DS3 DLC 2 Gameplay Showcase

That flaming gargoyle looking thing has bat ears and you fight it underground so it leaves me to think it's the infernal bat that was cut from the main game, which makes me wonder if the wicked soul is going to show up possessing the king of the ringed city like its own soul description said

Early review coverage is giving some details on the bat boss.

Assuming that's true, that's a sweet little developmental wrinkle to include. What do you guys think, sound like a good feature? Any bosses in other games do this kind of thing before, with last man standing getting unique powers dependent on fallen comrades? Which would you prefer to deal with, Orbs or Lasers?

Fuck, now I wish I wasn't in these threads but if I'm already here might just stick around. I am glad to see the Ornstein\Smough gimmick come back where killing one improves the other, but I do hope this one isn't too bullshit like Blackflame Friede. It's one thing to have multiple forms, but its another thing entirely to have them move so fast it's better suited for Bloodborne than it is DaS

what are the odds we'll get a SOTFS like edition of the game with bug fixes and improvements that actually fleshes out DSIII into a complete game? I'd like to try the DLCs, even as shitty as the first one was, but I'd prefer to do them all semi-organically like DSII did in Scholar.

ming-bogglingly sexy, love the way their tits are just barely hanging into that bra/corset combo and sitting all sassy on that chair. Did we ever get any rule34 of these semen-sorceresses

Ornstein & Smaugh.

I really am sorry for spoiling that for you user.

I don't think their health bats refill with each phase. At the very least none of the leakers made mention of that fact. That could mean that it isn't there, but it could also mean that they are just numb to that specific piece of bullshit after having it spammed so much in the base game and first DLC.
Still, the health bar and damage output on the bats is apparently scaled for endgame and stupidly difficult, so I feel someone would have made noise about it if the regenerated on top of that.

And I can't believe I forgot about O&S. in my defense, I woke up early and just took my pain meds, I'm in no shape to be speculating. Plus the way it's been framed makes it sound like it's far less scripted than the O&S transition.

What's the sauce on that pic?

That was announced with the first Ringed City trailer. Dark Souls 3: The Fire Fades Edition with both DLC packs included comes out April 20/21.

ah cool. I wonder if it will take a bigger approach to the edition though and change up enemy placements and introduce actual gameplay changes and fixes like the other one did.

no clue user, sorry

Well, it was a good idea to wait

Not much that I know of. Their mirror/fan pyro catalyst is in this next DLC. And the set as well, according to MaatiMovie.

Just downloaded 1.10. Here's the notes:
Fixed issue where a player could invade another player during a boss battle.
Fixed issue where an enchantment could be applied to weapons which normally could not be enchanted.
Fixed issue where, when items are used while casting magic, display glitches could occasionally occur.
Fixed issue where it was possible to cancel immediately into a second magic spell after casting the first one.
Fixed issue where the first part of a skill action could be skipped.
Fixed issue where a single item could be used indefinitely.

I just hope they don't pull a Scholar of the First Sin bull and try to add some shit that actually makes the story make sense while also splitting their already dwindling player base in two.

I doubt its going to be anything more then a "game of the year" edition being that Hidetaka Miyazaki isn't a massive Jew. The only reason DkSII got all the extra polish is because Yui Tanimura had totally fucked up the game to the point that they fired him and Tomohiro Shibuya had less then a year to rebuild the game from the ground up. I personally wouldn't mind seeing a game form Tomohiro Shibuya knowing this in hindsight because after all the tweaks and fixes DkS2 became a much better game. SotFS fixed so many things overall, and the enemy placement actually helped sell the lore. That said, I would have never bothered with SotFS remake if I wasn't so salty and didn't boycott DLC. Fromsoft gave a huge discount to people who already owned the game so playing $25 for the DLC + "definitive edition" was reasonable.

There's a doujin with them

the story already makes sense.
that is because its the 5th "souls" game seven years. They are making these games at a CoD rate. Dark Souls 3 is essentially the equivalent of CoD World at War. They might be able to squeeze out one more "MW2 Souls" and its all downhill for here.

in* 7 years

DSII sucked for a lot of reasons but looking upon these almost makes me want to forgive them

l-link?

thats a shame. Like you're saying, SOTFS really fixed up a lot of the majorly wrong parts of the game and turned it into something sorta-good, it'd be a shame if they didn't go back and tweak shit that they didn't have time for

exhentai.org/g/993988/cbbc12f324/

this better not be full fucking price, bamco you god damn greedy bastards.

