Caltrops - Demon's Souls





	[quote name="Rafiki"]Well, whereas Dark Souls felt like an obvious improvement over Demon's Souls in nearly every way, the changes in DS2 don't seem as pronounced. I'm not terribly far into it, I've defeated maybe 5 bosses out of apparently 30 or so. The first 3 or 4 so (well, depending on how you go through levels, so Lost Giant, Ornstein, The Dragonrider, The Flexile Sentry) are pretty lame, but I forgive it because they're basically trainer bosses so if you already are comfortable with combat then you'll breeze through them. Dual wielding is actually viable now, and if you have 1.5x stats for your equipped weapons and have 2 weapons of same type (sword, axe, but whether they're slash/thrust/etc doesn't matter) you can use a different combat stance that has different move sets. You can switch in an out of the stance, so you basically get an expanded move set. They've reorganized the stats a bit to try to make them all useful. Stamina and equipment load are now divided between 2 different stats, there's a stat called adaptability which replaces resistance but also increases the speed at which you drink/use items/cast spells. There's like 4 or 5 things that increase health, but vitality still gives the biggest boost. Overall I think it mostly works. There's a reason to put points into pretty much anything now, depending on the build you want. You can also respec now, but you have to find an item first. With movement and dodging in DS1, if you were less than 25% equipment load you were super agile, less than 50% you could fast dodge, and anything over that you'd fat roll and move slower. In DS2, you can fast dodge up to 70% equipment load but the distance you dive is shortened I think every 10%. So this basically affects your dodge window. One change I do like that makes it worse for the player is if you dodge backwards when you stand up you have your back to your target before turning around. I think that's fair and appropriate. They also changed parrying and I don't like it because it's different from the first two. The timing window is shorter, which is fine, but in the first 2 games you'd parry with R2 and counter with L1. Now it's parry with R2 and counter with R1. After spending 2 games doing it one way, I keep fucking it up. There's also a guard break attack for knocking away shields by pressing forward + L1, which is nice. Co-op is crazy right now since it's so close to release. If you drop a summon sign, you'll be summoned in ~5-10 seconds. It works pretty well, and I haven't had any issues connecting to people. If you join the Champion's covenant, which is the rock in the main town Worm mentioned earlier, it disables co-op and drops your damage by 20%. I've yet to be invaded, I have no idea what the catch is. Even running around as a human I've never been invaded. There's also certain areas where people in a covenant can auto-invade you OR pull you into their game to kill you as a gray phantom. If you join the Belfry covenant, you can hang out in a belltower and auto-invade people who try to ring the bell. Enemies can also permanently despawn if you kill them 15-20 times. Seems counter to what Dark Souls is about, but whatever. The health decrease on dying hasn't been a problem at all for me. I've got enough items to restore humanity, and if you run out you can always just help someone kill a boss in co-op. You level up way faster now since it costs way fewer souls to upgrade. I'm already at soul level 75 or so, but enemies can still kick my ass and I have shit weapons and armor and still haven't found where to upgrade weapons with boss souls. Fast travel between bonfires is so fucking nice. There's a pyromancer chick you can depetrify and she'll ask you for some new clothes to wear. Just out of coincidence I only had a hat on me and I gave that to her. Next time I saw her she was in her underwear and just the hat. Good times. Leaving messages no longer requires an item and you can leave compound messages. Prepare to see a lot of [quote]Try tongue but hole[/quote] [/quote]