I didn't have a lot of time on my hands last night. For reasons that aren't worth getting into, I didn't sleep much over the last week, and I could feel my body starting to shut down. I needed to pound out a new character build, and I needed to do it quickly so I could grab some much needed shuteye. Demon's Souls, sometimes a wily dickcheese made manifest in video game form, thought it best to mess with me. I did't sleep well last night, either.
For my part, it was a sound plan: I had decided to roll up a Faith build. I would start with a low-level miracle, boost up a few stats for as much protection as I could muster, and then maybe jump into 5-x to score some Faith-based super weapons like the Large Sword of Moonlight. The odds of going through all of it last night seemed a little long, but I could at least tear through 1-1, maybe even start using the bastard sword found there to get used to playing with a heavy weapon.
But, again, the point of this final month of online connectivity was to play, well, online, and this is where the problems manifested. A few days ago, I wrote about how playing in online mode can affect serious performance issues. Last night, while also trying to stream the game on Twitch, these issues went overboard.
The frame rate plummeted to maybe single digits at times, the auto-save indicator on the top right corner of the screen in a constant, furious shimmer. It happened midway through 1-1 (I skipped the tutorial this time and most of the cut scenes), which was almost sad because things were going perfectly smooth up to that point. As I finished the level, I could almost feel the struggle my PS3 was experiencing in my own heart, which only got worse as loading screens between locations crawled into the minutes. That's way outside of normalcy. Sometimes these things clear up, though, so after checking the world tendency screen and seeing that 1-1 was close to pure white (which, again, I'll get into soon because I know that looks like gibberish), I tried skipping back into the first level. Then the game locked up on the loading screen and I knew that something was terribly wrong.
Reboot the PS3. Reload the game. Find that nothing saved since maybe the first five minutes of playtime. In the realm of big deals, this is relatively small considering that it's just the beginning of the game, but this is indicative of a larger problem here. These servers were never built to last. Over time, the maintenance on them has become fewer and further between. The game, when online, has been slowly killing itself for years.
I ran back through the rest of 1-1 in short order, things loading and moving as they should. I bailed out the first friendly NPC from a sticky situation, opened up a few shortcuts, and made puddle out of the boss, Phalanx. But the nagging feeling that none of it mattered was in the air. Are things saving as they should? Am I just spinning my wheels, here? Is all of this a convenient metaphor for the deeper themes of the Souls games (actually, yes)?
The good news to all of this is that Atlus will give the world a rare server maintenance next Wednesday, perhaps doing a global adjustment to world tendency for an event. Without something like that happening, I was seriously considering playing the game in offline mode for this run to avoid these kinds of problems, even though that gets away from my motives. I can always play like that starting on March 1. Guess I need to grit my teeth and tough it out for the next week or so with this build. It's clear to me now that DS was a game that needs some updating to survive, the network functions especially for how well they're integrated into the larger meta game. Maybe letting poor network maintenance that caused real, sometimes lasting gameplay issues was a sign to the community that ending them may be a mercy killing. Good things end. Nothing lasts.
But we'll talk more about that tomorrow.
Friday, February 9, 2018
Thursday, February 8, 2018
Day 7: An End Has a Start
Nobody likes to dredge through the muck.
This alone is the thesis statement that drives the Valley of Defilement, levels 5-x. Specifically, it refers to 5-2, which is a giant, open pool of poison. There's novelty here amongst the larger game: for one, the first 2/3 of it is a wide open area. There are no corridors and few walls or staircases. Once the player finds themselves at ground level, they can suffer laps around it like a kid being punished at football practice.
It's other unique quality is that actual movement in this sprawling state is hobbled. As far as the eye can see --which isn't very far; it's a dark, foreboding place-- your character is walking through a shin-deep poison bog. Normal jogging is reduced to a slow walk, and holding down the run button will only bring them to the jog (while still depleting stamina). Rolling is completely verboten, so in combat situations, you will always be at a severe disadvantage unless you can come across solid ground. Enemies that you encounter here, though, are back on their bullshit. They can move around however they please without the threat of being inflicted with poison. 5-2, then, has garnered a rightful reputation for being the DS community's least-favorite level of the game.
But the twist is that it's pretty easy when taken on a macro level. Once you find a secure route through the environment. It doesn't take too long to rush from one end of the swamp to the shanty town on the other side. It just takes the guts to get into the sludge and to avoid certain encounters. If you've come prepared with enough curatives to stave off the poison, a trip through the swamp isn't all that bad. Since I would venture that most players wait until close to the end of the game to get through 5-2, this is practically no sweat since they would have collected enough poison-curing consumables along the way. If you fight it at a distance, the boss at the end of the area is a pushover, too. So, sure, it's slow going and kind of a pain to meander through, but while 5-2 sucks, it only sucks if you don't have the stones to put up with its baloney.
Since this was my first time through it in a few years, though, I took my time. I wanted to be thorough and collect as many items as I could. This meant a lot of methodical pacing, but aside from a few idiotic mistakes, Finishing it and the major boss at the end of 5-3, Maiden Astraea/ Garl Vinland, took longer than a normal spin through, but wasn't all bad. In fact, I used a boss soul to forge the Insanity Catalyst, which is a magic wand that pumps up damage output at the expense of cutting your MP in half, which was actually more of a hassle than if I just used a normal catalyst. If this was the only thing I'm complaining about, I thought, it's probably time to clear out the game.
So this is what I did. I took an hour or so to do some end game collecting and a little experimentation (a +4 crescent falchion has stronger attack stats than a +5 Epee Rapier. That's kind of bunk given the trouble it takes to find the latter and then build it to that point), most of it to satisfy my own curiosity. I then jumped into 4-4, the final level of the game. This is a short stretch, but layered with endgame challenges and heavy rewards as it should be. I muscled my way to the finish line fast enough, witnessed the tragic end of maybe the only completely benevolent NPC in the game, and paused. The boss of the area, the False King Allant, was a rough fight. Since I was doing all of this to put a pin on the online functionality, maybe I should head over to the DS subreddit, find a player that wants to jump in and summon some help. Or perhaps I'll drop my summon sign and give other people a hand.
