I've recently picked this game up after hearing many random things about it, and I have to say I absolutely love it. If you're a Diablo fan and own the PS3, you should definitely pick this up. It's about 2 years old at this point so it's not too expensive. I think this game was discussed here before but never had a proper thread so I made one.
The game uses action controlled combat (e.g., you control if your blows hit or miss vs a "chance to hit" stat and the like), which is something I'm a sucker for. You can also block, parry and retaliate, dodge, roll, and throw exploding torches at people. There's actually more but I'm still figuring it all out (I barely scratched the surface, really). The game features all sorts of standard medieval weapons from your normal household sword to spears, halberds, crossbows, rapiers and other finesse weapons, + something in the spell department but I'm not a mage so I didn't really check that out.
You have extensive freedom in weapon setup, such as weapon + shield, 2Hing any weapon (gives +.5 bonus from STR), dual wielding. Pretty much every weapon type and weapon set have their own unique animation and attacks.
What you wear affects how your character moves, as well. Wearing too much armor will slow you down, and heavy armor restricts your roll/dodge ability and makes you rely more on blocking and parrying.
That aside, the game is a full fledged RPG. You choose a "class" at the start, but you can advance your class in any direction you like, class just defines starting attributes and weapons/armor. There are warriors, rangers, mage like characters, rogue like characters, and some hybrids, in fact, most of them seem to be hybridish except the Royalty class which is pretty much blank. Your character can grow in power as he collects soul points from killing enemies and improves stats (STR, DEX, Vit, the usual, + a few random ones like Faith), and the highest level (712) will take you a very very very long time to attain, most don't bother. Enemies have loot tables and constantly drop stuff, with weapons benefiting from different stats. Certain actions you perform may cause your world to become white (easier, worser drops, friendly NPC's appear and help you), or black (rare drops, hard, and special bosses come out to kill you), giving more for you to work with. There are different types of damage on weapons (blunt, slashing, fire, magic, etc.), as well as different effects to be protected from and affected by.
After you finish the game, in the classic Diablo style, you can play again at 40% increased difficulty, and more increased difficulty after that. In fact, this doesn't have a limit irrc, most people stop at 3.
The main "drawback" this game seems to have for most people is the difficulty. First of all, the game uses a more punishing version of the Diablo II Nightmare save/load system. The game saves all your progress and doesn't let you go back anywhere. You kill that trader, he's dead. You lost an item, it's gone. If you die, you drop all your souls on the ground. The difference from DII, is that all monsters respawn. You have one chance to get the souls back if you do not die again. If you die again, before reaching it, you will lose it all. This is similar to losing ALL of your gold and experience that was not distributed anywhere (and you don't always have something to distribute it on). But at least you keep your items.
I've also heard of a boss that drains your stats and level.
Second of all, it's very easy to die. Any run of the mill mob can kill you if you're not careful. You two-shot some of them, they 2-3 shot you, some 1-shot you, too, and this is very early in the game (granted, my class relies on dodging and wears little armor and doesn't parry or block, so keep that in mind). There are many places where you can fall, or be caught out of position, or burned, or just speared to death by this weird charging knight with red eyes that I can't seem to be able make a dent in... (he also approximately 2 shots me)
Personally, I didn't really find the last 2 points a detriment. I enjoyed my share of games like Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, where every time you die you have to start the whole thing all over again. And in these games I had to arrive at a boss about 10-20 times to kill them (I'm bad OK?). This game is actually considerably less brutal than that, and over time you'll get good at killing stuff that you'll smash through the tutorial boss on first try without even being hit once... The current system makes you very apprehensive, since death awaits around every corner, and some enemies may take a while to figure out how to defeat them. When in doubt, visit the Wiki or Youtube. The gameplay is very fun, so running the same are multiple times for farm or because I need to get my souls back doesn't really bother me, and usually I won't die until I get back to the thing that killed me in the first place.
actually really interested in playing it since release but alas I dont have a ps3, I'm actually waiting for dark souls (I think its called) which is more or less its prequel or predecessor and its on both consoles. it should be out early October. Just hope the magic arsenal is bigger (just from looking up the wiki and stuff, not from playing, the spells don't look so vast, just a thing that I like).
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I agree with feminism. I don't think that it's right that for every dollar a man makes, a women gets 70 cents. Why do I only get 30 cents and some chick gets the rest?
