Dark Souls Remastered

[Hero-of-Time]

The Network Test can now be downloaded from the EU eShop. The test servers will come online 21st, 22nd and 23rd of September.

[MindFreak]

And naturally it requires Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

It's also only 7PM-11PM CEST.

[killthenet]

Very suspicious that this would be available for download almost exactly as soon as the paid online service launches. The timings aren't great for me, I would prefer it a bit later UK time to be honest, but I'll try and get a few hours in across the weekend. You can launch the client and get to the main menu but it obviously fails when checking for the server, it's pretty surreal seeing 'From Software' and the Dark Souls logo on a Nintendo console. 

You can also pre-load the full game now, takes up 3.9gb so pretty reasonable file size. 

Edited September 19, 2018 by killthenet

[Sméagol]

Here's the official tweet:

Great timing.. Not sure how much time I can devote this weekend. I'll try to be available Friday at least! Hoping for some co-op fun!

[Sméagol]

Quick reminder!

Had a quick look to see what the network test actually entails.. I suspect it doesn't function well as an introduction to Dark Souls, it's a bit multiplayer focussed (although like normal you can ignore all of that.. If you stay hollow), and it features the Undead Parish map. You can't go anywhere else. PvE wise your goal is to defeat the Gargoyles, this ends the game. You have 6 pre-built classes to choose from, one is the Black Knight, who has a Red Eye Orb, so that's the one you want if you want to invade.

Anyway, unlike the retail game, and previously the prepare to die edition on PC with 3rd party mods.. I don't think there's a way to reliably match up, and no way to concretely indentify eachother. I think I'll try to hide my summoning sign somewhere less obvious.

Anyway playing tonight or this weekend? Anyone who's not familar with the game?

[killthenet]

I'll be playing it tonight, definitely. I played it on PS3 a couple of years ago and have played through Demon's Souls and Dark Souls II since so I'm fairly well versed in the Souls games but will likely be pretty rusty as I haven't played one in a while. 

Was kind of hoping that more of the game would be open during the test but I guess it makes sense to limit it to Undead Parish. Does it start out the same as the main game or do you just create a character and go straight to the Undead Parish? 

[Sméagol]

I watched a youtube video of the network test on.. I think PS4. I'm assuming here, that it's exactly the same.

You don't create anything, you have 6 characters to choose from. I'm not sure, but I suspect they don't even level. The Dark Knight started at level 16 I think, I don't know if that's the same for the other characters. But the Black Knight was wielding his.. Well one of the swords those things use. Does insane damage of course. 4 of the characters are "normal" (a soldier, witch, pyromancer and knight), and there's Solaire. Or at least a character in his gear.

Yeah, you start out at the bonfire at the start of Undead Parish, the one at the end of the bridge (so you don't see the asylum or Firelink Shrine). The gate is closed, but you can see it. All other passage ways are gated off by fog gates. You start out human, with one humanity (kindle the bonfire), and you can get invaded (or invade yourself, if you chose the Black Knight) right away. Session ends when you defeat the Gargoyles.

Anyway my plan is to dump my summoning sign somewhere, and farm the map and getting the feel back while waiting to be summoned.

Edited September 21, 2018 by Sméagol

[killthenet]

Ah right, makes sense that you don't create one or have the ability to level up but I was kind of hoping I could level a character up across the weekend. Would obviously lose it after the beta anyway but would have been fun to see how much I could level up. 

My memory is hazy of where exactly the Gargoyles are but the way I remember it they're pretty far from the first bonfire in Undead Parish aren't they? If so then it seems like there's a decent sized area to play in. From what you watched were the Gargoyles the only bosses/mini bosses in the test? 

[Sméagol]

Yeah they're the only boss.

But like I said, I don't think it's a good "demo" for beginners. The boar and Black Knight are scary for newcomers. If you're a newcomer, the map is plenty.. If you're a veteran, well it's still plenty to have some quick fun, but if you know what you're doing, it doesn't take long to get to the Gargoyles. Theoretically you can sprint past everything, though that can often fail near the end, even for veterans ;). The guy in the video hadn't played the game in a long time, and kept messing up his run to the boss, trying to ignore everything. When I played last time, I eventually gave up trying to run past it, haha. It's doable, but can often fail miserably. But if you succeed, you can get to the boss in a few minutes. The Gargoyles are at the top of the church like building at the end.

