Time for shieldless SoTFS. I foresee pain. And suffering.
Have fun! I'm not familiar with SotFS but the vanilla DS2 isn't all that tough shieldless.
Archived M2K2 Forum
One shall stand, one shall ball.
No no, it is mostly that I am bad. I was never good at timing dodges in Dark Souls but I could hide behind my shield for the most part there and could parry pretty well so it didn't matter too much. In 2 every shield is trash apparently and the parry window feels tighter (or Heide Knight attacks are bullshit fast) so I am firmly out of my comfort zone.
Probably doesn't help that I can't farm up a +5 claymore or zweihander almost immediately and shred everything before it becomes a threat though lol. I am actually kind of scrounging for weapons in this game cause I guess they got smart and hid all the good ones in later zones this time. The halberd still seems pretty good for the moment and the bastard sword is ok but I miss my zweihander.
I'm also probably being too stingy with upgrading my weapons, I'm so used to finding the one or two weapons I want early on and upgrading those that I'm holding off in this game because I don't want to commit to whatever I'm using because titanite feels way more limited when you can't beatdown Balder Knights for an hour and get all you could ever want.
This all sounds really complain-y but I'm actually liking the game a lot!
Probably doesn't help that I can't farm up a +5 claymore or zweihander almost immediately and shred everything before it becomes a threat though lol. I am actually kind of scrounging for weapons in this game cause I guess they got smart and hid all the good ones in later zones this time. The halberd still seems pretty good for the moment and the bastard sword is ok but I miss my zweihander.
I'm also probably being too stingy with upgrading my weapons, I'm so used to finding the one or two weapons I want early on and upgrading those that I'm holding off in this game because I don't want to commit to whatever I'm using because titanite feels way more limited when you can't beatdown Balder Knights for an hour and get all you could ever want.
This all sounds really complain-y but I'm actually liking the game a lot!
One shall stand, one shall ball.
Yeah like no joke I was using the morningstar a lot early on because like every enemy in the game resists everything but strike damage I guess lol. Only thing I had that could bother an Ironclad. In Scholar there's like four of them hanging around by the bastard sword, it is unpleasant! In the future I'll have to remember to upgrade mace or somthing for that area.
The mace move set seems better in this game at least so it's not the worst thing in the world, I guess.
The mace move set seems better in this game at least so it's not the worst thing in the world, I guess.
The Big Knights in Heide need some getting used to, and the Heide Knights even more so. In vanilla they were entirely optional, there were only 4 of them spread all over the game world and iirc even if you attacked them and died, after respawning they'd be non-hostile again. What Scholar did with them is a bit, well... same like all the turtles around the Bastard Sword, some bullshit the devs pulled lol
One shall stand, one shall ball.
It's a super simple fight, and it's not hard really, it's just the arena is trash and not helped by all of his attacks sending you flying. Like if they just didn't have that little lava hole in the back of the platform it's be 100% better because you wouldn't dodge a slam only to get shockwave'd into the lava for your trouble. I mean straight up the only real threat in that fight is the arena. He was taking half my health off per hit but it's trivial to heal back up, it's just you come back around the corner and whoops he clipped you! Into the lava you go!
I just have a thing about instakill pits in boss rooms, really. These games are usually pretty good about giving you a level playing field with bosses so it bothers me a lot more when you get bunced into the death hole in the middle of the arena and you know it's only there cause the boss is kinda bad and needs the help. At least you could knock the Iron Golem into the pit in his area. :v
It is a fine looking sword! I am coming around on the new 2h R2, it just bowls dudes over instead of squishing them. Gonna miss those R2 stunlock shenanigans though. I spent way too much time trying to get the right lighting and camera angle on that pic lol.
I just have a thing about instakill pits in boss rooms, really. These games are usually pretty good about giving you a level playing field with bosses so it bothers me a lot more when you get bunced into the death hole in the middle of the arena and you know it's only there cause the boss is kinda bad and needs the help. At least you could knock the Iron Golem into the pit in his area. :v
Quote from Da Dood:
That Zwei pic <3
It is a fine looking sword! I am coming around on the new 2h R2, it just bowls dudes over instead of squishing them. Gonna miss those R2 stunlock shenanigans though. I spent way too much time trying to get the right lighting and camera angle on that pic lol.
One shall stand, one shall ball.
Quote from ryu:
I never liked the Zwei in Dark Souls II. In fact, I more or less despise almost all weapon animations in that game.
I don't know, so far most of them are ripped straight from Dark Souls 1 far as I can tell. I mean I'm definitely not thrilled with what they did with ripostes taking so damned long. But it's weird what they did change at times: longswords losing their 1 hand thrust for the broadsword's r2 and the zwei getting the greatsword's 2h r2 instead of the hammer of the gods are oddities, but nothing's looked bad at this point. Well ok the thing that happens when your guard is broken or a guy is parried is pretty goofy looking but I mean other than that.
Also the guard break move instead of a kick is pretty awful, so slow.
Quote from Idkbutlike2:
I don't know how From did it, but they managed to make Dark Souls II simultaneously more twitchy yet more passive than Dark Souls.
Dark Souls 3: every boss is pretty much Moonlight Butterfly/Ceaseless Discharge.