Played the early access beta this morning for EU PS Plus members. Came away impressed! It looks great, plays really well. Just feels different, can't quite place it. For those that are still worried in anyway about 'accessibility', I've died probably 9 times in the space of 40 mins. For the sake of the beta I think they've balanced it by having enemies dropping plenty of lifegems, but I imagine that when the final version comes out, it might not be as easy as that. Even if it was, I still died a whole lot!! Few notes:
- Played through to completion as the Dual Swordsman. Very interesting as it's focused purely on going on the offensive all the time. Though I could switch to a shield if things got rough. Pretty odd to have me weilding a greatsword in one hand and a shortsword on the other!
- Arrows shoot so fast now! I eventually figured out that you have to roll as soon as you hear the bow being strung otherwise you're just gonna get hit.
- The boss is essentially a combination of Nito/Pinwheel . Died once when the big 'reveal' of that boss came out but when you figure out how the boss works, it's pretty straightforward to deal with. It was only checking other people's impressions afterwards that I found out there was a second boss to deal with too! How did I miss it?!
- Having two red phantoms catching you in a pincer attack is a dick move, but I love it. Also lots of areas were able to catch me off guard as enemies were hiding round corners or you can even see archers crouching and hiding in camoflauge waiting for you to come and shoot you unawares in a trap.
- You can break the boarded up windows in one of the early indoor areas to let more natural light in the room. You can light a torch at a bonfire and carry it with you, which is handy as it's a dark area. The kind of dark where you need a torch to see properly lest you get ambushed. Carrying a torch does mean the use of your shield arm so you better be careful. Lighting in general is well done here.
- Maybe it's just an instance in this game, but shortcuts now seem to be activated by pressing X rather than hitting a wall. The X prompt seemed a bit finicky. If I just press it next to a door or something it makes it look like I'm trying to switch a weapon. Not sure if it's because I have to hold the button down now to open a door/lever?
- Tried a bit of the sorcerer. Liking the way magic works now with it's change in light/heavy versions of the spells but it isn't all that effective when you have so many enemies in that beta. Luckily there's a new item now which replenishes your magic uses by a little without having to visit a bonfire.
- Liking the new message system! You can string longer sentences now so you could have 'Beware of tough enemy ahead' but you could have 'Beware of tough enemy ahead, therefore, try rolling!' Before the small bridge leading to the fat monster with the dual scythes I had written 'Tough enemy ahead therefore backstepping!' and I got 17 likes on it
- I killed the tradeswoman in the starting area. Though rather than having her death be permanent, there was a tombstone which you can pray to (at the expense of 3000 souls) and she is revived as a ghost. So while you can kill NPC's, their death isn't really permanent like in the original. The only penalty now by the looks of it is that if you need to use them again, it comes at a cost of souls. Wonder the same thing happens for other NPC's too or just tradesmen.
- Wasn't able to invade someone else's world, got an error code every time and at one point a textbox was up on the screen notifying me that there were server issues and apologised for the inconvenience. Got this error message towards the end of the beta 'Thank you once again for participating in the DS2 Beta. And we are very sorry about the trouble that some players not able to participate because of our mishandling. Thus we have decided to have an extra CBT session'. So seems like an error on their side? Guess those of us that want more time to play are in luck!
Overall, I love it. Was half expecting to breeze through the beta considering I've played so much of Dark Souls already, but was pleasantly surprised to die a number of times. I came away from it wanting more, even though it kicked my ass a bunch of times, so in essence, just like the original game. Obviously there were issues with PVP, but there's plenty of time yet to sort that out. I wish I could play the whole thing now. March seems so far away.
Topic: Dark Souls (Read 17187 times)