Dark Souls

So, I went back and played through Dark Souls 1 again. I never understand how people can hate on the 2nd half after Bimmy and Jimmy. It felt like the Lordvessel collection was a bunch of side quest with pretty unique areas. I don't remember Demon Souls that well, but did it suffer from this as well? or is this the comparison in relation to Dark Souls.

Post O+S is weaker than the rest of the game, but still good.

Demon's Souls had a totally different philosophy than Dark Souls 1 - you can complete the game really in any order you wish, the only prerequisite is that you get an Arch Demon souls from one of the other worlds besides world 1 after killing Tower Knight

What do you think was so weak about it?

Fuck, I should really play through it again. I don't even know where my phat ps3 is

i didn't enjoy a lot of the areas or bosses for the Lord Souls - Dukes Archive / Crystal Cave is one of the most dull experiences in the game in my opinion. Lost Izalith is even worse compared to the other ones. None of the bosses themselves are challenging or even remotely interesting to be honest

You didn't like progressing in a lost city completely riddled with demons? or getting lost in a massive library? The Crystal Caves I can see being dull.

The problem wasn't the branching out or the general gist of each area. The problem was the rather lazy and unfinished level design of the later stages, most notably Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith. This was compounded by poor enemy placement and reused enemies. The Tomb was pretty good, but very short. The Archives were pretty and had some interesting navigation challenges around the walkways, but had a mandatory death sequence, and the crystal caves were meh.

That's essentially the problem, the enemy placement in Izalith and other places becomes mobs of 20-30 enemies indiscriminately dumped there.

It has like three rooms

Seriously? did you also think DS3 was good?

I'm not even being sarcastic here. Ceaseless Discharge, Seathe, four kings, bed of chaos. Izalith in totality are all ranging from bad to utter contemptible garbage so bad the developers gave a public apology for izalith and bed of chaos. A zone where they ran out of time and said 'fuck it, stop working on that new monster and add dragon asses'

Nito is mechanically piss easy but he is the best post bert and ernie boss gameplay wise and gwyn is the best thematically. The inconsistency is really the dark souls part of the souls series biggest weakness. Demons and Bloodborne have their own problems. Demons is easy to cheese and bloodbornes pvp is fucked but every dark souls just has those huge slogs of the game where you replay and go "ugh, fuck not this shit again" and the good parts are great but they are so stark.

Case in point DS3. Irithyll is the only good part of that game and it shines all the more because the rest is the height of mediocrity and redundant attempts to add new mechanics to revitalise a retroactive design.

there's just nothing in them? I mean its cool when you first go to them when you've never played the game before. But the archives are just devoid of anything but endless crystal hollows. Lost Izalith is just lava with endless Dragon Butts that do nothing but have fucking stupid hitboxes - bed of chaos is a shit show in and of its self. Seath isn't an interesting boss besides him killing framerate on console.

the areas aren't total garbage or anything (except Izalith) - its just they don't have much going on in them compared to the other, earlier parts of the game that had branching paths, more interseting bosses, and loot in them

Honestly, I can't even say if it was good or bad after O&S. After I went back to the loch ness monster and he was like "okay, now go do something else," the first thing that popped into my head was "why?" and I had no answer. I didn't know why I was still playing.

If the game had ended five minutes before that moment, I never would have realized I didn't even give a shit.

Gee I wonder why people think it's shit xD

Ceaseless Discharge is not post-Lordvessel, and neither are a lot of the weaker bosses and levels in the game.

name a genuinely *good* boss in the post lordvessel areas

To be fair, the 4kids got nerfed in several patches. But that's because the boss design is inherently flawed - it's almost a pure damage race or gear check if you want. They don't even do much damage if you stand close enough to get hit by the sword hilt instead of blade.

I wasn't saying there was a genuinely good boss in the post-Lordvessel area

But can you name anywhere post lordvessel as good as pre lordvessel areas?

Jesus christ two people who can't read

I wasn't saying that some of post-Lordvessel is good, I was saying that not all of pre-Lordvessel is good either and that drawing the dividing line at the Lordvessel is wrong.

Fair enough.
So if I made a Mod that cut off all Lordvessel levels and just made so you could go straight too Gwyn, would that work for any of you anons? How could I work that out lore wise?

What do you anons think of the Expansion for Dark Souls 1?

its a good dividing line because all of the content aside from Centipede and Firesage are mandatory. Its a part that a lot of people dread having to do once they get past it so there's a severe drop in quality for the mandatory parts of the game

also Ceaseless is optional

I think you can't read bud. You are saying "not all of pre is good" and i'm offering a rebuttal that ALL of post is mediocre to bad.

There's already a thread here