I agree, but I think Friede is an incredible boss fight, so I don't see it as a negative for The Ringed City.
3 of TRC's bosses would be in my DS3 top 5, so I think that's pretty good.
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Dark Souls III: The Ringed City |OT| One Last Journey
- Thread starter Hikami
- Start date
I agree, but I think Friede is an incredible boss fight, so I don't see it as a negative for The Ringed City.
3 of TRC's bosses would be in my DS3 top 5, so I think that's pretty good.
Gimmick fights have more misses than hits IMO. For every Armor Spider or Saint Astraea you have an Adjudicator, Demon of Song, Curse Rotted Greatwood, etc, etc.
clockworkinyou
Banned
Same, Demon's Souls bossfights were incredible -
Tower Knight being huge and having the mages on the wall. Astraea - enough said. Dragon God - was fun to learn the pattern. Old Hero and Penetrator - aggro AF. Storm King. Fool's Idol was slick. Old Monk - /comeatme.
Not to mention all the Phantoms/NPCs - the samurai dude at the start of 4-1. Old King in that tomb room with the mask.
The GOAT hasn't been topped.
MikeBison
Member
I've seen people talking about an optional boss, are you referring to the
If so, does it drop/is it guarding anything good? Otherwise I can't be bothered to fight it and will pass it up.
I feel like the whole run from the ringed city bonfire to the
bridge one was tedious.
Like I was doing it methodically over and over again and then realised it's best to just sprint the whole thing.
About 20 of the little curse dudes, 10 mages, 5 ringed knights and about 10 of the fat knights. It's just too much.
Dragonslayer armour at the back of the second swamp?
If so, does it drop/is it guarding anything good? Otherwise I can't be bothered to fight it and will pass it up.
I feel like the whole run from the ringed city bonfire to the
dragon
Like I was doing it methodically over and over again and then realised it's best to just sprint the whole thing.
About 20 of the little curse dudes, 10 mages, 5 ringed knights and about 10 of the fat knights. It's just too much.
I think the weakest part of the design of TRC was the actual city - it's a beautiful setpiece but it's filled with monstrosities with like 4000 health on NG that can combo you to death, surrounded by annoying little dudes who either throw lightning spears or curse you passively. Everything felt like it had way too much health. I was going in at 40 DEX with sharp +10 twin sellswords, which is about the damage cap, and things took multiple full stamina combos to die.
The giant adjudicators were an interesting idea but the archers could knick you at the the end of one of your rolls and then combo you to death. I didn't think this was a fun mechanic and it didn't feel rewarding to finally get to them and kill them, because A) they respawn, B) you can just ignore them and C) they drop crap for loot.
Other than that I enjoyed the level design immensely.
There's a
The giant adjudicators were an interesting idea but the archers could knick you at the the end of one of your rolls and then combo you to death. I didn't think this was a fun mechanic and it didn't feel rewarding to finally get to them and kill them, because A) they respawn, B) you can just ignore them and C) they drop crap for loot.
Other than that I enjoyed the level design immensely.
There's a
dragon fight if you go halfway up the elevator and go through an illusory wall in the room opposite the room that drops down onto the Gwyn statue for the Chloranthy +3 ring.
The dragonslayer armor drops an armor set.
The dragonslayer armor drops an armor set.
It's not but it drops its armor so that's cool.
Well it is meant to be late game difficulty and I've liked the enemies. I feel they are varied enough as well as tough enough to make it interesting. I do agree that they could have had less health. Even the weak cultist dudes can take something like two UGS hits.
MikeBison
Member
Gotcha, thanks!
MikeBison
Member
I liked the enemies themselves. Even the high health fat knights and they have a cool mechanic to one shot them. But it's just that whole run is some mad gauntlet that doesn't even want you to stop and talk to the 2 NPC's in the area so you just think fuck it and sprint after everything.
