2 things.

1/ Another big patch just now. Lots of performance improvements and gameplay changes. All of which seem very well thought through.

2/ First playthrough done!

Well chuffed. The pyro is very definitely a difficult class to play. Mostly because for perfectly acceptable story reasons, there’s a lot of fire in the game. That’s mostly made up for with some spectacular abilities further down the line which have been a joy to use.

IMO, this is by far the closest anyone has come to a spiritual Dark Souls successor as opposed to FROMs actual Souls successors. In doing so they’ve actually managed to bring a lot of their own ideas In as well and they’re mostly fantastic.

I highly recommend it if you like the souls games. And I would say give it the time it deserves. I think a lot of people dismiss it early on; it really comes in to its own after a few hours.

It won’t actually be on the awards lists but I think this might be my personal GOTY.

I’ve got a save going on my PC for cooping with Rachel, which was huge fun when we could get it working. And will likely NG+ my pyro for a while. I unlocked a new class at the end too so I might try a new build once I’ve palate cleansed with a bit of Mario or something.

    6 months later

    I finally picked this up on sale and, after a couple of false starts (turns out trying to learn a new game when in a very bad mood isn’t a great idea) it’s starting to click. I was struggling with the first boss until @Brave pointed out that I was using a faith build which it’s apparently resistant to. Rerolled as a bloke with a big sword and that went a lot better - can confirm that the boss is very much not ‘big sword’ resistant. Making the first boss in your game extremely difficult for one of the starting builds is certainly an interesting design decision 😮

    Yeah. She’s also just pretty damn difficult as a starting boss but that’s no different from a souls game really.

    Like I said. I chose Pyro despite the game warning me it was an advanced class and then discovered the game seems to be considerably on fire. So I spent a lot of the game with a very fun class that was really tough to play in a lot of areas due to resistances

    They made a lot of balancing tweaks over the months too so you’re getting the primo experience now I think. They had wayyy too many smaller mobs dotted around the place originally so it was a genuine slog to even get to the bosses. My first playthrough was tough because of that. Second one was pretty spot on though.

    Brave I highly recommend it if you like the souls games. And I would say give it the time it deserves. I think a lot of people dismiss it early on; it really comes in to its own after a few hours.

    @Gordon I’m going to leave this months old quote from me here for no reason…

        If @Gordon is going to stick with it I might give it a go at the same time. What is a good “easier” starting class then?

          Brave I’m reserving the right to change my mind and flounce off in a huff at any point. Probably later today.

            Also, if I’d been playing the pre-patch version with the shitty framerate on top of everything else that was annoying me the other night, I would’ve deleted it on the spot I suspect.

            DrDamn I went with ‘dark crusader’, it’s a big armoured bloke with a long sword. I think it might be only available if you got the ‘deluxe’ version (that’s the one they put on sale). Doesn’t have a shield but the shields seem to be shit anyway because they don’t actually block damage, they just convert it to ‘withered’ health which you then have to turn back to real health by hitting things. I can’t be arsed with that so I’m just going 2-handed big sword.

            That reminds me of another thing that really helped with my super positive first impressions of the game. The deluxe version comes with a digital art book thingy. When you first boot up the game, it pops up a dialog saying “Remember to download your art book thingy!” with an “OK” button to dismiss it. The “OK” button did nothing and the dialog box wouldn’t go away. Pressing every button on the controller did nothing. I had to force quit the game and run it again.

              DrDamn Avoid the pyro I’d say although it is a HELL of a lot of fun, especially later. The biggest issue with the holy classes is just that first boss really. So it depends on whether you think you have the patience to deal with that roadblock. There are holy areas later but you’d be statted up by then probably and you’d be good in the numerous fire areas I think. You can summon help too - so that’s worth doing. My character’s there ready to help if need be.

              Big sword is a good way to go but I also think the ranged stuff is better than dark souls in a lot of ways. Thing is, if you don’t like a class, once you get the - admittedly very annoying and confusing - tutorials out of the way, you can get to the first boss pretty bloody fast if you want to roll a different class.

