• Combat is controlled entirely by four factors:
  • Stamina: It determines all player attacks and special movement actions. Run out at the wrong time and you die, messily.
  • Animation: Every weapon has a specific set of animations, and choosing to attack is all on the player. When you begin an attack, the animation will finish entirely or clang off the environment or an enemy shield. There is no third possibility. Mistiming attacks is also a messy end.
  • Health: Like most RPGs, losing all of it means you die. Unlike most RPGs, your options for healing in combat extend exactly as far as your resources go, but it often takes considerable time to use those resources.
  • The Roll: While it consumes stamina, rolling at the right time makes you completely invincible to all effects that may impact your character. It seems unintuitive at first, but dodging through the giant sword as it comes to slice you in half will be your bread and butter before long.
  
  
• In a corollary to the four combat systems there is a fifth; resources. Ostensibly, health and stamina are your two true resources, but this refers to consumables. There are dozens of items in every game that can give you a leg up in combat, but many are not inexhaustible, and misuse can cause a heartbreaking spiral of death. Even resource dependence can become an issue to progress.
  
  
• Enemies have a set pattern of attacks. Every single enemy in every single game has a 100% quantifiable set of attacks that they do, with each one doing the exact same amount of damage every time they do it. A large giant may have two large sweeping attacks with his arm, but they are different, and you must learn to tell the difference to succeed. These patterns will never change within each game, but not even the same enemy you just died to will do the same attack in every situation.
  
  
• Souls, the eponymous existence of all three games, souls are your life blood. They are currency for merchant NPCs and they are your leveling resource, leading to a bleak game of juggling your needs to make progress. Every enemy you kill will grant some amount of souls, but upon death you will relinquish every single soul in your possession. If you can return to the place of your death before repeating your mistakes, you can retrieve the souls you lost. If not, they are gone forever.
  
  
• Characters all begin from one of several backgrounds that determine stats and a beginning item or two at the start of each game, but anyone can grow to wield any weapon or spell over the course of the game. You are never locked in to a single play style through a full game, though changing play styles once you are deeper into each title can become somewhat more challenging. All together, in player choice of combat style and function, there is no greater series for a power fantasy.
  
  
• Finally, each Souls games can be a uniquely frustrating experience. While many millions have found great joy in slamming themselves against each obstacle until it gives way to their accumulated knowledge, there is no reason not to ask a friend, or the forums, if you run into trouble. With dozens of vets just among goons who know every in and out of every game, you'll get as little or as much info as you're looking for, and it's an infinitely preferable outcome to shelving the game because you're stuck somewhere. These games deserve to be experienced, don't let yourself miss out because of a progression fault.
  
  
• Specific games quirks will be listed in their area.

• Unlike later games in the series, Demon's Souls uses a somewhat old school style of world separation for its levels. You begin the game in a hub world, The Nexus, with access to every major level from the start. Each world starts with a beginning area, having several following. Access to each successive area within a world is unlocked by defeating a boss. While it is possible to progress through most of the game directly in level order (fans refer to the first world's first section as 1-1 for instance), the world is balanced with the intent for you to move from world to world as progress and stats allow.
  
  
• Leveling is done from The Black Maiden, a mysterious woman in The Nexus. Nothing else particularly special about it, you must simply survive the return to the Nexus each time you wish to level.
  
  
• When you die in Demon's Souls, you become a ghost. Mechanically this is fairly simple; you cannot rise above 50% of your max HP under any circumstance (75% with a very important item). Killing a boss will return your full body and your full HP bar. For most people, you'll be playing the majority of the game in ghost form, so it's less of a gently caress-up tax and more the true limitation of your HP.

• World tendency is a mechanic that changes spawns, loot and area availability and a few other things within each area. Offline you can grind specific actions to change the world tendency, while online the world tendency occasionally gets flipped on the developer end to allow for certain items to be gained without too much work. Generally speaking it's not worth your time to worry about.
  
  
• If you play online at some point someone will invade you with the Scraping Spear. It is an item that damages your equipment at an immense rate every time you are hit with it, and unlike later games equipment repair is an enormous pain in the rear end. It's a dick move, and we've all done it, anyone who says they haven't is lying to you. It's just part of the nature of the unrefined ideas beast that is Demon's Souls.
  
  
• Unlike later games, holing items in your inventory gives you Item Burden, which slows a number of your actions. A storage option exists in the Nexus and should be used liberally.

• Unlike Demon's Souls, the world of Dark Souls is entirely interconnected. There are no loading screens, no false boundaries, every piece of the world is reachable in a matter of minutes from every other point. This interconnectivity gives the world an immense sense of place, but can also make backtracking through the games various paths a bit of a chore at times.
  
  
• Humanity is a second droppable resource you must concern yourself with. Unlike Demon's Souls, when you die you do not lose any max health, but you hollow. In order to interact with any of the multiplayer functions of Dark Souls, you must be human, which costs a humanity. The humanity counter in the top left will be lost on death, while items that grant humanity may be used whenever and are not lost on death.

• Leveling is now done from bonfires, checkpoints scattered throughout the world. Resting at a bonfire refills your estus flask and allows you to level and attune spells, but also respawns every enemy in the world save bosses and rare cases.
  
  
• Gone are the various consumable grasses for healing, you now have an estus flask. Each bonfire by defaults grants five uses of the estus flask per use. Becoming human and spending a humanity in the bonfire, thus costing two humanities, will raise this to ten uses per rest. A semi-late game item will allow you to raise this to twenty uses per rest.

• Unlike Demon's Souls, Item Burden no-longer exists and you can carry the entire slew of items from the game on your person at all times. Should you desire, an item can be purchased quite cheaply that will allow you to store items in bonfires, which can then be accessed from every other bonfire.
  
  
• World Tendency is gone, the world of Dark Souls simply is.

• Dark Souls 2 still uses the bonfire checkpoint system of Dark Souls 1, however it makes a small but significant change; you can teleport to any previous used bonfire from any other, at any time, from the beginning of the game. The world loses some of the connectivity and immersion of its predecessor but gains a great deal in ease of play.
  
  
• Dark Souls 2 adds a stat called Adaptability, one of its few true missteps. As your Adaptability or Attunement go up, so does your Agility. Your Agility governs the iframes your roll has, the speed of your estus flask use and the speed of your spellcasting. It's a massively important stat that entirely changes the difficulty of the game (from nearly unfair to basically playing correctly) when fully leveled. You'll want 100 Agility and eventually 110 to be able to play normally.

• Dark Souls 2 borrows concepts from both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 in terms of death. When you die you hollow, cutting off your access to summons. However, unlike Dark Souls 1, while hollow you can still be PvP invaded. Additionally, each death while already hollow lowers your maximum health, down to a minimum of 50% (75% with an item). This can make repeated deaths incredibly punishing while still learning an area, but luckily the unhollowing item is in abundant supply.
  
  
• Dark Souls 2 also uses hybrid design in its healing system. You maintain your estus, but instead of bonfire upgrades granting you more uses, its number of uses and effectiveness per heal are increased by finding items within the world. Additonally, consumable items called soulgems allow for on-the-move, slow over time healing. These are in extensive supply, and are often the better call over a slug of estus.

Bonby fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Apr 10, 2016

Songbearer fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Apr 10, 2016