with level 300 all casters.
@texasgoldrush: ds2 does not rely on nostalgia? have you talked to any of the npcs in ds2? all they can talk about is the original dark souls and how legendary and great it was.
though i gotta agree, bringing back anor londo, wanna-be sif and priscilla in ds3 is soooo bad. it kinda feels like only dark souls (1) is an original game.
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