                  Brave Ok went for the ranger box/axe combo. Got to the first boss and had by ass handed to me. Had just popped my head round the door to guage the size of the problem 🙂. Haven’t been using parry at all and I probably ought to get the hang of that - not traditionally my strong point in these games to be fair 😃

                  One thing I don’t like so much is the samey pallete in each area. It makes everything smooge into one grey-mess. Took me three circuits of the first little mini boss arena (Otto?) before I found the way back up to the rest point! It’s got loads of detail but if all of that is in very similar shades of grey then it’s all a bit pointless. 😦

                  One thing I like - the ability to level up without resting and resetting all the mobs/progress. Allows you to spend your hard earned souls/embers/whatever and continue round a couple more corners looking for the next rest point.

                  One confusion point. When to soul flay? L2 lamp, R2 flay. Save it for the harder regular mobs?

                      DrDamn One thing I don’t like so much is the samey pallete in each area

                      I mean… you’ve just been to the first boss. 😉 It’s a big game. It does change things up quite a bit.

                          Soul flay is very good in boss fights. I can’t remember what it looks like but it becomes relatively obvious when to hit them with it. Flay them, wail on their soul for massive damage, hopefully win.

                          Edit: also I started to use it to great effect when a large mob was near a drop. You can pull them off a cliff using it.

                          I keep forgetting soul flay exists. Experimented a bit with a long sword and shield combo and it works fairly well, despite the annoying withered health mechanic. Tried parrying a bit but as usual my timing is bad enough that it’s just not worth it.

                          I’m two bosses down and onto a third now. The second was much easier than the first, and the third I only tried once but got it down to 5% before her pet dogs got me.

                          Agreed about the colour palette, I’d prefer a bit more variation just to help me tell one part of a level from another, but I can get lost in my own house so that’s probably a me problem rather than the game.

                          I dunno. I see the withered health as no different than bloodborne really and I loved that game. Just promotes a bit of aggression.

                          I can’t remember properly but I think you can mitigate it a bit further down the line with various accessories.

                            Brave Bloodborne doesn’t have shields though. I don’t like that blocking an attack with a shield means you take a hit to your stamina and also to your health as withered. Feels to me like it should be one or the other. It’s not a big deal, just not a fan of the way it works.

                            I really need to rememeber soul flay. I was having a hard time fighting the guys with the cages on their heads in an area with lots of narrow elevated walkways. Presumably I could just push them off the edge if I remembered soul flay was an option.

                                Brave RE: withered damage - I think you can use it as a somewhat risky healing mechanic too. I was on half health with no more healing, went into Umbral and that gave me full health half of which was withered, came out of Umbral and hit some things without getting hit. Tada Full life. Least that’s how I think it happened 😁

                                  Brave good to hear the colour variety gets better.

                                    Gordon Presumably I could just push them off the edge if I remembered soul flay was an option.

                                    Yup. They’re prime candidates. Soul flay and flick them to the side.

                                      A couple of interesting observations. Multiplayer you stick with people even if they fail, so you can go again. Not so helpful for the poor souls I just “helped”. When you die as a helper you can stick around for the end of the battle and get the goodies if they do it. They can also res you - maybe only if you have a heal left?

                                      Was getting a little better at judging timings for dodge and able to get through first phase ok, second phase not so much.

                                      I also played around with graphics settings after getting pulled in to someone’s game post the first boss - not sure if this was a networking error or something which can happen anyway? I.e. I haven’t done the boss yet but I was summoned into a game past that point. This was run up to boss with dogs. I could see not a lot in tunnels. Hence playing with brightness/contrast etc. Upping contrast has helped visibility quite a bit, I do still find it generally a bit flat tone wise.

                                        DrDamn Yeah I had to push the brightness and contrast a bit, it was a bit gloomy and flat otherwise.