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DS1 has the nostalgia advantage from a time where I rarely ever bought games because I was a kid and money was appropriately tight.
But I'll forever assert that DS2 is my favourite DS. The build system, the fact that stamina allocation matters, that - TPM may recognise this sentiment from another conversation we just had - healing is a tactical choice due to the time it takes to be effective, even the "ganking" was more an exercise in managing multiple opponents to me.
Controversially, I even like the way it reduces your HP slightly when you die. It really gives that feeling of desperation that you're "going hollow" and have to either embrace it or keep restoring your humanity, which fits the theme of the game.
Controversially, I even like the way it reduces your HP slightly when you die. It really gives that feeling of desperation that you’re “going hollow” and have to either embrace it or keep restoring your humanity, which fits the theme of the game.
It's also contrary to one of the most important lessons from the first game: that death doesn't matter. Experimenting is okay. There's nothing to lose. Achieving that calm in ds1 was memorable.
DS2 fucks that up by rather harshly penalizing you for every death.
That's a very good point too. I understand why they didn't keep that idea.
Live's hard and short for us dried prunes. Best not to get hit then. Speaking of:
I'm ambivalent on whether having to level iframes is a good thing. I like the idea of improving your agility like the rest of your abilities. On the other hand, that raises the entry barrier since your dodges have to be more precise at the start of the game, and the idea of using positioning instead of dodging for some attacks isn't intuitive to a lot of people.
Then again, part of the appeal of these games is trying and finding out what works and what doesn't.
God, I had no idea what I was doing with my build the first time I played that game. I don't think I put any levels into ADP. The struggle and confusion was part of the fun for me, but I get that not everyone wants to put up with that.
The best part is it isn't even ADP. It is AGI which was governed by ADP and ATN. And it was really a tight scaling window too: like 96 AGI slashed your iframes and anything past like 102 AGI was imperceptible.