So is this patch in place yet?

I've heard it is nov. 7th, but that's just what has been floating around.

Gwyn is freakin' real boss. He doesn't screw around with slowly walking towards you like a dike, nah, he just freakin' rage-rushes you, breaks your guard, and pees on your corpse.

Until you parry and riposte him.

I walked in there the first time expecting some kind of cinematic or some variety of cut-scene signalling the end boss. I was obviously very wrong when I walked in and didn't last a minute.

I have officially rage quit as of this evening. Beat Ornstein and Smough finally, and then decided to check out the New Londo Ruins because I didn't know where else to go. Groups of ghosts hitting me through walls, untargetable because they're in the floor or behind walls in narrow corridors, died a couple of times to that. Made it through the ghosts, emptied the lake, pwned by some knight who drained my health. Okay I thought, I'll try again. Walk slowly into dark doorway, jumped on by two of those knights, dead.

And at that moment I just lost the will to play. I already had issues with pressing an attack and my character just standing there doing nothing, only to suddenly do the attack 5 seconds later. Also had issues with my shield swapping out even though I didn't even press the button. Add to that the extremely crappy online system and I really can't be bothered to play it any more. I'll wait to see player feedback after the patch, but until then it's going back on the shelf.

Yes, a totally viable tactic. Except you never get the chance to because he swings like lightning and you're constantly trying to keep your health up? Iron Flesh you say? Sorry, you're too slow to avoid his grab which sends you flying, forcing you to waste spell-time getting back to him. Or he'll just rush you again, stab you, and deplete your health enough to force you to heal. But wait! His attack has such a range that you're 15 feet from him, midway through an estus drink, your spell has worn off, and he IMPALES you.

There is a lot that is good about this game. A whole crapton. But FROM, for some reason, though HARD was all the players wanted, and they sure freakin' delivered on that. This is, without a doubt, that hardest game I have ever played. And that is not a good thing. There is such a thing as "too difficult", and Dark Souls crosses that line. Not just with Gwyn. Demon Ruins is the dev team giving the finger to the player. Bed of Chaos is entirely luck-based (what with those handsweeps), and the falling floors give no warning.

And then there's those myths perpetuated (by myself at times, I'll admit), that Dark Souls is always fair to you, and every death is your fault, and that once you beat a boss you have overwhelming happiness.. No, those are lies. This game is very picky. You can be standing right behind a Black Knight and it won't backstab, or the enemies attack will clip through a wall you thought you were safe behind, while you're doesn't do crap. (LOST IZALITH DINOS I'M LOOKING AT YOU! YOU, TOO, ENEMIES WITH LONG WEAPONS!)

And the boss feeling? Lie. The only feeling I get after beating a hard boss is weary elation. Elated that I can actually move on and start having FUN again. Except for Sif, there has been no boss in Dark Souls that I've actually had fun going up against. Bosses should be the capstone of enjoyment, the thing that makes or breaks a game. A good deal of the bosses in Dark Souls are, I'll admit, easy enough (read as: boring), but some are just utterly ridiculous, and make you want to rage quit. That's the worst of both worlds. Gwyn, while being overwhelmingly difficult, is actually a good capstone for this game. He perfectly encapsulates all the successes and failures the dev team made. And he has a flaming sword, and that's always cool.

I was super-excited for Dark Souls, I was expecting an utterly amazing game. What I got was a good game, maybe even a great one, but not an amazing game.

Final Score: 7/10

I also expected a lot more from Dark Souls. It's Story mode was nearly exactly like demon's souls. Beat 4 archdemons/lords to move to final boss. The multiplayer mode suffered severely compared to demon's souls, and while the covenants are a cool idea, half of them didn't do anything or were so poorly designed that they were unplayable. Poorly designed weapon upgrade system that is on the brink of being utter lazyness: the difference in occult weapons and divine weapons is extremely small (and only matters in the catacombs), enchanted and magic weapons are practically the same, fire and chaos will be just as powerful as the other one, give or take 5 damage. And lightning weapons beat them all although it doesn't scale with anything.

Pre-patch, the game was more like a DLC with a lot of balance issues and multiplayer svcked. I expected more than Demon's Souls and only got a very tiny piece of that more, in terms of a few new weapons and a bunch of broken spells and rings. So, pre-patch I'd give 75/100. Once the patch fixes all the unbalanced things and if it also fixes multiplayer, I'd give it a 85/100.

