dying less than I'd like...? Does that make sense?
Not much to me. Some masochistic tendencies? ;) 

That it should have skill settings not just to tone down the difficulty but also increase it for veterans/perverts.

The dungeon is the 2nd most boring place after the underground fire tomb lake corridor things....but each to their own huh. The Health Drain is evil but a neat trick IMO. Keeps you on your toes. Profaned is semi-tiny despite appearances and the boss fight is pretty much a gimmick. HTH. 

Well, I beat the game. I'll summarize the rest of the journey since the last post.

***Super Spoilers***


I like the inclusion of Anor Londo and the whole spiel of Aldrich munching on some Gywndolin doritos. I loved the Aldrich boss fight and room but sadly I bested him on the first go...once you close the distance with him he is pretty defenseless. Aldrich's boss room is probably my favorite location in the game.

Yorhm (sp) the Giant was pure gimmick but a nice homage to Demon's Souls with the Storm Ruler sword. I would have liked this fight be something that wasn't a Lord of Cinder. As it stands, that fight takes about 5 charge ups to defeat the giant regardless of your skills/weapons. He didn't get me once.

Dancer of the Valley is a different story, pretty intense fight and that one spin move is frightening. I had to finally switch away from my warden twinblades +8 to my black knight sword +3 for this fight so I can appreciate that! Took about 3 tries.

Lorthic castle is fun, but I did not get a "final" vibe from the place...just seemed like a continuation of the high wall. But the Dragonslayer Armor may be my favorite boss. This guy took at least half a dozen attempts and I had to learn all of his patterns to walk away with just 1 estus. The burning butterflies are not cheap as you get plenty of time to compensate...just a great fight.

Grand Archives just feels like more Lorthic and not a new area...although the wax head mages are funky.

Lorian and Lorthic are a fun fight, and I knew it was going to have a second phase and indeed it did. At first I thought it was overkill but I really enjoyed the dynamic the duo provided. 2 or 3 tries...can't remember.

Consumed King Oceiros (sp) appeared difficult on the first go, but on the second try I found if you stay almost under him, he really can't do much but hop away. Loved the inclusion of this place in general...completely unessential and I can appreciate that. Further more, it leads to two secret complete areas!

Untended graves is a trip and was very eerie to roam around...fire keeper's eyes...haunting. The champion gunther or whatever was a more aggressive version but nothing a single attempt couldn't achieve.

Would have never found Archdragon Peak without checking the wiki...that is just too convoluted to find on your own and offline. But wow is this place cool, not only super secret but also includes a large area, items, and 2 bosses! I loved the gimmick of the ancient wyvern and it was done in good taste...felt really good and that I actually accomplished something. I hesitated to ring that grand bell considering the dev warnings (Dev warnings in this game should be adhered!) but finally broke down and rang the sucker. Cool boss, really feels like the Ozma of FFIX or emerald weapon of FF7 in terms of non-essential but very tough fight. He took about 4 tries and again I had to learn his moves and patterns to make it out with zero estus!

Soul of Cinder was expected to be honest...another Gwyn-esque fight and it was a bit of a let down. Just another humanoid where you learn a couple of swipes and you are good to go. I think 3 tries to take him down. I can appreciate that he appeared to possess abilities of the first four lords so that is cool.

And that's it, I linked the fire and did some things and proceeded to NG+. I was too afraid to give the eyes to the fire keeper as it only sounded horrible but I will be sure to do so this cycle. I also completely missed out on the dark sigil quest line and would like to explore that as well.

Speaking of quests, a nitpick I have is how utterly convoluted some of these side quests are. I checked the wiki after beating the game and I am pretty sure I would have never found 3 of the covenants or how to continue 75% of the NPC's stories. There are so many failure points which I can appreciate but damn son. One example is Patches. I did the CotD in such a way that I never triggered his event. This means I would have to purposefully go to the fully explored tower, ride the lift and back down to trigger him...never would have done that without internet assistance. Oh well minor nitpick.

In summary, I think DSIII tied the three games together quite well. I found a lack of locales in this game but the ones present were fantastic. I found this game to be a smidgen more difficult than 2(Not including DLCs), and 1 harder than both. I think the most challenging boss was probably Dragonslayer Armor or maybe the Dancer with Nameless King a close runner up. The new DLC just came out and I imagine some of you folks will be playing it so I may have to stay away from the thread for a while! Thanks for reading.

One more note is that I played this game (And the previous) entirely offline. I enjoyed the brooding and oppressive isolation that this brings and I was never interested in PvP. Further more I never summoned an NPC to help because I feel that takes away the challenge from a boss. 

online play is the heart and soul of the game, it can ease off a lot of the supposed difficulty.

