Did Dark Souls 2 or Dark Souls 3 have any memorable locations the likes of Ash Lake?

Dark souls 3 had the area with the giant arrow launcher

All of the DLC areas are pretty good looking.

Seeing a frozen over Anor Londo from that really cinematic spot before the bridge was pretty incredible

The moment when hydra flies over your head

first you go to blighttown, which is (or so you think) literally the deepest place ever, an infinitely stretching hole. then, you reach the swamps, which is at the bottom, which you think is the bottom of the world. but you realize it's not, you find a super sikrit passage in a super sikrit tree and go down and down and down forever without finding any bonfire, until you reach this area.
it's one of the only areas with ambient music. it's the deepest place of the world. there is a boss tier monster there waiting for you. and at the end, a giant scary looking dragon.
if you didnt experience it for yourself, you can't get it.

not mentionning the fact you realize lordran is resting on basically ONE (1) tree. everywhere around you look, you see hundreds more, and a lake that is probably bottomless as well.
you also find countless bones and skulls from things you never saw.
it's just cool.

>Going through there on my third playthrough
>Realize theres an ENTIRE UPPER LEVEL on the support beams that I never found
>And a covenant I missed

Yeah I guess Smoldering Lake would be the best comparison, but I wouldn't really call that place cool, at least not in the same sense as AL.

>DaS2
Frozen Eleum Loyce.

>DaS3
I remember the cathedrals I guess.

>bland rectangular room x100
>good looking

That's entirely a matter of your opinion.

I thought the Abyss was the lowest point in the game.

>Dark Souls 1: 32 hours
>Dark Souls 2: 100 hours
>Dark souls 3: 80 hours

Oh well lol. I'll beat Ds1 some day

Yeah no shit. Which is why we're all discussing our opinions.

didn't do the DLC, if there is an abyss zone in it (wasn't even out back then).
but to me, the abyss, where you fight the 4 kings, was just like another dimension, not an actual location one can go to with a map.

While I really liked DS3 combat and bosses, I felt the levels themselves were pretty lacking. There wasn't anything on the level of Sanctum City, Anor Londo, Grand Archives, or Brume Tower. Instead they did a lot of retreading of older levels from previous games.

I'm hoping they fix it with the DLC, but from the trailer I saw it looks like they're just redoing Painted World, which is strange because that was probably the weakest area in DS1 excluding Lost Izalith.

I'm pirating dark souls 2 at the moment actually. It kinda pains me that i will not be able to play online though. Is the online component worth it enough to buy the game?

There actually is an Abyss zone, but I was referring to the Four Kings area.

DS3 too hard to platinum
inb4 gitgud

>Dark Souls 1: 32 hours
>Dark Souls 2: 100 hours
>Dark souls 3: 80 hours

Oh well lol. I'll beat Ds1 some day

I have the ring trophy left I'm not motivated to get it

It really shows that this area was designed from the earliest points in development

>Grind 2000+ silver knights for concords
>Grind for Sword Grass
>Do PvP for shackles
>Go on NG+++++++ to get every obscurely hidden upgraded ring that they used as a substitute for actual NG+ content

Even the weapon laundry list on DS1 wasn't this bad

the abyss is a physical location, you can see the brick floor if you pay attention.

>Is the online component worth it enough to buy the game?
Eh only if you are a pvp fag

>grinding in-game enemies for Concords and Sword Grass because the online doesn't work properly for a shitload of people

You could always use CE.

the drop rates are abysmal, and some covenants simply take too long to work.
It was pain to 100% it

youtu.be/_akvpJaQCIo
youtu.be/SSDsvzfYcmI

Don't worry, they'll patch the PVP problems like they did with DS2... Right?

this game came out TWO years ago. How is this possible, holy shit

Yeah, Smouldering Lake was interesting but didn't feel like some secretive mythical place untouched by everything where the world stretches out infinitely in all directions and where you find an ancient immortal dragon. It just kind of feels like a really big spooky cave.

