Dark Souls 2 [360, PS3, PC] Review

[S3M]

I'm with Golgo on this, very lazy just to reskin a boss, will certainly wait for a sale before I pick up the DLC now.

[briareos_kerensky]

Thread bump. I've given the PS4 version of Scholar of the First Sin a very quick run, up to the second bonfire in the Forest of the Fallen Giants (the one in the building with the merchant).

First impressions? Looks sharp! Moves smooth! Almost unnatural I might say: between the three Souls on the PS3 and Bloodborne on the PS4, moving the camera feels almost too fast. Combat, on the other hand feels great. And right from the start there's plenty of combat, From turned the enemy count up to eleven, with more Hollow Infantry and Hollow Soldiers patrolling the forest, often placed for ambushes in previous safe areas or away as snipers. I won't say the placement is particularly tricky or dangerous, at least in this starting area: fully clothed Hollow Infantry posing as corpses doesn't fool many. Yes, there's a Hyppo-unicorn patrolling the starting river but its detection range is so small there might as well not be there.
The tutorial area now has an entrance blocked by a petrified guy, wonder if there are more Branches available.

However, there is a "little" problem: weapon durability. Weapons take more durability damage due to the higher framerate, as it was on the PC. Now, more enemies, more swings: my starting sword broke down between the first and second bonfires in the Forest, leaving me with a knife (plus bare fists and a bunch of weapons I didn't had the stats for). When your weapon is "at risk" to break down, one or two swings will destroy the weapon, forcing you to use a blacksmith (don't remember if repair powder can actually restore a fully destroyed weapon). Oh, you just begun the game and he's not available, or you can't prevent your best weapon to be useless? Well, sucks to be you.
Come on guys, you could have fixed this, it's pretty big when you can't hop between bonfires without having your weapon destroyed...and it's the starting area! This makes the game more annoying than more difficult. I've seen videos where

->Open Spoiler<-

Flexy Sentinels

and

->Open Spoiler<-

Pursuers

pop up in previously safe areas, and this is the same as with the red phantoms in NG+ in the original game: recycling enemies does not the game more interesting; surely, it makes it harder, but in a rather cheap way.

[BaronSqwelch]

I'm playing the new version too...agree with the durability problem, added with the aggressive enemies it is making progress slow!

Also...coming to it straight from Bloodborne, trying to go back to souls tactics is hard. Getting killed a fair bit

[fuse]

Is there any English in the NTSC-J version, outta question? Sorry, know I asked this elsewhere too, but I've not seen anyone else talking about it.

I hear the game is meant to be much harder than 'vanilla' DS2, which is... a bit odd, and a little intimidating. I saw this picture, for instance, and cringed (don't look if you don't wanna see one of the game's later areas) -

->Open Spoiler<-

[briareos_kerensky]

Is there any English in the NTSC-J version, outta question? Sorry, know I asked this elsewhere too, but I've not seen anyone else talking about it.

Voices. Text is in Japanese, X and circle are swapped for actions as well. The more I know about the new enemies, the more I think whoever thought this didn't have any idea o how to make a good Souls game.

[Supergoal]

I'm playing the new version too...agree with the durability problem, added with the aggressive enemies it is making progress slow!

Also...coming to it straight from Bloodborne, trying to go back to souls tactics is hard. Getting killed a fair bit

Oddly I'm finding it the opposite way. Bloodborne has been giving me a beat down. Already on dark souls ps4 level 90 and 10 hours in. Died about twice so far.

[S3M]

Thread bump. I've given the PS4 version of Scholar of the First Sin a very quick run, up to the second bonfire in the Forest of the Fallen Giants (the one in the building with the merchant).

briareos, just to add for those thinking of buying the PS3 or 360 of Scholar of the First Sin, don't. The DLC is not on disc and it's just the basic version of the game with DLC codes added to the box, you still need to download the 1.10 patch as well. It's also missing the new characters seen in the PS4 version.

That said I do think the recent patch has improved DS2 somewhat on PS3 and From Software has addressed some of the lighting issues that where present in the orginal release. Can't help but feel that the current gen version is still the intended version of the game with the new content being a bit of a mess, I still think the game is pretty poor overall.

Likely I'll pick up a copy when I get a PS4 but till then BloodBorne is the far more interesting prospect. Releasing so close to Bloodborne was also a big big mistakes.

[H-Man]

I think i'm going to jump on this. Bloodborne's done and dusted other than the chalice dungeons, which don't interest me that much, and I never played the DS2 dlc. Is there much content in the dlc btw?

[Supergoal]

I think i'm going to jump on this. Bloodborne's done and dusted other than the chalice dungeons, which don't interest me that much, and I never played the DS2 dlc. Is there much content in the dlc btw?

Have you not played the DLC yet?

The DLC is quality and well worth exploring. Some very good bosses too.

[Goemon]

Question about this.
I decided to give DS another chance off the back of Bloodborne.

I’ve started playing this and I’ve noticed that my heath is slowly getting less and less each I die.
Is there a way to get this back up?

I’ve been doing a lot of recon running around and I’ve pretty much lost half my health bar!

[endo]

It'll only go down so far, but yes, each time you die your health bar gets shorter. You'll have to reverse hollowing to get it back to full capacity. Either use a human effigy or do some co-op. Depending where you are, The Rotten is an easy boss for co-op.

[Goemon]

Wow, that's pretty harsh!
Here you go, here's a game where you'll die A LOT...and each time you do we're gonna make harder for you by shortening your life bar.

Coop is out as I'm behind a strict (work) firewall so my only option is to burn effigies.
Played a couple of hours and I think I've only picked up one effigy in that whole time. are they hard to come by?

[dataDave]

Effigies are finite, but you do find more later - and they turn out to be a rare drop off of some farmable mobs.

Losing a little health each time you die isn't really that bad when everything is going to 2-shot you anyway.

[BaronSqwelch]

I found a ring early on that limits the health loss...

Now if only I could find a durability ring!!

[J0e Musashi]

My Hong Kong version (with the better controls) finally arrived last night. I MUCH prefer this to Bloodborne (apart from the touchpad and Option controls that you can't swap). It seems even easier too, being that it's a lot slower.

I spent about three hours creating my chara, but once I got in I really like it. I've got some half decent gear already and I'm now at what I think is the second boss.

How long is the game compared with Bloodborne?