I’m a bit surprised nobody made a thread on this, but it looks like the last DS thread never got much traction either despite people talking about it all the time on this board.
Has anybody picked it up yet? It came out on PS3 and 360 a few days ago, and will come out on PC next month. Supposedly they hired a bunch of real PC developers, and actually developed the new engine code on PC first and then ported it to consoles (no, I don’t know why PC is coming out later then), so it shouldn’t be a shitty port this time.
I picked up the PS3 version, and I had it given to me as a preorder on Steam. I’ll probably move to PC after it comes out there, but until then, yay!
Even if you want to avoid spoilers, I heavily advise looking up the new mechanics. They’re just different enough from Dark Souls that I think having played it may put you at more of a disadvantage than a new player if you don’t learn them.
I’m planning on making a hex-based character. Hexes are a new form of magic that rely on both int AND faith. A lot of hexes have an interesting mechanic where they drain souls to have greater effects. For instance, Dark Magic Weapon can drain up to 2000 souls from you to greatly increase the dark damage it enchants the weapon with.
Some important things and minor hints (spoilered for length and people who want to figure out new mechanics themselves, no major plot spoilers):
[spoiler]Monsters have limited respawns, around 15. After you beat the area’s boss, you can use an item called a Bonfire Ascetic to put that area (and that area alone) in New Game+ difficulty, which will reset loot and respawn enemies at the higher difficulty. One word of warning is that this stacks with NG+. So if you use an ascetic in NG to make an area NG+, when you start an actual NG+ on that character, it will be like it’s NG++.
There are a few new stats. Notably, while all stats now increase health, the “health increase” stat is Vigor, not Vitality. Vigor also increases your equip load.
If you find certain items, you can respec by going back to the firekeepers at the beginning of the game.
There’s a sex change coffin somewhere in the prologue level if you want to change your character’s sex.
Weapon upgrades on separate paths now. No more arcane “get things to +5 then go to this blacksmith and…” nonsense. There are two things: upgrades and infusions. You can upgrade weapons to +10, and “infuse” them with fire/lightning/etc. These infusion materials are relatively common so it lets you swap out the damage type of your favorite weapon depending on the area you’re going to. That said, there are two blacksmiths that do different infusion paths.
You can get invaded while hollow, so there’s literally no reason to not be human except for a couple items that work better while hollow. To offset this, you can burn a human effigy (the item that turns out human) at any bonfire to lower the chance you’ll be invaded. You can still only summon friends while human.
Every time you die, you lose a little of your max life, up to a total of only having half a health bar. Becoming human reverses this. If you kill NPCs or invade other players with cracked red eye orbs, you gain “sin” which allows your max health to go below half when hollowed.
Soul levels seem to be easier to get, and item prices seem cheaper. Most people seem to finish the game around SL 120. I hear the most expensive item is 10k souls.
You get your flask and level up at a lady in Marjoram, the main town. Don’t leave until you find her, I hear a lot of players miss her.
If you’re not good, don’t join the covenant given to you by the tablet in Marjoram. Well, join it for the achievement and item, but immediately leave it. It makes everything harder. There’s a reason it asks you 3 times if you’re sure you want to join it. It also makes it so you can’t summon help.
You can warp between any two bonfires you’ve lit from the beginning of the game.
[/spoiler]