Then I looked at the clock, found that I had been streaming for 3 hours, and said "screw it." It's the end of the first week, not the last. I made short work of Allant with the might of the sorcerer that my Magic stat clearly says I am. I then followed the Maiden in Black down beneath the Nexus and killed the final boss, the actual King Allant; a battle meant to be a snap. The Old One was lulled to sleep, the credits rolled. The first run of the game is down.
The last week was cracking my knuckles. I feel fast and loose, now, stretched and ready for the power lifting. We're at an impasse, though: Should I continue on with New Game Plus, or roll another character and find another ideal route. I honestly don't know.
But we'll talk about that tomorrow.
This alone is the thesis statement that drives the Valley of Defilement, levels 5-x. Specifically, it refers to 5-2, which is a giant, open pool of poison. There's novelty here amongst the larger game: for one, the first 2/3 of it is a wide open area. There are no corridors and few walls or staircases. Once the player finds themselves at ground level, they can suffer laps around it like a kid being punished at football practice.
It's other unique quality is that actual movement in this sprawling state is hobbled. As far as the eye can see --which isn't very far; it's a dark, foreboding place-- your character is walking through a shin-deep poison bog. Normal jogging is reduced to a slow walk, and holding down the run button will only bring them to the jog (while still depleting stamina). Rolling is completely verboten, so in combat situations, you will always be at a severe disadvantage unless you can come across solid ground. Enemies that you encounter here, though, are back on their bullshit. They can move around however they please without the threat of being inflicted with poison. 5-2, then, has garnered a rightful reputation for being the DS community's least-favorite level of the game.
But the twist is that it's pretty easy when taken on a macro level. Once you find a secure route through the environment. It doesn't take too long to rush from one end of the swamp to the shanty town on the other side. It just takes the guts to get into the sludge and to avoid certain encounters. If you've come prepared with enough curatives to stave off the poison, a trip through the swamp isn't all that bad. Since I would venture that most players wait until close to the end of the game to get through 5-2, this is practically no sweat since they would have collected enough poison-curing consumables along the way. If you fight it at a distance, the boss at the end of the area is a pushover, too. So, sure, it's slow going and kind of a pain to meander through, but while 5-2 sucks, it only sucks if you don't have the stones to put up with its baloney.
Since this was my first time through it in a few years, though, I took my time. I wanted to be thorough and collect as many items as I could. This meant a lot of methodical pacing, but aside from a few idiotic mistakes, Finishing it and the major boss at the end of 5-3, Maiden Astraea/ Garl Vinland, took longer than a normal spin through, but wasn't all bad. In fact, I used a boss soul to forge the Insanity Catalyst, which is a magic wand that pumps up damage output at the expense of cutting your MP in half, which was actually more of a hassle than if I just used a normal catalyst. If this was the only thing I'm complaining about, I thought, it's probably time to clear out the game.
So this is what I did. I took an hour or so to do some end game collecting and a little experimentation (a +4 crescent falchion has stronger attack stats than a +5 Epee Rapier. That's kind of bunk given the trouble it takes to find the latter and then build it to that point), most of it to satisfy my own curiosity. I then jumped into 4-4, the final level of the game. This is a short stretch, but layered with endgame challenges and heavy rewards as it should be. I muscled my way to the finish line fast enough, witnessed the tragic end of maybe the only completely benevolent NPC in the game, and paused. The boss of the area, the False King Allant, was a rough fight. Since I was doing all of this to put a pin on the online functionality, maybe I should head over to the DS subreddit, find a player that wants to jump in and summon some help. Or perhaps I'll drop my summon sign and give other people a hand.
Then I looked at the clock, found that I had been streaming for 3 hours, and said "screw it." It's the end of the first week, not the last. I made short work of Allant with the might of the sorcerer that my Magic stat clearly says I am. I then followed the Maiden in Black down beneath the Nexus and killed the final boss, the actual King Allant; a battle meant to be a snap. The Old One was lulled to sleep, the credits rolled. The first run of the game is down.
The last week was cracking my knuckles. I feel fast and loose, now, stretched and ready for the power lifting. We're at an impasse, though: Should I continue on with New Game Plus, or roll another character and find another ideal route. I honestly don't know.
But we'll talk about that tomorrow.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
DAY 6: The Hard Shit
I briefly recapped my awkward reacquainting with Demon's Souls internally. Done with 1-1 to 1-3 without much trouble. Finished 2-1, 3-1, and 4-1 ably, but it wasn't pretty. Blasted my way through 5-1 because I needed a break from the torment I was living through with 4-2. Old Hero and Storm King down, so 4-x is finally over. Farmed souls in 4-3. Acknowledged the cancerous elephant in the room. As seeing old friends goes, it was a lot of forced conversation about the weather with only hints of flirting. Now, it's time for the hard shit.
I had two challenges to overcome with Day 6: First, I decided to heed my own advice and start streaming the playthrough. Yes, I probably should have done this from the beginning, but better late than never. Since I've only streamed via Twitch once or twice with the Castlevania stuff and not using a PS3, I wasn't sure how things were going to go. Thankfully, Twitch and Elgato have been around the block a few times so things are streamlined, and it was pretty easy to set up with only minor fiddling with the interfaces to get cooking.