I've put over 100 hours into this game, and let me just say, what an experience.
I've gone back and forth from utterly hating it to thinking BEST GAME EVUR, many times. Once you get the hang of it it's not that horrendously difficult, but you will get frustrated regardless. It's an extremely unforgiving game. But it can be very fun and very rewarding.
All in all it's a great experience for any gamer who wants a challenge. I recommend it!
I'm just running around the Boletarian Palace for now, practicing different weapons and com. I'm too scared to enter the big fogged door because I am afraid some kind of a boss there is going to one shot me, and I want to kill the red eyes knight first.
I've also recently bought a spear from the Dregling, having a lot of fun with it. I'm trying to figure out all the combo moves the game has... I know there's a run attack (which is annoying to activate reliably) and a roll attack (both of these are really awesome for the spear and make it a good close combat or AoE weapon). There also seems to be some kind of an outward from below attack but every time I accidentally activate it I can't figure out what causes it. Overall, though, spears are OP. And they seem to scale off of Dex, too.
Currently learning to hit with the spear without auto-aim... + backstabs.
Btw, I have a hunter so I have the bow and stuff, I wonder, where is the bow most useful? I try to avoid using it but I like keeping it for utility, but so far everything seems perfectly killable by melee, and the things I can't kill by melee (red eyes knight), the bow is not too helpful because they block. The only use I found for it so far is to kill this one knight who's on top of some ledge throwing fire and unreachable. And he gives less souls than the arrows needed to kill him are worth.
There was also this random dragon who kept breathing fire on a wall path and I tried shooting at him but either my aim is really bad or I dunno. Either way, I wasn't able to reach him with any weapon... o.O He didn't bother me much but I wanted to kill him...
I took the easy way when I played Demon's Souls. From the beginning I was the Royalty class. Magic is such an easymode in Demon's souls and the Royalty class is the only one that starts off with a mana regen ring. The game by far wasn't "easy" as a magician though, it is just the easiest of the choices. After I beat the game and then played through on New Game + I decided to play through as a melee character. I forgot which one I picked, maybe the Temple Knight for the free heal. Either way it was much more difficult, but after learning all of the boss's attacks and weak points it wasn't as horrendous. If you're looking for a reasonable challenge and enjoy magicians in game I definitely recommend the Royalty class. While I'm here I'd like to mention that the hardest way to play the games is the way of the rogue. You need to be perfect at dodging and parrying in order for this class to work.
Oh ya, and just so you know, someone beat the game in less than an hour:
My place really was here. I was too foolish and stubborn to notice. But, what I truly hoped for then was here. Why do I always realize it When I've already lost it.
I'm just running around the Boletarian Palace for now, practicing different weapons and com. I'm too scared to enter the big fogged door because I am afraid some kind of a boss there is going to one shot me, and I want to kill the red eyes knight first.
I've also recently bought a spear from the Dregling, having a lot of fun with it. I'm trying to figure out all the combo moves the game has... I know there's a run attack (which is annoying to activate reliably) and a roll attack (both of these are really awesome for the spear and make it a good close combat or AoE weapon). There also seems to be some kind of an outward from below attack but every time I accidentally activate it I can't figure out what causes it. Overall, though, spears are OP. And they seem to scale off of Dex, too.
Currently learning to hit with the spear without auto-aim... + backstabs.
Btw, I have a hunter so I have the bow and stuff, I wonder, where is the bow most useful? I try to avoid using it but I like keeping it for utility, but so far everything seems perfectly killable by melee, and the things I can't kill by melee (red eyes knight), the bow is not too helpful because they block. The only use I found for it so far is to kill this one knight who's on top of some ledge throwing fire and unreachable. And he gives less souls than the arrows needed to kill him are worth.
There was also this random dragon who kept breathing fire on a wall path and I tried shooting at him but either my aim is really bad or I dunno. Either way, I wasn't able to reach him with any weapon... o.O He didn't bother me much but I wanted to kill him...
Yep... fogged doors means boss. What bosses have you killed so far?
About the red eyed knights... to kill them you'll have to move on to other stages and become powerful enough, then come back and take out the red eyed knights if you want (they're tough!). To give you an idea, the Boletarian Palace World is the last world I finished (and it's the one you start in), I finished all others first before beating the final two stages of the palace. And it's a good thing I did, cause it's hard. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but there are some tough bosses ahead.
