Author Topic: Dark Souls III  (Read 4091 times)

Offline MysterD

  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 18,049
  • OWNet 4 Eternity & Beyond
« Last Edit: Tuesday, April 05, 2016, 05:47:11 PM by MysterD »

Offline MysterD

  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 18,049
  • OWNet 4 Eternity & Beyond
Re: Dark Souls 3 to be rumored to be announced at E3 2015.
« Reply #1 on: Monday, September 14, 2015, 08:22:14 PM »

Offline MysterD

  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 18,049
  • OWNet 4 Eternity & Beyond
Re: Dark Souls 3
« Reply #2 on: Tuesday, April 05, 2016, 05:46:54 PM »
Dark Souls III:

METACRITIC:
Playstation 4.
PC.
XB1.


Offline MysterD

  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 18,049
  • OWNet 4 Eternity & Beyond

Offline Quemaqua

  • 古い塩
  • Administrator
  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 16,498
  • パンダは触るな。
    • Bookruptcy
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #4 on: Saturday, April 09, 2016, 01:13:34 PM »
Also, apparently the bad performance areas have been cleaned up via patch and things seem to be looking good: http://wccftech.com/dark-souls-3-pc-103-patch-vastly-improves-performance-demanding-areas/

I can't wait. Preloaded the game last night. Going to be doing more or less nothing but playing this until I can get a review done for PopOptiq, and will also be working on a couple other pieces related to the franchise.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline MysterD

  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 18,049
  • OWNet 4 Eternity & Beyond
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #5 on: Saturday, April 09, 2016, 01:44:16 PM »
Also, apparently the bad performance areas have been cleaned up via patch and things seem to be looking good: http://wccftech.com/dark-souls-3-pc-103-patch-vastly-improves-performance-demanding-areas/

I can't wait. Preloaded the game last night.
I still need to work on + finish the original Dark Souls; and start-up DkS 2. :-x

Quote
Going to be doing more or less nothing but playing this until I can get a review done for PopOptiq, and will also be working on a couple other pieces related to the franchise.

@Que
Wait. Did I miss something? Are you freelancing or doing reviews for an official site?

Offline Quemaqua

  • 古い塩
  • Administrator
  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 16,498
  • パンダは触るな。
    • Bookruptcy
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #6 on: Saturday, April 09, 2016, 02:56:26 PM »
Yeah, I'm freelancing for PopOptiq. I've linked I think 4 articles in various threads there?

I stuck them all in this post: https://bookruptcy.com/2016/04/04/writing-about-games/

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline MysterD

  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 18,049
  • OWNet 4 Eternity & Beyond
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #7 on: Sunday, April 10, 2016, 04:35:32 AM »
@Que
I must be going blind w/ the posts you've linked about your freelancing here!
That's pretty damn cool that you're doing freelancing for reviews + whatnot. :) Congrats!


Offline Quemaqua

  • 古い塩
  • Administrator
  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 16,498
  • パンダは触るな。
    • Bookruptcy
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #8 on: Sunday, April 10, 2016, 03:30:16 PM »
Thank you, mate. :) I'm actually about to start doing some work for Goomba Stomp and possibly Quad Nine in the near future, too.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline MysterD

  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 18,049
  • OWNet 4 Eternity & Beyond
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #9 on: Sunday, April 10, 2016, 08:35:02 PM »
@Que
Awesome! Keep up the good work. :)

Offline Quemaqua

  • 古い塩
  • Administrator
  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 16,498
  • パンダは触るな。
    • Bookruptcy
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #10 on: Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 02:59:41 AM »
Have put a good 6 hours into this, I'd say, plenty of it just me throwing myself at dumb shit because I'm stubborn. Game is really just crazy good, but it's also very weird, feels different from all the others in terms of atmosphere. It's got some of the horror aspects of Bloodborne, and combined with the story stuff it just makes the world feel so untenable. It's clearly on its way out. Action is great, enemies are really tough, but very satisfying to fight. Beautiful graphics that render everything well. PC has been pretty good so far. I've had some hitching that I can't quite identify, which is a shame because it generally stays at 60 fps, but sometimes just drags down for a bit here and there. Seems like maybe dropping shadows and motion blur a bit helped some.

Anyway, having a great time. Very pleased so far. Sad to see nobody else on my Steam friends list playing it.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline MysterD

  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 18,049
  • OWNet 4 Eternity & Beyond
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #11 on: Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 03:47:19 AM »
@Que

Hell, I still need to finish the original DkS: PTD. :-X
And then actually start up DkS2. :-x

I'm WAY behind here w/ this series.

Offline TheOtherBelmont

  • Post-aholic
  • *****
  • Posts: 2,340
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #12 on: Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 03:47:51 AM »
I'm playing this on PS4 and about 5-6 hours into it and enjoying it so far.  I'm looking forward to having the next two days off from work to dig into it further.

Offline Quemaqua

  • 古い塩
  • Administrator
  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 16,498
  • パンダは触るな。
    • Bookruptcy
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #13 on: Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 09:45:42 AM »
How's the PS4 version holding up? I heard the patch optimized some of the slowdowns a bit, but didn't totally fix things, but I haven't seen any footage or anything.

