I thought I’d make this thread for those that also played the first session today. I played for three hours today. I’m not the best when it comes to explaining things but I’ll do my best and I’ll try not to make a wall of text. I’d like to hear your impressions too.
If there was any doubt, it’s 100% Dark Souls in a open world. Would have made all the sense in the world to call this Dark Souls 4. When it comes to combat in general, the way your character moves, the animations, the atmosphere, the level structure when it comes to dungeons and such…it’s DS in every single way.
Also the reusing of some attacks from the Souls games such as the backstab.
Being able to jump is nice!
Bonfires are called Sites of Grace and I’m happy that they offer you plenty of these, it being open world and enemies respawning after death it would have been annoying if these were spread out too much.
I noticed I received potions quite often after killing enemies, at first I thought it was with every slain enemy but it seems it’s about killing a group and then you get a potion again, unless you’re still at max.
You can pick up stuff in the world and craft things, but you need to buy a crafting kit from a merchant first. Also at this merchant there’s a option to ask him what he recommends you to buy, in this case it was the crafting kit.
Runes are souls, if you die you lose them and you need to retrieve them, if you die before doing so they’re gone, just like Souls.
It’s faster than Souls, which is a good thing, but I really would have liked to have the dodge from Bloodborne or Sekiro, but it’s still the roll.
I’ve tried the warrior and enhanced knight I believe he’s called. Boss fights are hard as ever, I could not kill that dude you also see in the trailer, me still sucking at evading attacks, rolling through attacks at the right time doesn’t help either. I tried to summon people or AI but I kept getting unable to summon ally .
It was nice though, but now after having played it I don’t know if I’m just over (hopefully temporarily) Souls games a little or if it’s something else because right now for me I’m not sure it’s a day one buy for me.
There are plenty of empty spaces, that’s true, but having the horse helps a lot with this. But many games actually have this. Witcher 3, Skyrim, personally I didn’t mind this all that much.
LAME, I hate this backtracking mechanic in souls games, how important are Runes in this game? I HATE dying and having to trek back fighting respawned enemies just to get my stuff back.
Runes are souls, if you die you lose them and you need to retrieve them, if you die before doing so they’re gone, just like Souls.
I would say they are super important because you use them to upgrade at the Maiden and you also buy stuff with it. But to be honest, I wanted to explore the most I could of this world (well until you see the visible transparent walls keeping you from going further) so I didn’t bother much with trying to get the runes back and upgrade. But I’ll do that in the next session.
It isn’t too bad actually, not that far away and in the case it is you can summon your steed and run to the area where they are and ignore most of the enemies. Sneaking is also cool and can definitely help to avoid fights if you don’t want to take em on.
I died in a cave and near the entrance there were enemies before, but they weren’t anymore. So it does seem like not every enemy respawns. But in the gameplay video last week we saw a camp like area, I killed all baddies here except one which proved to outsmart me…I died and the whole camp had respawned,lol.
I checked the game first with VRR off and even in performance mode I started noticing hiccups in the framerate outside, it was smooth as butter in closed off starting area.
I enabled VRR and it was one smooth ride from there, it’s crazy what a game changer VRR truly is. At the same time it’s definitely unfortunate for those that don’t have that option. This was in performance mode by the way. Quality mode is not how I want to experience a open world anymore.
Good impressions Staffy. I have watched a few gameplay videos and I must admit that im buying this day one and will give it a chance despite not being a fan of souls games at all but the open world looks great, love that magic appears to be powerful and having crouching/stealth like in Sekiro also helps.
Watching MKIce&Fire’s 30 minute walkthrough and I notice that there’s all these bloodstains on the ground that can be touched. What are these? Is there anything to them?
Those are exactly like Dark Souls. If you interact with them you can see the death of the player that probably jumped off a cliff (because some messages left by other players can trick you into believing there’s a secret down below, assholes, lol) or just where this player was killed by an enemy.
Are they having you make a different character for each session or can you use the same one in different sessions?
Also how much of the map do they have blocked off? I could imagine if it’s limited to a certain area people might be trying to glitch out of the boundaries to see more of the game.
Okay, gotcha. One other question, can you swim in the game? My guess is no because in the gameplay I just watched, the player goes in a cave and when he comes out, he ends up on the small island he was previously looking at. Thanks Staffy.
I can just continue with the one I left off with but they let you choose between three classes. Warrior, enchanted knight and the mage. But I saw a video by Shirrako and he was able to choose many, but maybe he played a different version by Namco or I was not looking right.
The next session is in a hour from now and I’ll make sure to check if there are more classes to choose from.
As soon as you get out of the starting building you have a big space to explore and after that boss fight there’s even more to explore but I didn’t manage to get there yet because I kept dying at the boss, I think I suck, lol. But I watched that video by Shirrako and he had a big area after the castle boss fight that he could explore. There’s really a whole lot, so I am guessing the game world overall is going to be gigantic if they are willing to let us play and see this much.
Doesn’t seem we can swim sadly no. Yesterday I was at a beach in the game and in the near distance I saw a island but I saw there was no ground under the water and I did see a bloodstain, that told me all I needed to know. So I do wonder how to get to that island.
Lol, my bad. But I wonder which cave it is because the one cave I found led to a boss fight and not really an exit. Unless…it was after that fight. But I died there too, lol. It’s time to go for another session now.