Well if you already have the base game SOTFS doesn't fix much in terms of game play mechanics that wasn't fixed with a band-aid patch and oddities like the transition from earthen peak to Iron Keep persist. However, in terms of "lore" told through appropriate enemy placement and a few decorative set pieces it really helps the games feng shui. For example having every enemy in drangleic castle is now some variation on the Gargoyle or Stone Golem. Not to mention many of the enemy locations are more "fair" so while there are still traps and its challenging their is a bit more logical strategy to encounters. Places that where too easy where made a bit more difficult and places that where totally shit where made a bit easier so the difficutly curve not all over the place. Likewise their are more viable uses for Torches and other items as well as access to a fragrant branch of Yore as a starting gift so the game is a bit less linear because you can theoretically do Scorpioness Najka as your first boss (and that is not even considering the lighting is a bit better so using a torch for light is sometimes a necessity even outside of the Gutter). Just little tweaks all over the place nothing major that you would be missing but nice quality of life details that bring the game together a bit more holistically in terms of flow and aesthetics.

Arianism had a lack of content but it was surprisingly still well made

Ariandel

I will wait for the "game of the year" edition like user posted. I played for 2 hours on release with a pirate version. Did anyone else experience their video card sounding like a JET ENGINE when playing on PC? That is the only reason I didn't continue.

I'm not an expert on DSII by any means, only played through it three times (one vanilla, two on Scholar) but I liked the enemy layouts more (heide's tower actually has fucking heide knights in it, the pursuer actually… pursues you a bunch of times) and enjoyed the fact that NG+ mixes things up a bit too, something that really adds to the replay value

it's just such an okay game that could've been great with more time and thought put into it rather than the slapped together product we ended up with

Ariandel was not bad by any stretch, but it was pretty hard to justify the price of admission for how little there was on offer. That said, if Ringed City really does turn out to be double or triple the size and quantity of Ariandel, that plus the good bits of Ariandel are definitely a great value if purchased together.

Yeah, they fixed it a while after release.

What was it that was triggering it? bad porting or?

yep the additional optional Pursuer encounters are a few of my favorite additions.
I hate this meme. You can polish a turd all you like but its still a turd. If the fundamentals are broken then no amount of time can fix the issues at the core and feature creep and over design in terms of trying to balance everything often spoils the soup. However, given what we know now, I would love to see Tomohiro Shibuya as head developer of his own game from scratch or maybe a spin-off.

DSII fashion was top notch. Lots of options for almost all sorts of looks.
Though Desert Sorceress wasn't my waifufag fashion. That would be Straid's body piece + witch shoes + Lucatiel's hat (no mask version). Incidentally, while DaS3 brought back a lot of good sets, it blueballed me on my favorite ones from the prequels - Oswald's and Straid's.

I get the feeling that the Desert Sorceress set will be the new overused set, both by waifufags and memelords.

Am I reading this right? Desert Sorc is coming do DaS3?

Yes, there's one in the dlc. Along with Earthen Peak

forgot to quote

dsfix helped with framerate, right?

yeah, I run it at 60fps these days without too much trouble. Sometimes, you'll get the occasional issue with physics (i.e. the small gap in the bridge in Sen's Fortress that connects to the tower with the merchant can be a bitch to jump properly because the framerate increase somewhat messes with your ability to land on terrain correctly), but it's not that much of an issue. You can play most of the game without running into any game breaking problems or anything.

You can also just unlock the framerate but cap it at 30fps to make the entire game stable, and without any strange physics problems.

I'd say Tseldora, Aldia's freak lab, Drangleic castle, Eleum Loyce or Shulva might have been more interesting to reminisce.
Earthen Peak was great on paper but the area itself is very barren and nothing about it invokes a vain woman that went fuckin' bananas.