Bows are useful for later stages (I use the term 'later' loosely, you can do the worlds in whatever order you want), although you are not forced to ever use one. Some ranged attack, be it a bow or a spell, will make your life easier in a lot of stages. Later on you'll find these huge flying stingrays that you can't kill with melee attacks (you can not kill them if you want, but they will make your life a living hell). Also, some monsters are very very tough once they get close to you (an example being the red eyed knight, but others are much worse) so it's always better to take them out before they are right in front of you. The bow, if you are powerful enough, will help you accomplish that. You can't always do that though.
About the dragons: there are two dragons in the Boletarian Palace, and you can kill them both. Yes, even with arrows. It might take you 30 minutes of waiting and aiming, but you can do it and it will net you tons of souls for a low level character. I assume it was the red one, correct? Was it in the bridge right before the lever, or the one where you go inside a tunnel with wolves?
Dark Souls is the spiritual successor to Demon's Souls, but in many way different like an open world, better online, harder(YES), etc.-comes out Oct 3rd I cant wait. But yes, definitely pick up this game if your into a good'ol fashion hardcore game that is hard, but isn't cheap and teaches you as you play to be more smart and strategic.
You can kill the Red Dragon if you sit atop the first tower in 1-2 and pelt him with about 150ish arrows and he'll drop around 30,000 souls take awhile but is well worth it if you are patient.
Also, any monster you see should be reachable. The guy your thinking of you can get too him if you jump off the side at the bridge across the Red-eyed Knight where you fought the Blue-eyed Knight; it's little hard to see but there's a hole on the wall that lets you jump off the bridge(also get a crossbow!). As for the Red-eyed Knight if you want an easy way of killing him I got a trick that I learned from a friend; you can lure him down near the pit filled with floating white things near the beginning, and run around it till he charges and falls for a free 3,000 souls. Trying to take him down early in the game is really tough, so if you want a different measure try the pit. He's more of a You Shall Not Pass guy anyways.
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"The righteous shall fall before the wicked, and all of Creation shall tremble before the burning standards of Hell."
I heard about this about time it came out. I was told it's hard as balls and no saved progress unless you complete the area. Do you know if it's on the PS3's online marketplace?
The game broke me. I played it for a couple of days then I just kinda moved on. Now it sits there along Bayonetta and GTA IV (other unfinished games) just biding its time, waiting to further humiliate, aggravate and murder my soul.
I was unprepared for DS the first time I tried it.
Next time I'll be ready.
First time it broke me as well. But I promise you, if you push past it, it's sooo worth it.
@akainu
The game saves all progress. It just respawns the monstere every time you die, but it doesn't discard your souls (you can get them back), and it saves all the shortcuts you have opened (like, opening a gate).
While I'm here I'd like to mention that the hardest way to play the games is the way of the rogue. You need to be perfect at dodging and parrying in order for this class to work.
I'm still figuring out the whole parry-riposte thing myself.
Oh ya, and just so you know, someone beat the game in less than an hour:
I can definitely see how that's possible. If you play it long enough, you'll be able to run through it very fast, although he probably used exploits as well.
About the red eyed knights... to kill them you'll have to move on to other stages and become powerful enough, then come back and take out the red eyed knights if you want
Well, it seems that he's still killable at my level. I do damage to him, so as long as I can dodge all his stuff well I can kill him.
I know you can abuse the bad AI but I wanted to kill him properly.
To give you an idea, the Boletarian Palace World is the last world I finished (and it's the one you start in), I finished all others first before beating the final two stages of the palace.
Huh? All the other archstones/worlds are closed for me, I thought Boletarian was the entry world. I figured I have to kill the boss here to unlock the other worlds.
Bows are useful for later stages (I use the term 'later' loosely, you can do the worlds in whatever order you want), although you are not forced to ever use one. Some ranged attack, be it a bow or a spell, will make your life easier in a lot of stages. Later on you'll find these huge flying stingrays that you can't kill with melee attacks
About the dragons: there are two dragons in the Boletarian Palace, and you can kill them both. Yes, even with arrows. It might take you 30 minutes of waiting and aiming, but you can do it and it will net you tons of souls for a low level character. I assume it was the red one, correct? Was it in the bridge right before the lever, or the one where you go inside a tunnel with wolves?
