I love how everyone is getting a different ‘story’…
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Yeah, I come from Breath of the Wild just recently, and while that one has a fairly simple combat system, you certainly can’t barge in on most enemies in the outer parts of the map and expect to win. The Lynels, the goblin camps, the Hinox beasts, it’s impossible to beat them with button mashing. Tactics are required, though stealth and where you’re coming from - the air, through the grass, jumping down from a tree - makes a huge difference.
But Dark Souls definitely takes it one step further. The slow, grunting and lashing, just the fatigue of battle, the foes almost radiate some kind of desperation, as if this is the only fight that matters, this lunge or failing to block could literally be the difference between life or death. The entire game seems to radiate this existential awareness in every strike it delivers.
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in all fairness the game has only been out three days and not everyone is a no-lifer like me (or…you? 
)
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Was having a private chat with @xidnpnlss about performance tweaking, but perhaps this is of use to more tarnished:
This wil obviously vary depending on your system, but this should give you a rough idea of what is the most taxing. Haven’t done any tweaking myself but the result fall in line with my expectations
Also dropping down to something like 1280x720 (which I personally would have preferred, if it allowed for much higher graphical fidelity) should give you a lot more headroom since that’s only 45% of the pixels that your gpu would have to process for 1920x1080.
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I’m on a 1080gtx, 1080 resolution too. Everything is at max but depth of field and motion blur are off. I had massive stutters but the latest patch and updated Nvidia drivers fixed it all.
No excuse. If they haven’t beaten Margit by now, they clearly have gone hollow. 
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Yeah margit was a serious challenge solo at the level I was at, then I went south and by the time I came back and did godrick it was a first try affair. Just absolutely crushed him with a greatsword. Funnily I actually find some bosses hard with summoning as they get a beefy boost to health and are harder to stun.
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I feel that, strongly. 2011 (DS1) was the year I “retired” as a gamer, all I played in the last decade was the 4 souls games, the Witcher 3 and rdr 2. Two weeks ago I downloaded God of War 4 (now that Sony is starting to release their exclusives to PC 
) which was on my “I want to play it but I don’t have a ps4 list” since forever. And that list is very short:
1: Bloodborne
2: God of war 4
But an hour into it I turned it off… DS freed/ruined me 
(don’t worry I’ll get around to god war eventually 
)
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I don’t want to do without the shield entirely because there are too many surprises in the first playthrough.
I always need the shield for the bosses, at least until I understand the attack pattern. Some bosses are immune to magic, so the shield comes in handy. because the pressure of your spells is missing.
Although I can’t even say how I’ll actually play in the end, there’s still a long way to go
I might have arrived a bit overpowered at the Castle Lorne boss, my +5 magic halberd crushed his poise and I made about 240 damage with each hit…
Was that a compulsory boss?
Two interesting examples. I never got as in to BB as I did the DS titles, probably because I tend to be a cautious fighter in DS (unsurprisingly), while BB favours aggression. Father Gascoyne in BB landed on the wrong side of the frustration / reward divide for me, and it was basically because you can’t approach him like a DS boss, or he just obliterates you. I did better after him, but never finished it.
God of War I very nearly completed in full, but the final (and optional) valkyrie battle was a brutal brick wall I couldn’t handle. I enjoyed it, and it’s another game with a clear DS influence but a more arcade feel - certainly a more solid system than Assasin’s Creed, but it never felt like a contender for the throne. As @circuitghost articulates, every fight in DS feels as though everything is at stake, and even as you progress an early enemy can still ruin your day if you give them anything less than 100% of your attention.
Aye, I think fighting a Lynel for the first time (and also beating a Lynel for the first time) is probably the closest thing to a non-DS DS experience.
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Just upskilled so I can use the meteorite staff and rock sling spell. That’s going nicely.
I keep forgetting how to upgrade and invest in skill points wisely in these games! Using the Lordsworn greatsword with +4 and now the meteorite staff but still kicking about with dreadful armour and shitty health!
Finding it difficult not to be heavily loaded too. Don’t like being slow!
I beat Stormveil and am about to clear the next legacy dungeon boss. But what’s insane is there is an entire hidden area of Stormveil. I explored most of it but my god, what a deep area.
I really like that you can come back and clean up a lot of these places later on. Just focus on getting the bosses cleared and then come back and explore it when your character has a little more punch to them.
that’s the nature of this game. i went back and cleared out most of the peninsula EZPZ because i completely missed it at first. i’m in liurnia right now and things are a little more my level, but i think i’m overleveled at this point.
By now I kinda play DS as if it were BB anyway, aggression/forwardness wise that is.
Yeah what they did with god of war is amazing, I listened to the soundtrack more times than I can count, played and loved the other 3 (main) games, I really wanted to play it. So it really meant something to me when I still ran into the “it ain’t darks souls wall” 
I’m not sure if it’s the same type of knight, but I just took down one in a fort in the north area of the first region with a blood sword of some kind. Took many tries, because there were some guards that I couldn’t avoid getting to him each time. Luckily there was only one of him. 
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I put 24 hours into Elden Ring over the weekend, defeating Margit last night, and now I wonder if I’ll ever bother making music again.
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I ended up being a glass cannon for most playthroughs. I go for maximum impact, hit-and-run style. I just can’t say how this will play out in PvP scenarios. if that gets too bad, i switch to full strength/vigor/endurance. Long Sword and Bow/Knife style… Reskilling is fortunately available at some point in the game. Until then, I will try and make mistakes 
Best place for this “theorycrafting” but also a big spoiler alert
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Ok. I just took down the Tree Sentinel and wasn’t button smashing and watching his patterns. And it was sick. I think I’m getting it now.
And I get now what everyone is complaining about: I hadn’t had any issue, and the stutters were bad (this was my first time going at him). I think FS shot themselves in the foot putting literally out the gate such an intense fight in the open world.
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