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The embargo on reviews for Dark Souls isn't supposed to be lifted until 9am PST tomorrow, but already I've found five reviews up:

IGN
Destructoid
Polygon
The Escapist
AusGamers

All five scores so far are a 9/10 or above.

Lastly, a great 40-minute fan-made video guide on how to play the game has been released. While it obviously features gameplay footage and so has minor spoilers, this is all about game mechanics and isn't about spoiling lore or boss fights or anything like that. Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8mkbwp1F78

EDIT: Yet more reviews

We're up to 11 scored reviews. Only two are below 9/10 (an 8 and an 8.5).
 
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Been playing Dark Souls 2 for a couple hours. Had to stop to cool my irritation with it. Ah the joys of the Souls' series. Addictive and frustrating as hell all at the same time.
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It's awesome so far BTW. :)
 
Yep. I played it for a couple of hours last night and I'm pretty sure I'm already stuck. I kept taking on those cyclops hippo dudes and attacked that emm effing statue. My broadsword is broken and I have no way to fix it yet. I'm going to have to dual wield a bandits knife with a ****ty dagger until I have enough dex to be able to actually use a shield or a key to help that blacksmith out so he'll repair my sword. Awesome. It's so ****ing hard.


Sent from the JazzFanz app
 
I made it 2 and a half hours in without dying once or using a guide. Now I'm 7 hours in and I've died a bunch. I have a funny story about the midnight release I'll share later.
 
Archie Moses said:
I made it 2 and a half hours in without dying once or using a guide. Now I'm 7 hours in and I've died a bunch. I have a funny story about the midnight release I'll share later.
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My first death was an inadvertent button press... I hit circle and rolled off a ledge in the tutorial area. Second time I died was because I hit the wrong button for jump, also in the tutorial area (I actually switched jump back to the circle button). Grr.

Died a bunch since then anyway, though.

A few early complaints:

-Getting humanity back after a boss would have been nice (as was the case in Demon's). I actually haven't used an effigy yet, they seem pretty rare, so I've just accepted being stuck at half health.

-I also have to agree with the IGN reviewer that needing to return to Majula to level is annoying. And it doesn't help that the Emerald Herald has four lines of dialogue to go through every time you talk to her. That gets old fast.

-Also, I am confused by what seem to be missing magic mechanics, things that existed in the beta but not here. There used to be strong and weak spell casts, and you could double-hand your wand for more magic damage just like you could a melee weapon. But now I can't get any of that to work. I also can't figure out how to manually aim spells with the first person view, another thing I could do in the beta. I wonder if they just decided to abandon that stuff?
 
Wow, so I had literally made the game harder for myself without knowing it.

There are two covenants in Majula, the Way of Blue and another one I forget the name of where you pray to this big tree. Well, apparently this second covenant actually increases enemy health and damage, and as far as I know doesn't give you any additional souls for your trouble. All it does is allow enemies to drop "awestones," which you use to level up the covenant and get rewards. However, when I checked the guide, the rewards really aren't all that great. So I dropped the covenant like a bad habit.

I post this in case anyone made the same mistake I did. :p It did say when I joined that it was for people who desired a challenge, but I didn't know at the time what exactly that meant...
 
Hantlers said:
I'm just curious. I'm not gonna buy it, but I thought I had heard that it was going to be the best game ever.
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The only real complaint seems to be the lack of any kind of single-player mode, whether it be a campaign or just maps against local bots. Granted, few players actually care about single-player modes in shooters, but this omission seems particularly odd since the game includes lots of bots present on multiplayer maps. They created the AI, why not at least allow practice play against bots offline? Kinda odd. As it stands, there's literally nothing to do with the game if the network goes down. Plus I hear the multiplayer modes themselves aren't all that varied or original, either.

But everyone seems to like the core gameplay. Haven't really seen any complaints there.
 
AtheistPreacher said:
Wow, so I had literally made the game harder for myself without knowing it.