So what do you guys think of the Bat Demon? How many bosses do you think there will be total? And what kind of tactics do you want to see the other ones use?
That Giant Judge is almost certainly a later boss. Maybe he'll do some cool shit by summoning small groups of orange ghosts on the fly to provide cover for him?
And then the Woman with the egg from the first trailer, something crazy has got to be in store there.
What do you guys hope for from the other bosses, and does the Bat Demon encourage or batter your hopes?

I recently tried to pick up DaS2 and I'm starting to hate it a lot less. Adaptability was a shit idea though.

DSFix bumps it up to 60, but you have to deal with the fact that jumps and rolls are going to be shorter at the higher frame rate. As well, there's two or three ladders you shouldn't slide down because they have a shitfit and throw you under geometry.

Maybe 3, with one being the traditional re-used assets optional type (probably a roided NPC gank squad).
I'd want something that's challenging, will take a while to git gud but fair and, especially, more "subdued" because I'm kinda fed-up with all the chinese girl cartoon shit in DaS3 where everyone now darts around the screen making fire skidmarks, running three laps around you before shoving a spear up your ashen ass. Fume Knight would be a good example of that - tough as nails but doesn't move at light speed or has a bunch of flashy anime moves and his AI was exceptionally well done; I've helped a lot of people beat him and the guy can fight a trio really well; he doesn't wail on one guy over and over but switches targets often so he could be pressuring one player and immediately turn to jump the caster on the other end of the area.
Curious if we'll meet Liliane of the Sable Church , boss or not.

As for hopes, I've long accepted that whatever this game will throw at us, it will make Friede look fair and balanced and she'd be pants-on-head retarded even as a Bloodborne boss.

pic related

I don't mean to say that it was rushed per se user, I just meant that if people had taken more time initially and thought about what made DeS and DS so good and just taken that and run with it as opposed to the frustrating lie we were given initially, I think a lot more people would have been more positive toward the game. As it is, it wasn't until the definitive edition that we got what we were sorta promised rather than a halfbaked DARK SOULS IS HARD AMIRITE game we were handed

I still remember the wonky hitboxes, borderline monster closets, bizarre level progression and lazy design (how many giant empty rooms do you come across in this game, seriously), SOUL MEMORY, and bullshit multi-boss fights that made me want to choke whoever signed off on this for release. Not to mention them gimping the PC version so that consolefags didn't feel inadequate and then releasing the actual version a year later with all the shit they purposefully cut.

I installed the frozen dlc half a year ago but never played it.
I don't think it was even worth a try.

I only like Demons Souls and Bloodborne.

heh

If you treat Harvest Valley and Earthern Peak as one level it's much more enjoyable to go through. Yeah there isn't really much going off inside Earthern Peak but that's pretty much the case with every indoor area of DS2, almost every one is a barren room. I hope in DS3 Earthern Peak gets fleshed out more. I wouldn't be surprised we will be traversing it on its side or even folded up in some way.

It sucked but the weapons were pretty good and the bosses were mostly alright
The pvp arena that only came with one arena also was good for a few hours of shitting on people, though personally I like fight clubs better

Haven't played the game in years but the only unique, non-boss rooms remember are two trap rooms in Drangleic Castle - the one with the poison needle shooting eyeballs and the one with Nashandra's painting.

I do hope we get more DaS2 sets though. What it lacked in interior decorating, it made up on the wardrobe.

A bone for the DeS fans would be nice too.
Honestly surprises me they never kiked armor sets.

What's also maddening is the fact that the cloth physics in DS2 is outright superior to the one in DS3. DS2 cloth physics have a more natural flow and bounce to them. DS3 have a perfect sequence swing with some cloth being extremely floaty. This was an area of development that was definitely rushed because the attire in Bloodborne rarely has this issue.

evernote.com/shard/s281/sh/393a0e74-5dd1-46d3-ae9b-42b9146bb82a/e1ec02ada85b6a30

So VaatiVidya got in on the early access playtest and wrote a whole slew of notes for the first two areas. I know most don't like him or care for his theorywanking, but he did copy dialogue, item descriptions, and fight stategies, so some of it has objective value.

What I find most interesting is that the "Angels" are apparently resurrected Londer Pilgrims, or at least created and controlled by them after death. They can be sniped, but respawn indefinitely and immediately. You have to search for the corpse of the pilgrim that created it then kill the "Grower" or avatar that the Angel is tied to.