Irithyll

They didn't bother to patch such an obvious fuckup with the Black Knight set, so I doubt they'll actually patch shit all.

HOT FUCKING HOLY SHIT

My fucking friend played through this game three times, and he watched me play through it, and played through it one more time after that, and NEITHER OF US KNEW THIS FUCKING PLACE EXISTED.

WHAT THE EVERLIVING FUCK

Dark souls 1 is just mindblowing. I'm going to go through and play it just to see this place. What the hell...

>abyssmal
>abyss
Really makes you think

You are just pulling numbers out of your ass.

>ITT: Five years ago

...

...

Painted World was great

>the most memorable area of DS3 was basically wintertime Yharnam
I liked DS3 a lot but the original Dark Souls was a fluke

You have to separate what the devs intend to portray vs what they are able to do using game assets. It's a form of suspension of disbelief.

I take your shaded and up you to Gutter.

perhaps you will stop sucking dicks some day lol

>Dark Souls II is bad meme
Yawn.

I wouldn't count on it

Gutter was one of my favorite places

A lot of Dark Souls stuff is "that kid" tier.
>Hey, if you drop down from the elevator you can reach the giant crow's nest
>If you curl into a ball on the nest the crow will take you back to the starting zone where you can fight and extra boss and find a peculiar doll
>If you hold the doll near the painting in Anor Londo you can enter another secret level with a half dragon girl
>The dragon girl will let you go but you can actually fight her, she has a huge scythe that causes bleeding and can turn invisible.

they would not put a floor there for no reason

>unnecessary areas
You know that the game has a story mode, right?

>If you die in Dark Souls you die in real life
I didn't believe them when they told me

>ds1: 159
>ds2: ~300
>ds3: 230
I still don't know how i managed to play Ds2 this long, i replayed it recently and the gameplay was garbage, perhaps it's because it was my first souls game

youtu.be/Q9mz3DX28-s
youtu.be/ZQB9WTyDJ98

youtu.be/55p-7Ujg-nI

>If you cut off the dragon girl's tail you can get a magic knife
>If you go into the catacombs, get a ring, then wear it in front of a statue of gwyndolin, you can get a secret covenant and a boss fight

You mean what you walk on, but can't normally see because it's covered in darkness?

The Abyss is referred to by the game as a void. There isn't actually a floor there in-universe, just like how Whiterun in-universe is more than 12 buildings.

Why wouldn't they just make it a solid black texture?

Use your brain, man

DS2 Would be a lot more replayable if they let you go for any of the 4 great souls first. Instead they kinda railroad you into going Lost Sinner->Freya->Rotten->Iron King.

Depends on what you mean by memorable.

I don't think it has anything that can hit you as hard, because part of the impact of the Ash Lakes comes from the trip you have to do down there, coupled with the significance the place can have narratively (in the loosest sense of the word), but there''s plenty of incredible scenery throughout the three games. But they're eiher too dependent on player input - say Shrine of Amana when you look at the sky - or way too staged - reaching Irithyll comes to mind.

I'm a big fan of Aldia's Keep from DaS2, left a strong impression on me because of the level design.

I love that it's just a corridor. You can run almost straight to the boss. But then you're a player, and the people who made this level know how you work: if there's a switch to be used, a door to be opened, a button to be pressed... you will.
And little by little you make the place *hell*. And there's no one else to blame but yourself.

Lovely design. The place cracks me and I certainly remember it fondly.

Who are they?

>but can't normally see because it's covered in darkness?
but you can normally see it if your screen is bright enough(i think), or if you just use the lantern or sunlight maggot

I actually got Rotten the last, but yeah, I know what you mean.

its just a fucking corridor full of monsters that can break their own cages easily but for some reason they don't unless you make them angry

its funny because no one knew it existed until like 5 months after the game came out

Last location with Soul of Cinder was cool. Also that one location with Yorm, Corrupt Capital or something.

Really makes you think

Because FromSoft cannot into programming.

