☠ Souls Series Symposium ☠

[Xeogred]

Still cruising through with my magic character. Beat O&S on a first try but this time I went in with two summons.

It's funny what proves to be challenging with this build compared to my norm. Enemies with shields are a big pain, the lizard knights at Sen's Fortress and Silver Knight's are pretty tough, especially the spear Silver Knight's. Low END gets tricky here because you can't take many blocks and once that stamina is gone, only takes a few good hits if even to get yourself killed. It's hilarious to one shot the giant Anor Londo knight's with Soul Spear haha. Stray Demon was also the hardest boss fight for me so far, which is hilarious. I probably went in a little earlier than what's ideal. But the arena for that fight being tiny made it super hard, since I could only take about two hits. I eventually realized that getting up close to his face still worked, even though I was casting spells instead of slashing with a weapon.

Almost at 50 INT and just bumped DEX all the way up to 20 for Richard's Rapier. I think I'm going to upgrade that normally and make the Estoc enchanted. After 50 INT I'm not sure if I'll go beyond that, but I see people say 70 works for some builds? That might be way later PVP or NG+x talk though, which I'm not worried about. So I might start bumping up health and stamina after 50 INT. I'll probably leave Attunement at 19 for 5 slots.

[Gunstar Green]

Father Gascoigne was really cool. While I think I like the sword and sorcery stuff more the atmosphere in this game is incredible. I can see why Gascoigne is a skill check wall for some people. If this is your first Souls game he'd definitely be the "Capra Demon" moment because he's totally relentless.

It still took me three times though I almost had him during the first, I just got greedy on those last few hits and faced severe punishment. The second time I trapped myself early on and then the third time I delivered the beatings.

Maybe a lot of newer players don't realize he's pretty susceptible to parries. This is the first thing I tried when facing him and it made the fight almost trivial. I think this is part of what makes him an excellent early skill check boss, he's designed to make sure you've got the basic mechanics down before you can move forward.

He's also just really cool looking and anime-as-fuck vampire-werewolf-monster hunters duking it out is one of the coolest things you can do in video game.

[isiolia]

He's even more of a skill check than that because he's the first boss you actually have to beat to progress. Easily the most difficult in that category out of any of the games. While most will probably run into the Cleric Beast before they find Gascoigne, it's not strictly necessary to kill it. Same can really be said for a lot of Bloodborne, as only 7 of 17 base game bosses are actually necessary to roll the credits (though 2/3 of the endings will require more). The rest unlock things or give pieces for Chalice Dungeons.

Plus, of the mandatory bosses, the first couple are probably the hardest to do - more or less why I feel like Bloodborne is very front-loaded, and has the potential to be either among the easiest playthroughs in the series, or the most difficult, depending on your ambitions.

[Xeogred]

It's very odd how skippable half the bosses are. On the flip side once you know the layout of the game, it's extremely easy to breeze through it. On NG+ or NG++ to get one of the additional endings I beat the entire run in only a few hours easily.

Like the other games, once you reach the end game... you might want to do a little research to see if you've missed any area or bosses. Bloodborne definitely has some Ash Lake level stuff in there for sure.

Gunstar if you're already missing the fantasy of DS, I wonder if that will change haha. There is nothing about Bloodborne I would want changed, but ultimately yeah I prefer the aethetics and variety of the Souls games personally by a fair bit. Bloodborne is gross Victorian gothica from start to finish. I also think it's funny you went from DS2 to Bloodborne. The game with the most content, to one that arguably has the least. Not a knock on Bloodborne though, the difference in combat and more advanced weapons is cool enough. But Bloodtinge seems kind of pointless, so in the long run there's not a lot of room for different kinds of builds or anything.

So, in DS1 I went for the Four Kings before placing the Lordvessel to discover the Darkwraith covenant and Kaathe. Since I went for the Dark Lord ending with my last character, it's really cool how this substory gives a lot of context for that scenario.

Also discovered the Gravelord Servant covenant which is kind of funny... just seeing Nito laying there in a coffin.

[Gunstar Green]

I'm not missing the DS setting necessarily, in fact I hope their future games experiment even more with other settings. I'm just realizing how much I like that setting which is strange because I'm usually not one for medieval-ish settings like that. Still it was starting to feel familiar and Bloodborne has brought back the sense of dread for me.

I have kind of noticed how straight forward BB is in regards to builds. It seems like you can focus on some different stats but I kind of doubt that they're ultimately going to play much differently from each other from what I've seen so far. It's not a bad thing really, it's a different game and I wasn't expecting it to be a carbon copy of the Souls classes and I don't mind a more focused approach because it feels so polished.

[Exhuminator]

https://atlus.com/fond-farewell-demons-souls-servers/

On 2/28/18, Japan and USA Demon's Souls servers are going down permanently. If you've never played Demon's Souls, and you'd like to do so using its online capabilities, you'd best hurry.

[Gunstar Green]

That's one thing that's really sad about the Souls series, and Demon's is about to become the first. The online components are so ingenious and add something to the overall experience but they won't last forever. I suppose it's fine for the people who prefer to play these games offline to begin with but it's a little unfortunate.

On the other hand maybe this is a sign that a modern remaster of DeS is coming... not holding my breath but a man can dream, can't he?

[Exhuminator]

On the other hand maybe this is a sign that a modern remaster of DeS is coming... not holding my breath but a man can dream, can't he?

I'm usually a fan of exclusives, but I'd like to see Demon's Souls ported verbatim to PC. More folks need to have access to this brilliant game.

[Gunstar Green]

PC is probably too much to hope for given Sony ultimately holds the keys to the IP but even a PS4 re-release would be great.

At least emulation is almost there and already is there for DeS if you have a beast of a machine. They may even get some online servers working on a long enough timeline.

[Xeogred]

I will treasure my memories of getting royally fucked over my troll messages, getting ganked by the most OP player invaders imaginable right before boss gates (makes Dark Souls invaders look wimpy), and the epic one on one battles with the player summoned Old Monk boss battle.

Souls lost in the Nexus forever.