>>11422
It sucks I'll never get to play Bloodborne unless I pick up a ps4 cheap in a few years or step up my gaming PC when emulation becomes pretty viable for PS4.
I want to play it. I picked up a ps3 late in it's run like 2010 or so and nabbed Demon's Souls on a whim and loved it.
Should give Dark Souls 3 a try too though. Heard pretty mixed things. 2 was really unbareable for me I could never put my finger on why exactly. Everything just felt off. Like someone photocopied Dark Souls slightly off center or something.

>>11423
3's problems are multiple so this is going to be a rather lengthy (maybe series of them?) post.

Poise is fucked up, you only get poise bonuses while attacking or preforming moves. Long gone are the days of tanking an attack and running through it. Another thing that pisses me off is that the magic system has gone balls deep into the whole MP/AP bar bullshit. Long gone are the times of carefully deciding what to fill up your attunement slots with and knowing EXACTLY how many spells you can carry. Now needless complexity was introduced via a shitty bar on the HUD. Honestly it's been so long since I've played DS2 so I don't remember if this cancer started there. Additionally the ring number from 2 has not gone down, making ring management a joke again.

One positive note is that Humanity was done away with, and healing consumables from 2's cancerous bullshit too. So while the stats minmaxing has gone to shit, health item minmaxing has not. Meaning you don't have to worry about some faggot with 99 humanities/Healing Crystals invading you. Additionally you can't go into a boss fight with some bullshit like 99 humanities and pretty much make it a cake walk if you turtle hard enough. This time it's something called Embers and there's a limited number of them, it's not low AT ALL, but it's not a renewable resource either unless you play lots of COOP sine you're rewarded one every time you COOP a boss successfully. IIRC it's something like 50 or 70 embers you can get , so if you approach DaS3 as a singleplayer game, these are really valuable, additionally when you use one you can be invaded, however as a positive you get 30% more health. Finally the flask has been nerfed to only allowing you 15 heals instead of 20.

Now on to the core of gameplay, movement sets and hitboxes. Hitboxes are back to DaS1's old glory days for the most part albeit they're a little bit lenient when it comes to a player's own hitbox. What do I mean? The player's hitboxes for weaponry are anywhere from a foot, to half a foot bigger than what they seem. Don't know why they did this though, but IMHO it's possibly due to PVP. Which I will touch VERY LIGHTLY later. So is player hitboxes being larger than it seems for weapons the only issue? Not at all, in PVE the hitboxes for enemy weaponry while consistent does have a bullshit factor to them. The bullshit factor is that if an enemy's weapon clips through a wall, object or other entity, if it looks like it will hit you, it will hit you.

To be fair this problem happened from time to time in Dark Souls 1, and players could even exploit it to kill Silver Knights through walls in Anor Lando for example, if you had a Spear with a swiping move set or a Halberd. However DaS came out YEARS AGO additionally this is not From's first RPG, nor second, they've been making RPGs and games with Melee Fighting mechanics since Otogi 1 and 2. Bullshit like this at this point in the souls series is just not acceptable anymore and some players have made a fuss about it righteously so.

>>11424
Now on to the level design, the level design has been dumbed down severely, what do I mean? The game has A VERY CLEAR progression to it with some areas blatantly being locked out for the player. So, due to this DaS2's bullshit "star" pattern of level design is back, but this time the star is a bit crooked and has a few nook and crannies to it here and there, but there's no real inter-connectivity between the levels anymore. I've seen all sorts of analysis on why this happened, and the ones I agree with the most is that fucking casuals who hate exploring and backtracking is what killed the interconnected level design of DaS 1.

So instead of an interconnected world laden with shortcuts along with hubs that have well thought out functionalities to their detours are long gone now. Long gone is that eerie feel you get when you notice that the environment around you is getting progressively darker, foggy or hellish. These have now been replaced by isolated cities and settlements that barely look like they belong in the same continent and sometimes even world and a shitty warp menu. Now don't misunderstand me, the levels look really gorgeous at times but the exploration is just so linear now due to how isolated the world segments are. More over the world no longer feels like it could exist or have some functionality, it instead feels very gamelike.

