Baud Attitude

Yes.  Yes, I did.

It took me over 50 hours to grind my way through, which is apparently WAY over the curve, but I’m fine with that.  I was very uncertain about what I was getting myself into back on April 10th when I decided to give Demon’s Souls a try, and I am still somewhat in awe at the notion that I managed to get through the entire series.

It was my first attempt at playing a glass cannon, and I definitely felt brittle the entire way.  It was somewhat made up for by getting to watch enemy health bars drop in massive chunks rather than slivers, particularly once I got into the last couple of zones and unlocked the BIG nukes.

I also did a ton more multiplayer this go ’round, so that added quite a bit of time to the total.  Most of it was on my own terms, but I did get invaded (and generally stomped into the dirt) a few times after killing a boss put me into Ember form and made me a target.  In the entire time, I only won one 1v1 invasion, and that was thanks to an invader who didn’t expect the shield-piercing lunge from the Moonlight Greatsword.  Most of the time, I just saw the “you are being invaded!” message and went to go find a bonfire to die near.

But I’ll set that aside now so I can talk a little more about the game, which was brilliant.  I suspect that I’ll always have a soft spot for Demon’s Souls (and you can count me in with the masses slavering after a PS4 or PC version), but Dark Souls III felt like From had taken all of the good ideas from the first two games, chucked out some of the annoying ones (particularly a couple of questionable design decisions from DS2), and given it all a very shiny coat of paint.

I particularly appreciated the level design and the way rough bits were almost always followed by shortcuts, From’s way of saying “You’ve proven you can get here on your own, you don’t have to keep proving it” and frequent bonfires kept the post-failure loop to a minimum, which is important.  I’ve discovered that I’m not turned off by difficult games, but I AM turned off by difficult games that put extra hurdles between the point where you’ve died and the point where you get to try the fight again.

They also put the story a little more front-and-center in this one.  Your hub slowly fills up with NPCs, and most of them have a fair bit of information to impart about exactly how terrible the world has gotten and how it got to that point in the first place.  There’s still a lot of reading item descriptions to fill in the blanks, but I felt much more part of the story this time, rather than just a random undead bouncing off the plot on occasion.  Not that knowing the story was particularly complimentary at times – it’s made very clear that you’ve been charged with the job of saving (as much as that means anything) the world not because you’re any good, but really because you’ve already tried and failed once.

I wouldn’t recommend anyone play DS3 as their first Souls game, but I’m having to resist the urge to get super annoying with friends and try to convince them that they need to drop everything and play the entire series from beginning to end.

I guess I should probably try Bloodborne at some point now. I’m giving myself advance permission to decide that it’s not my kind of game, though – it sounds a little too fast-paced for my reflexes.  🙂

So, several more Dark Souls 3 bosses down and I am chugging along towards the fourth Extra Bad Big Bad Guy because the Dark Souls series seems fixated on the Rule of Four. Presumably there will be something else after I kill the first four. 

That’s not that noteworthy. What is, however, is a lesson that I thought I’d learned years ago (from a PSP game!) but which I apparently hadn’t fully internalized. 

Basically, while playing through “Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core”, there was a point where I got trapped in a room full of fire elementals, with me carrying a fire sword and with fire spells equipped. It did not go well for me, because they were completely immune to every form of damage I had on offer, and I thought that it had taught me to always have a backup. 

So when I got to Aldritch in Dark Souls 3 and realized that he was, well, not 100% magic resistant but certainly pretty dang resistant, I was quite embarrassed to realize that I had done exactly the same thing again. He’s very weak to fire, but most fire spells are “Pyromancies” rather than “Sorceries” and require at least some investment in the Faith stat. 

My Faith was 7. 

I did give it a try. Several tries! I got pretty good at dodging the guy’s attacks, even, but I just could not hurt him enough before I made enough mistakes to wind up looking at the You Died screen again. 

So I grumbled, and backed away from the boss, and found a quiet corner full of respawning enemies, and ground up five levels of Faith so I could equip a low-level fire spell, and then I absolutely steamrollered the guy on the next attempt. 

So victory? But not really one for the record books. 

Anyway I have several optional zones open to me before I actually go for Bad Guy #4, so those are my next goals. With any luck, the next DS3 post you see will start with “Did I Actually…”

So, there are a couple of different Covenants in Dark Souls III that revolve around helping other people.  The Warriors of Sunlight (“SunBros”), as previously mentioned, hang out near boss fights to lend a hand if needed.  I started off as a SunBro and have gotten enough of the covenant rewards so that I’ll be able to get max rank in the covenant as soon as I find the dang altar to hand them all in at.

Then I met an NPC who inducted me into the Blue Sentinels.  This is a Covenant where, once you’ve joined it, you will be occasionally plucked out of whatever you’re doing and plopped down in another player’s game for the purpose of defending them from a PvP invasion.  You are a bright blue phantom while in the other player’s game, hence “BlueBro”.

I’m not actually very good at PvP, and I can’t say that I was ever a GREAT help to any of the people whose games I got summoned into, but I like to hope that I was at least a helpful distraction at times.

If I’m honest… it did wear after a while.  Once the novelty wore off it actually got to be a little jarring constantly being yanked out of my own game and dropped into whichever area I was needed in.  Still, I stuck with it for long enough – and was present for enough successful defenses – to get the top rank in that covenant as well.

Ironically, neither covenant gives me any real game benefits.  Their top-rank rewards are Miracles, which are Dark Souls’ faith-based spells, and I’m playing an all-Int sorcerer.  Still, sense of satisfaction and accomplishment and all that.