The real issue with the stream, though, was the crazy, years-long problem with Demon's Souls servers. Without trying to really suss out the hows and whys of it, DS was the definition of "sleeper success" for both From Software and especially Atlus, and neither had any idea the game's online functionality would last this long. Because of what I can only assume was an overload of players on a rickety engine and a subpar server from 2009, playing in online mode will occasionally cause debilitating performance issues to the game. Voices and sound will go out of sync. Loading and saving will take noticeably longer than it should. Occasionally, the frame rate drops so badly you'll think Don Draper is trying to sell you your own nostalgia. The Demon's Souls community have tried cockamamie ways of dealing with this over the years, but the long and short of it is that you either tough it out or quit out of the game and restart.
This is something I don't often deal with in video games anymore, a network connection that hobbles the actual game. When I encountered it again on Day 1 for the first time in many years, I was starting to have heart palpitations. Was this, my fifth PlayStation 3, about to go to yet another busted console cemetery? After all, most of my PS3s have gone kaboom shortly after finishing a Souls game, I supposed it would probably be poetic that this one dies during my final month with the game that inflicted the curse to begin with. Do I even replace this thing, though? After February is over, I was thinking of retiring it altogether. I hated having to think about this, and was seriously expecting the worst. Thankfully, an audience member from the stream reminded me of the game's long-running issue with staying online. I don't think I need to push this old horse any further than it needs to go, so I'll try to keep play sessions short going forward. But sigh of relief all the same.
The second major challenge of Day 6 was what I can only call the worst boss fight of the game, the Maneaters. This is somewhat infamous in the DS community for continuing the game's tendency for bullshit. Essentially, you're on a bridge, and in flies a large gargoyle-type thing with a snake for a tail. It's a tough customer, and only made tougher by an environment that you can easily fall off of if you're not spacial aware (or the AI just gets sick of playing fair and it bum rushes you off the ledge). Sounds kind of lousy, but negotiable with some practice, right? Well, smart guy, a second gargoyle-type thing flies in to double the fun when you get the first down to 50% of its health or a certain amount of time happens.
I suck at this. I start a new game and dread this fight like I just broke an antique vase and my parents are on their way home from work. There are times where I've done better with it and finished it after half hour of slamming my face into a brick wall and there are times where it's burned whole nuggets of my own happiness away. In a game that I love so much, I hate this fight like I hate Kid Rock singing the National Anthem. It's a urinal cake on top of an actual cake. It's the worst.
But not this time. Armed with the Soul Ray spell and a whole lot of nerve, I dropped the first Maneater before the second one flew in. Knowing the fight and the arena well enough to remember that getting to the middle of the bridge was the best area to move around in, I maneuvered past the first gargoyle-type thing in anticipation of needing more space to breath and I chucked enough spells at it in the process that it was good and dead by the time I made it to the sweet spot in the arena. This sunk my stress level by orders of magnitude. It was still a tense fight, and I almost botched it a couple of times on the bridge, but then, something magical happened: the servers decided to start acting up again, ratcheting down the frame rate and moving everything to a crawl. My knee-jerk reaction to this was anguish and that the Maneater was going to get a win it didn't deserve, and on my best ever run at it to boot. But it stopped dead in it's tracks, the enemy data streaming to and from the server had frozen it in place. I don't care if you think I cheesed the game. My flashing this fight and plowing through it on my first go was a cathartic moment. It has, and will never, happen ever again. I peppered that motherfucker with so much magic you'd think we were at a Liberace farewell show.
Another hurdle down. At this rate, I need to start thinking of future plans for the rest of the month. I suppose I could roll another character and start from scratch, or I could just head into NG+. That might be getting ahead of ourselves, though. Now that the worst boss in the game was dead, I needed to move into the worst level of the game.
But we'll talk about that tomorrow.
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
DAY 5: For Old Time's Sake
I have a lot to unpack when it comes to the Storm King.
Typically, it's the Greater Demon boss that I tackle first. Since I laid out my usual itinerary yesterday in regards to getting through 4-x for the easy level grinding, plowing through the Old Hero drops you on the doorstep of what might be easiest boss in the game. If you know what you're doing and know the layout of the arena, the Storm King is both a trivial challenge to overcome and bountiful horde of insane experience grinding.
It also reminds me of having cancer.
Now, I have a lot of memories of my time with cancer: throwing up in a hospital chair, shoving food into my face as fast as I could after chemo so I wouldn't throw up at home, watching my then- brand new wife watching me fall asleep, those kinds of things. Deeper stuff. Personal stuff. But when I think about cancer as a period of my life, the most lasting, continuous phantom of that is the Storm King arena.
We generally spend Sundays with my wife's family. At first it was more utilitarian; we lived in an apartment at that point and wouldn't say no to free laundry. Over time, it became the norm, especially in the warmer months. It sounds cliche, but a few beers and some grilled food was a routine that most people can abide by. And we certainly liked to have a few beers or more. But cancer and its treatment will wag its finger to that. I was placed on a pregnancy diet of no uncooked lunch meat, no shell fish, and most importantly, no booze.
I stopped going to my in-laws on the weekends. It wasn't a matter of people being shamed into imbibing or not, but trying times in people's lives have a strange way of playing guilt reversal. People would feel bad for me because I was sick. I would feel bad for them because I might ruin their good time. I know it's not entirely right-thinking, but the longer the treatment carried on, the more I wanted my wife to have some sort of release from what was happening. If she wanted to do it with her parents and a few drinks, I call that the best possible situation.
This left me a lot of Sundays in our apartment alone. Not long before coming to this decision, I had started to use Demon's Souls as a way to cope with what was going on around me, I started digging deeply into what else was going on in the game in regard to character builds, hidden magic spells, and world tendency events. I was using a character I had already built to test these things, thinking that it would be easier to sort of bolt new abilities onto a something instead of running through the game with an avatar built for specific things from the ground up (though, I did that eventually). This meant a lot of time grinding for levels to mess around with this spell or that weapon, effectively turning my first character into a jack-of-all-trades that could steal your life with a stupidly unfair bit of magic or crush your skull in with a meat cleaver.
