Dark Souls Revisited - 2 - The Power that Be

Progress update: Beat Taurus Demon, circled back through and got the ladder for the Undead Burg bonfire.

I don't think I'm having fun with Dark Souls this playthrough.  My build is a Priest who has been varying between one and two handing whatever weapon I pick up.  I think I know what part of the problem is too.  I want to talk this out, who knows, maybe I'll change my mind by the end.

The first issue is that I am higher levelled than I was in my initial playthrough.  This will feed into a later issue, I can definitely tell that I am stronger than I was the first time through.  I will agree that knowing more about this game makes it easier, but that doesn't make the game itself easy.  Knowing where precisely to put your stat gains might be the single most powerful bit of information you can have though.  Dumping most of my points into Strength and Vitality let me breeze through fodder enemies.  I still feel nothing but tension facing them, as I know how bad things can get in the game, and I know that I'm a bad hitstun away from dying, but this tension is different than before.  Now, I'm playing a game of rocket tag, where first strike usually wins.  This is certainly a wild departure from what my first playthrough was.

This leads to the second thing: Playing one/two hand melee just doesn't have the range of options or approaches that I like.  Basically, I have Heal as an extra estus flask, then I either circle strafe or charge in and cleave an enemy.  This isn't fun gameplay for me.  This is weird too, because in most RPGs, including tabletop ones, I love to mix it up in melee.  I just end up having more to do outside of combat I suppose that supplements it.

I've taken a few breaks of a few days each, trying to figure out what I'm thinking about this.  At first, I thought to compare this to Dungeons and Dragons spellcasters, which often are the Right choice for any situation.  I had this whole thing planned out to talk at a tangent about the Quadratic Wizard/Linear Fighter dichotomy, but, the more I thought, the less accurate that felt.  Melee is starting to feel like a very linear FOOS strategy.  I wrote more about those here, but in short, a FOOS strategy is your Go-To that stays your strategy of choice until it stops working.  I feel like I've found that strategy early with melee, in that I just take the biggest number and biggest stat bonus, equip it, and either run in two handed or play a little cautious with shield.  This style of play isn't as engaging, to the point where I "wasted" a few points in Dexterity so I could use a bow.  I need these mixups and options in this game, because the enemies are so varied and the feeling of mitigating some tension by having a good tool for the job is exciting.

I want to compare this strong FOOS strategy to my Sorcerer, who I did have a Go-To strategy with, but it wasn't the only one I could employ, and I was able to mix things up regularly.  On my Sorcerer, I would frequently use Aural Decoy to distract some melee enemies.  Depending on the type of enemy, I would then either try to approach with Melee, or attack from afar with Soul Arrow and it's ilk.  This led to constant trade offs though.  I only had a finite number of Aural Decoys and ranged damaged spells.  Do I spend more than one Decoy on this enemy, if the first doesn't stick?  How many arrows do I shoot before switching to my sword?  Can I get a Heavy Soul Arrow off before they get in my face, or should I just hit them with a Greater Soul Arrow?

These types of thoughts made the moment to moment gameplay so much more engaging, and made the game so much better for me.  I know I'm not going to capture that same magic in subsequent playthrough of a game, that's just not how things work.  Experience and system mastery can help curb those things.  And it's not like I'm disinterested in finishing the DLC, it's just that I can definitely tell that I'm not having as much fun right now.  We'll see how long it is until I get a new weapon and try to spread out my stats into some weird gimmick.  There is a benefit to having a strong FOOS in this case.  It allows me to experiment on the fringes, while still being able to fall back on an extremely powerful option.  The trick is actually taking time to experiment, instead of just falling into the "I'm going to just be the best I can be" trap.  Only time will tell if I keep the experimentation up.

Wandering the Stars

Lately, I find myself enjoying games focused on exploration more and more.  The games I own or focus on playing are built around this idea where you're going to see what comes next.  My favorite parts of Dark Souls, for example, were seeing the different areas and how they were all different.  I especially admired the architecture in Anor Londo.  When I play MineCraft or Terraria, I like to see what the world has generated for me.  In the game that sparks this post, No Man's Sky, it's finding out what each new star system has in store for me.

When No Man's Sky launched, a lot of people were disappointed in it.  It wasn't as feature complete as the hype had led it to be believed.  Between the hype and the developers overpromising, the game was not received well.  Had I been able to play it at the time, though, I would have played at Launch, as the core concept of the game still appealed to me.  What can I say?  I'm susceptible to procedural generation. 