Although on about my 6th run I had my 3rd invader in a row and I was tired of fighting them, knelt down in the praying emote, the invader clapped. He then kicked me up to my feet. Then I removed all my clothes and weapons and knelt down in prayer again and he just waved and returned home. Pretty cool!
Yeah I had to dash to get items and then run away because the enemy placement is such that often you have tons of them on your tail if you just try to go grab something. I think they have deliberately gone for a gauntlet with this one considering most of the main game and first DLC you can take your time to approach.
From seem to really love their swamp levels though. At least this one isn't poisonous.
MikeBison
Member
I oddly didn't mind the angels as much. Because you plan your route (and iterate after a few deaths) but can get rid of them permanently. My horror when I found out the giants in the next section and the fat knights the section after respawned. Think if they didn't, it would be much more palatable and I've have done less suicide runs.
Had a pretty interesting experience doing the 2nd main boss at level 1:
So it appears they do take level into account when picking who invades. First time I attempted the fight it summoned a guy wearing soul of cinder armor and he basically just walked up and 1 shot me.
Second attempt I got the same guy, but instead of fighting, he sat down in the center of the room and let me kill the healer guy. Then he took off his weapon, bowed, and let me kill him. What a nice guy!
Second attempt I got the same guy, but instead of fighting, he sat down in the center of the room and let me kill the healer guy. Then he took off his weapon, bowed, and let me kill him. What a nice guy!
Drillary Clinton
Banned
I do like 600 damage with my light attack and yeah those giant headless enemies still take like 11-12 hits to kill. It's a little insane.
I think this is kind of an inherent issue with Souls games, there's a soft damage cap fairly early and enemy health only continues to increase. I can be soul level 70 or 200 and I'm still doing the same damage even if the enemies have 10,000 health. Making every enemy a mini boss fight is kind of the point but it would be interesting if damage was allowed to scale higher as you get into NG+ or finish DLC like this. There would be PVP implications, but they already have mechanics to scale players down (at least in Bloodborne) so this could be reeled in and addressed for PVE and PVP.
Randy Solo
Member
This has to be the least amount of fun i've had with a souls game.. maybe ever. I actually really enjoyed the last dlc, and the main game. I absolutely hate just running around dodging this angel shit. I honestly can't identify the fun at all. I'm just standing at the second bonfire, and I don't think I have another headless chicken run left in me. Does this dlc get better? And if so, am I close to that point?
You have to kill their chrysalis, you probably ran past one on the way to the second bonfire (I know I did), it's on the left hand side.
The second chrysalis
you have to make a run through the swamp and up some tree branches at the other side, it's on a roof. This will kill Angel 3.
The third chrysalis
is located below the third bonfire, this kills Angel 2.
This also kills them permanently btw.
RandomSeed
Member
I think Midir makes my top 5 for bosses in Dark Souls, as far as visuals, not mechanics. In no order...
Midir
Gaping Dragon
Manus
Yhorm
Nameless King (plus King of the Storm)
Bonus spots would go to Gravelord Nito, Artorias, and Kalameet.
Midir
Gaping Dragon
Manus
Yhorm
Nameless King (plus King of the Storm)
Bonus spots would go to Gravelord Nito, Artorias, and Kalameet.
Randy Solo
Member
Okay that makes me happy, because I killed one and it just respawned and gave me no souls so I was getting frustrated. I'll be on the lookout now. Cheers.
Laser Angels and the big praying dude are bad designs.
I only say this as I get one shooted by them all. Angels are dead, I am on praying dude. I even use the
, but I can't even touch the dude because he seems to spam the archers so they don't even disappear.
How do I do this? This doesn't seem like an actual challenge as more just as gate.
I only say this as I get one shooted by them all. Angels are dead, I am on praying dude. I even use the
side thing you jump down
How do I do this? This doesn't seem like an actual challenge as more just as gate.
BossDarkseid
Member
The Giant respawns, so I didn't bother. You can run down the stairs to the right of the stairs you ascend.