One could argue that DaS2 and 3 have an emphasis on designing levels for a video game instead of one giant level and then have that be the world if that makes any sense to you. Which causes a lot of misery in my heart to be honest.

As an example, it's not like in DaS where if you're bold and stupid enough as a newbie you could explore the catacombs and die horribly while getting some powerful jacked up loot. It's not like in DaS where you can skip the Taurus Demon by going through New Londo to the Valley of the Drakes, straight to Dark Root Basin and then straight to the rest of the game without even fighting him, or cheesing him with upgraded gear from Andre at the Undead Parish or Sorceries or Pyromancy from Laurentius and Griggs. Moreover, long gone is the ability to tackle the bosses in any order you want because of this. In some DaS runs I decide to kill Quelaag first by cheesing her with toxic and then using her souls to upgrade pyromancy or weaponry. The exploration and exploitation of the map's design has been killed and reduced to nothing more but nooks and crannies and trick jumps.

This makes for a very limiting experience, however a much more casual and hand holding one. Similarly a lot more attention was put in place to not let players cheese bosses with ranged weaponry. Granted the Hellkite SORT OF had this by making it expensive to do it without a very upgraded bow, but the point still stands. This can be argued as a good thing however, since I'm not gonna lie in some runs of DaS I have been a faggot and cheesed Capra with Dung Pies I collected from skipping Taurus to get early access to better Pyromancies.

Finally to another meat and bones about gamplay, enemy design, the enemies are much more Lovecraftian than ever before. Miyazaki's boner over Lovecraft has gotten too strong to contain over the years, some enemies will have long grotesque limbs growing out of them and in general inhuman shapes to them. Humanoids are still a plenty, but get ready to dodge a barrage of eldricht abomination tentacles from time to time every once in a while. This in turn has affected the gameplay making it much more mobility focused as well thanks to the removal of proper poise.

In other news, there's now more variety in magic caster type enemies. Due to the fact that magic is still pretty hard to block unless you have very specific shields, yet again we see an emphasis on movement speed over planning and preptime of gear.

Oh and I forgot to mention, that a place called Farron Keep is DaS3's equivalent to Blight Town, just without the god awful performance drops of course. It's not as awful as Demon's Souls or Dark Soul's swamp levels, but it's still annoying.

>>11425
First run in Dark Souls tbh, I somehow didn't see the one path going up to the Undead Burg and tried to struggle through both the Catacombs and New Londo for longer than I care to admit and I had played Demon's Souls lol.

Thanks for the indepth posts dude. I'll keep it in mind. I'll probably by DaS3 if/when it gets a pretty serious price reduction on Steam.

Sucks though, part of what made DaS feel really good exploring was the inter connected and cohesive nature of everything.
It was the first 3d game that I know of that really captured that feeling. Obviously it takes some work but it's those little things imo that really seperate games from being a good game and something you can look back on and have some really fond standout memories of.
That something that makes you realize something, when it clicks you know.

>>11427
Lol don't worry, on my first run I struggled through the Catacombs and nearly rage quitted the game as a whole since the Nito fight is cockblocked due to obvious reasons. This was done in reaction to not being able to tickle the Gargoyles mind you. Anyhow I thought the yellow light was a glitch or something and was desperately looking for a key or some mechanism to remove the yellow light while upgrading my strength to properly wield a Zweihander and be able to 4 shot skeletons comfortably. Looking back on it, it wouldn't have done much of a difference and I would have gotten 1-3 shotted by Nito due to my shitty gear and knowledge about game mechanics. The good thing is that I asked on /v/ what the fuck I was doing wrong and sure enough I was told I was being retarded and to not try to go deeper into the Catacombs. Also, I didn't learn about the Valley of the Drakes shortcut for blight town until I rage quitted another save at Blight Town and decided to make a new game and explore the map around to find some more powerful gear. Best decision I ever made in the game, I fucking love that shortcut now, fuck Blight Town.

All in all it took me 2 fucked up, shitty save files to learn how to beat the game. My first successful build was a strength and dex build focused on ranged combat. Specifically in using the Pike and Bow and Arrow.