I disagree with this. The statement, not that I have an issue with fifth's playstyle.

I found that the DS1 online connectivity was to have a synchronous world where you realize others are struggling alongside you but not physically with you. The PvP exploded in popularity so of course it will be more infused in future titles. I have no problem with it but I feel having a white phantom distract a boss while you wail at its backside significantly lowers the intimidation (And by extension, the feel-goods when you overcome them) level of the fight. I would have to agree with Shambler and Orl.

I don't need to read a message in front of a statute of a woman that states: "Try holding with both hands."

Anyhoo that's just like my opinion man and I am happy the multiplayer aspect is there but more happy that we that players have a choice!

This is also more in regards to your first play through. Co-oping after the fact would be a different and more social experience I am sure. 

The champion gunther or whatever was a more aggressive version but nothing a single attempt couldn't achieve.

Think he took me 60 attempts or something??

Couldn't even contemplate doing Arse Dragon or Soul Of Chunder solo. 

This guy is way too fucking reasonable for this message board 😆 

I don't like toxicity so I try not to spread it if I can help it.

*Spoilers*



I assume arse dragon is Rider of the Storm? He was very intimidating and was quite difficult. The few points about soloing bosses I can say is I have been doing so since the first Dark Souls and never looked back. It could be that trained my Dark Souls boss mojo I don't know.

I am working on a thematic let's play of sorts where I am attempting a soul level 1 play through only using a certain thematic build. (Raw hand ax, light cross bow, weak ragged armor) I did so in Dark Souls 1 with the hollow thief's set and a fire hand ax and light crossbow and had a blast.

Soul level 1 demands picking the deprived class and I can say that Iudex Gundyr rocked my world about 6 times this time around...so I can imagine many of the bosses that appear to be infamous here are going to give their biggest grimace and gently whisper into my ear: "You brought this on yourself big boy." 

What are you even doing on func_ then? :p 

Who knows...

Let's go with something about Quake mapping discussions or some shit like that. 

woof 

Overall I enjoyed the dlc and would recommend it to anyone who wants more DS3 content. It clocks in at around the same size as Archdragon Peak so if you feel that is worth the cash then go ahead!

The new items are interesting as are the new enemies. The new bosses are fantastic and I guarantee the final boss will have you :O'ing

Fuck wolves though, seriously 

Hmm...

Thanks for the no spoiler mini review man! 

It's much longer than Archdragon's Peak. Feels like roughly 2 areas as one nicely connected whole. I wasn't disappointed. The level design is great, the difficulty feels like it slots in nicely as something to do after Archdragon... the biggest criticism I can offer is I feel like it could've used 1 extra boss, but the 2 there that were in the DLC were interesting and fun fights. 

I started playing this a little while ago, with my normal character, having finished the full game (level 110 or something). Not NG+. IIRC, the DLC was feeling a bit easy at first?? Am I grossly OP for it? Is it designed to either be reached on NG+ or reached by starting over so you have a COTD-level character?

Cheers bromiez. 

There's a note at the beginning of the DLC area suggesting it's for players who are "deep into Castle Lothric", so something around level 60-80. You should be a bit OP, but then again, even on the recommended level range, I found the majority of enemies to be easy, only two or three types are quite tough. And then there's the bosses... 

The design of the game looks cool, I will play it once i get my new computer.

The game looks dark, unlike Diablo 3 that looked like a Disney movie.

The Textures have abit too much detail, and the lighting looks abit flat at moments, this makes the game look messy. I think there can be a compromise between looking like a disney movie or looking like a mess of details.

The typography is also bad, and they HUD-design is also just squares, something like hexen and diablo 1 had good HUD design, imo.

There are moments where the game looks really good, where foreground, middlground and background are nicely separated and legible.
http://imgur.com/a/fw19j

but even in this example the character get blended to the surroundings... Doom 2016 graphics were legible without totally looking like a disney movie.


I dont neceserally dislike the disney movie feel but i think the style is starting to dominate too much. Overwatch, diablo 3, hearthstone, wow... 

I notice the BB abbreviation was about BlazBlue, but so much of this thread has virtually no information on BB. I accept both Dark Souls' and BlazBlue's existences, but still I think a comparison of BB's gameplay with that of DS3 is needed. 

The BB abbreviation was also about Bloodbourne I think. 

Oh well, don't compare BlazBlue to Dark Souls 3 in this thread. My mistake, because BlazBlue's a fighting game. (unless you want to state the fact that it was going to be an RPG at first before becoming the fighter it is now) 

Ok so my opinion is that the bosses in souls games rock because they force the player to master the game in order to progress. This trickles down in to all the combat mechanics and makes the player engage with their character build in a way that I haven't really experienced in another game.