Also, what was it you wanted to ask me on Steam? Sorry I missed your message. Those damned Steam messages don't pop up and call attention to themselves, so I always miss them.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline TheOtherBelmont

  • Post-aholic
  • *****
  • Posts: 2,340
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #14 on: Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 12:25:30 PM »
How's the PS4 version holding up? I heard the patch optimized some of the slowdowns a bit, but didn't totally fix things, but I haven't seen any footage or anything.

Also, what was it you wanted to ask me on Steam? Sorry I missed your message. Those damned Steam messages don't pop up and call attention to themselves, so I always miss them.

PS4 version is holding up great. I haven't had any of the slowdown people are talking about yet.  I think that was mainly affecting people that got the game pre-patch.  I was trying to ask you about the estus allotments on Steam.  I was being paranoid that the estus allotments were permanent but they are not, so no worries about missing my message.

Offline gpw11

  • Gold Member
  • *
  • Posts: 7,180
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #15 on: Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 03:18:41 PM »
I've tried to play the first game again and again.  I just can't get back into it.  Any point in checking out this or are they all kind of just the same thing?

Offline Quemaqua

  • 古い塩
  • Administrator
  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 16,498
  • パンダは触るな。
    • Bookruptcy
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #16 on: Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 11:03:39 PM »
Depends on what you're interested in. None of the games are the same thing even remotely as far as the details go, but yeah, the gameplay is pretty much explore, find stuff, kill dudes, fight bosses, upgrade gear, work toward a build. But the art, the world-building, the NPCs, the pathos ... all that stuff ebbs and flows in interesting ways through the series. I do love the gameplay of these, but I'm really there for the stories. The lore, the history, the character stories, trying to bridge all the gaps in knowledge to get a better sense of the mysteries.

Anyway, I'm loving the fuck out of it. It's got a few rough edges, but for the most part has been amazing.

EDIT - My (*shudder* ... editors want these, don't blame me) top ten list on what makes Dark Souls unique as a series is now up on PopOptiq. Hopefully it works for everybody. The site has been fucked for me formatting-wise since yesterday, and this took way longer to go up than it should have. It looks fine in Edge (also *shudder*), but is totally borked in Opera. Anyway, couple thousand words on all the best stuff about Dark Souls.

http://www.popoptiq.com/?p=337561

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline TheOtherBelmont

  • Post-aholic
  • *****
  • Posts: 2,340
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #17 on: Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 11:11:39 PM »
I read through the list. I agree with all of the points you make in it.  As for the formatting, its all fucked up on my end here in Chrome if you're curious. The top images with the site logo are all distorted and all of the social media icons on the left block a partial portion of the text as you scroll down the list.

Offline Quemaqua

  • 古い塩
  • Administrator
  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 16,498
  • パンダは触るな。
    • Bookruptcy
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #18 on: Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 11:13:57 PM »
Yeah, I don't know what the fuck is going on. Hopefully it gets fixed soon. My editor said it was jacked for him too and was supposed to talk to the site director.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline PyroMenace

  • Senior Member
  • *
  • Posts: 3,930
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #19 on: Wednesday, April 13, 2016, 12:19:15 AM »
I've tried to play the first game again and again.  I just can't get back into it.  Any point in checking out this or are they all kind of just the same thing?

Yea they are all pretty much the same, its sort of what is turning me off about them. I played through the first Dark Souls and really enjoyed it, but after finishing it I really felt done with pretty much anymore of that. Not to say its a bad thing, since they are all well made games and its really working for them, and hell I may even come back to one of them again if the itch ever comes back again but yea. I remember watching some areas in Dark Souls 2 where it had yet another blight town area, or maybe it was Bloodborne, I don't remember.

Offline MysterD

  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 18,049
  • OWNet 4 Eternity & Beyond

Offline Quemaqua

  • 古い塩
  • Administrator
  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 16,498
  • パンダは触るな。
    • Bookruptcy
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #21 on: Saturday, April 16, 2016, 12:56:56 PM »
Game is fucking amazing for anybody that's curious. I have no clue how so many reviewers got through it in like 40 hours, other than to just blaze through on a direct path toward the end and missing most of what makes the game special. I'm at 46 hours and probably just hit the halfway mark a couple hours prior. A lot of other people also bitched about linearity and level design not being interconnected, which is staggeringly false, again I suspect because most of them just didn't actually find a lot of the stuff that's in here. I'm not sure if the world is 100% interconnected or if there are a few places one needs to warp around (it's hard to visualize such a huge scope going through it in my head), but it's mostly the case if not completely. And definitely not completely linear. There is some linearity to it, of course, but I've come across one area that let me go, more or less, to 3 different places, then another that branched off into 2 main paths. I completed some content in a completely different order from other people I've talked to. Bit more linear than 1, I guess, but not as restrictive as many have made it out to be (of the reviews I've read, Gamespot's review in particular is disappointingly misinformed on this and several other topics).