>>11428
I gave up my first run because I got to Ash Lake while cursed and could not for the life of me make it back to a higher bonfire.
I'm surprised you got that far into the catacombs. I couldn't make it far enough to kill the first necromancer or whatever to keep the skellies from re-forming. I got pretty good at trying to get them to jump off for the most part but it was a pretty high risk/reward strategy.

>>11427
Whoops, I forgot to talk about PVP! Since I'll be honest, I like playing DaS in singleplayer, which is why I love the first so much.

Dark Souls 3's PVP still suffers from Network problems due to p2p faggotry. And the good things from DaS2's PVP, those being that allied summonings or invaders can't heal, was done away with. Meaning that fights of attrition like in Blood Borne and late portions of DaS are very common all throughout the game. Additionally the PVP suffers from the hitboxes of the weapons being slightly bigger than they appear due to networking issues.

You'll think you dodged a swing from a gigantic fucking grave sword, but it turns out you didn't! Whoops go get fucked XDDDD!!111! It's annoying and I really wish Jap developers knew how to code proper multiplayer games. They've shown they can via the Oldschool DOA series when Tomonobu Itagaki was still in charge.

>>11429
I did because I pussied out from a lot of the Skeletons and would go straight for the Necromancers. Mind you I was running around with a Zwei as well which, has C and D scaling for Strength and Dex. I was literally praying sprying R1 plowing through Skeleton shields to get to the Necromancers. Plus those 20 estus you can get thanks to Pinwheel via the kindling ritual are useful as fuck.

>>11430
I'm retarded what I meant to type is that due to the player hitbox for weapons being slightly bigger than what they appear, they make multiplayer a shit show.

Here's a good video on youtube displaying this

https://youtube.com/watch?v=H-fplak7u44 [Embed]

As you'll see the hitbox for weapons is anywhere from a foot, to half a foot bigger than what they appear.

Did the Dark Souls 3 DLC ever reveal who was branded with the Dark Sign? Were people just captured at random, or were special candidates chosen? Were they chosen after they died, or before?

I've seen some people theorize that people are branded when they're dead due to the Dark Souls 1 Lore Cinematic

Anyone hyped for Dark Souls Remastered?

>>11433
I'm gonna multi post here, but whatever;

I have a theory on these questions but I'm too impatient to see other's thoughts on the subject. I think that the Dark Sign was placed on those who not only were useful to the gods but deemed dangerous due to this, but to those who are seen as a threat. In essence human warriors who achieved great power were cursed with the sign.

Why? Well if you recall, Humans who have their humanity drive them mad turn into the awful creatures, Manus included, we see in the Oolacile DLC in DaS1. It's my belief that the undead curse was developed in response to the Oolacile incident in order to manipulate and control humans they deemed too powerful appropriately. This is why so much emphasis is placed on the plundering of the grave of primeval man, they perturbed his grave and probably offered humanity to it.

In essence the Dark Sign is just a way to seal away mankind's raw power potential.

The reason why all humans who achieve enough power are seen as threats is because as the DLC in DaS3 confirms, man is in fact a direct descendant of the Furtive Pygmy, in fact after he, many followed suit. There was in fact multiple pygmy kings. Whether he created them or not, is a mystery, but from one many came. This doesn't explain however just what is the abyss, since even though Dragons can survive it as shown by Kalameet, it still doesn't explain why dragons can be corrupted by the Abyss after they consume it long enough. It still doesn't explain why humans can be corrupted by the abyss either.

Maybe the Abyss is just a side effect of the flame and the TRUE equilibrium state is the primordial, boring, grey land full of Everlasting Dragons, and clams. Regardless one thing has not changed humanity is fucked unless they turn into Dragonoids, fuck over the gods and quarantine the Abyss.

>>11441
>MFW there's a shitload of shit eaters unironically saying IT'S A REMASTER NOT A REMAKE and other retarded shit like that

And then when you mention stuff like Skyrim, Halo CE Anniversary, and many other remasters they start making up bullshit on the spot. Shit like this is why I've long stopped calling myself a "gamer", because most "gamers" are brain dead faggots who defend anti consumer practices just to get another video game high.

>>11475
I'm so angry I forgot to put in a reaction image

It's not a genre. Dark Souls is a 3rd person ARPG.