There are two covenants in Majula, the Way of Blue and another one I forget the name of where you pray to this big tree. Well, apparently this second covenant actually increases enemy health and damage, and as far as I know doesn't give you any additional souls for your trouble. All it does is allow enemies to drop "awestones," which you use to level up the covenant and get rewards. However, when I checked the guide, the rewards really aren't all that great. So I dropped the covenant like a bad habit.

I post this in case anyone made the same mistake I did. :p It did say when I joined that it was for people who desired a challenge, but I didn't know at the time what exactly that meant...
Click to expand...

I did the same thing for a while. Im a little confused about where to go next, after the first two bosses. This is by design though because I wanted to go through blindly this time around. Jazzfanz is my only dark souls 2 correspondence. Anyways, I rode a bird thing to a dark tower place and Im getting wrecked by the first boss there. I still lost with multiple summons.
 
OK. Now for my midnight release story.

I picked up my game at the Gamestop in South Jordan at the District. Anyway, Gamestop asked for the preorders to be taken care after 9 pm. My brother and I show up at 9 (he got Titanfall) to pay for our games and get a number to speed things up at midnight. Listening to the two guys behind us (Dungeons and Dragons wiz kids) talk about Dark Souls and their excitement was worthy of hilariously nerdy conversation of the year award (in case you were wondering, that doesn't really exist, I simply made it up.) In front of us there was this tall, lengthy looking kid that paid for his game. After he paid he asked the clerk, "What time do I come back to pick up my game?" He was being serious, too. I guess he's never been to a "midnight" release before.

Later on that night, we were put in a line with our numbers. That tall lengthy kid, who strangly looked like Edward from Twilight was right in front of me. He was wearing a Stanford hoodie and basketball shorts with a Stanford lanyard hanging from his pocket. I tried to have small talk with him and asked him if he went to Stanford. He said he was going there this fall and one of his friends chimed in, "If you only knew who this guy was! Google him." I put two and two together and asked him if he was the tied end from Bingham (Dalton Schultz) who signed with Stanford. He said yes. I was kinda shocked because he's been hyped on the radio as the best recruit from Utah. He just looked like your regular, tall, high school kid. I asked him how big he was and he said 6'6' and 240. There's not way in hell he's either 6'6" nor 240, but that's besides the point (that wasn't my ice-breaker question by the way lol.) I told him good for you and how much he was going to love Palo Alto and I had spent two years living there and was on the campus every day. Trying to talk to the kid was like talking to a dead moth. He never made eye contact, gave one worded responses. I kinda got out of him either he's tired of talking about it or he's just super arrogant (there's no way I'm the douchebucket.) I told him I hoped the Utes crushed him and I stopped talking to him (yes, I told him I was only joking and he choose a really great school and wished him the best of luck, too.) Anyway, we make it into the store with our numbers, we were the first group to be let in. He walks up to the cash register hands him his number and grabs two posters and starts to leave. The cashier says, "Dude, do you want your game with them posters?" Everyone started laughing at him.

That Stanford education, doe.

Now I'm a level 41 knight on Dark Souls. I named my character, Dalton, and yes, he's getting it taken to him a lot. ;)
 
Archie Moses said:
OK. Now for my midnight release story.

I picked up my game at the Gamestop in South Jordan at the District. Anyway, Gamestop asked for the preorders to be taken care after 9 pm. My brother and I show up at 9 (he got Titanfall) to pay for our games and get a number to speed things up at midnight. Listening to the two guys behind us (Dungeons and Dragons wiz kids) talk about Dark Souls and their excitement was worthy of hilariously nerdy conversation of the year award (in case you were wondering, that doesn't really exist, I simply made it up.) In front of us there was this tall, lengthy looking kid that paid for his game. After he paid he asked the clerk, "What time do I come back to pick up my game?" He was being serious, too. I guess he's never been to a "midnight" release before.

