Game News Dark Souls II Gameplay Videos and Interview

[Linden]

None of the enemies in the video seem very hard. I do hope they give the enemies some new moves.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Compare the Great Sword seen at around :50 in that first video with comparable weapons in Dark Souls:

So you already know that weapon was an Ultra Greatsword and not just a Greatsword ? The Claymore in DS is actually faster than this one (IIRC).

The claymore is smaller and still swings slower, so what is your point?

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

Compare the Great Sword seen at around :50 in that first video with comparable weapons in Dark Souls:

So you already know that weapon was an Ultra Greatsword and not just a Greatsword ? The Claymore in DS is actually faster than this one (IIRC).

The claymore is smaller and still swings slower, so what is your point?

its faster than zweihander and slower than claymore. did you even played ds?

 

[Xi]

What's with all the Dark Souls gushing over?
For a combat centric game, it's clunky as fuck.
Animations are stiff, enemies pretty much don't react to being hit.
It just has that same clumsy feeling every azn game has when its developers attempt to make a melee/action oriented combat system.

All the points you make are related to fluffy graphics and visuals. Why the fuck should I take you seriously? You are a tool. (And uninformed/wrong about every point.)

 

[deuxhero]

The switch from Healing Herbs to the automatically replenishable Estus Flasks is a prime example of streamlining done exactly right. It "limits" healing, yes, but more to the point it also eradicates the need and, to a large extent, the ability to grind for healing items. (There's Humanity, but it was much harder to get in the vanilla game, so most wouldn't bother.)

For me, it's an improvement because it completely eliminates the thinking that you can't use any limited use items because you won't have them latter.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

ds2 is getting easier so they removed option to drink more than one estus flasks during single animation like in ds1

 

[Cowboy Moment]

The dual-wield video reminded me of Witcher 2 combat, very excited for DS2!

 

[AN4RCHID]

Compare the Great Sword seen at around :50 in that first video with comparable weapons in Dark Souls:

So you already know that weapon was an Ultra Greatsword and not just a Greatsword ? The Claymore in DS is actually faster than this one (IIRC).

The claymore is smaller and still swings slower, so what is your point?

its faster than zweihander and slower than claymore. did you even played ds?

This doesn't help your point, considering that the sword in DaSII is much bigger than either the Claymore OR the Zweihander. Compare and contrast:

Spoiler

Realistic, cool looking Greatsword from Dark Souls:

Spoiler

...And silly anime sword from Dark Souls II:

Now look at how heavy the Claymore feels compared to that weightless anime sword:

Spoiler

Even though it's an order of magnitude smaller, it still animates with realistic weight and momentum. You can't just whip it around like it weighs nothing. Look at the two-handed overhead swing of the Claymore around the :30 mark - that animation takes over two seconds to complete. Compare that to the one-handed overhead swing of the retardbait anime sword in the Dark Souls 2 video, around the :47 mark - this much larger sword swung with only one hand, completes in just under two seconds. Now compare that to the Zweihander in Dark Souls. Remember, this should still be a significantly lighter sword. Let's see how it stacks up:

Spoiler

This sword takes approximately three seconds to perform the full overhead swing animation (see the full animation around the :36 mark). A much smaller sword, again swung with two hands, takes 1.5x the time to swing.

Demon's Souls and Dark Souls were marketed with knights in realistic armor, short swords and shields. Dark Souls 2 is being marketed with Awesome duel-wielding and giant anime swords. Not proof of anything, just one of many bad signs.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Uuuuuuh, it looks exactly the same as DS (which is what I thought would be criticized). You guys are overanalyzing these short videos so hard that you're seeing things - "I'm getting the feeling that there is a distinctive lack of weight in how some of these characters move", really?

edit: here, some video I was watching earlier today. If that guy with the axe is not "Cloud Strife shit", I don't know what is.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

Demon's Souls and Dark Souls were marketed with knights in realistic armor, short swords and shields.

yea maybe on games covers

ohh and silly anime sword? moonlight greatsword( which looks like the sword from video) was in like every fanatasy game made by fromsoftware. they even put huge ass sword from berserks manga in ds for lulz. but its clear from those 4 minutes of gameplay that they changed direction and we can expect a mix of retardness in design and gameplay similar to final fantasy and soul calibur

 

[AN4RCHID]

Yeah, those weapons are ridiculously big. They're also ridiculously slow, so what is you're point? I'm not saying there shouldn't be big weapons in DSII, just that weapons should be appropriately weighted. In the videos released so far the weapons look too light, and make the game look twitchy.

 

[Karellen]

Yeah, those weapons are ridiculously big. They're also ridiculously slow, so what is you're point? I'm not saying there shouldn't be big weapons in DSII, just that weapons should be appropriately weighted. In the videos released so far the weapons look too light, and make the game look twitchy.