Use the cover, the archers cant hit you there. Once you are at the closest one to him, you want to hit him while his last summon is fading a few times, then run back when he summons again. Should take just a few runs back and forth. It's really not bad once you know where you need to stand.
Dunno if I'd call it closure, but you can murder the one in the boss room while he's talking
Drillary Clinton
Banned
Once you drop down
just run up the ladder, and head up to him. Be ready to roll a lot and murder him once up the stairs.
I said the exact same thing to my friend yesterday, I really miss gimmick fights because every fight sort of felt different in Demon's Souls.
Yep, as much as I love Souls, I'm wishing for more than rolling around and stabbing something in the ass. Dark
eater Midir
I'm probably (most likely) talking out my ass but From made what they wanted with Demon's Souls and the difficulty just happened to come with it, but difficulty is what everyone focused on so From decided to keep difficulty in mind which gave us Slave
Knight Gael and fucking gank squads, multiple phases etc.
I can deal with those types of challenges (but not a fan of it), it's the loading times that really mocks you, so much wasted time.
as for killing the big dude, I get a couple of hits in, run back wait for the spam and repeat.
...it gets worse later in the game.
personally, the ridiculous curse build up is, what killed me a lot.
Red Liquorice
Member
Everything that stops you from taking it all in can be killed permenantly. But I agree, when you first start, I feel like you're being pushed forward all the time. It isn't until later that you can really come back and take in your surroundings.
Red Liquorice
Member
lol, I never thought of it like that, it is like Frogger!
Assuming you're talking about the giant summoning archer ghosts too, there's exactly three runs you need to do if you don't want to kill the giant. Run to first safe area, wait. Run to second safe area, wait. Drop down to the right and climb the ladder and run past the giant. It takes like 30 seconds.
Also now that I've had some time to reflect on the "ending" of the DLC I think there's some conversations to be had about it, but I'll save that for a few days later when more people have finished it.
Adam_Vania
Banned
holy crap, these ghost archers
frogger?
Astraea actually has really cool and different gameplay dynamics than any other Souls boss, though.
And while the pure combat ones are intense and good, they work partly because they are only a handful amongst a large and diverse rogues gallery. My criticism of most Dark Souls fights is because they are nearly universally just sword to sword or sword to meat tank brawls. A lot of them just blend together and often don't play enough with different movesets or the environment to feel really vastly different. There's only so many ways you can make the super fast and mobile swordsman before they all just feel the same.
It's also why I like Sinh way more than Kalameet. One actually feels like a dragon fight while the other spends most of its time just sitting on the ground.
Bosses like Armor Spider, Maneaters, and even Leechmonger have the stage be as much a part of the boss' dynamic and identity as their movesets.
Sanctuary
Member
While Dark Souls 3, and its expansions are technically graphically the best of all of the Dark Souls games (duh, hardware and engine), I feel like in many ways, it's actually the least impressive both aesthetically and atmospherically. I got so bored with the way Bloodborne looked due to its nearly monochromatic nature and how it really just felt like one huge level with barely any diversity and that bled way too much into Dark Souls 3. It basically looked like Dark Souls: Bloodborne Grayscale Edition.
On top of that, it seems as though FROM forgot, or simply didn't care about any semblance of balance. The enemies in general are faster, and that would be okay if it was just that, but it's not. There's also way too many enemies that do combo attacks which makes shields moderately worthless until high levels of staminia, and player speed wasn't adjusted enough to match. Oh, and then they also decided to keep the "more big packs of enemies equals difficulty!" garbage too. Sorcery was also shit until near the end of the game thanks to enemy speed and combos.
That's not to say I struggled with the game, because it wasn't really comparatively difficult to the previous games aside from a few broken enemies as long as you ended up realizing the easiest (and most boring) way to cheese the game; Straight Swords or Pyromancy. With the way they altered how poise works (or rather, how it essentially didn't unless you were already over halfway through a swing) it was too easy to get staggered with any of the larger weapons, and they didn't really compare damage/stamina wise.