Some NPCs levitate above the ground in order to seem slightly taller than you. This is obviously a game limitation instead of them actually being able to float in mid air.

>Some NPCs levitate above the ground in order to seem slightly taller than you. This is obviously a game limitation instead of them actually being able to float in mid air.
what the fuck does this have to do with the floor or programming? there is no other way to make a npc look taller without making them float or giving them unique models.

They meaning the game designers.

Anor londo is a pretty shit level once you get past how pretty it looks

I have thousands of hours spent in the soul series, and I've never once noticed anything like that

Well except for the time I messaged Maneater Mildred and then found that my character had been deleted right after I beat Quellag, but I wouldn't read into that too much

...

It's true though. Solaire for example, is floating.

they did patch the bare ass bug though.

I consider das3 on par with das1 in atmosphere and level design with the exception that the areas not being more interconnected with each other is a bad thing, but besides das3 being too linear it's level design and atmosphere are on par with das1.

I dunno, I always assumed "dark souls 2 and 3 suck" was some ebin Cred Forums meme. The I got bothand gave then a try.

I couldn't get past the 3rd boss on DaS2, there's something VERY wrong with the controls, the animations and the hitboxes, also some rooms had like 15 enemies inside, it was just a shitty game.
DaS3 I got to some snowy town that was actually kinda cool, but I gave up when I realised amost every enemy in the game had infinite poise and stamina, they just attack you like gorillas on crack, never stopping never flinching when you attack first. It was just not fun, giting gud at it would not make it fun, so I gave up. A shame, as the Abyss Watchers boss eas actually pretty cool, I'm sure there are other cool bosses in the game. But at this point it seems even FROM fell for the "it's so hard XDDD for hardcore gamers such as myself lol" meme and the game is frustrating just for the sake of it.

>painted world
>weak area
It's the best area in the game, ahead of both the funhouse, burg and blighttown.

> have terrible acrophobia
> fight it by playing Souls games
> find secret ladder
> find opening back into cathedral
> praise the sun, no more cliffs and walkways over bottomless pits
> run inside
> OH GOD WHY
> lose my shit so bad I can't find the opening I entered through
> get knocked off rafters by a fucking thrall
> barf on my keyboard when my undead hits the floor

For some reason, bottomless pits are easier for me to handle than deadly falls, because you never actually see anything go SPLAT.

I had to NOPE Ass Creed 2 for the same reason.

Its not das1, so it sucks and is shit

Congrats dude, you are the meme

>rushing through your first playthrough
>not meticulously searching every corner of each level

I bet you also missed the dragon crest shield and crown of dusk and failed every npc questline.

you are the worst kind of person, you have no sense of appreciation.

Amusingly, I think DaS3 is the weakest of the three in no small part *because it's too easy*.

There's nothing hardcore about it. It's even the easiest of the three to SL1. It's just that its over-focus on attack basically killed any build that wasn't a glass cannon build of sort.

lol I can't believe there are people this bad at vidya.

this, painted world was a master piece in atmosphere and level design, and it was actually finished unlike other parts of the game that people praise like sen's and anor londo

It's really what I think, I got into the series with Bloodborne and I was hooked, I played 12hours a day until I got the plat.
Then I tried Demon's Soul. It's cool, but I think it lacks something, it's fine tho, as it was the first one.
DaS1 is a flawed masterpiece. The level design is amazing, and the combat feels right. The game is challenging without being memehard.
DaS2 is really terrible, iframes just feel wrong, everything feels wrong, it's ugly as shit, the music is kinda meh.
DaS3's only real problem I noticed was the over aggressive enemies.
The thing is, I liked the first 3 games I tried (BB, DeS and DaS), so I really went into the other 2 exppecting to like it, I still hated 2 and was disapointed by 3.

Don't listen to that other guy, you just have taste.

Does the return to Anor Londo in III count? That's literally the only area I remember from III.

>But at this point it seems even FROM fell for the "it's so hard XDDD for hardcore gamers such as myself lol" meme and the game is frustrating just for the sake of it.