Yeah, it was the red one on the bridge (he doesn't show up anymore). Haven't seen any tunnel with wolves yet. I did find 2 dragons resting on hills guarding goodies. Tried to get the goodies but all I got is some random stuff + this stupid shield that seems like it should block flame but I'm not sure... and I don't think I can get to the dragons, they're too high up. But if I used a bow there, it would be rather easy to kill them. They just sit there, and the fire is easily dodgeable.
How many arrows does a dragon require? I've only got 70.
I'm also not sure what use are the soul points to me now, I have nothing to spend them on.
Btw, is there any easy way to use firebombs? Going into the inventory, selecting them, and going "Use Item" just seems too slow to be viable.
Haha, you actually killed the tutorial boss? You don't have to, you know that right? The big fat thing with wings? It's put there so that you die and move on. So just to check, you haven't killed Phalanx yet, right? That's the first official boss, so to speak. It's a blob of things, you'll know it when you see it.
Well, it seems that he's still killable at my level. I do damage to him, so as long as I can dodge all his stuff well I can kill him.
I know you can abuse the bad AI but I wanted to kill him properly.
All enemies are "killable" at any level. What I meant was that realistically, you don't have the stats to take a red eyed knight comfortably, it's probably a waste of time and effort. Better to move on and come back later, some enemies are actually designed so that you can't kill them the first time you meet them.
Huh? All the other archstones/worlds are closed for me, I thought Boletarian was the entry world. I figured I have to kill the boss here to unlock the other worlds.
It is the entry world, but you don't have to complete it to move on. As soon as you kill Phalanx (and it's easy) all other worlds are unlocked. So you don't need the entire world, just the first stage. After that, you can enter the first stage in any World, and if you kill the boss of that stage you can move to the next one within that world, and the same applies for all stages basically.
Yeah, it was the red one on the bridge (he doesn't show up anymore). Haven't seen any tunnel with wolves yet. I did find 2 dragons resting on hills guarding goodies. Tried to get the goodies but all I got is some random stuff + this stupid shield that seems like it should block flame but I'm not sure... and I don't think I can get to the dragons, they're too high up. But if I used a bow there, it would be rather easy to kill them. They just sit there, and the fire is easily dodgeable.
Alright, so... when it appears on the bridge, you may notice that as long as you're near the bridge, the dragon keeps flying over and spitting fire in the same exact area each time. If you stand on the other side of the bridge and wait for it to pass over you (without standing in the fire) you can shoot 1 arrow each time it flies over you. Unfortunately you can't kill it here, as it flies away when it's low on life.
If you kill any of the dragons and come back to the area in which they rest (can't kill them there) they won't be there anymore and you can pick up the goodies. This stage is actually meant for you to come back later in many occasions. You may have noticed right where you start, in the first area of the first stage, to your left there is another area which is on a lower level, and you can't pass because there's a locked door. But before I go on, have you heard about World Tendency?
Anyways, soon after you kill Phalanx you'll meet the red dragon again, and this time you can kill it by doing something very similar to what I've just described.
I'm also not sure what use are the soul points to me now, I have nothing to spend them on.
Soul points are experience, basically. You may have noticed you're not getting better by killing enemies. After you kill Phalanx you'll be able to buy your levels, that's how it works. You kill stuff, get souls, and spend them on levels and weapons. Each time you increase your soul level, the price to go up again increases. At first the increase will be barely noticeable, but later on it's gonna get very expensive. That's why saving is important, and dying is so painful. There's nothing worse than the first time you lose 100,000 souls and die again, losing them forever.
Btw, is there any easy way to use firebombs? Going into the inventory, selecting them, and going "Use Item" just seems too slow to be viable.
No no, you don't have to use them like that. I don't remember the menus now, but there's one in which you select what weapon goes with what button. And you have a button that swaps the item according to a list you make. Sort of like the dual weapon system in Diablo II, but with more slots. Go to Equipment and just by tinkering you'll find the way to do it. Once in combat you can switch weapons by pressing a button. Going into the inventory will only get you killed, very quickly, too.
Oh and about the shield... Some items appear only once in the entire game, I think that shield appears a few times though. But save it. Later you might find an enemy with a fire attack that just one-shots you. That's when you'd use the shield.