Later on that night, we were put in a line with our numbers. That tall lengthy kid, who strangly looked like Edward from Twilight was right in front of me. He was wearing a Stanford hoodie and basketball shorts with a Stanford lanyard hanging from his pocket. I tried to have small talk with him and asked him if he went to Stanford. He said he was going there this fall and one of his friends chimed in, "If you only knew who this guy was! Google him." I put two and two together and asked him if he was the tied end from Bingham (Dalton Schultz) who signed with Stanford. He said yes. I was kinda shocked because he's been hyped on the radio as the best recruit from Utah. He just looked like your regular, tall, high school kid. I asked him how big he was and he said 6'6' and 240. There's not way in hell he's either 6'6" nor 240, but that's besides the point (that wasn't my ice-breaker question by the way lol.) I told him good for you and how much he was going to love Palo Alto and I had spent two years living there and was on the campus every day. Trying to talk to the kid was like talking to a dead moth. He never made eye contact, gave one worded responses. I kinda got out of him either he's tired of talking about it or he's just super arrogant (there's no way I'm the douchebucket.) I told him I hoped the Utes crushed him and I stopped talking to him (yes, I told him I was only joking and he choose a really great school and wished him the best of luck, too.) Anyway, we make it into the store with our numbers, we were the first group to be let in. He walks up to the cash register hands him his number and grabs two posters and starts to leave. The cashier says, "Dude, do you want your game with them posters?" Everyone started laughing at him.

That Stanford education, doe.

Now I'm a level 41 knight on Dark Souls. I named my character, Dalton, and yes, he's getting it taken to him a lot. ;)
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Thanks for sharing.... good read, i laughed
 
Archie Moses said:
OK. Now for my midnight release story.

I picked up my game at the Gamestop in South Jordan at the District. Anyway, Gamestop asked for the preorders to be taken care after 9 pm. My brother and I show up at 9 (he got Titanfall) to pay for our games and get a number to speed things up at midnight. Listening to the two guys behind us (Dungeons and Dragons wiz kids) talk about Dark Souls and their excitement was worthy of hilariously nerdy conversation of the year award (in case you were wondering, that doesn't really exist, I simply made it up.) In front of us there was this tall, lengthy looking kid that paid for his game. After he paid he asked the clerk, "What time do I come back to pick up my game?" He was being serious, too. I guess he's never been to a "midnight" release before.

Later on that night, we were put in a line with our numbers. That tall lengthy kid, who strangly looked like Edward from Twilight was right in front of me. He was wearing a Stanford hoodie and basketball shorts with a Stanford lanyard hanging from his pocket. I tried to have small talk with him and asked him if he went to Stanford. He said he was going there this fall and one of his friends chimed in, "If you only knew who this guy was! Google him." I put two and two together and asked him if he was the tied end from Bingham (Dalton Schultz) who signed with Stanford. He said yes. I was kinda shocked because he's been hyped on the radio as the best recruit from Utah. He just looked like your regular, tall, high school kid. I asked him how big he was and he said 6'6' and 240. There's not way in hell he's either 6'6" nor 240, but that's besides the point (that wasn't my ice-breaker question by the way lol.) I told him good for you and how much he was going to love Palo Alto and I had spent two years living there and was on the campus every day. Trying to talk to the kid was like talking to a dead moth. He never made eye contact, gave one worded responses. I kinda got out of him either he's tired of talking about it or he's just super arrogant (there's no way I'm the douchebucket.) I told him I hoped the Utes crushed him and I stopped talking to him (yes, I told him I was only joking and he choose a really great school and wished him the best of luck, too.) Anyway, we make it into the store with our numbers, we were the first group to be let in. He walks up to the cash register hands him his number and grabs two posters and starts to leave. The cashier says, "Dude, do you want your game with them posters?" Everyone started laughing at him.

That Stanford education, doe.

Now I'm a level 41 knight on Dark Souls. I named my character, Dalton, and yes, he's getting it taken to him a lot. ;)
Click to expand...

How do your stats look so far?
 
Safetydan said:
I did the same thing for a while. Im a little confused about where to go next, after the first two bosses. This is by design though because I wanted to go through blindly this time around. Jazzfanz is my only dark souls 2 correspondence. Anyways, I rode a bird thing to a dark tower place and Im getting wrecked by the first boss there. I still lost with multiple summons.
Click to expand...