I just wanted to show off a cool planet I found, even though it's hostile.

In No Man's Sky and the above games, what really helps the exploration is the anchoring of your home.  A bonfire, a built base, a space station, they all act like a beacon back to safety and lets you think about what you've seen in safety.  Whether it is the hud marker in No Man's Sky or the Compass in Minecraft, knowing where your home is just gives you a sense of safety.  Knowing that, no matter how harrowing things get, you can get back.  No matter what twists and turns you take during exploration, finding home makes the exploration that much more impactful to me.  

You could compare No Man's Sky closer to Dark Souls in this aspect.  Unlike Minecraft or Terraria, when you hop star Systems, it becomes harder to access the home you had started to build. You can think of your built base with your machinery and farm like a highly Kindled Bonfire.  When you move to a new sector, there will be a space station, where you can buy and sell materials and talk to NPCs, but this would be comparable to a basic Bonfire.  Once you start building your base up on a new planet, it will be like setting up a new Bonfire as your base.  

I really enjoy just flying out and finding a new planet, seeing the new creatures, plants and animals.  It's so relaxing, even when you get into a space fight that damages your ship.  Combat isn't anything to write home about in the game, and it's not what I'm here.  I'm here to land on a planet, look up at the skyline, and see another planet in the distance.  Here is a screenshot I ended up taking where I was just enjoying the scenery.

I wish I had better words to explain how the exploration makes em feel.  It's a sense of fulfillment that I get from seeing new areas that fills me with more endorphins than beating any boss does.  I have not played a game that I can remember that makes me go "Oh, wow, I wonder what's over there" and "oh no, I need to get out of here RIGHT NOW" more than this game has.  The little descriptors of new animals you find are evocative and makes you fill in what the creature is like from what you see and that little blurb.  "Hs secondary skull", what does that mean?  Why would it need that?  "Has redundant organs" "Caustic Skin", and "Diet: Removed Hearts" are all evocative bits of lore and information that makes the creatures seem that much more alien.  It's such a wonderful thing to discover.   The words "Organic Rock" have caused me to flee the area in my ship, because just the thought of what it could be fills me with a feeling of "I should not be near that".  

This game isn't for everyone.  It isn't a detailed space sim, nor does it have a lot of interfactional interests that you need to deal with.  You aren't establishing or running your own empire or anything like that.  I like this solitary experience.  I like flying and exploring planets.  I like the light trading aspects the game has, where different sectors and planets can value different items different.  There's just a lot of little things that I really enjoy in this game, and it's all tied back into the core loop of "go and explore a new place, and return to your central base".  If flying the ship and seeing the planets was not as interesting, then it all falls apart.  Each new sector has something to offer, and I cannot wait to see it.

Dark Souls Revisited - 1 - A New Challenge

I am a goddamn liar.  I am a liar who cannot be trusted. 

Due to some stress in life, between work issues and an ongoing chronic illness making work harder for the past 2 months, I had reached a level of self-loathing where I decided I should go back to Dark Souls and hit up the DLC that I missed.  I had skipped the DLC in my first playthrough, as I was just getting frustrated with the zones and wanted to get to the end. 

Instead of running a New Game Plus with my Sorcerer, I went for a new game with a new character.  I'm rolling a Cleric this time, and took the Master Key as my starting item.  I had heard this would allow me to skip Blighttown, and that, my friends, is the best news I could ever hear. 

Part of this is to track how different the game is the second time through, and what I remember.  Obviously, some fold of my brain is remembering some general map information, and general tactics, but each fight still makes me nervous.  I'm not remembering precise enemy placement, but I remember vague things so far, like "oh hey, there's a Black Knight ahead guarding a chest.  Wonder how hard this will be" 

I've got about an hour and twenty minutes into the new playthrough.  Currently, I'm around level 5 or 6, and made a torpedo beeline from the Asylum, to Firelink, and then to the Undead Burg.  I had a push almost take me to the Taurus Demon fog door, but, well...  See for yourself.

I'm not actively remembering these things, but the repeated runs and deaths of the last playthrough may have lodged these things into my brain, to a point where I can subconsciously call on it.  We'll see how it goes, once I get away from the Burg though.  I wouldn't be surprised if I started to mix things up from different areas.  It'll also be interesting to see what the DLC areas are going to be, and what my strategies will be at that time. 

It'd kind of a bummer not playing my Sorcerer, but I had decided a long time ago that if I wanted to play it again, I'd run a Cleric.  Here we are, and we shall see how this goes.