As for parrying Gwyn, Iron Flesh + target shield is win. The window of parrying him is very big with the target shield and even if you don't successfully parry, iron flesh akes you take nearly no damage. If he grabs you and tosses you, you press the attack one or twice before the grab animation kicks ín and stop you from attacking for a while. Again, Iron flesh makes you take nearly no damage. You can also tank with iron flesh + crystal ring shield. Oh boy how fast he'll go down.

I agree with a lot of what you have said, I liked Dark Souls loved the combat especially the bow. Probably the best use of Bow I've seen in any game to date but there are moments where the game draws a line between hard and just plain ridiculous. I had quit the game when I got to Quelaag and she kept killing me, I didn't want to waste 20-30 hours gaining 30 Soul Levels just to keep getting killed by Quelaag, I don't even know if getting the 20,000 souls for the forest area would've made a difference. It's a good idea that From had when they made this game but they failed a bit on the execution and I think they rushed it too and that never helps.

My verdict *7.5/10, decent game but From dropped the ball in some areas.

My only gaff with the game is the story and presentation. The difficulty is fine, quite hard enough to make me laugh at anybody who says it's "easy", but at the same time I feel like they got so wrapped up in the whole "MAKE IT HARD HARDER OH YEAH SO HARD" that they forgot to have it MAKE ANY SENSE.

I've said this before too I think.

The world design is, to me, a complete mess. Instead of a kingdom or even a city it feels like a random assortment of obstacle courses that have been cobbled together. It's not the same feeling I got when I was saving fair Boletaria. Add to that the fact that many bosses don't drop anything at all, or have random drop rates like normal monsters, and defeating them doesn't in itself create a checkpoint like the archstones, and the fact that it's a fragment run-on like "YOU DEFEATED" instead of "THE DEMON HAS BEEN DESTROYED"...well it all just ends up feeling like anti-climix after anti-climix, with aimless frustrated wandering around inbetween until you find a deadend boss who drops a key that opens a door somewhere unrelated to get somewhere else.

It's fun, oh it's definitely fun. All of the gameplay is great, and the boss fights themselves are fun to play, but the story and the lore is weak at best and completely cluster[censored] the rest of the time.

See the above? Yes to the max. Would it bother them so much to include some comprehensive story and lore elements to the game? Very fun, even with broken PVP and such. Hopefully the patch fixes a lot of issues like it hints at. The difficulty is not that bad. The thing that probably is the most irritating for me are the fall to my death scenarios. Always feels cheap. LOL at ghosts in the forest rolling over my head off the ledge. Priceless bug. 7000-10000 souls every run is nice too.

Well, there's two problems with that. I think, personally, they could have had the NPCs say MUCH more about the actual story than they do now. As it is they have a whole lot of dialogue that really ends up saying nothing useful at all.

Instead all of the lore and story is hidden away in item descriptions, and that's one of the biggest problems. From, or Bandai Namco, or whoever translated the game text, did a very poor job. Some translations are just downright wrong (like the Tiny Being's Ring gift), and some of the items appear to have the wrong description attached to them (Pendant is the exact same as the Sun Medals). The descriptions in the loading screens are even worse, with Miracles being given totally different descriptions from what they actually do (Homeward has the description of Force for example).

It's bad enough that much of the lore and story is locked away in these item descriptions, but it's worse still that we can't even be sure they're translated properly in the first place.

The patch seems to have F* up match making even more than before. And while they nerfed a big chunk of spells, they did nothing to the spell-switch glitch (which was the most broken thing of them all)

Eventually beat Gwyn by tanking him in Black Iron Armor with my Divine Greatsword +8 along with Iron Flesh. Had to heal a couple of times, but he went down in quick order. I wonder how non-melee characters beat this guy...

Having fun on NG+. My plunge attack on the Taurus Demon took off 90% of its life-bar.

None of the challenges in this game have annoyed me too much...until now.It began with the whole walk through pitch blackness thing in the valley of giants.I died many times and finally made it through.But now I am in the crystal caves, trying to walk across invisible platforms to get loot.It is absolutely tiresome, because it seems to be about trial and error.I just want to ignore everything and get through this place quickly.That makes me sad.

I keep playing other games now, as i know I have annoying stuff to get through before I can start having fun again.I am gonna burn the whole world down if I fall to my death one more time!

Edit - Okay prism stones are my friend.

Well yeah there is that too. I mean the whole 'You Defeated' thing has been bugging me everytime I see it, Many things just do not make sense or are wildly innaccurate. This is why I come here and not the wikis most of the time. The Item descriptions are mostly copy pasted.

