PixlBit

That dude gave it a fucking FIVE.  That's ridiculous..he seems to have missed the point of every single gameplay system that has a place in Dark Souls 2.  

Everyone's opinion is their own and I totally understand not appreciating the game, but from reading his review you can tell that he really played the game wrong. He was too afraid to jump into boss encounters, he was grinding areas until enemies despawned, he overvalued his souls, he neglected to read item descriptions to figure out how they work, he didn't experiment with gear loadouts to find a middle ground, so on and so forth.

I personally believe that the answers to all of those basic questions are contained within the game, whereas the deeper, more strategic components need to be crowdsourced via wiki to be discovered. He should've done himself a favor and just read up on the game a bit to understand how to play it. I mean, who grinds for 20 hours without trying to figure out if they're just doing something wrong? That's just insane. Don't you stop and analyze your actions and the material at your disposal to find a better way?

I feel like making the Souls games any more accessible could actually taint its very core, so it's hard to say that it should be changed to be one way or another, because who knows what that would do to the experience. I think if he would've sought help from some other resources to get over the hump, he'd think he was playing a completely different game.

You might want to save up all the boss souls you come across. You never know which boss weapons you might like, which ones might be useful for your particular build, until later on. There's two blacksmiths that you can use to trade in those boss souls to make boss weapons, and you have to jump through some hoops in order to use either of them. Also, they each have unique boss weapons and take certain souls so getting access to only one of the two blacksmiths only opens you up to the limited ones he or she offers. Straid of Ophalis is the first guy who can make boss weapons, he's in the Lost Bastille in a high room full of mummies and a bonfire you can't reach. Straid is petrified and you have to use a Fragrant Brach of Yore to de-petrify him, and you don't come across a fragrant branch till Earthen Peak or so.

The second boss weapon maker is much later in the game, she's a raven-lady and she's in a jail cell underground in the Shaded Ruins area. You have to find a key to open her cell, and the key called the Fang Key is on a lion warrior that's petrified near the bonfire across a fallen tree. Once you get the key, find her cell underground by falling into a hole near where the giant basilisk frog is, open the cell you find down there, talk to the raven-lady and she will move to a different area even deeper into the game. You'll find her again, deep in Brightstone Cove Tseldora and she'll make boss weapons if you have the souls, and the first one is free. It sounds like a big hassle but getting access to both of those blacksmiths I mentioned can be super useful. There's a lot of bosses in the game, and likewise a lot of boss weapons.

During my first playthrough of the game I just consumed a bunch of the boss souls to get the raw souls because I wanted to level up, and by the time I finished the game I realized there's not really any reason to do that, there's plenty of souls to come across just playing the game normally. You'll level up plenty of times without needing to consume boss souls or farm areas for their souls. And I figured out by the end that I missed out on some pretty neat boss weapons that might've been fun to use.

I'm getting frustrated, had to put the game down for a while; 12 consecutive attempts on The Pursuer has my nerves shot.  I asked Yarger over the PSN for his strategy, which is basically just bait and dodge, rinse and repeat.  Sounds good, and I'm going to give it a shot after I get some rest.  Anyone else with advice?  it'd be most welcome

The best advice is actually to get rest, which you said you're planning on doing. Most of the time if you're banging your head against a boss, you can come back to it a few hours later or a day later and do much better. When you start getting frustrated it makes it more likely that you'll start making dumb mistakes, use bad timing, and screw up, over and over without correcting your mistakes properly.

Another thing that can help a lot with the pursuer are the stationary ballistas near him. If you can shoot him with one of those arrows it can take anywhere from 50% to 80% of all his health away, making the fight a lot faster. It can be hard to do, when you enter the arena stay near the entrance and let him come towards you to attack. Once he does attack, hopefully you can dodge it (dodge to his left side, you're right side) and hopefully he uses a type of attack with a long animation so that you can sprint over to one of the ballistas, cock it, then shoot. And even if all that goes right you need to hope he's lined up with it, if it works out it'll take most of his health away. It worked for me once, but I had to try it about 8 times before the ballista thing worked out for me.