Most weeks were research periods. Most Sundays were sitting in the shack in the back of the Storm King arena as I silently killed flying monsters. I carefully manipulated the world tendency for maximum experience farming. I outfitted my character with gear best served to double that. For hours and hours and hours at a time, the only sound coming from the room was the occasional "well, fuck" if I were to accidentally get killed off (because of that I finally discovered podcasts). It was a redundancy that I found myself craving, a routine my body could adjust to while I sat in my own malaise. I missed being with my new family, but grinding over and over for all these long hours felt safe and comfortable. Getting stronger as I grew weaker, if you want to slap a metaphor on it.
Yesterday, I killed the Storm King yet again with ease. Like everything else with Demon's Souls, the first time was the most challenging, nearly everything that followed propped by the scaffold of prior experience. I remember cheesing the fight during my first go round by worming myself into a glitched chunk of the environment and screwing the game's physics. I don't need those things any longer. I hit the archstone to return to the Nexus, and while I was leveled beyond the need for it, I couldn't help but come back to that lonely, broken house by the sea, murderously obliterating whatever flew above me. After the previous day's frustration through the catacombs of 4-2, I was taking back control. It was satisfying and bittersweet. Any extra help would be welcome at this point, too. I was gearing up to take on the worst boss fight in the game.
But we'll talk about that tomorrow.
Typically, it's the Greater Demon boss that I tackle first. Since I laid out my usual itinerary yesterday in regards to getting through 4-x for the easy level grinding, plowing through the Old Hero drops you on the doorstep of what might be easiest boss in the game. If you know what you're doing and know the layout of the arena, the Storm King is both a trivial challenge to overcome and bountiful horde of insane experience grinding.
It also reminds me of having cancer.
Now, I have a lot of memories of my time with cancer: throwing up in a hospital chair, shoving food into my face as fast as I could after chemo so I wouldn't throw up at home, watching my then- brand new wife watching me fall asleep, those kinds of things. Deeper stuff. Personal stuff. But when I think about cancer as a period of my life, the most lasting, continuous phantom of that is the Storm King arena.
We generally spend Sundays with my wife's family. At first it was more utilitarian; we lived in an apartment at that point and wouldn't say no to free laundry. Over time, it became the norm, especially in the warmer months. It sounds cliche, but a few beers and some grilled food was a routine that most people can abide by. And we certainly liked to have a few beers or more. But cancer and its treatment will wag its finger to that. I was placed on a pregnancy diet of no uncooked lunch meat, no shell fish, and most importantly, no booze.
I stopped going to my in-laws on the weekends. It wasn't a matter of people being shamed into imbibing or not, but trying times in people's lives have a strange way of playing guilt reversal. People would feel bad for me because I was sick. I would feel bad for them because I might ruin their good time. I know it's not entirely right-thinking, but the longer the treatment carried on, the more I wanted my wife to have some sort of release from what was happening. If she wanted to do it with her parents and a few drinks, I call that the best possible situation.
This left me a lot of Sundays in our apartment alone. Not long before coming to this decision, I had started to use Demon's Souls as a way to cope with what was going on around me, I started digging deeply into what else was going on in the game in regard to character builds, hidden magic spells, and world tendency events. I was using a character I had already built to test these things, thinking that it would be easier to sort of bolt new abilities onto a something instead of running through the game with an avatar built for specific things from the ground up (though, I did that eventually). This meant a lot of time grinding for levels to mess around with this spell or that weapon, effectively turning my first character into a jack-of-all-trades that could steal your life with a stupidly unfair bit of magic or crush your skull in with a meat cleaver.
Most weeks were research periods. Most Sundays were sitting in the shack in the back of the Storm King arena as I silently killed flying monsters. I carefully manipulated the world tendency for maximum experience farming. I outfitted my character with gear best served to double that. For hours and hours and hours at a time, the only sound coming from the room was the occasional "well, fuck" if I were to accidentally get killed off (because of that I finally discovered podcasts). It was a redundancy that I found myself craving, a routine my body could adjust to while I sat in my own malaise. I missed being with my new family, but grinding over and over for all these long hours felt safe and comfortable. Getting stronger as I grew weaker, if you want to slap a metaphor on it.
Yesterday, I killed the Storm King yet again with ease. Like everything else with Demon's Souls, the first time was the most challenging, nearly everything that followed propped by the scaffold of prior experience. I remember cheesing the fight during my first go round by worming myself into a glitched chunk of the environment and screwing the game's physics. I don't need those things any longer. I hit the archstone to return to the Nexus, and while I was leveled beyond the need for it, I couldn't help but come back to that lonely, broken house by the sea, murderously obliterating whatever flew above me. After the previous day's frustration through the catacombs of 4-2, I was taking back control. It was satisfying and bittersweet. Any extra help would be welcome at this point, too. I was gearing up to take on the worst boss fight in the game.
But we'll talk about that tomorrow.
Monday, February 5, 2018
DAY 4: It Knows Neither Friendship Nor Loyalty
A few things happened with this trip.One, I should have been recording or streaming what was going on here. I mean, I'm supposed to write a story after the month is over, so I should probably either begin to promote it somehow or at least have some footage I can refer back to and personal screenshots to use. I guess I'll start doing that.
Two, I was right to be afraid. I decided that running 4-2 was the safest bet after how things were going over the last few days. Not that I'm particularly intimidated by what's left of the game (5-2 notwithstanding because it sucks), it's just that 4-2 is prime real estate for early- and mid-game level farming. Right in the beginning of the stage, you can buy cheap arrows from Grave Robber Blige, a vendor that can be freed from a cell in 4-1. You only need between a handful of them for this exercise, but I tend to buy in the low 200s for future purposes. Anyway, just past our shiny-domed friend is the entrance to the actual level, which is a scaffold of narrow stone walkways overlooking an altar below. Standing in front of said altar is a Grim Reaper enemy, who has the handy ability to summon ghostly giants to come after you. But we want that to happen. Armed with a few things to shoot and the knowledge that the dope is right below you, you can rain down some misery on the Reaper before dealing with the phantoms, killing him and making his sidekicks disappear. The payoff for this is a range of experience starting at around 4500 souls depending on your world tendency (which, I promise, I'll get to in a future post), and since this whole affair takes place mere steps after you enter the level, it's easy to kill this guy, head back to the Nexus, and repeat ad nauseam.