In the other corner there are players who hate the bosses because they see them as a giant artificial difficulty spike that gets in the way of the enjoyment of exploration and discovery.

I am interested to hear people's opinions on this and also what they think the souls games could do better in this area. 

As someone who heard of From Software during the Armored Core days, I think Dark Souls is similar to an old 1990s RPG series named King's Quest, which was developed by From. Of course, DaZ, you haven't played King's Quest and Armored Core in general, but still I think we gamers need to pay attention to those two series and how similar they are to Souls, because they were important for From's success in the 1990s and 2000s. By the way, please note that Armored Core is a series of mecha video games. 

1. Difficulty spike is extremely disproportionate compared to main game. I.e. not 5-10 times as difficult but more like 20-50 times.

2. Co-oping them is laughably easy i.e. a boss that is 50 times harder than a mob will only be twice as hard as a mob in coop.

3. Definitely does NOT distill combat mechanics down as the mechanics are very different to the mobs: Less exploring around mobs, less drawing them out, less use of scenery, instead repetitive attempts at learning one enemy's attacks.

4. Thematically out of place on the following counts:
A. Boss arenas completely disparate and separate to the complex and interconnected aesthetics in the rest of the game.
B. Lengthy repetitive boss combat spoils the general flow of exploration.
C. Being locked into an arena is unthematically artifical.
D. Basically goes from an action RPG to a beat-em-up fighting game and back again.

5. Bonfire save points often pointlessly far from the boss arena (and equally pointlessly near afterwards).

6. Huge difficulty spike particularly exacerbates lack of difficulty settings. 

If the bosses were well balanced, harder than mobs but not 2+ hours on 1 arena hard, were set in more complex and well themed areas, encouraged use of tactics and reactions rather than just repetitive learning, were significantly boosted for coop, weren't locked in as arenas, had better save points then they would be fine.

As it happens a lot of the bosses are aesthetically spectacular (as are many of the mobs) but are wasted in completely out-of-place gameplay. 

<Shambler> i am assuming that 90% of the gameplay will be fine and the bosses with be stupid out of context boring arenas that are unplayably difficult
<Daz_> I mean you're wrong but I cba to argue
<Shambler> BECAUSE WHY HAVE ANY FORM OF BALANCE???
<skacky_> DS3 bosses are honestly not too hard compared to bloodborne
<Shambler> that doesn't mean they're good skacky
<skacky_> with the possible exception of pontiff sulyvahn or nameless king
<Shambler> also half the people on func cooped them anyway
<skacky_> I think they're very good
<skacky_> well soul of cinder is also pretty difficult, gwyn it isn't
<Shambler> aesthetically maybe
<Daz_> learning and eventually beating the bosses is one of the best parts of souls for me :P
<skacky_> it's funny because I find the levels harder than the bosses in souls games
<skacky_> except in bloodborne
<skacky_> one exception would be DS1 anor londo, it's a really hard level with an equally hard boss
<skacky_> ornstein and smough gave me PTSD
<skacky_> but then you have blighttown which is hard as fuck and quelaag which is very easy in comparison
<skacky_> or catacombs and fucking pinwheel
<Shambler> levels are mostly easy and great fun
<Daz_> FUCK catacombs
<Shambler> learning and eventually beating the bosses is by far the worst, most boring, most out of place, more repetitive, most immersion spoiling pile of shit in any game, especially ds3
<Daz_> and BlightTown
<Shambler> you get this amazing fantasy world to explore, full of interconnected madness, amazing atmosphere, bonkers monsters and such a cool vibe
<skacky_> and strong opponents to prove your worth
<skacky_> makes perfect sense to me
<Shambler> then it all just fucking stops for 2 hours as you do the same thing over and over a-fucking-gain in some arbitrary arena counting fucking attack timings and getting bored off your fucking tits and all that immersion just flies out the fucking window
<skacky_> the poison swamp in DS3 is pretty difficult but it's just a far easier blighttown
<Shambler> strong opponents are fine
<Shambler> the tougher mob enemies are good
<Shambler> you have to try hard and fight hard but it's part of a satisfying process
<@Bal> the only thing that kept the bosses bearable for me was reading up how to kill them online after my first attempt at each
<Shambler> repeating the same damn arena is the dullest thing ever
<skacky_> you're really weird
<Shambler> no you are
<skacky_> I have tons of fun figuring out how to beat a boss
<skacky_> I'm not the only one
<skacky_> a lot of people love souls games because of the bosses
<skacky_> yeah losing your souls can be annoying but that's part of the game
<Shambler> yes there's a fucking bunch of you, and pandering to your weird fucking puritanical work ethic maschocism ruins what would be a pretty much perfect game
<@Bal> I don't mind them soo much, but I probably would have stopped playing the games without a wiki :D
<@Bal> just cause I'd get bored redoing them over and over
<skacky_> also it's really satisfying to beat a boss on your first attempt in your first run (wink wink nito)
<Daz_> git gud
<Shambler> there you go daz
<Shambler> you ARE the problem
<Daz_> lol
<Shambler> bal is correct
<skacky_> I always loved the really epic (I fucking hate that word but here it's perfecly appropriate) feeling you get when you fight a boss
<skacky_> it's the culmination of all your trials and tribulations in the gauntlet before 