Also confirms return of the Desert Witch's Set, and a couple of new weapons' names and flavor texts.

And while this is some of his trademarked wanking, I do find myself intrigued by his proposals that The DLC takes place in the displaced future, and that Lapp the knight is actually Patches after finally starting to succumb to Hollowing.

wait they actually added lore content in the scolar of the first sin?

Explicitly elaborating on the lore was the entire point of Aldia being retconned in.

yes but aldia was also added to the vanilla version.
im asking if they added any weapon or NPC only in the SOTFS

This is probably my favorite set in the series
Still makes me mad that all the "iconic" stuff got brought back but barely any of the actually cool sets of armor

ds2 definitely had the best /fa/ but im happy the drakeblood got through

still cant find the tex IDs for it though so i can port over the best armor mod from ds2

I'll admit the "default costume" for my STR/FTH build uses the Alva armor but, yeah, there's tons of great sets that were left behind.
Pics related are the ones from 1 I wish they added but would "trade" for DaS2 sets in a heartbeat. My only fashion disappointment in 2 is that we never got pristine versions of Fume Knight and Ivory King armors, especially the later.

which is weird when you consider we got pristine and battle damaged versions of a few of the drangleic infantry armor sets

Those, turtle knight, Loyce knights and, to an extent, that one armor that visible and invisible versions.

I really like the Ivory King armor. It's like a classy take on Smough's you can use without looking like a clippin' moron. DaS2 wasn't shorts on sets that only good on boss characters though; the puny bearer of the curse can't make proper justice to the Velstadt and Looking Glass Knight sets.

There's one thing in the video he didn't put in the notes which, I dare say, might be a huge deal. Here's a screencap.

finally waifus without MASSIVE shoulders

I'm expecting to run into more characters like pic related rocking that set than waifus.

this is also perfectly acceptable, infact i encourage it

however one of the few good things to come out of the cuckchan general is this
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EXGIWRHO8lgeHRyb8fzDMeKPpuzyWGq-HA9v-udWRYg/edit#gid=0

Gotta hold one juicy bit of lorefodder in reserve for future speculation videoes.

But for real, every line of that description shakes the assumed structure of the lore to its foundations. I can't wait for the payoff.

Shame it's just waifus. IIRC, one YTer ( Otzdarva ) had video guides for all sorts of characters.
But fuck it! My girl could use some retouching. Just YOLO'ed the Astora Noble face without much thought.

DaS3 seems to be the Director's Cut lore; vanilla version already had its share of playing around with what we thought was set in stone like Ornstein who was rewritten to have left Anor Londo to become a scaly degenerate and the one in DaS was a illusion or some shit.
Hope this won't be as needlessly stupid.

Wouldn't youngest daughter in this instance imply Yorshka?

Given they're walking all over pre-established lore, Gwyn probably has a shitload more crossbreed kids now.
Could be the lady in white from the reveal trailer; I think she's the painter's mother but that isn't mutually exclusive from her being Gwyn's daughter. Fuck it! She's also Gertrude, the Queen of Lothric, Velka and the one who took forbidden blood to Cainhurst.

>Patches hollowing
Get the fuck out of here you cunt. That's the only goddamn constant in this fucked up series and I wont let them try and fuck it up for MUH FEELS.

I'm more inclined to believe she's Gertrude given how the angels are in the DLC, but I wouldn't put it past From to make her yet another bastard child of Gwyn

So here's some guy with a full recording of his fight against the first boss.
Nice to see direct evidence that the journos and e-celebs with special access weren't taking us for a ride and making details up.

Dark Souls 2 was the ultimate shit on lore

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I thought people only played these games for the gameplay.

any .webm's for the folks that don't use JavaScript in their browsers?

I really doubt that Gertrude is Gwyn's daughter. The reason I say this is because there are two chests right near the cage in the archives, one with a divine blessing and another with a twinkling titanite implying that she's the daughter to Gwynevere and Oceiros as those items have an affinity with those characters. From Software has done stuff like this a lot in the Souls games to paint stories in a certain direction. To make Gertrude Gwyn's daughter would be in my mind a big fuck you to every bit of lore in the games.