[killthenet]

I'd forgotten that Undead Parish was the area after the bridge, in my head I thought we'd be starting at the first bonfire in Undead Burg. I played for 50 minutes or so and didn't make it too far, lucked out with the bull when it ran into flames and managed to make it up the first flight of stairs in the church but got overwhelmed. At first I was in Hollow Knight mode pressing Y to attack, took me a few minutes to get the hang of the controls again. 

Have to leave the house for a bit now but will try and play a bit more when I get back.

[Sméagol]

On 21/09/2018 at 7:57 PM, killthenet said:

I'd forgotten that Undead Parish was the area after the bridge, in my head I thought we'd be starting at the first bonfire in Undead Burg. I played for 50 minutes or so and didn't make it too far, lucked out with the bull when it ran into flames and managed to make it up the first flight of stairs in the church but got overwhelmed. At first I was in Hollow Knight mode pressing Y to attack, took me a few minutes to get the hang of the controls again. 

Haha, yeah, admittedly it took me much longer than expected to get to and take down the Gargoyles. The Black Knight already caused numerous deaths, but I was adamant at killing it. It was a combination of getting back the feeling for the game, including its controls, playing with a pre-built character, and maybe a little bit of over confidence.  I played Pyromancers, but I built them so they were at least capable of blocking some things. But yeah, I succeeded in the end, which is good because I'd normally have better gear at that point. After that I tried some of the other characters for multiplayer. But it's too bad to see no hype at all for this game on this forum.

 

Edited September 23, 2018 by Sméagol

[killthenet]

I didn't get to play it on Saturday night but put a couple of hours into the demo today. I thought I'd be able to beat the gargoyles easily but I only managed to reach them twice, the first time I had no estus left and summoned Solaire for the battle but got caught by the second gargoyles flames just as I was killing the first one. Only had a few minutes left before 10pm so my second attempt proved to me my last one, again dealt with the first one but ran out of estus before I could do much damage to the second guy. 

On Friday night I tried for ages to try and get summoned into my brothers game, he's never played a Souls game before so I thought it would be better if I could show him the ropes a bit but it seemed nigh on impossible to link up with him. I kept placing my summon sign underneath some barrels hoping that nobody would look there but I kept getting summoned by random people.

What have your impressions been of the network test @Sméagol? I played the game originally on PS3 so was used to a lot of slow down and even with the small slice we had to play I thought it ran a lot smoother than that version. I read some very negative impressions from people on reddit and resetera but don't really understand where their criticisms are coming from. It seems foolish to judge the performance of the game based on the beta, especially when people have already played the actual game at expos and reported that problems areas like Blightown don't suffer from the same frame rate issues as the original release. Hell even Digital Foundry analysed footage (admittedly not direct feed) and came out with positive results. 

It would have been nice to link up with some people from here (and my brother) for some co-op action, I've never experienced Dark Souls online before (had a hacked PS3 and don't subscribe to PS Plus) so it was fun to get summoned and invaded but I will definitely enjoy it more when I can play with people I know. Did anybody else here try it out over the weekend? It made me more excited to get my hands on the game again so hopefully more than just me and @Sméagol end up buying it.

[Sméagol]

1 hour ago, killthenet said:

What have your impressions been of the network test @Sméagol?

My impressions are that this is good old-fashioned Dark Souls. It's still doesn't look technically pretty, although most of the setpieces  and monster designs make up for it. But I can see why some people are upset about this aspect of the "remaster". I suspect the biggest actual improvement are the dedicated servers, but I'm not sure how big of an improvement that will be. One host was lagging while co-opping. Some of the multiplayer aspects got changed for the network test I suspect. I never was able to summon someone as the Black Knight, nor could I ever invade a Gravelord. But as a soldier, I got summoned constantly. But yeah, everything else just feels like it ever did, so it feels good. PvE combat is as satisfying as ever, PvP combat is still something I have to practice!

Overall it's the Dark Souls I know and love. I personally need nothing more than a physical copy for my collection and a new multiplayer community to play with. While hype here seems to be non-existent, there were plenty of people playing, and I can have fun with randomers. Would be great to see more NE people though. @nekunando and @Nicktendoweren't impressed with the network test, though I keep telling the test wasn't great as a demo. I wonder if there will be a proper demo (do the other consoles have one?)? The asylum works much better as a demo. Anyway, even after 250 hours, I still have plenty of stuff to do. Doing another regular run, trying out different builds, do new game + runs, doing specific multiplayer builds for both co-op and invasions (on PC I had an invading Santa Claus build who was dropping prism stones and leaving gifts, for example), playing plenty of hide and seek with invaders, haha, and if I have enough experience, maybe I'll try a level 1 run. And I still want to do a let's play, but I need to change my set-up for that, so probably won't do one at launch.