This. The disabled poise leads to situations that don't even make sense.

>DaS2 is really terrible, iframes just feel wrong
DS2 is a slower, tactical game that punishes button mashing. Investing in Adaptability and timing your rolls well is vital. I do agree that it's a very flawed game, but imo it's enjoyable nonetheless.

And coming from BB, how can you dislike the fast-paced combat of DS3?

Maybe I'm playing it "wrong"?
As I said, I played BB first, but then I played DeS and DaS before playing DaS3, so I'm not playing like I did in BB, I'm playing like I did in DaS, using shield and somewhat heavy armor.

>and failed every npc questline.

to be fair though every quest except siegward's was pure fucking stupidity with no rhyme or reason to it.

Especially shit like Anri and Sirrus where you had to keep backtracking to areas you've already cleared in order to progress them, with virtually no hint or clue to actually do so.

I don't get why people cry about poise when the meta of das3 is quality build w/ ultragreat+strswd/thrustswd+op casts. power armor works perfectly fine, you can gangspank all day with a meta build.

and you can still do a meta build with heavy armors as long as you give up a ring slot for havel's ring and put a few extra lvls into vit.

the only difference in making a heavy build in das3 is that you actually have to play smart and be strategic instead of just being an unfuckable giant dad who doesn't even have to try.

>DS2 is a slower, tactical game that punishes button mashing
That's Dark Souls 1. Dark Souls 2 is just sticky, imprecise, unresponsive shit.

>coming from BB, how can you dislike the fast-paced combat of DS3?
Not him, but Dark Souls 3 doesn't have the slower, more thoughtful pace of DS1, or any of the things that make Bloodborne's faster combat interesting. It's just a bland compromise between the two that has none of the strengths of either.

This webm is just fucking false. Everytime I try to compare the deadzones on 1, 2 and BB they function the same.

oh I see. Yeah, DS3 really discourages heavy armor builds.

So what, Havel the fucking Rock would flinch against a dog?

Big issue I have with DaS2 is that level design of individual zones can be hit and miss and they never really manage to coalesce into a cohesive working whole - from both a pure game design design and narrative standpoint.

As far as that latest is concerned, one of the things I love about Dark Souls that both sequels, and especially Das2, didn't really manage to re-iterate (probably because the original did it partly by accident, by sheer virtue of tapping into such powerful, deep-rooted, raw mythic imagery) is how it straddles the thin line between the allegoric and the literal, between the symbolic and the figurative, without ever picking a side, by conjoining those narrative elements with gameplay elements.

DaS2 tries - and does some really interesting things with exhaustion and difficulty - but in the end just goes overboard there's too much stuff at once, and the units don't mesh - they even go at cross purpose at times.

All that being said, from a level design standpoint, I do think it has some of the best individual zones. DaS1 is a better album than 3, and 2 feels like a weird collection of singles and B-sides so to speak.

running HSGS makes every fight, even PvP, a joke. It has hyper armor for days, and the more you swing it, the shorter it's swing time gets (as well as it ups the HA value for each swing). You can literally R1 spam and stunlock Havel in Archdragon Peak with it.

With the gimped poise and "hyper armo" bullshit they threw on every GS/GH/GA, (except Wolf Knight's for some stupid reason), you can tank up to two or three hits for free, then roll around for 30s just to do it again.

I've tried doing multiple builds and playing different classes/styles, but i always go back to Hollowslayer's because it's just THAT good

the devs designed the combat mechanics in das3 to essentially punish those who had become complacent with the exploits and strategies of das1, you had to adapt or be a shitter like everyone who is crying in this thread.

dumping into vit for heavy armor instead of dumping into vig is just as viable for a meta build, i see players all the time who have low vig and high vit doing havel builds or other heavy armor builds and yeah they still stagger but they absorb a lot of physical damage, and if their good they play smart and roll and use their hyperarmor properly. the only problem with heavy armor builds in das3 is that casters can just blast you in the ass because vit only raises physical defense.