HAVE THEY FIXED MAGIC YET?

HAVE THEY FIXED POISE YET?

Fucking sadpanda bullshit.
Can some fag give me the name?

Wew laddo

There's another thing that bugs me; titty guard ring in DaS1 explicitly says that her husband is some fire god named Flann but wouldn't surprise me if they retcon that.

Like adding a dragon crossbreed kid to Gwyn's family? Then again, he probably got cucked by a dragon and that's probably what set him off in the first place.
Lorewise, this game screwed the ashen pooch one too many times. A shame because the wholly new things it adds are pretty interesting (Sulyvahn, Age of Deep, Londor etc).

"It's working as intended." - Miyazaki

To be fair, their movesets are pretty solid and the two bats actually coordinate attacks and cover their flanks extremely well. Plus killing one gives the survivor new attacks. If nothing else, it looks fun to maneuver around.

The dev team did try to explain away lore inconsistencies with that caveat about how the Souls of the Lords and Gods get passed down and reincarnated, and mortals keep confusing the identities of the gods.

Still though, you can only pull the "long lost child whose identity was hidden" card so many times, even with the amount of family drama Gwyn has.

I don't think retconned, I think he's dead. It's also worth considering that when it comes to the gods polygamy is perfectly fine. Considering Gwyn's family is heavily inspired by the Greek gods, that shit as well as incest was all acceptable. Zeus fucked everyone, men and women even when he was married to his sister Hera. Nameless King is like Ares the god of war and Gwynevere is like Aphrodite the goddess of love, pleasure and procreation. Some fun triva both Ares and Aphrodite fucked each other so this should give you an idea that the family of Gwyn like the taboo side of sex.

I didn't like how DaS2 added a shitload of characters that barely served any purpose and whose dialogue you'd exhaust on the first encounter (while others like Licia were begging for more development) but, at least, it was its own thing. Now DaS3 adds pointless ones that shit all over the lore carpet.
Yorshka's a terrible inclusion and her role could have easily been played by the brass armor Fire Keeper (imprisoned by Sulyvahn, close to Gwyndolin, covenant leader etc).

Interesting, never thought of them that way. As someone who likes mythology, I'm almost embarrassed to never make a parallelism between a lightning chucker declaring war on the old rulers and then splitting the world with his buddies.
Then poor Gwyn finds out his kids are all a bunch of degenerates. "Fuck it, I'm gonna go set myself on fire for a thousand years."

Speaking of linking the fire, that's a part of DaS3 I never understood - it seems they can now link the fire and then go about their daily routine of writing Artorias fanfics, eating children etc. At least from the first game, I thought the linker of the fire would stay there being fuel until there's nothing left but a hollow husk.
Then there's also the Profaned Flame that, if I understood correctly, it was a botched attempt at recreating the First Flame and Yhorm fucked up big time by linking it (another interesting new thing in DaS3 but the whole area feels horribly rushed).

If Yorshka is believed to be legitimate then you gonna have to count Gwyn as a degenerate. If he's anything like Zeus he's an incestuous bisexual that enjoys zoophila.

That's why it's kinda silly. He's chucking bolts at dragons and then getting some dragon pussy on the side.
I just think Yorshka doesn't make any bloody sense. Feels more like they just wanted to pander to the Priscillafags.

People have proposed rationalizations for her existence: the one that makes most sense to me personally is that she's merely Priscilla's less viable twin/diminished reincarnation, though the more popular one I've seen is that she's Gwyndolin's or Nameless King's mutant bastard child that Grampa Gywn agreed to let live only so long as she was kept out of his sight and away from knowing her true heritage.

This is true. Sadly From only cared about bringing back the meme-characters as pander-fuel for their big finish.

I prefer thinking of them as Norse gods, with their relatively few numbers, vulnerability to death, working among mortals, and general solemnity of the setting it's more thematically appropriate in tone.