When the game was new, I wrote a small "getting started" document for friends of mine that I would convince to play the game because, let's face it, it's kind of a hard nut to crack for first timers. After explaining the ins and outs of character builds, weapon scaling, item vs. equip weight and all kinds of other junk, I would carefully walk them through 1-1 and then immediately suggest that a person bum rush 4-1 with the explicit plan to get them to this one spot. In a way, this is weirdly cruel because 4-1 is super hard the first time through, but I am nothing if not a strict task master. Besides, this little bit of muscle-building should feel like a reward for toughing through such a hard level. Things aren't entirely a breeze after putting the Reaper loop in play, but it's as good a way to easily build some soul levels until you feel like you're comfortable enough to go on.
So I circled through this a couple of times, already a little advanced for the payoff since I had already flattened a few early levels with relative ease. I even augmented it with killing the black katana-wielding skeleton behind a hidden wall not far from where the Grim Reaper stands. I bought some spells, I bumped up my Magic stat, and sat back telling myself, "yes, old friend. You were a wild stallion that I have since tamed. Let's ride off into this internet sunset together, assured that we're both a little older, a little better. Maybe, even, we're a little kinder. We're more ourselves than we were all those years ago." And then I remembered that 4-2 can go right off and fuck itself blind.
After the success of the further Dark Souls games and especially Bloodborne, the larger gaming populace has found that From Software's series of pitch black fantasy action RPGs are hard, but fair experiences. In a lot of places, Demon's Souls is only one of those things. Enemies frequently ignore the same rules that your character must adhere to, and specifically in terms of stamina loss. I can't just sit there and continuously swing my sword before a little green meter informs me that it's time to stop. Monsters, especially a few in the Shrine of Storms, don't subscribe to this law of nature. Worse, they have some fairly wily AI, so there are occasions where a literally unstoppable death machine will come tumbling before you on a narrow cliff face while another guy is pelting you with arrows and a giant flying stingray is shooting magic spears at you. It's a lousy setup, and worse knowing that the death machine is prone to accidentally falling into the cliff itself, and when this happens, you will wander off of it with it with absolutely certainty. There are times when you can meticulously plot your advances and ward off foes far ahead of you. There are other times where you are the mercy of the random flight patterns of flying fish and their asshole friends on the ground.
Demon's Souls can get a little bullshitty. People forget this, and everything in 4-2 past our first lucrative encounter with Death is there to remind you of that. You'll meet other Reapers and their ghostly henchmen. Sometimes they'll shoot giant, damaging lasers at you (because, sure). Other times they'll just stumble around. This is the only area of the game that's perhaps more infuriating than thrilling because you just never can tell how things are going to react to you foraging for items and poking your head around corners. It absolutely killed 90% of my playtime for the day just fumbling along to the boss, the Old Hero. As a guy with a house, a wife, and a small kid, getting stomped on by a game that I used to think I knew pretty well was making me seethe in fury.
Then there's the Old Hero himself. This is funny fight because the adversary is blind. This way, you can let him wander off and pelt him with arrows or magic from afar. When he figures out that some jerk is behind him shooting shit, he comes running. If you're in soul form (which I assuredly was after dozens of deaths in this level), you're quiet enough that you can sprint to the other side of the arena before he drops his giant sword down on you. Well, that's how it's supposed to go. I've never gone toe-to-toe with this guy before after figuring out what to do, but for whatever reason, my tried and true plan just kept screwing up. He'd figure out I was running past him and swipe me for an easy kill (magicians are frail, you see), or peg me with a long jump that I had trouble reacting to. There were many, many times where I wanted to just put the controller down and tell 4-2 to eat shit for the day, but I dug deep and remembered that I had a ring that made me harder to detect by enemies. I put it on finally, more than an hour of my day wasted, and triumphantly beat the snot out of the Old Hero. It wasn't the bittersweet death of an enemy that shared some genteel mutual respect with me. It was a curb-stomping. I earned it. It was time for my first major boss demon, and a lot more power leveling.
But we'll talk about that tomorrow.
Two, I was right to be afraid. I decided that running 4-2 was the safest bet after how things were going over the last few days. Not that I'm particularly intimidated by what's left of the game (5-2 notwithstanding because it sucks), it's just that 4-2 is prime real estate for early- and mid-game level farming. Right in the beginning of the stage, you can buy cheap arrows from Grave Robber Blige, a vendor that can be freed from a cell in 4-1. You only need between a handful of them for this exercise, but I tend to buy in the low 200s for future purposes. Anyway, just past our shiny-domed friend is the entrance to the actual level, which is a scaffold of narrow stone walkways overlooking an altar below. Standing in front of said altar is a Grim Reaper enemy, who has the handy ability to summon ghostly giants to come after you. But we want that to happen. Armed with a few things to shoot and the knowledge that the dope is right below you, you can rain down some misery on the Reaper before dealing with the phantoms, killing him and making his sidekicks disappear. The payoff for this is a range of experience starting at around 4500 souls depending on your world tendency (which, I promise, I'll get to in a future post), and since this whole affair takes place mere steps after you enter the level, it's easy to kill this guy, head back to the Nexus, and repeat ad nauseam.