People have been saying both that this game is the easiest DS game and the hardest (way to go, Internet), I'd say it's probably the hardest, even though I'm having less trouble with it than some of the prior games. If you're a vet and you know what you're doing, the difficulty curve is maybe less steep in the early goings than some of the past games (maybe?), but it seems to have ramped up the punishment for making mistakes a bit.

Some have complained about bosses being too easy or not creative enough, but certainly not from what I've seen so far. Obviously the series has had like, what ... uh ... okay, by my count, 97 bosses from Demon's Souls on. It's hard at this point, I'm sure, to come up with stuff that's 100% new and amazing. But so far the fights have been cool enough, generally satisfying, fairly unique, and one of them ranks in my top 5 hardest in all these games so far. I had to spend a good couple hours on it, and I watched a streamer friend of mine go at it for like 3 hours. He was practically in tears after he finally made it through. Game gets substantially harder at about the halfway point, that fight seemingly the point of demarcation.

Loving the hell out of this in general, though. It's definitely "just more Dark Souls" in some ways, but none of those pieces feel tacked on, or any lesser for this being the 5th game in this style. Lore is great, characters are interesting, weapons are interesting and have some cool new nuances, spell system seems more robust than ever, there are some faster enemies that demand faster reflexes, PvP seems really solid (though it seems on the high end that the Fume Greatsword needs a nerf), covenant stuff is present and accounted for, they give you more titanite shards early in the game so you can progress some of your earlier weapons a little further along to try out a greater variety of them before ultimately deciding on whatever you want to go all the way with. Game is also just bloody gorgeous. Need a fairly beefy PC to run it well, and I'm still getting some periodic stuttering that I can't identify the source of, but mostly the performance has been good and the art design is brilliant.

Anyway. My two cents thus far.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline MysterD

  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 18,049
  • OWNet 4 Eternity & Beyond
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #22 on: Saturday, April 16, 2016, 05:24:29 PM »
@Que

Awesome mini-impressions/review, bro.
I really need to get back to Dark Souls 1 + get going w/ Dark Souls 2. With DkS3 here, I'm falling too far behind in this series.

About DkS series: you mention how gamers powered-through in one playthrough DkS3, but do you think many of these gamers will do multiple characters for multiple playthroughs w/ different style of runs (try to find everything run, fast run, more direct runs, etc)?

Offline Quemaqua

  • 古い塩
  • Administrator
  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 16,498
  • パンダは触るな。
    • Bookruptcy
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #23 on: Saturday, April 16, 2016, 07:20:32 PM »
Varies by person. Some are very clearly one-run players, others will play through like NG+ 8 or whatever. Some people never even bother finishing a run either because they're just there for PvP, or they want their level to stay at a certain point for PvP. But there is more to do, and it's incredibly difficult or sometimes impossible to see all the character stories in these games in a single run. There will be items that don't show up until NG+. Some of those details are part of what makes the games mechanically interesting.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline MysterD

  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 18,049
  • OWNet 4 Eternity & Beyond
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #24 on: Sunday, April 17, 2016, 04:35:42 AM »
@Que
In most games, I'm actually a 1 PT (PlayThrough) kind of guy. I normally don't do multiple PT's, even more so especially on long-winded games.
But, I usually do try to find as much as I can on the first run.

I'm so terrible of DkS1 - I die so damn much, hehe. Got 145 hours on PT1 - still ain't done.
I'm curious how much I'm be yelling, screaming, and controlling-chucking w/ DkS2+3... ;)

Offline ender

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 424
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #25 on: Friday, April 22, 2016, 02:31:25 PM »
I'm playing it. I think it's actually more well balanced than either Bloodborne or Dark Souls 2. I'm having a tough time in the beginning, bute making some pretty successful progressions every few hours. The gameplay mechanics feel very robust and well polished... there's also a much better sense of discovery than I felt there was in DS2. Nicely melds Bloodborne enhancements with what I loved about Demon's Souls and Dark Souls.

Offline Quemaqua

  • 古い塩
  • Administrator
  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 16,498
  • パンダは触るな。
    • Bookruptcy
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #26 on: Thursday, May 05, 2016, 10:20:57 PM »
I'm a ways into NG+ and yeah, I would generally agree. I've got about 80 legit hours into it at this point. Hopefully will have my full review finished tomorrow.

EDIT - My review is up on PopOptiq.com now!

EDIT x2 - Some Dark Souls III lore stuff I wrote about. Careful, though, loaded with spoilers.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline Quemaqua

  • 古い塩
  • Administrator
  • Forum god
  • *
  • Posts: 16,498
  • パンダは触るな。
    • Bookruptcy
Re: Dark Souls III
« Reply #27 on: Friday, September 23, 2016, 07:14:50 PM »
Reminded how great this game is. Seems like hardly anyone here played it, which is a real shame.

Started to sort of poke at it here and there in Japanese after watching these 3 Japanese let's players on YouTube. They go through it and take turns on each death switching to their own characters, and it's really pretty funny, and kind of neat to see 3 different melee styles and how they differ. One dude uses big swords and mostly just kicks ass the whole game up until the Dancer of the Boreal Valley. Then he discovers the real Dark Souls.


天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野