<Shambler> skacky, they can be epic without being dull, imba, repetitive
<skacky_> honestly there's not a single DS3 boss that is imba
<Daz_> I don't agree with you at all Shambler. DS series is s breath of fresh air where you have to actually demonstrate mastery of the game in order to progress.
<Shambler> skacky, if it was remotely proportional to the trials before, like only up to 10 times harder instead of 200 times harder, it might make sense
<skacky_> exactly
<@Bal> they aren't imba, but I feel they are very frustrating if you go at them with no info at all
<Shambler> daz: tell that to scampie and czg who cooped the bosses i did solo
<skacky_> Shambler a lot of people play these games solo
<Shambler> also for me, DS3 was great becaose of everything else
<Daz_> well coop is there if you've had enough
<skacky_> I do, I don't play coop
<Daz_> its the relief valve
<Shambler> also if people want miserably boring and frustrating games, that's what skill settings are for
<skacky_> if you want an imba boss look no further than bed of chaos
<Shambler> no i don't
<Shambler> i want quality, balance, pleasure
<skacky_> there is not a single boss in DS3 that is remotely like bed of chaos
<Daz_> because it was bad
<Shambler> anyway i really liked rotted greatwood, only took 2 goes but that was spectacular because it was spectacular
<skacky_> yeah but greatwood is piss easy
<Shambler> bonkers boss, dramatic events, etc etc
<Shambler> obviously for 1337 git gudders like you
<skacky_> not, greatwood is just a pushover
<@Bal> greatwood was the tree testicles?
<skacky_> it's really hard to die against him unless you're really stupid
<skacky_> yes
<@Bal> yeah that's one of the few I got first try
* Daz_ is really stupid
<skacky_> lol
<Shambler> Daz: <Daz_> git gud
<skacky_> iudex gundyr was probably the single best first boss in the souls series
<@Bal> I'm still mad onion knight died right away against the big sword guy, wtf
<Shambler> iudex gaycunt was fine yes
<Shambler> that seemed nicely balanced
<@Bal> I read online "don't worry onion knight will kill him alone"
<@Bal> onion knight runs in, instadeath
<Daz_> weird
<skacky_> Bal siegfried does insane damage against yhorm
<Daz_> he took a few hits on my game and was ok
<Shambler> also coop is a kinda skill setting for bosses......except it's stupidly easy
<skacky_> you can effectively just run around and let him fight yhorm for you
<@Bal> he literally didn't have time to attack once
<skacky_> lel
<@Bal> yeah that's what I started doing
<Daz_> too much Seigbrau man
<@Bal> for 5 seconds, before he died :D
<Shambler> if mobs = 1x difficulty, then tougher bosses = 200x difficulty, and coop = 1.5x difficulty
<skacky_> but then again yhorm is probably the only "bad" boss in the game
<skacky_> because you need a special weapon to beat him
<Daz_> no
<Daz_> I killed him in my 1st playthrough with regular
<skacky_> and he's definitely not as fun as storm ruler in demon's souls who uses the exact same gimmick
<Daz_> with no onionman
<@Bal> it was ok
<skacky_> how many hours did you take Daz_ lol
<Daz_> fucking forever
<skacky_> well yeah I mean you can beat him like that
<skacky_> but the 'intended' way to beat him is with stormruler
<Daz_> I just thought that was how the boss was
<Daz_> didnt notice the sword pickup at his throne
<Shambler> daz i bet that was the best bit of the game by far eh, i mean forget the madness of the first town, or the beauty of ithryll, or the interconnected splendour of cathdreal, i bet doing that boss fight over and fucking over for hours really made the game
<Daz_> the worst part of the souls games are hte fucking quests tbh
<skacky_> some people seem to dislike ancient wyvern but it's not really a boss per se, more of a gauntlet with a boss creature in it
<Shambler> what a pair of cunts you both are, i can't believe i've actually had some serious discussions with you morons in the past
* Shambler puts everyone on ignore except bal