Dark Souls

Ryan

Please talk about Souls games with me 🙂

Porter

Dark Souls 2 has the dubious honor of having my highest play time of any game, ever. I would make new characters over and over for the Dragon Covenenant and just PvP at the Iron Keep bridge all the time. My favorites were my pyromancy and miracle builds, and I got a surprising amount of utility out of that one miracle that causes lightning to strike all around you. People walked into that all the time.

Overall favorite is probably still DS1. It's the only one I finished for whatever reason (although I keep 2, 3, and Elden Ring on backlog to this day). It also had my favorite version of Pyromancy and the most contained story. DS3 is good but too monochrome and too roll-y on the PvP side.

I kind of burned out on Elden Ring after Morgott. It's just a really big game, even if I love it. Going to go back to it and finish eventually since I was loving my dual wielding pyro and my unga bunga STR/ARC dragon knight builds but it's probably going to sit on the burner until I can finish DS2 and DS3.

I also beat Yhorm in DS3 without using Storm Ruler, which was probably dumb but fun to do. You can bean him in the face with fireball pyromancies and eventually stagger him. Just spent the whole fight hitting him in the face with Dark Fireball. Still died less than I did to the boss at Dragon's Peak.

Gigachad

I played Demons souls when it came out and dark souls 3 but I gave up at the first or second poison swamp. I beat like 12-15 bosses in number 3 and no fucking clue about demons souls. The only thing I remember about demons souls was the gamestop guy telling me to lead the red eyed 2 handed sword guy to fall down the stairs cause he will kick my ass. And I remember doing that.

Dark souls 3 was cool but I discovered that while I enjoy a hard boss fight what I do not enjoy is slogging my ass back to retry it and having that slog take anywhere from 5-20 minutes. If bonfires were outside boss fights I would have beaten it.
My middle son (12) is doing dark souls 2 with my brother (his 2nd playthrough) and while he is having fun I'm waiting for his stubbornness about not finding a build to come bite him.

What did you like OP? What did you wanna talk about? Builds? That also probably didn't help me. I didn't Google a build either and sometimes the increases to stats feel so incremental as to almost not be felt at all. Cool series. Baby's first philosophy tier story. A good one but a simple one. Not all stories need to be deep af with allegory and metaphor in everything (although it seems like they kinda tried that by obfuscating the story).

Fantasy

I've played and beaten every fromsoft "souls" game, except Dark Souls 3. I played it after bloodborne and I was not a fan of bloodborne I prefer the souls games proper that had released before it.
I'm one of those creatures that thinks 2 is unironically the best one. I like the slow nature, I like the massive amount of builds, I like how you have more options on where to go than any other souls game(beisdes elden ring now), and it has some of my favorite songs.
Amazing to me how from managed to put out so much quality content in 10 or so years. Not a single bad game. I'm excited for the future, just not the armored core future since I'm not going back to play 5 other games, I've no interest in the series.

FreeColaZ

I need to play the Souls Games because I heard that despite their difficulty they have good gameplay. The thing is I don't know which platforms. I would like to get them all on Steam, but I am currently waiting for the summer sale and I know that DS Remastered is on Switch, and I would like it on a portable platform. (Don't have a Steam Deck on me at the moment).

Which Souls game should I buy and play first?

Fantasy

FreeColaZ

Which Souls game should I buy and play first?

release order

Lumeinshin

Fantasy
FreeColaZ
Yeah I think release order is best, tho Dark Souls is probably easier to access. I think what I like about 2, being the ability to go elsewhere else/easier if you get stuck (i always describe it as being like mario64 to friends). Thats done in DeS more and probably better which makes it a bit easier to stick with as you get to grips with everything.
Give Dark Souls 1 a go without looking up too much and then once youre close to giving up maybe then look into tips and such

fynkks

Im absolutely obsessed with the fantasy and lore inspirations behind these games. Bloodborne being inspired by HP Lovecraft is pretty well known, but Im almost certain that the imagery and feel of Dark Souls 1 & 3 were inspired by the writing of Lord Dunsany. If anybody has any leads about possible inspirations hmu pwease

Murderbunny

I kinda tried DS1 but ended up getting filtered by it pretty much requiring controllers before even leaving the prison. A lifetime of kb+m made me near unable to adapt to anything else.
How are the later games in terms of kb+m compatibilty?

Gigachad

Murderbunny
They play and work but not anything better than what your expecting. It just plays better with a controller. Although with some practice you can get it with the kb+m. You just have to want it.

Fantasy

Murderbunny
I did a playthrough of Dark Souls 1 without the one fix that was made and it was done with MKB. I learned about the patch after that run and immediately swapped to controller, haven't looked back since. The only style of these games where i went back to MKB was Bleak Faith Forsaken since that game had awful controller support on launch, and well awful a lot of things but I liked it.

agoraoptera

I'm an absolute sucker for Bloodborne. I used to be a Lovecraft fan, then gradually got disillusioned by the incredibly poor showing of almost all Lovecraft-inspired media. Tentacles and "ahh help me catman I'm going insaneee" are really shallow renditions of Lovecraft's theming.
Bloodborne though. Bloodborne's got it down pat. Perfect atmosphere, lovely usage of Insight as a mechanic (shame about cut content), fantastic depictions of the Great Ones while also having its own unique themings shine through. Also I do adore that they went through an entire game about consuming blood without ever making a reference to vampires. Could gush about it all day.
I get why people don't like it as a souls game though, given how it goes away from the regular formula. Gun parries are a lot less punishing than regular souls parries, the variety of builds is a bit smaller, and the pace of combat is markedly different.

Also side track, but I find the formula of souls games to be a perfect fit for me. I don't have great reflexes or good perception. I will almost always take the boss' first few hits because I fail to see the tell entirely. Mind you, it took me the better part of 4 hours to get through an early part of Yharnam. But what I do have is perseverance, and the way souls games work is perfect for a dunderhead like me to throw myself at the wall over and over and over again until I can finally internalise the movesets, timings and tells. And after that, things get so much easier. I died so many times in Yharnam at the beginning like a dumbass, but consequently those mooks became trivial once I figured it out. Of course, some mobs are easier than others to deal with, but the "keep doing it until you get it" formula suits me greatly. I wonder if any of you feel the same?

Thorius

if you guys ever see a note in yharnam saying "be wary of wheelchair" make sure to give it an appraisal

1996FordMondeo

Man I have a weird relationship with darksouls games.
I love them yet I was never able to git gud on them.
most time I put in souls games was 15ish hours in SOTFS

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