Dark Souls, anyone?

[KAZUYA]

Interesting!!!!

[BudMan01]

Man, tried summoning with one of my buddies last night in Dark Souls. What a MESS! I guess with Dark Souls, not only do you have to worry about level gap, but also you need to be under the same convenant. WTH...there are quite a few convenants to join in Dark Souls. Even though we were in the same server and within the level gap, we still could not see each others summon signs. It must have been the different Covenants we were under. BAH!!!

Anyone else run into this issue trying to coop with a friend?

At least in Demons Souls, you just had to be on the same server and be within the level gap.

[BudMan01]

Almost done with Anor Londo. Looking to get the Lord Vessel so that I can warp to certain bonfire locations. So far Anor Londo hasn't been that bad. I only struggled a little bit with the Black/Silver Knights shooting their Demon Bow at me on my way up toward the 2nd bonfire location.

Have not completed Tomb of Giants yet either, so need to go back there and finish that. (I hate that level also). The Painted World of Ariamis was pretty sweet and I was able to score some cool items. I do tend to get side tracked farming souls alot as I need about 30k just to level once. Between that and spending all my souls on upgrading weapons/armor, buying items, ect... depletes them pretty quickly.

[BudMan01]

Finished off Dark Souls last week. WOOT!

Now with Demons Souls & Dark Souls both beaten, I can officially retire as a gamer.

Two of the BEST and rewarding games I have played on a console. Epic stuff

[GerryAtrix]

I picked up Dark Souls last week after some "soul searching" (pun intended) on whether the punishing nature of the game as documented in numerous reviews was for me. So far, I've found the press to be absolutely correct: this is a punishing game! But it's also as much fun as I've had doing RPG (seasoned with liberal amounts of frustration), and that includes Skyrim.

Dark Souls was definitely created by a sadistic group of developers, requiring insanely long intervals between save points, limited health regeneration, umpteen areas in the environment where you can fall to your death by a mis-timed movement, enemy battles where one mistake or less than perfect execution of moves removes an hour or more of work, because your death sends you back to a long ago save point to do it all over again.

The cool thing about it is that you continue to level your character (and to a lesser extent your weapons) as you repeatedly die, until you finally, finally, FINALLY beat all the enemies and the insanely overpowered " boss" creature......only to get a brief rest and do it all over again on the next, even harder level. The sense of accomplishment after working a level and dying maybe 40 or 50 times and finally beating it is strangely satisfying.

Collecting souls from your defeated enemies is the currency of the game, allowing you to buy weapons, armor, upgrades, spells, etc but the problem is that when you die, your collected souls are dropped at the point of your death, and you need to get back to that point without dying to retrieve them, or they are lost.

So far I've beaten three levels and the game is getting a little easier (so far) as I have better weapons, armor and leveling, but I fear the levels will also increase in difficulty. The RPG aspects of this game are tremendous, requiring a little more thought in how the items you find in loot or buy are put to use in your character build.

If you buy this game, go into it knowing that you will be dying constantly and redoing areas over and over, but the leveling system fits this seemingly annoying gameplay perfectly, because death in Dark Souls is a learning experience which leads you to making a stronger character and an amazing sense of accomplishment when after 50 tries and loss of thousands of souls, you finally beat the boss and start a brand new level!

[Sheriff_Bullock]

I picked up Dark Souls last week after some "soul searching" (pun intended) on whether the punishing nature of the game as documented in numerous reviews was for me. So far, I've found the press to be absolutely correct: this is a punishing game! But it's also as much fun as I've had doing RPG (seasoned with liberal amounts of frustration), and that includes Skyrim.

Dark Souls was definitely created by a sadistic group of developers, requiring insanely long intervals between save points, limited health regeneration, umpteen areas in the environment where you can fall to your death by a mis-timed movement, enemy battles where one mistake or less than perfect execution of moves removes an hour or more of work, because your death sends you back to a long ago save point to do it all over again.

The cool thing about it is that you continue to level your character (and to a lesser extent your weapons) as you repeatedly die, until you finally, finally, FINALLY beat all the enemies and the insanely overpowered " boss" creature......only to get a brief rest and do it all over again on the next, even harder level. The sense of accomplishment after working a level and dying maybe 40 or 50 times and finally beating it is strangely satisfying.

Collecting souls from your defeated enemies is the currency of the game, allowing you to buy weapons, armor, upgrades, spells, etc but the problem is that when you die, your collected souls are dropped at the point of your death, and you need to get back to that point without dying to retrieve them, or they are lost.

So far I've beaten three levels and the game is getting a little easier (so far) as I have better weapons, armor and leveling, but I fear the levels will also increase in difficulty. The RPG aspects of this game are tremendous, requiring a little more thought in how the items you find in loot or buy are put to use in your character build.

If you buy this game, go into it knowing that you will be dying constantly and redoing areas over and over, but the leveling system fits this seemingly annoying gameplay perfectly, because death in Dark Souls is a learning experience which leads you to making a stronger character and an amazing sense of accomplishment when after 50 tries and loss of thousands of souls, you finally beat the boss and start a brand new level!

I still want to try this game, but I'm waiting for it to come down in price. I don't want to spend too much on it just to learn I absolutely can't stand it.

[GerryAtrix]

I still want to try this game, but I'm waiting for it to come down in price. I don't want to spend too much on it just to learn I absolutely can't stand it.

I paid $39.99 at Best Buy, it may be less on Amazon. To elaborate more on the difficulty of Dark Souls, the game is designed to test your adaptability and ability to not give up. Each level has a variety of enemies to battle which require different approaches to beat. Most are not difficult once you figure out what works on which type of enemy (part of the repetitive learning I mention as you die and repeat your trek). You get several life recharges when starting each level but the challenge is that even knowing how to beat certain enemies, you need to be patient and can't rush through the battles because you need to ration your life recharges. Rushing enemies (even those you have fought numerous times and beat handily) leads to excess damage and may leave you with little or no life recharge when you meet the inevitable boss character (or even making it far enough to meet the Boss creature).

Whether you will consider buying this game a waste or not depends on how much patience you have for losing your progress and starting again, many times, and whether you can get enough enjoyment/satisfaction out of finally overcoming a truly difficult (but completely possible) scenario. What would be insanely frustrating in most other RPGs must be thought of as the DNA of Dark Souls. The bosses are overpowered, with one or two hit kill capability, but there are always several ways to beat the bosses if you learn and adapt from your deaths..... In fact it is possible to beat the bosses with little to no damage to your character if you find their weakness; the Wiki on-line guides and walkthroughs are pretty much mandatory to consult when you run into a wall. I think it takes about 8-10 hours of somewhat grinding gameplay to really settle in and feel comfortable with it, so bear this in mind.

[LtDan]

Been playing for about 3weeks now. Love this game even though it's the hardest game I've ever played. Gerryatrix and I were able to hook up in game so it's possible just requires a little patience. Anyone interested? I could use the help. I'll free up a spot on FR if you want to try and get together.