When the game was new, I wrote a small "getting started" document for friends of mine that I would convince to play the game because, let's face it, it's kind of a hard nut to crack for first timers. After explaining the ins and outs of character builds, weapon scaling, item vs. equip weight and all kinds of other junk, I would carefully walk them through 1-1 and then immediately suggest that a person bum rush 4-1 with the explicit plan to get them to this one spot. In a way, this is weirdly cruel because 4-1 is super hard the first time through, but I am nothing if not a strict task master. Besides, this little bit of muscle-building should feel like a reward for toughing through such a hard level. Things aren't entirely a breeze after putting the Reaper loop in play, but it's as good a way to easily build some soul levels until you feel like you're comfortable enough to go on.
So I circled through this a couple of times, already a little advanced for the payoff since I had already flattened a few early levels with relative ease. I even augmented it with killing the black katana-wielding skeleton behind a hidden wall not far from where the Grim Reaper stands. I bought some spells, I bumped up my Magic stat, and sat back telling myself, "yes, old friend. You were a wild stallion that I have since tamed. Let's ride off into this internet sunset together, assured that we're both a little older, a little better. Maybe, even, we're a little kinder. We're more ourselves than we were all those years ago." And then I remembered that 4-2 can go right off and fuck itself blind.
After the success of the further Dark Souls games and especially Bloodborne, the larger gaming populace has found that From Software's series of pitch black fantasy action RPGs are hard, but fair experiences. In a lot of places, Demon's Souls is only one of those things. Enemies frequently ignore the same rules that your character must adhere to, and specifically in terms of stamina loss. I can't just sit there and continuously swing my sword before a little green meter informs me that it's time to stop. Monsters, especially a few in the Shrine of Storms, don't subscribe to this law of nature. Worse, they have some fairly wily AI, so there are occasions where a literally unstoppable death machine will come tumbling before you on a narrow cliff face while another guy is pelting you with arrows and a giant flying stingray is shooting magic spears at you. It's a lousy setup, and worse knowing that the death machine is prone to accidentally falling into the cliff itself, and when this happens, you will wander off of it with it with absolutely certainty. There are times when you can meticulously plot your advances and ward off foes far ahead of you. There are other times where you are the mercy of the random flight patterns of flying fish and their asshole friends on the ground.
Demon's Souls can get a little bullshitty. People forget this, and everything in 4-2 past our first lucrative encounter with Death is there to remind you of that. You'll meet other Reapers and their ghostly henchmen. Sometimes they'll shoot giant, damaging lasers at you (because, sure). Other times they'll just stumble around. This is the only area of the game that's perhaps more infuriating than thrilling because you just never can tell how things are going to react to you foraging for items and poking your head around corners. It absolutely killed 90% of my playtime for the day just fumbling along to the boss, the Old Hero. As a guy with a house, a wife, and a small kid, getting stomped on by a game that I used to think I knew pretty well was making me seethe in fury.
Then there's the Old Hero himself. This is funny fight because the adversary is blind. This way, you can let him wander off and pelt him with arrows or magic from afar. When he figures out that some jerk is behind him shooting shit, he comes running. If you're in soul form (which I assuredly was after dozens of deaths in this level), you're quiet enough that you can sprint to the other side of the arena before he drops his giant sword down on you. Well, that's how it's supposed to go. I've never gone toe-to-toe with this guy before after figuring out what to do, but for whatever reason, my tried and true plan just kept screwing up. He'd figure out I was running past him and swipe me for an easy kill (magicians are frail, you see), or peg me with a long jump that I had trouble reacting to. There were many, many times where I wanted to just put the controller down and tell 4-2 to eat shit for the day, but I dug deep and remembered that I had a ring that made me harder to detect by enemies. I put it on finally, more than an hour of my day wasted, and triumphantly beat the snot out of the Old Hero. It wasn't the bittersweet death of an enemy that shared some genteel mutual respect with me. It was a curb-stomping. I earned it. It was time for my first major boss demon, and a lot more power leveling.
But we'll talk about that tomorrow.
Sunday, February 4, 2018
DAY 3: Stonefang Funky
Day 3: Ok, Then
After my initial burst through several opening areas, I was sitting on what you might call a false sense of security. Knowing that I now had a handful of forging materials to strengthen the sword that I scored from 4-1 that made melee fighting tenable, I dipped into 2-1 to meet with the blacksmith Ed, fixing that I should probably also finish the level while I was there.
Then I nonchalantly walked off a crude elevator and remembered what I was supposed to be doing in the first place.
Demon's Souls is perhaps the most straight-up when compared to the games that followed it. There are levels that are basically straight line partitioned off by bosses, which denotes each sub level (though, you can logically run and entire level front-to-back if you want). Further games in the series are what many consider 3D "metroidvanias" where you roam a giant world with smaller environments that interconnect and circle back to each other. This added a deeper layer of mystique to the games as exploration was now a major concern. But the first Souls game was, in many ways, the most opaque in terms of what was running under the hood. We'll get into this more down the road, but the most obviously difficult concept to grapple with was body vs. soul form, which drove some of the game's heralded multiplayer functions.
It works like this: Kill a boss or use a certain item and your character is "revived," which means that they have twice the amount of hit points. While in this body form, you also have the opportunity to call in other players over the internet to give you a hand, be it killing further bosses or helping you through sticky situations in the levels themselves. The game never explains any of this to you, though, so while this seems relatively straightforward (and having all further games in the series use practically the same method), the onus is on the player to suss out how things work with strange items that never leave their inventory or rare consumables that only restore more hit points on the surface. There are some distinct advantages to staying in soul form, but that's what we'll come back to later.
This tumble off the elevator (and right in the begging of the level, too) was the first real death I had encountered up to this point; scripted tutorial doom notwithstanding. I was pretty irritated, to be honest. I thought I was doing well for being in body form for so long, and a dumb mistake like not accounting for momentum when I tried to drop onto a wooden lift was just about the last way I wanted to experience the first (of what will still be several) deaths. But it reminded me of that the whole point of this exercise was to say farewell to the game's network functions, not to tumble through it for the eventual final showdown with an end boss.