I found that parrying the Pursuer when he rushes was the easiest way to get off the ballista shot. Not sure how comfortable you are with parrying, but if you can position yourself once you enter the arena in the line of sight of the ballista and pull off the parry, it gives you a ton of time to haul ass to the ballista and nail hiim. Then you're basically just one or two attacks away from victory and he's easy work.

Ahh yes the Persuer...the thing is that I think that the developers really intended to teach you to parry his attack which will stun him for a few seconds. A shortcut is to parry him right before he strikes you, stun him, then run to the ballista behind it, and get one hit on him. Granted, pulling this off can either be very quick and easy, or really frustrating and difficult. 

I actually just tanked him. The thing is that you dont want to get too close in on him and you dont want to get to far from him that he does that dash attack from across the room.  When he does his final swing you want to go in a do 1 hit then quickly get back. You really dont want to block his attack with your shield directly because it will drain your stamina bar and you wont be able to roll away. I hope this makes sense. We had it out like a boxing match. LOL! I just waltzed around him like a fencing match and got 1 or 2 hits at a time, but kept my distance and tried not to roll or absorb his hit directly. And breath man, breate!

Status Report!

I'm steadily making progress with this guy, The Pursuer.  I'd contemplated tucking tail and heading for Heide's Tower, but then I gave it a few tries and actually had him wittled down to about 80 percent health via Yarger's stick-and-go advice.  I've yet to execute any kind of parrying in the game...i'm going to mess around with it and get it down after I can kill this brute.  

This boss is my new Capra Demon.

On second thought:  Should I head to Heide's Tower and snap up the Ring Of Binding?  Did you guys get it before or after you killed The Pursuer?  

That's really good. Is he doing some wierd finishing move that you can't get the last 10% of his health? This is how I beat him. Baby punches. LOL!

You shouldnt get so frustrated with the game to want to quit. Just take a break and come back to it later. Use whatever items, equip, etc. to give you the edge because the game certainly wont. You can even level a bit in Hades Tower if you want to farm souls early. One issue I have with Persuer is that there is this wierd animation glitch where he has this wierd reach advantage on you with his impaling move. Im sure it isnt just me, but it feels cheap. Like he can impale you even though you are obviously out of range. I'll give you a hint. There is some very useful items as reward for finishing Persuer, however there is an optional path to your next destination if you cant kill him. I didn't know about Persuer at first and didn't use the Soldier key because I didn't know what it was for, so I went to a completely other location after that Giant boss. But you seem to be doing good on Persuer. Just keep at it. You should be familar with his move set.  

Drangleic Is Where the Gods Fled Theory

I was browsing some of VaatiVidyas DS2 lore videos on youtube and he was giving his take on Hades Tower, which made me reconsider me original position of it being future Lordran. Specifically, he comments over a play through of Hades  Tower and its origins. He points out that the devs said that Drangleic is a new place and is NOT Lordran. However, this leaves a possibility that Drangleic exists in the same world as Lordran but on a different continent maybe which would be accessible by sea from Lordran. So in this scenario, Gwyns daughter Gwenyvere and her husband Flann plus other gods could have fled Lordran and settled/established Hades Tower, which would explain the architecture and the tower being a tribute to Flann, god of flame. This also explains why the Blue Cathedral is protected by a familiar enemy, much the same way as he protected the throne room in Anor Londo and the princess. There is not much evidence about these gods existence because Hades Tower is already super ancient and the people/gods have long been gone. The game still takes place far into the future after Dark Souls 1 but also on a different contintent. And to add to this, someone on this board mentioned something about the curse being "far-reaching" or reaching "other worlds". When I talked about the opening cinema, which is kind of vague, the cursed dude in the video is searching for a cure and may have gained knowledge about how to cross over to Drangleic or something--but he might be from some other continent as well? The giants invading Drangleic are not from Anar Londo, but some other place. Hmmm...