You like playing a wizard?

Fuck you LONGSWORD

It's weird, but I really like DaS when it first came out, loved both 2 and 3. With the exception of what they did to dual wielding in 3 that's retarded. But I went back to play 1amd just couldn't get into it. I really just couldn't get into it again

Well, I'll keep trying. Thank God I found some bitch that allows me to restat my char, so if everything fails, I can try that.

you can parry every single strike the HSGS has and it's easily countered with a halberd or spear or casts or whip or anything with more range.

it's funny that people still treat GS like UGW when they're not.

I don't know about PvP, but I don't think dumping like 40 points in VIT to be able to wear Havel's armor is worth it when it only provides a ~10% damage absorption increase relative to armor sets that only require ~13 vit

>tfw

Not him but I liked playing a knight on medium armor in DaS1 so obviously once DaS 2 came out I tried something similar however I discovered quickly that my Alav set offered almost no protection over going completely naked and poise was non existant, only way to see result was wearing heavy armor or element resistant armor since you can reach inmunity to elemental damage quite easily. I also discovered in my second playthrough that I could wear heavy armor as a mage with no major penalties since iframes weren't tied to my total carry weight anymore.
I love the series, I have hundreds of hours in every game except Bloodborne, the problem here is a balance problem, there should be a good enough incentive to wear armor of any particular weight.

>the devs designed the combat mechanics in das3 to essentially punish those who had become complacent with the exploits and strategies of das1

Nice intention, but when they had to kill so many strats that used to work without bringing anything to widen the field back, all they did is kill the game for so many players. As I was saying up--thread, glass cannon builds are where it's at, to the point that not only no other build compares, none really feels viable.

And then it goes into the issue of how it irremediably changed the pace and tempo of the game.

you're right it's not going to be as good as other builds, but i still see people do it, I see havel, gundyr, and winged knight builds often enough and they do good, like I said I only ever see these builds struggle with casters.

Probably intended for the whole area to be masked in the fog mist stuff.

DaS2 is a victm of the gutted lighting engine. A lot of the unfinished crappy looking areas likely weren't meant to be nearly as visible as they currently are.

I've been thinking of doing another run of DS3 before the DLC comes out. Are pyro builds any good? Will I stand a chance against bleed/quality builds?

It's too bad, because from the few levels in which it works (the Gutter being the obvious big one), I so much like both the theme and gameplay of bringing light to the dark places.
There's something very powerful there that the game clearly intended to capitalize on yet never really managed to in the end.

Last time I played, pyro wrecked most bosses. Don't know if they nerfed it since then.

jesus those things skullfuck you

they really freak me out for some reason, trigger my skinwalker vibe

I've got a lvl8 pyro with gfb and uchi, pretty decent

Focus points were a mistake, prove me wrong, you can't.

Would you get a remaster/GOTY of Dark Souls? They've done it for 2, will probably do it for 3 but North America never got the Prepare to Die edition (or the Bloodborne one) and it would be neat to have them all for PS4

I'd rather get BB for PC

Nawt happening.

Gehrman vs Gwyn

Who wins?

...

The forge room was actually really sick looking.

>DaS3 I got to some snowy town that was actually kinda cool, but I gave up when I realised amost every enemy in the game had infinite poise and stamina,
Literally every enemy in Irithyll gets staggered from a single hit unless they're in certain special attack animations which take 2 hits to stagger, and the silver knights which have moderate poise

you can stunlock pontif knights to death with your fists if you have enough stamina to keep it up (except for the single Scythe one because his attacks have extra poise)

>Abyss Watcher lights up his sword and does flashy bullshit at you
>you can't buff your Abyss Watcher Greatsword

>Silver Knights show off their crazy new movesets and weapon arts
>can't get their weapons

most memorable place for me in all of the games was darksouls 1 forests. When I was a newb, I would spend so much time in there dying. I remember being in school at the time and waiting anxiously for the weekend so I could play dark souls (not a kid, just limited my video games due to need to study).