Is a +5 Astoras Straight Sword any good? Or did I waste twinkiling titanite? Says it scales to C three times for Str Dex and Faith. I am working on a pyro faith melee build. A kind of holy fire thing. Most of the emphasis is on faith and melee. I can just upgrade Pyro by upgrading the pyro hand thing with souls correct?

Yes pyros upgrade with souls at three known NPCs.

The astoras straight sword has low damage and only a C rating for added damage, so it's crap. Any occult straight sword would most likely outdamage it, as they will get a bigger base damage. Don't worry about twinkling titanite, there's infinite at the snuggly the crow trader. Simply drop a moss, reload, drop another moss and now pick up your reward. Repeat as many times as you have moss.

What? Since when did Snuggly traded more than one piece of same item?

Oh, found that from wiki. Change to my farming methods...

Is it only the single twinkle moss that can be repeated? Cause Snuggly rejects the flowered moss for the 2 twinkle drop.

That or FROM fixed it.

Had fun in the forest today. Wanted some help with Sif for NG+, so was in human mode. I was getting attacked by dark phantom players every five minutes or so, so I hung around and pvped. Greatsword is such a bahs weapon, especially as a divine one with high Faith (my faith is 40.). But then I summoned another guy, and we went tromping to go kill Sif. Well, we get to Sif, and my partner drops from my game.

I was displeased, but soldiered on, kicking Sif in the balls. I tell ya, Black Iron Armor (full except for helmet), and a Black Knight shield is a pretty good combo. With the greatsword, you're a damage dealing machine, and can take physical and fire attacks really well. You suffer from magic and lightning, though.

I quit after beating the game. I cant see myself going back for a long time. It started fun, but its just a pisstake by the end of it. Like having a swarm of unded dragon legs chase you across lava, or unblockable AoE attacks, or the dog things in the tomb of giants. Just gets to a point where it stops being a fun challenge and becomes cheap. I know folks will defend it, but some things (unblockable AOE spamming) are cheap, try all you want to say it isnt, but it is. there is no skill involved in countering those tactics. You just hope they dont spam the hell out of them, and it dosent take off too much health. Try playing a thief.

Hell its not even much of an RPG, yourguided to making a certain character type. Again try and play a thief and stick to it.

Yeah I know, I've pointed out this many times to my friends who think DkS is an RPG. It's not.

That said, I have fun using the dragonslayer greatbow (super slow and super low damage.., but I buffed it and now it's fun ). The knockdown effect has given me 2 kills in Kiln in PvP, it's fun

Which makes the choice of a character at the begining pointlee. Even more so now the master key is for sale. Seriously I hate it gave me a pointless choice, then slapped me because I *gasp* tried being a thief. Why even give me a bloody option.

Yeah, PVE is pretty much "Get the biggest weapon you can wield, and wear the heaviest armor you can because, brotha, yer gonna need it". I think that is a major flaw that that is the choice thrust on you. Oh yeah, sure, you can make functioning sorcery builds, but some bosses just laugh at that. You need 50 Vitality and at least 40 Endurance to get anywhere in a NG+.

Also, yes, the dinos are a slap in the player's face. At least they don't respawn, that's good.

Just thought I'd play devil's advocate:

Bad level design? Are we playing the same game? I think the level designs were great. Not only does each area feel very unique, the game delivers so many "and there you are," moments when the areas connect. Not only that, those sprawling vistas were you can see all the areas, how can you not love those views! The world may not be as big as I wanted, but the level design itself is brilliant.

Except Tomb of the Giants and Lost Izalith, those places svck.

And people complaining that the lvls feel like obstacle courses? Uhhh, of course they did, I thought that's what dark was going for. Felt that way in demon's too. That's why I like the game(s), it is more of throw back to older generation games.

As far as story and presentation, I'll admit the end was disappointing. But coming from demon's, what did you really expect? The game is esoteric in so many ways did you really think the were gonna lay out an easily understandable story? Of course it didn't really make much sense, it is a "spiritual" sequel to demon's and that story was confusing as hell too. I like the presentation. Confusing, mysterious and basically hard to understand, just like the game itself. I thought the presentation gives the game its charm.

I'll admit multiplayer has problems, but the single player is still straight up amazing.

Just my 2 cents.

About unique: They recycle the same enemies in entirely new areas, and the whole of demon ruin and lost izalith is full of the stone-statue buddhas.


It's actually fun to hunt the dino's with my hunter character. A buffed dragonslayer greatbow hits for 440 damage and kills with 2-3 shots them. Fun! The best about this game is the very first playthrough and then the following playthroughs once you know everything you need to and can faceroll all bosses and areas with a new character.