A bit about bias...

I was wondering what the overall consensus is about the Souls games, now that there are 3 of them and what we all want to see in the future. I say this because I didnt particularly like the emphasis on mulitiplayer in DS2 and there are a couple of areas where it feels like a multiplayer shooter where you need to take cover (from archers and mages). I saw a mention of possible gunplay in a possible Demons Souls sequel which Im skeptical about now.

When it comes to lore and commentary I tend to watch videos from EpicNameBro and VaatiVidya over on youtube. I noticed that EpicNameBro is more critical and points out dislikes about the boss fights and gameplay, whereas VaatiVidya sounds more like a happy salesman. And VaatiVidya was working with Namco and Gamestop to produce videos for Dark Souls 2, which he admitted on one of his videos, so I tend to be a bit skeptical about him from here on. Although he is also getting financed by some crowd funding  programs, but I havent heard any complaints from him about the new game. Maybe he just reall really likes it.  EpicNameBro on the other hand, I think mentioned he helped write the game guide and played early builds of the game, but he is a bit more critical about the game anyway. Just some thoughts...

EpicNameBro
VaatiVidya  

EpicNameBro really loves the game though, he says that plenty of times in his playthrough videos of the game he's been doing, but there's some things about it that he's critical of, just like most of us. It's okay that Dark Souls 2 isn't the best game of all time, not every thing has to be either a perfect 10 or a zero. Dark Souls 2 fits in snugly around a 7 or so on that kind of scale. It's really good but there's a number of things to complain about. It's okay to criticize a thing too, and it doesn't have to mean you hate it. Some fans don't understand that, there were people complaining that ENB wasn't hating the game enough. That's stupid.

It's understandable but silly that people are getting so worked up about the shotgun they saw in the leaked screenshots, there's already ranged combat in the Souls games, there's already gun play. You shoot from the hip with crossbows and you use an over the shoulder scheme to aim bows. Theres very little difference if the projectiles happen to be arrows, pellets, silver stakes, or bullets, the only differences being velocity and trajectory. If you modded some Van Helsing style guns into Dark Souls 1 or 2 right now I bet it wouldn't change the gameplay, you could keep the same mechanics and functions and the game would play the same. The only difference would be the model of what you're holding and the sound effect, but functionally everything else would be Souls ranged combat. People are jumping to conclusions that guns would somehow make it Gears of War. You have to do a lot more in order to design your game to feel like Gears of War.

Miyazaki can do whatever he wants with this game and it'll probably be pretty good, he hasn't failed us in the Souls games yet. Putting guns into a Souls game would be like the design equivalent of a placebo or a sugar pill, people would freak out and imagine it changing everything, and in reality nothing has changed and things are far less dramatic than they're making it out to be in their minds. I bet you if there are some guns available to use in the next Souls game, then once people get their hands on the game to play demos of it they'll probably be surprised at how that doesn't necessarily change the combat, in any way.

Alright, having finished, I'm left with more questions than answers.  however, seeing as the DLC is coming in just over a month, I'll be waiting until then to hit another playthrough.

Going to experience Demon's Souls and the first Dark Souls til then.  I began Demon's Souls today and feel very comfortable with the controls.  Updates later, possibly..the Demon's Souls world feels so lonely and cold it sorta just sucks you right in

Hi! I Finally started playing DSII last night. I got to the village with my warrior. I also entered the giant's forest for a few minutes before calling it a night. So far I'm liking it! It's structured more like Demon's Souls than Dark Souls 1, which I like better, anyway. The only thing that's confusing me is all these items. What do they all do? Which ones will help out a newbie like me? Sorry for the rushed post - I have to read the whole topic a little bit later when I have time. My only deaths so far are from wandering off cliffs. lol Well, that and a pack of wild dogs in the tall grass at the beginning.

What items are you confused about bud?