What bothers me the most though is simply the overall aesthetics of the game. They barely change, and many of the textures have this really awful "wet paint" or "mud" look to them where a single color is just slathered across all of the textures, with very little in the way of detail. Both Demon's and the first Dark Souls had way more atmosphere and variety than any of the games that came after. Even Dark Souls 2 had a lot more variety, and I don't know what happened, other than they just seemed to have run out of inspiration. I was hoping The Ringed City might finally breathe some new life into this tired look, but it didn't really.
On top of that, it seems as though FROM forgot, or simply didn't care about any semblance of balance. The enemies in general are faster, and that would be okay if it was just that, but it's not. There's also way too many enemies that do combo attacks which makes shields moderately worthless until high levels of staminia, and player speed wasn't adjusted enough to match. Oh, and then they also decided to keep the "more big packs of enemies equals difficulty!" garbage too. Sorcery was also shit until near the end of the game thanks to enemy speed and combos.
That's not to say I struggled with the game, because it wasn't really comparatively difficult to the previous games aside from a few broken enemies as long as you ended up realizing the easiest (and most boring) way to cheese the game; Straight Swords or Pyromancy. With the way they altered how poise works (or rather, how it essentially didn't unless you were already over halfway through a swing) it was too easy to get staggered with any of the larger weapons, and they didn't really compare damage/stamina wise.
What bothers me the most though is simply the overall aesthetics of the game. They barely change, and many of the textures have this really awful "wet paint" or "mud" look to them where a single color is just slathered across all of the textures, with very little in the way of detail. Both Demon's and the first Dark Souls had way more atmosphere and variety than any of the games that came after. Even Dark Souls 2 had a lot more variety, and I don't know what happened, other than they just seemed to have run out of inspiration. I was hoping The Ringed City might finally breathe some new life into this tired look, but it didn't really.
Astraea is literally just a fight with a NPC.
The main reason people love that fight is how it's aesthetically presented.
semiconscious
Gold Member
Why is that? It's a damn fine weapon.
I was mostly referring to how that fight has actual multiple ways to "complete" it.
You can kill her directly versus Garl first or just bow n arrow from the sniper perch. It's not thaaat much but it at least actually experiments with it on top of having a really bonkers arena.
One issue is that many of the more novel ideas have been reused so they no longer seem so novel.
For example, Ornstein and Smough was the first Souls boss to have a cutscene phase transition, and the first Souls boss to be two distinctly different opponents working together, and the first Souls gank boss where which enemy you kill determines the final phase.
All of those things have since been repeated in the series.
For example, Ornstein and Smough was the first Souls boss to have a cutscene phase transition, and the first Souls boss to be two distinctly different opponents working together, and the first Souls gank boss where which enemy you kill determines the final phase.
All of those things have since been repeated in the series.
I guess so, but the boss isn't very fine lol I just can't do it.
Red Liquorice
Member
The arena is also terrible for such a fight. There's a tiny strip of a path to fight him on (unless you like getting plagued/toxic) and he leashes halfway up the path where the ceiling comes down. It reminds me a bit of Gwyn if you do that fight just stood in front of him waiting to parry.
Saying that - I love the music, the set up, the atmosphere, the characters - it's just the fight that sucks.
I mean, yeah, you could go through the plague babies if you hate yourself or you could kill Astraea from afar if you don't mind making the fight a boring cheese fest.
But for most people, it's just a battle against a NPC with cool dialogue. Compare it to Champion's Gravetender, where you have a fight against wolves and a NPC, then a second stage with the NPC changing tactics while a big wolf attacks you, and then the big wolf itself has a second phase. That's a much more mechanically distinct battle, it's just not nearly as well presented.
I think the strip sucks for a different reason: Garl Vinland often bumps his hammer on the ceiling, stopping his attacks.