I'm gonna ramble a bit, but basically it's like this: each Lord of Cinder you fight before Lothric is a previous Linker of the Flame that has already been used up. Each time the Flame is linked, it's smaller, shorter-lived, reverses less decay, and needs more fuel. Lothric is the last mortal Soul with the power needed to light a new Age. When he refuses, it damns the world to the Dark Age. Other people try to take his place, to no avail. Ludleth is one of those people, and afterwards he does some bullshit to go back in time to before the flame went out and reawakens the Unkindled Ones. Unkindled are Undead who tried to become Lords of Cinder, but failed and were consumed by the flame completely. The idea is that one of them (I.e. You) kills Lothric, takes his soul, and uses that as a medium to become a true Lord of Cinder.
The reason that previous Lords of Cinder are coming back to life is that the First Flame is binding their life force together in one power mass; the combined might of each previous Lord of Cinder behind the next one is required to start a New Age. With the Flame dying for good and Ludleth fucking with Time, their souls and powers are breaking free and running around. You kill them to claim their title and powers for yourself to have the strength to harness the Flame.

I was under the impression that the Proflamed Flame was simply another instance of the Chaos Flame/Old Chaos reappearing in a different land. Yhorm attempt to combat it by linking the First Flame and using its fire to smother the Chaos, but when he did the two flames temporarily combined and surged, if only for just long enough to kill everyone he was trying to protect.

Interesting interpretation on Ludleth. I've been witholding judgment on him, as I'm still somewhat unsure what his role was intended to be or why he's separate from Lothric - in one of the gameplay demos before launch, the High Wall of Lothric was called the High Wall of Lodoleth, and given their general similarity (frail and sickly), I have to question what purpose Ludleth is supposed to serve and what connection, if any, he has to Lothric and Lorian.

Regarding the Profaned Flame, I was under the impression that was the result of Yhorm, a giant, attempting to link the Fire instead of a human. I could be misremembering the order of events though.

Gotta be honest, that's the Priscilla theory I favor. She's the Nameless King's daughter and because she's royal blood, couldn't be executed but was kept away in a inconspicuous place that could be under close watch.
Then again, I also thought that Andre was the firstborn. I'm just a sucker for tales of humble redemption.

OK, I can roll with that. I'm currently playing Yakuza 0 and that game makes the flow of time in Souls games look normal.
I suppose then, that in the specific case of Aldrich, Sulyvahn took him back to Anor Londo to chew on Gwyndolin and rounded up the cult to consolidate his power.

I know I'm a broken record on this but Aldrich really disappointed me. Such a build up with cannibal cleric that envisioned a third path and we cross the fog gate to 'MEMBER GWYNDOLIN? YEAH U 'MEMBER!
I was expecting either some invertebrate, Ludwig-tier abomination or a living room where nowhere is safe.

There is this common thought in the lore community that Gwyn hates dragons when there is no evidence that points to Gwyn hating them. Gwyn's goal was conquest because the dragons ruled the world.

It would make sense for Gwyn to have a crossbreed. The dragons are eternal so to have a crossbreed of a god with a dragon would mean the gods can rule forever, though as we can see this wasn't a complete success.

So that means Gwyn could have fucked a female dragon?

What?

What?

Looks like I missed some item descriptions.

I unlocked the framerate and limited it to 30, runs beautifully now. Thanks lads. Also, anyone who says 1 was any harder than 2 or 3 can get fucked, this game is a goddamn cakewalk compared to the others. I am parrying the damn world

Uneducated plebs, even here.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_the_Father

Parries are piss easy in the first game because it has a larger time frame for it to work. Enemies also very weak to circling behind them.

No magnets on the ends of their weapons yet, right? I still won't try and parry greatsword black knights though, fuckers hit like a truck, no thank you.

I think the magnets being on the end of the weapons was mainly a thing in 2 to "punish circle strafing", but the key to parrying in 1 is to hit the button right as they're swinging towards you. I could never get parries reliably in 3 for whatever reason. As bland as 3 was, I still think Mound Makers are fucking great. Just wish they could actually interact with the bosses.

Parrying in 2 is kinda odd. The active frames are when the character has his arm raised in the air at the animation's end so it requires a lot more anticipation. I remember a tip about it - to know when the active frames trigger, do it against a wall and when you hear the hit sound, that's it.
Also, yeah, strafing is very effective. A lot more so than rolling through attacks in most cases.

Nothing like DaS2 but I've seen hollows literally 180º in mid-air to hit me with a leap attack.