I promise I won’t go too wacky with the Dark Souls III posts.  What’s far more likely, to be honest, is that I forget entirely about updating this thing.

But for now, here’s one more.

There aren’t a ton of sympathetic and likable characters anywhere in the Souls universe, but I think that Solaire, the Knight of Sunlight you first meet in the Undead Burg early in the first Dark Souls, is most everyone’s favorite.  In a world where being undead but not insane YET is pretty much the best you can say for anyone, he is terrifically optimistic and helps you out during some of the game’s worst boss fights.

I felt just awful when I failed to save him in the end.

I joined the Heirs of the Sun covenant in Dark Souls II, but did it pretty late in the game and never managed to get enough co-op fights in to actually rank up in the covenant.  I rather felt like I’d let the jolly madman down a second time.

So, in Dark Souls III, when I realized that I could join the Warriors of Sunlight covenant super early – just after beating the game’s first boss, in fact – I got my very own gilt-edged membership card and went right back to the first boss to lay my summon sign down.

What followed was, mmm, about four hours of helping with the boss, and occasionally helping fend off PvP invasions, and far far FAR too many instances where I’d get summoned to help and watch the host rush up the stairs to tackle the Dancer boss (and die, every single time), and EVENTUALLY…

The crazy thing, of course, is that I’m not even close to the actual altar where I turn these dang things in.  But, once I get there, I am going to hand these things in with pride.  For Solaire’s sake.

Oh, and I also wound up with about 50000 souls and 40 embers, 25 of which I turned into more souls.  Net result, 10 levels, all spent on INT and now my Soul Arrow is extra punchy.  Next, I need to find an int-scaling weapon, and fast.

So, after triumphantly smashing my way through three Souls games in a row, I wasn’t going to be able to put off buying DS3 until the next Steam sale.

What I’m saying is, I bought a PC game at full price.

I have brought shame on myself and my family.

Every game thus far, I’ve tried different play styles, and my plan for DS3 was to try something completely different and go shieldless, relying on parrying and dodging to get me through.

For the record, I stuck with the plan for a good six hours and managed to claw my way to Soul Level 28 before saying “to heck with this” and strapping on a nice 100% physical damage reduction shield.

I am at least trying to stick with the parry plan. I’m not very good at it though.

It took me most of those six hours to make it to the first boss. This entry in the series makes it very hard to get your feet under you to start; stuff is very aggressive and not worth much experience, the cost of upgrades ramps up very quickly, and it’s back to unlimited respawns so there is no way to completely pacify an area.

Once I made it to that first boss, and did some jolly co-operation to help a couple of other people with him, and then did it again for myself, I started feeling like I was actually in control of the situation for the first time.

But, wow, getting to that point was seriously making me wonder whether I’d finally gotten in over my head.

That’s in the past, though. Onwards!

Yes.  Yes, I did.

Dark Souls II is one of those games that is a little divisive among fans of the series.  It’s a little less free-form and a little more linear than the original Dark Souls, and there are some systems (like weapon durability and reduced health while hollow) that feel less like being challenged and more like the game just wants to annoy you a little.  It also adds a ton of not-terribly-well-explained character stats and forces you to go back to the game’s hub zone every time you want to spend souls to level up.

On the other hand, it’s absolutely gorgeous by comparison (and I played the original DX9 release, not the Scholar of the First Sin re-release with the upgraded graphics), HAS a hub zone that you can always go back to without having half of the NPCs mysteriously killed, drastically simplified armor and weapon upgrading, and keeps the same general sense of progression from feeling like a complete loser to an unstoppable bad-ass.

…not that “unstoppable” is ever an adjective you want to break out for a Souls game.  Pretty much every single boss managed to make me stoppable AND vincible at least once.

The biggest change for me was getting into the game’s co-op multiplayer (and, just at the surface level, the PVP components as well).  I barely even used NPC phantoms in the first Dark Souls, but I found myself frequently summoning co-op partners and putting down my “hey, I’m available for jolly co-operation!” sign in this game.  It’s not perfect (DS2’s “Soul Memory” system for determining who you can group with is pretty dumb), but it worked really really well to help me learn zones and boss fights.

I did get invaded five times (in 50-odd hours) by other PCs, and lost three of the fights, but I think that’s a pretty good ratio when you consider that someone who is invading is someone who has prepared their equipment and their spec for PVP and I don’t get the same luxury.

More to the point – and this is ENTIRELY subjective – stumbling into the Souls series came at a very good time for me.  I work for a company that is going through some very uncertain times and I don’t really feel in control of my life as a result.  When I play a Souls game, I know that I CAN beat everything trying to kill me, even if it does manage to kill me a few times first, and that whether I win or lose is entirely up to my ability to adapt to the game. I’m in control, and that is a really comforting feeling.

Hey, it’s cheaper than therapy.

While the Souls series is somewhat famous for its approach to multiplayer, I managed to get through the first two games barely interacting with anyone else. Demon’s Souls is, after all, pretty ancient and doesn’t have a lot of people playing it on any given day, and I played Dark Souls during the period where the servers were almost always offline due to Namco issues.

So Dark Souls 2 was a little weird in that, once I got out of the starting area, the “summon signs” that let you pull another player into your game were scattered all over the place.

And I was feeling a little overwhelmed so I figured that I’d put my own sign down and see if I could be of any use to someone else.

You know, mostly just to say that I’d done multiplayer once and could check it off the list and move on.

3 hours of non-stop co-op play later, I forced myself to stop putting down my summon sign and get back to, you know, actually killing a couple of bosses and progressing in my OWN game.

I also got invaded a few times and even won once.

I didn’t “get” Souls multiplayer before.

I get it now.

Praise the sun.