You probably did the same thing I did and couldn't figure out how to unlock one of the areas.

From Majula, head into that stone tower thingy where there are spiral stairs going down (you might have picked up a shield in a chest in this area, the entrance is just to the left of the make-the-game-harder covenant). At the bottom is a grate with some water running under it that's locked. But there's actually a lever high up on the wall that you can reach. Hit that and the area will open. You should have an easier time there than at the dark tower place with the bird that you're describing.

Oh, and as for my progress, I think I've beaten something like six or seven bosses at this point. I just reached the area that they used for the beta, "Huntsman's Copse." It'll be interesting playing that one tomorrow since it's the one area I know pretty well already (barring changes). Also, I've shut down my PS3 now so I don't know the exact number, but I know my soul level is in the 80s. At this point I'm investing in pretty much everything except faith. I have 30 in stength so I can use the first greatshield I picked up, also got 20 dex so I can use the Drangleic Greatsword, which is a pretty danged awesome weapon, been using it for quite a while now.
 
AtheistPreacher said:
You probably did the same thing I did and couldn't figure out how to unlock one of the areas.

From Majula, head into that stone tower thingy where there are spiral stairs going down (you might have picked up a shield in a chest in this area, the entrance is just to the left of the make-the-game-harder covenant). At the bottom is a grate with some water running under it that's locked. But there's actually a lever high up on the wall that you can reach. Hit that and the area will open. You should have an easier time there than at the dark tower place with the bird that you're describing.

Oh, and as for my progress, I think I've beaten something like six or seven bosses at this point. I just reached the area that they used for the beta, "Huntsman's Copse." It'll be interesting playing that one tomorrow since it's the one area I know pretty well already (barring changes). Also, I've shut down my PS3 now so I don't know the exact number, but I know my soul level is in the 80s. At this point I'm investing in pretty much everything except faith. I have 30 in stength so I can use the first greatshield I picked up, also got 20 dex so I can use the Drangleic Greatsword, which is a pretty danged awesome weapon, been using it for quite a while now.
Click to expand...

Yes, I moved to Heide's tower of flame and took out the first boss w/ no problem. Im at SL 33 atm. The bastille enemies werent too bad. But that trio of bosses were a little too intense. Still, I managed to find a second bonfire there before I left.
My build always ends up straight dex. Unlike DS1, however, I have to pump up vigor, endurance, vitality, and adaptability for survivability purposes in addition to my dexterity. Dark souls 1 was just vit. and end. and you were golden.
 
If anybody is curious about Gamefly.....I have had it for a few weeks now and it seems the turnaround for a game is 3 business days to Utah. They have 2 shipping centers in the West(Seattle and Los Angeles) and they have Seattle assigned as my default. So the two game out at a time plan seems like the way to go if you want something available to play constantly and/or are picky enough to be sending back games a lot.
 
Level 90 and about 30 hours in. Such a great game. Still learning things like a newb. I've had my world invaded 3 times and I'm 3/0 with heart palpitations. Lol
 
Archie Moses said:
Level 90 and about 30 hours in. Such a great game. Still learning things like a newb. I've had my world invaded 3 times and I'm 3/0 with heart palpitations. Lol
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Speaking of learning things like a newb, I discovered another important gameplay mechanic that the game never explained. :p

You CAN aim spells from a first-person view, but you can only do so by having the binoculars in your off hand. If you do that, you can look through your binoculars with the left trigger, and fire spells with your right.

I discover this after six days of playing... yeesh...

Also, you don't upgrade your base pyromancy flame to a better one anymore, you just pick up the better one. So don't waste your fire seeds upgrading the weaker one like I'd been doing. :p Wait until you pick up the Dark Pyromancy Flame in "The Gutter."

Last, I'm finding the high-INT magic in this game rather underwhelming. I ended up respecing and bringing my INT down from 40 to 20, enough to still be able to cast Great Heavy Soul Arrow and use a good catalyst. I put the extra points in faith and am having a ball chucking lightning bolts around.
 
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