At some point I'll probably reinstall 3 to practice it before the second DLC comes out, but for whatever reason I can't enjoy 2. Granted, I can't really enjoy 3 either.

Gotta justify that 70 dollars spent on DaS3 after all

I admit I got a lot of mileage out of 2 thanks to co-op. While I solo my end, I like helping others and DaS2 let you set a sign and move 5 feet away from it and you could PvP without getting King Crimson'ed by a nip every 10 minutes (though some of the worst lag I experienced was in 2 - literally teleported across a room to get backstabbed).
As for 3, taking a break until the DLC comes. I'm expecting a repeat of Ariandel - do well with my DEX build and rage like a motherfucker with my STR/FTH and pyro builds. Doesn't help they're all in NG+ or ++.

Dark Souls 2 was an uninspired game.
Everything about it was mediocre. The biggest evidence of its mediocrity is the fact that the fact that the world map is not a coherent world unlike Dark Souls.

And yet I'm still playing dark souls 2 because of the amount of builds and invading and arenas are
pretty fun

So, does Dark Souls 3 have bullshit hitboxes like 2 did?
2 completely killed any and all interest I had in the Souls games, but enough time has passed by that the disappointment has dulled to a point where I'm not completely against giving a Souls game a go.
On a sightly related point, what kind of DRM does the game have?

The games are better when you're fucking around with people, but considering I've put at least 1100 hours across DeS, 1and 3 that I don't think I'll ever be able to sit down and clear 2.

2 suffers from trying to change too much to the point where it harms the game, even when there's some good things in the change. At the same time, 3 suffers from feeling extremely hollow and builds being extremely similar because 40/40 STR-DEX shits on almost everything if you're doing melee.

...

I don't buy DLC.

I consider tying the speed of most non-spell related animations (yes spells get cast faster the more DEX you have, I think was even in Demon's Souls) and i-frames to a stat a pretty fucking huge change. That and the fact that my go to weapons have wildly different handling. And the fact that 2 is ambush on ambush in an "attempt" to teach you to drop the lock-on. It's a shame powerstancing didn't come back, but that's another difference you don't see in any other game. Yes, the combat in 3 suffers from most of the enemies being Bloodbourne rejects moving at Bloodbourne speeds while you're moving at Dark Souls speeds.

I'm not saying Gertrude is Gwyn's daughter, I'm saying she's the black-haired lady in the trailer

And yet the combat is still the same from 1 to 2, whereas thanks to poise the combat in 3 is akin to a shitty ripoff of bloodborne. The big change is obviously 3.
You should stick to 3 if variety is bad to you.

Its gonna be an hour and a half romp through two bosses again. Don't fall for the hype.

Poise is working as intended.
I'd rather play the first one tbh fam.

No, 2 suffered from a shit ton of bad decisions on top of the good. Worse hit boxes, leveling up to improve your I-frames, soul memory, etc. The level design is also spotty, and the enemies are not very inspired as well.

Some of these issues also fall into 3, but 2 was exceptionally shitty about this stuff.

This gif would be great with the Delin box move sound from Shenmue 2

further reason for me to call bullshit on the fact that we can't get the blue lothric knight, cathedral knight, and undead legion armors, that shit was fucking cool and we never get it.

Blue Undead Legion armor? I don't remember there ever being any variants. Do you mean the regular hollow Drangleic infantry? Even if not, that's another one to chalk up there. The blue version is very nice simply for having pants that aren't ripped into shorts from the knees down, as well as being maybe slightly less raggedy in other ways.

Considering the DLC is dragging us through the ruins of Lothric, maybe we'll see those variant palette swap sets somewhere after all, hopefully made as non-lazily as possible. I'm just hoping they find room for some more of the totally finished cut content sets & weapons in the unseen sections. So far, we've seen the Dreg Heap, the ruins of Earthen Peak, and the outer section of the Ringed City and its walls where the giant Judicator is standing, but we have no idea if they won't pull an Old Hunters with the second half or third coming out of nowhere. I doubt we'll get any of the especially interesting cut stuff like the Four Knights and their bigass mace, but the Heavy Knight Set is a pretty clear telegraph that they'll be bringing in at least some of it. Vilhelm's sort of counts, too, though that was a revision of the Burial Knight set and not a direct implementation.