The truth is, I almost never play this game connected to the internet. Yes, this is bit ironic regarding the task at hand, but I feel as though I have good reasons. When DS was released in the US in 2009, I had come off a solid decade of playing nothing but one-player, story-driven, death-march-to-the-end Japanese RPGs like your Final Fantasies and Suikodens. Even the occasional action RPG like the Kingdom Hearts and Fable games were entirely solo experiences. My first initial impression of the obtuse multiplayer functions of DS was to ignore it, then. It wasn't worth wrapping my head around it if I were just going to go through the game myself anyway, so I brute forced my first character past the end credits, and to much consternation. This was a mistake in hindsight, but that first run of the game was enlightening in many ways. Eventually, I learned the game well enough that a second player never felt necessary, the advantages of playing it offline seemed to outweigh the disadvantages. I had some fun multiplayer experiences over the years, but to me, Demon's Souls was a lonely, solitary endeavor. What I'm doing now can't be. This first death slapped me upside the head to remind me of that.
I wove my way through the rest of 2-1 (in my opinion, the best designed level of the game) in soul form, knowing that the rare Stones of Ephemeral Eyes that returns you to body form were still a scarce resource and not worth dipping into just yet. The Armored Spider at the end of the level wasn't even close to the hardest boss of the game, so I decided to drop my summon stone just outside of his arena to see if anyone needed the assistance of a budding wizard. After 15 minutes of waiting, though, there were no takers, and the giant arachnid died painfully like it should. I didn't see the need to stick around Stonefang any longer with it dead and in the ground. Plus, it was time for some power leveling.
But we'll talk about that tomorrow.
After my initial burst through several opening areas, I was sitting on what you might call a false sense of security. Knowing that I now had a handful of forging materials to strengthen the sword that I scored from 4-1 that made melee fighting tenable, I dipped into 2-1 to meet with the blacksmith Ed, fixing that I should probably also finish the level while I was there.
Then I nonchalantly walked off a crude elevator and remembered what I was supposed to be doing in the first place.
Demon's Souls is perhaps the most straight-up when compared to the games that followed it. There are levels that are basically straight line partitioned off by bosses, which denotes each sub level (though, you can logically run and entire level front-to-back if you want). Further games in the series are what many consider 3D "metroidvanias" where you roam a giant world with smaller environments that interconnect and circle back to each other. This added a deeper layer of mystique to the games as exploration was now a major concern. But the first Souls game was, in many ways, the most opaque in terms of what was running under the hood. We'll get into this more down the road, but the most obviously difficult concept to grapple with was body vs. soul form, which drove some of the game's heralded multiplayer functions.
It works like this: Kill a boss or use a certain item and your character is "revived," which means that they have twice the amount of hit points. While in this body form, you also have the opportunity to call in other players over the internet to give you a hand, be it killing further bosses or helping you through sticky situations in the levels themselves. The game never explains any of this to you, though, so while this seems relatively straightforward (and having all further games in the series use practically the same method), the onus is on the player to suss out how things work with strange items that never leave their inventory or rare consumables that only restore more hit points on the surface. There are some distinct advantages to staying in soul form, but that's what we'll come back to later.
This tumble off the elevator (and right in the begging of the level, too) was the first real death I had encountered up to this point; scripted tutorial doom notwithstanding. I was pretty irritated, to be honest. I thought I was doing well for being in body form for so long, and a dumb mistake like not accounting for momentum when I tried to drop onto a wooden lift was just about the last way I wanted to experience the first (of what will still be several) deaths. But it reminded me of that the whole point of this exercise was to say farewell to the game's network functions, not to tumble through it for the eventual final showdown with an end boss.
The truth is, I almost never play this game connected to the internet. Yes, this is bit ironic regarding the task at hand, but I feel as though I have good reasons. When DS was released in the US in 2009, I had come off a solid decade of playing nothing but one-player, story-driven, death-march-to-the-end Japanese RPGs like your Final Fantasies and Suikodens. Even the occasional action RPG like the Kingdom Hearts and Fable games were entirely solo experiences. My first initial impression of the obtuse multiplayer functions of DS was to ignore it, then. It wasn't worth wrapping my head around it if I were just going to go through the game myself anyway, so I brute forced my first character past the end credits, and to much consternation. This was a mistake in hindsight, but that first run of the game was enlightening in many ways. Eventually, I learned the game well enough that a second player never felt necessary, the advantages of playing it offline seemed to outweigh the disadvantages. I had some fun multiplayer experiences over the years, but to me, Demon's Souls was a lonely, solitary endeavor. What I'm doing now can't be. This first death slapped me upside the head to remind me of that.
I wove my way through the rest of 2-1 (in my opinion, the best designed level of the game) in soul form, knowing that the rare Stones of Ephemeral Eyes that returns you to body form were still a scarce resource and not worth dipping into just yet. The Armored Spider at the end of the level wasn't even close to the hardest boss of the game, so I decided to drop my summon stone just outside of his arena to see if anyone needed the assistance of a budding wizard. After 15 minutes of waiting, though, there were no takers, and the giant arachnid died painfully like it should. I didn't see the need to stick around Stonefang any longer with it dead and in the ground. Plus, it was time for some power leveling.
But we'll talk about that tomorrow.
Saturday, February 3, 2018
DAY 2: Slooww Doowwwwn
Demon's Souls, amiright?