I'm not sure why you keep going on about this. Both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls feature plenty of weapons that are not "appropriately weighted", in the sense that they're obviously far too large to be swung one-handed by a real human in the first place. So, from a thematic perspective, there's no argument to be made that the huge greatsword from the Warrior video is somehow incongruous with the precedent set by the earlier games. That aside, we see all of two attacks with the weapon, one of which has its animation interrupted from hitting the wall, so that's not really enough to build a clear picture of how it handles. At any rate, while the attacks are quite abrupt, the recovery time seems to be substantial, which is not too different from how greatswords handle in the earlier games. The Meat Cleaver in Demon's Souls is even bigger and about as fast as this.

To my knowledge, the talk within the Dark Souls community is that across the board, the weapon animations we've seen from DAII are a bit faster than in the first game, but still slower than in Demon's Souls, a game that is usually not considered to be twitchy. Looking at the other videos, it seems to me that the axe and polearm in the Temple Knight video both have very slow, deliberate attacks, so it seems to me that the sort of calculating, strategic timing of blows that Dark Souls was about is still in. So all you really have left is that you don't like huge swords that handle lighter than is strictly realistic. That's perfectly fair, but you really have no case if you're suggesting that the same is not true of the earlier games too.

 

[praetor]

Yeah, those weapons are ridiculously big. They're also ridiculously slow, so what is you're point? I'm not saying there shouldn't be big weapons in DSII, just that weapons should be appropriately weighted. In the videos released so far the weapons look too light, and make the game look twitchy.

but from your posts you were okay with the paper-weight characters and hugass weapons in DeS. so far these new ones seem like they're somewhere in between the relatively realistic weight/feel/speed of DkS and the way too fast, almost weightless DeS paper weapons

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Even though it's an order of magnitude smaller, it still animates with realistic weight and momentum.

I think I prefer hugeass animu swords, at least they don't pretend they're realistic.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Even though it's an order of magnitude smaller, it still animates with realistic weight and momentum.

I think I prefer hugeass animu swords, at least they don't pretend they're realistic.

...

That is modeled after a real sword. If anything, Dark Souls exaggerated the weight of the Zweihander.



edit: oh wait, you were talking about the Claymore? uh... I'm not sure how to respond to that.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Even though it's an order of magnitude smaller, it still animates with realistic weight and momentum.

I think I prefer hugeass animu swords, at least they don't pretend they're realistic.

...

That is modeled after a real sword. If anything, Dark Souls exaggerated the weight of the Zweihander.



edit: oh wait, you were talking about the Claymore? uh... I'm not sure how to respond to that.

My point bro, is exactly that the DS Claymore handles as if it was thrice as heavy as the real thing. Even actual historical Zweihanders didn't go above 3 kg, a heavier sword was simply impractical. Not to mention Zweihanders were often handled in a polearm-like fashion, with one hand gripping the blade above the primary guard - precisely because swinging them like your character does in DS is suicidal in the real world.

 

[AN4RCHID]

It is bigger than a real Zweihander, and it handles as though it were bigger. There obviously needs to be a line of verisimilitude drawn somewhere in any fantasy work. I liked where it was drawn in Dark Souls. I wouldn't have minded it moving closer to realism, I don't love seeing it move closer to fantasy. Personal preference, etc...

 

[Xi]

I think the game is realistic enough. Too much realism is a bad thing when it comes to a fantasy game (IMHO). If the combat is similar to the first game, then it is good enough, because the combat was fantastic in DS.

 

[Jasede]

You guys don't "get" games... I am wondering if you ever did.
At least you get RPGs for the most part; I can appreciate that. But when incline in any other genre spits you in the face you still somehow fail to see what's important in a non-RPG non-TB game, as if you were experts in only one field.

Try to focus on what is important and don't get distracted by details like "it seems faster/slower/heavier/lighter. That sucks."
In a game with dozens times dozens of weapons, all of different yet somewhat cohesive style, all with different weights, styles, speeds, some explained from the lore, others from their size and some that way to fill gameplay niches. It's too early to comment on any weapons at this point or speculate about something like this.

 

[St. Toxic]

It's never too early to speculate, but reach conclusions? Sure.

 

[AN4RCHID]

You guys don't "get" games... I am wondering if you ever did.
At least you get RPGs for the most part; I can appreciate that. But when incline in any other genre spits you in the face you still somehow fail to see what's important in a non-RPG non-TB game, as if you were experts in only one field.

Try to focus on what is important and don't get distracted by details like "it seems faster/slower/heavier/lighter. That sucks."
In a game with dozens times dozens of weapons, all of different yet somewhat cohesive style, all with different weights, styles, speeds, some explained from the lore, others from their size and some that way to fill gameplay niches. It's too early to comment on any weapons at this point or speculate about something like this.

Hey, if this was directed at me, Dark Souls is one of my favorite games of the last decade. Probably one of my favorites of all time. I have really high standards for a sequel, which is why I'm so critical.