Dark Souls 2

[Roman Totale]

A quick and dirty guide as hopefully you will have picked this up in the Steam sale:

A walkthrough guide is a damn good idea. I use this one.

Character builds can also be useful. The Dark Souls wiki has some good ones.

General tips:

* Warrior, Knight, or Cleric are good starting classes

* Every time you die you become hollow - this causes your maximum health to go down. You also lose all the souls you have. You can get these back by going to the spot where you died and touching your bloodstain (green glowing light). However, if you die again before getting to this point you will lose them all forever.

* If you are hollow you can't summon other players or NPCs for help

* You can un-hollow yourself by using a 'Human Effigy' in your inventory. These are very rare compared to the number of times you will die, so don't worry too much about being hollow. Try to save them for when you get to a boss fight.

* Try and keep your equipped load below 70% - this will help you roll and run better

* Learn blocking, dodging, parrying, riposting and back stabbing

* Keep an eye on your stamina - if it's too low you won't be able to attack or block. Allow it time to regenerate between attacks or blocks

* You can only level up by speaking to the woman in green in Majula. If you look at your character info it will tell you how many souls you need to level up

* Don't rush in - even the weakest mobs will easily overwhelm you

* Having some form of ranged attack is incredibly useful (especially bow and arrow)

* Get to know what all the weapon and armour stats mean

* Stats on weapons show how well they scale based on certain stats (strength, agility etc). A rating of 'S' is the best (superior), followed by 'A' etc. So if you have a weapon with a Strength rating of 'D' and an Intelligence rating of 'A', it is more suited to a high Intelligence character.

[Roman Totale]

Some amusing videos:

Zero Punctuation review of the first Dark Souls - probably one of the things that got me try the game in the first place.

Honest Trailers does Dark Souls - I love this so much.

[Mr. Johnson]

I'm liking this game so far but man is it frustrating, it's a good thing that xbox controllers are so sturdy.

Allow me to give you a quick rundown of my most recent foray into Dark Souls II: I was supposed to cross a castle courtyard over some rickety rooftops, walkways and fallen tree trunks whilst being shot a by several archers. I didn't have anything ranged so taking them out from afar wasn't an option. To make things worse, there were several hollow footsoldiers along my path which I had to defeat before I could get across. After literally countless deaths I finally managed to take out all the footsoldiers and some of the archers but I was still being shot at so I flee to the other side of the courtyard where there's a little cave I could hunker down in. I notice something sparkling in the distance so I figure I'd pick that up before I go take on the rest of those archers and continue exploring. Just as I reach the shiny thing a boulder comes out of nowhere and crushes me.

Getting across that courtyard took me hours.

[FatherJack]

I have the first two games on the PS3 and XBox, free through PS+ and XBL respectively. Maybe I might have played them more if I'd paid for them, but they both frustrated the hell out of me in the short time I played them.

They both seemed to be the same game and pulled the same dick move at the start: whoops here's a really massive monster that kills you immediately right at the start - a-ha no you can run away through this little door. Now you've found a plastic pop up pirate sword and a paper shield and are just starting to feel comfortable we'll make you fight that big fucker again, no escape this time though fuckface - prod him up the arse and run away for 10 minutes.

Then there was the illusion and choice and exploration, where whichever way you go found you dead in short order and thinking that you maybe took the hard way by mistake, but no - every way is the hard way, even the lowliest grunts can kill you, every step is a grind and an effort through multiple attempts, you fighting against the camera and the controls rather than them being an extension of the actions you want to perform.

And the reward? To be a smug bastard who says "yah, great game actually" without mentioning the countless hours of hair-pulling screen-screaming vein-popping frustration they went though. Unless a lot has changed in this third release, I don't think I'll be looking to get it, but I'm hoping someone who's played both can tell me that they've fixed a lot of those issues, or concede that it can be very frustrating.

[Joose]

concede that it can be very frustrating.

I don't think there is a sane Dark Souls fan in the world that wouldn't concede that it can be very frustrating. If the frustration in the first one made you say "Fuck off" rather than "I shall beat you, you bastard!" then I would be surprised if you found this one much different.

I would say though, the fact that it pulls no punches and is one gaming dick move after another does make it all the more satisfying when you do make progress. Plus, the backstory is pretty clever.

[Dog Pants]

without mentioning the countless hours of hair-pulling screen-screaming vein-popping frustration they went though.

Pnut's pretty vocal about this part. Quite frankly I'm amazed that the world is still the same place considering the apocalyptic amounts of rage it musts generate in him.

[Roman Totale]

Dark Souls 2 is much easier to play and is slightly more forgiving than the first one. Even so, it is massively frustrating as you say. I've just finished my second play through (bar the DLC), and I think it's slightly true that it is more unforgiving than difficult - enemies telegraph their attacks, and you are punished for getting cocky or greedy. It's like the bosses of old platform games, where you learn their attack patterns and respond accordingly, except in this case the entire game is a boss. Bizarrely on my second playthrough I was less concerned about dying, and actually found I got through sections much quicker.

With regards to the choice and exploration, I'd actually say it can be too open. Without a guide I would have been well and truly fucked and would probably have given up straight away - it's one thing to be battered about by bad guys, but it's another to then wander around a huge world not knowing what you're looking for and having go back everywhere.

Yesterday I started the Crown of the Sunken King DLC on my second character (this one is a Sorcerer, previously did it with a Knight), and there were certain parts of it that I was bricking it going back to because of how difficult they were. I honestly can't remember the last time a game did that to me. The elation I then felt when I got through the section unscathed first time was incredible - proper adrenaline pumping stuff. Then I went on to die 7 times against a rather tricky boss, and decided to quit and go to bed.

I had Dark Souls for about a year before I started playing it, and was always put off by people saying the best thing about it was that it was difficult. I first when in blind and hated it - no idea what I was supposed to do. Eventually started playing with a guide and found it so much more satisfying.

Now I'm off to have another crack at that boss after dreaming about it all night.

[Roman Totale]

With the excitement of Dark Souls 3 coming out next year, I've again started playing this. It's worth noting that if you have it on Steam it will have automatically upgraded to the Scholar of the First Sin edition (nothing massive - an additional boss and a few things changed around). ***2016 edit: ignore that about the automatic upgrade - it's lies!***

I was talking to pnut about DS earlier, and the temptation to go into the game as a sword and shield character. It's actually well worth eschewing a shield and instead "get good" at rolling and dodging. Also means you don't have to rely on the best armour and can instead just wear what looks good (Fashion Souls, yo). Also,also you can 2-hand or dual wield for more damage. I'm currently in NG+ with my knight character and have been steamrolling bosses with a 2-handed Dragon Tooth.

Or you can go for pure spellcaster (though you may need to stab some dudes early game until you get enough spells). I can highly recommend the 'Becoming the Archmage' guide/build from Reddit. It soon feels very overpowered if played right. One thing it isn't clear on though is the need to use Binoculars - equip in the off-hand and use to manually target enemies from a distance. Good for headshotting. There's no target/sight, so just aim from the middle of the screen.

[Dog Pants]

I really want to get into DS2 after hearing how passionate you two are about it. But I'm such a spaz with a controller that I can't even run in a straight line.

[Mr. Johnson]

I am deeply intrigued by dark souls, but couldn't get past the initial treshold despite Roman's tips. Were I to put the time in I'm sure I could overcome it and enjoy the bitter reward of maybe not dying every five feet. I did feel like it was mostly trial and error, which I'm okay with.