DAY 2: This is going to fast
I left this out of the first post because things were getting a little lengthy, but after three hours playing (still sick on the couch), I found that I remembered a whole lot more about this game than I thought. The roll move in DS as well as early game magic spells have gotten a rep in the community for being fairly overpowered, something later games have since addressed. But once I fit back into that old suit and began running through levels, this knowledge came right back to me like I was getting my ass to Mars. Enemies --nearly all humanoid-- in 1-1, can't handle the starting Soul Arrow spell that the royalty class comes packed with, so even though I slid right back into the old habits of melee attacking most things, when life was low and mobs got hairy, one-shotting enemies with low level sorcery almost made me feel guilty about how I was steamrolling this early level. Almost.
The royalty comes equipped with some weak armor to counterbalance the unfair offensive output, which means that I'll drop dead if a larger monster so much as gives me a funny look. But 1-1, the first level of the Boletarian Palace and the actual tutorial of the game, was easily overwhelmed with these weaksauce duds and the rush of old memories regarding the level layout. Enemies came and went, Red Eyed knights left alone and a noble NPC saved, and the first boss was stomped on with a handful of firebombs and some turpentine. Everything felt good and right.
Now was the time for follow through. Demon's Souls is a game that greatly benefits from a carefully formulated plan, and its discretely separated levels and the rewards/ hazards therein can be tackled in more advantages manners depending on what kind of character you want to build. Want to swing heavy weapons? Next stop: Stonefang Tunnel and their copious forging items. Feeling devout and miraculous? Better head over to the Shrine of Storms to bust out Saint Urbain and learn some higher-level prayers. Scheming that magic was my weapon of choice, I knew that I had to go through the Tower of Latria, affectionately known as 3-1, but the learned player needs not be so dogmatic; there are strong weapons strewn about a many environments that can give a big boost in the early game, it just takes a little forethought and a lot of guts to go get them. For me, then, running into the first section of the Shrine of Storms (4-1) was worth the trouble to grab a sword that scaled with my magic stats vs. the normal stuff that bumps in effectiveness via Strength or Dexterity. I felt that it was worthwhile to just tough it out and finish the level now that I was swinging a melee weapon that doubled my damage output, and then there I was. Two down.
The Tower of Latria was a pushover, then, irrespective how lost I get every time I play it. But the point wasn't to finish the level, it was to meet Sage Freke, a high-level magic instructor. But getting him out of the the level and back to my Nexus hub world meant that you've run the entirety of the level anyway, so killing the boss became an easy bit of side work. Three levels done. This is going easier than I thought.
Car doors closed. I could hear them through the thick brick walls of my house as the sound traveled past old windows that still need to be replaced, the thud of my wife's wide swing slamming the back passenger side shut with a toddler in her arm. I come to, the fugue of replaying this game snapping. Had I seen too much too soon? Am I going to destroy this game? Do I need to start thinking of another character (and maybe one named after a more poignant album title?)? I'll need to stop today, and this was as good a place as ever to do it. I probably wouldn't need to be so concerned, though.
We'll talk about that tomorrow.
DAY 2: This is going to fast
I left this out of the first post because things were getting a little lengthy, but after three hours playing (still sick on the couch), I found that I remembered a whole lot more about this game than I thought. The roll move in DS as well as early game magic spells have gotten a rep in the community for being fairly overpowered, something later games have since addressed. But once I fit back into that old suit and began running through levels, this knowledge came right back to me like I was getting my ass to Mars. Enemies --nearly all humanoid-- in 1-1, can't handle the starting Soul Arrow spell that the royalty class comes packed with, so even though I slid right back into the old habits of melee attacking most things, when life was low and mobs got hairy, one-shotting enemies with low level sorcery almost made me feel guilty about how I was steamrolling this early level. Almost.
The royalty comes equipped with some weak armor to counterbalance the unfair offensive output, which means that I'll drop dead if a larger monster so much as gives me a funny look. But 1-1, the first level of the Boletarian Palace and the actual tutorial of the game, was easily overwhelmed with these weaksauce duds and the rush of old memories regarding the level layout. Enemies came and went, Red Eyed knights left alone and a noble NPC saved, and the first boss was stomped on with a handful of firebombs and some turpentine. Everything felt good and right.
Now was the time for follow through. Demon's Souls is a game that greatly benefits from a carefully formulated plan, and its discretely separated levels and the rewards/ hazards therein can be tackled in more advantages manners depending on what kind of character you want to build. Want to swing heavy weapons? Next stop: Stonefang Tunnel and their copious forging items. Feeling devout and miraculous? Better head over to the Shrine of Storms to bust out Saint Urbain and learn some higher-level prayers. Scheming that magic was my weapon of choice, I knew that I had to go through the Tower of Latria, affectionately known as 3-1, but the learned player needs not be so dogmatic; there are strong weapons strewn about a many environments that can give a big boost in the early game, it just takes a little forethought and a lot of guts to go get them. For me, then, running into the first section of the Shrine of Storms (4-1) was worth the trouble to grab a sword that scaled with my magic stats vs. the normal stuff that bumps in effectiveness via Strength or Dexterity. I felt that it was worthwhile to just tough it out and finish the level now that I was swinging a melee weapon that doubled my damage output, and then there I was. Two down.
The Tower of Latria was a pushover, then, irrespective how lost I get every time I play it. But the point wasn't to finish the level, it was to meet Sage Freke, a high-level magic instructor. But getting him out of the the level and back to my Nexus hub world meant that you've run the entirety of the level anyway, so killing the boss became an easy bit of side work. Three levels done. This is going easier than I thought.
Car doors closed. I could hear them through the thick brick walls of my house as the sound traveled past old windows that still need to be replaced, the thud of my wife's wide swing slamming the back passenger side shut with a toddler in her arm. I come to, the fugue of replaying this game snapping. Had I seen too much too soon? Am I going to destroy this game? Do I need to start thinking of another character (and maybe one named after a more poignant album title?)? I'll need to stop today, and this was as good a place as ever to do it. I probably wouldn't need to be so concerned, though.
We'll talk about that tomorrow.
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