1 hour ago, killthenet said:

On Friday night I tried for ages to try and get summoned into my brothers game, he's never played a Souls game before so I thought it would be better if I could show him the ropes a bit but it seemed nigh on impossible to link up with him. I kept placing my summon sign underneath some barrels hoping that nobody would look there but I kept getting summoned by random people.

Without getting to technical, every time you load a multiplayer area in Dark Souls, it will generate a pool of other players, from which it chooses when you want to invade, get summoned or be invaded. if your brother isn't among them, you won't be playing together. I assume this is still more or less the same for the remaster. But the full game will feature a password system, so you don't have to rely on random chance.

Edited September 24, 2018 by Sméagol

[Sméagol]

[MindFreak]

That is precisely how I imagine I would look when playing the game. And I would be nervous playing it in handheld mode...

[Sméagol]

44 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

That is precisely how I imagine I would look when playing the game. And I would be nervous playing it in handheld mode...

He seriously looks like he's about to break it.

[killthenet]

My copy has been dispatched. I probably won't get the time to get properly stuck into it for a little while but I can imagine much of my free time in November being consumed by it. Curious to see what this metal plate from the Nintendo store looks like too, very weird item to bundle with the game.

[Sméagol]

Yeah I am HYPED.

In fact, I am kind of annoyed it's the same weekend as Splatoween..

Apart from a Splatoween and 1 or 2 films, I intend to play this the whole weekend.

Anyone else getting this? Want to gank some invaders.

Seriously, I don't really summon people, unless I need help against invaders, but I'll post here to indicate when I'm playing and where my summoning sign is. Oh plus the other details, since you can now connect directly to each other.

[Hero-of-Time]

I was dabbling with buying it ( only played Bloodborne and I loved it ) but the audio issues in the game have made me have second thoughts. The game was originally a PS3/360 game so there's no way these kind of issues should be plaguing this release.

[Sméagol]

6 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I was dabbling with buying it ( only played Bloodborne and I loved it ) but the audio issues in the game have made me have second thoughts. The game was originally a PS3/360 game so there's no way these kind of issues should be plaguing this release.

What audio issues? I haven't experienced anything in the network test.

[Hero-of-Time]

22 minutes ago, Sméagol said:

What audio issues? I haven't experienced anything in the network test.

The audio files in the game seem to have been heavily compressed. There's a big thread over on Era about it. The Digital Foundry guys, as well as others, picked up on it during the network test and it seems it hasn't been addressed in the final release.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/dark-souls-switch-still-suffers-with-compressed-audio.74735/

[killthenet]

24 minutes ago, Sméagol said:

What audio issues? I haven't experienced anything in the network test.

Basically the snobs on resetera have got it in their heads that the audio is horribly compressed. I didn't think the audio was particularly bad in the network test so I"m sure they're just worrying over nothing as usual

Edited October 17, 2018 by killthenet

[Hero-of-Time]

3 minutes ago, killthenet said:

Basically the snobs on resetera have got it in their heads that the audio is horribly compressed. I didn't think the audio was particularly bad in the network test so I"m sure they're just worrying over nothing as usual

Digital Foundry guys also picked up on it.

[killthenet]

2 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Digital Foundry guys also picked up on it.

Ah right, wasn't aware of that. Personally I won't be too bothered if the audio is slightly lower bitrate, I'm buying it to play mostly in handheld mode while watching TV so it won't effect me too much. Could be an issue for people playing through it for the first time if it dampens the atmosphere at all.

[Hero-of-Time]

1 minute ago, killthenet said:

Ah right, wasn't aware of that. Personally I won't be too bothered if the audio is slightly lower bitrate, I'm buying it to play mostly in handheld mode while watching TV so it won't effect me too much. Could be an issue for people playing through it for the first time if it dampens the atmosphere at all.

I think how you will be playing the game and how sensitive you are to such things will effect if this issue will bother you. I'm not sure it will actually bother me but I'm waiting for the game to be out in the wild so that more hands on impressions/videos will show if this is a big problem or not.