I'd rather just play Bloodborne or the first one. I didn't even buy DaS2/3 for myself but want a refund just to give the people who bought them their money back.

I meant the armor of the guys at the staircase up to the twin princes; I want that blue yoke drape and plate on the undead deserters armor as a reskin; they already put like five variants in the game and gave them all to the enemies, it would take nothing to put it onto the player's body, especially since most armors just warp with the sliding scale, it wouldn't take much to make it fit, even moreso because it's a fucking reskin.
that's the only set I'm really hoping for, it's really nice to look at and pleases my armor fetish.

I might be pirating DS3 soon. How is it compared to 2?

Better.

That's what I thought. I was a bit confused, since you seemed to be referring to the Abyss Watchers formally titled the Undead Legion, but they never had a variant set, unless you count the boss having that poorly rigged eastern dagger on the leg that players don't get.

Overall an improvement, but in some fashions a sidegrade. I don't think there was a boss as strong as, say, Fume Knight; regardless of the technical difficulty, nothing felt as intense. It all sort of blurs together after a while into passive roll-through fests that lack something about the same concept in Fume.

Maybe it's the fact that all the 'gotcha' attacks of bosses tend to be readily dodgeable but irritatingly punishing if you don't fall into the very routine rhythm of buttslap whittling, while Fume has two different first stage gotcha varieties and the second stage gotcha slash is terrifying instead of just annoying to get chipped by as in so many 3 bosses.

Maybe I should just go back and play 2 and immediately regret it.

this is actually false
What it actually is, is the models are poorly layered, so wearing a chest piece will change the properties of some leg armors; most if not all skirts make the black iron legging kneecaps recline into themselves, the dagger is there on the abyss watcher leggings, but when you put on any chest piece that covers even a little bit of the waist line, ie fucking all of them because miazaki loves skirts more than he loves ripping off berserk, the knife is removed due to a layer conflict in which the knife is bound to the same layer as the chest piece, and the chest pieces are made to overtake leggings, or the knife is over the legging layer but under the chest piece layer, making it canceled out for being in the middle since it can't show over the chest armor. The simple way to fucking remove this problem is to put the knife on the hip of the chest piece in a way that doesn't look retarded or squirm around when the character that it appears on contorts their body as they tend to.
Another thing that is actually the only real use I've had with the glitch so far is that it makes the smough leggings not look fucking retarded and removes the thigh pieces with certain armors that have skirts, though not very many.
I'm sure other armors have this clash tendency, I haven't really tested it too far. The last bit of knowledge I have for you is that some gauntlets will shrink down for certain armors if the forearm guard goes too far down the arm, meaning that if you're using any knight armor with gundyr's arms you'll make them come down 2/3 of the forearm rather than completely up to the elbow.

All points given on the technical fuckery of lazy armor clipping prevention, I've encountered it a lot myself mixing & matching, although on the point of the dagger I was referring to its place on the boss model, the little Persian hip dagger is definitely boss exclusive. It really seems like the easiest thing to do would be to have the dagger be on the outer thigh or in the boot instead of on the front of the thigh at the hip joint, especially as it's a boss model they can do anything they like with, but no, they split the model between the chest and thigh. Having it be one piece that clips a little with the leg or thigh from being rigidly mounted on the respective opposite would've been acceptable, and better if they put it somewhere it won't clip at all, but instead they made it even weirder looking than if they were ordinarily lazy.

nigger go open up DS3 right fucking now and look at the pants alone. I was surprised too.

Well blow me the fuck down. That's the weirdest fucking thing, it IS there, but only without the set chest. That's the most bizarre design decision, why didn't they just make it render the knife one way with the chest off, one way with it on and disable it otherwise? Does any chestpiece actually allow that dagger to render?

As I explained before, I didn't really do a lot of testing on it, but anything that goes to the waist at the level the abysswatcher chest goes, it will blank out.

Best armor reporting in.

It's a much higher quality game than 2 but it's also less ambitious in scope. World is just a big corridor and that kills replayability.
I wish from didn't fuck up 2 so hard, because then 3 probably wouldn't need to exist at all.

I wish they went full gothic knight with this