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The game uses action controlled combat (e.g., you control if your blows hit or miss vs a "chance to hit" stat and the like), which is something I'm a sucker for. You can also block, parry and retaliate, dodge, roll, and throw exploding torches at people. There's actually more but I'm still figuring it all out (I barely scratched the surface, really). The game features all sorts of standard medieval weapons from your normal household sword to spears, halberds, crossbows, rapiers and other finesse weapons, + something in the spell department but I'm not a mage so I didn't really check that out.
You have extensive freedom in weapon setup, such as weapon + shield, 2Hing any weapon (gives +.5 bonus from STR), dual wielding. Pretty much every weapon type and weapon set have their own unique animation and attacks.
What you wear affects how your character moves, as well. Wearing too much armor will slow you down, and heavy armor restricts your roll/dodge ability and makes you rely more on blocking and parrying.
That aside, the game is a full fledged RPG. You choose a "class" at the start, but you can advance your class in any direction you like, class just defines starting attributes and weapons/armor. There are warriors, rangers, mage like characters, rogue like characters, and some hybrids, in fact, most of them seem to be hybridish except the Royalty class which is pretty much blank. Your character can grow in power as he collects soul points from killing enemies and improves stats (STR, DEX, Vit, the usual, + a few random ones like Faith), and the highest level (712) will take you a very very very long time to attain, most don't bother. Enemies have loot tables and constantly drop stuff, with weapons benefiting from different stats. Certain actions you perform may cause your world to become white (easier, worser drops, friendly NPC's appear and help you), or black (rare drops, hard, and special bosses come out to kill you), giving more for you to work with. There are different types of damage on weapons (blunt, slashing, fire, magic, etc.), as well as different effects to be protected from and affected by.
After you finish the game, in the classic Diablo style, you can play again at 40% increased difficulty, and more increased difficulty after that. In fact, this doesn't have a limit irrc, most people stop at 3.
The main "drawback" this game seems to have for most people is the difficulty. First of all, the game uses a more punishing version of the Diablo II Nightmare save/load system. The game saves all your progress and doesn't let you go back anywhere. You kill that trader, he's dead. You lost an item, it's gone. If you die, you drop all your souls on the ground. The difference from DII, is that all monsters respawn. You have one chance to get the souls back if you do not die again. If you die again, before reaching it, you will lose it all. This is similar to losing ALL of your gold and experience that was not distributed anywhere (and you don't always have something to distribute it on). But at least you keep your items.
I've also heard of a boss that drains your stats and level.
Second of all, it's very easy to die. Any run of the mill mob can kill you if you're not careful. You two-shot some of them, they 2-3 shot you, some 1-shot you, too, and this is very early in the game (granted, my class relies on dodging and wears little armor and doesn't parry or block, so keep that in mind). There are many places where you can fall, or be caught out of position, or burned, or just speared to death by this weird charging knight with red eyes that I can't seem to be able make a dent in... (he also approximately 2 shots me)
Personally, I didn't really find the last 2 points a detriment. I enjoyed my share of games like Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, where every time you die you have to start the whole thing all over again. And in these games I had to arrive at a boss about 10-20 times to kill them (I'm bad OK?). This game is actually considerably less brutal than that, and over time you'll get good at killing stuff that you'll smash through the tutorial boss on first try without even being hit once... The current system makes you very apprehensive, since death awaits around every corner, and some enemies may take a while to figure out how to defeat them. When in doubt, visit the Wiki or Youtube. The gameplay is very fun, so running the same are multiple times for farm or because I need to get my souls back doesn't really bother me, and usually I won't die until I get back to the thing that killed me in the first place.
I've gone back and forth from utterly hating it to thinking BEST GAME EVUR, many times. Once you get the hang of it it's not that horrendously difficult, but you will get frustrated regardless. It's an extremely unforgiving game. But it can be very fun and very rewarding.
All in all it's a great experience for any gamer who wants a challenge. I recommend it!
I've also recently bought a spear from the Dregling, having a lot of fun with it. I'm trying to figure out all the combo moves the game has... I know there's a run attack (which is annoying to activate reliably) and a roll attack (both of these are really awesome for the spear and make it a good close combat or AoE weapon). There also seems to be some kind of an outward from below attack but every time I accidentally activate it I can't figure out what causes it. Overall, though, spears are OP. And they seem to scale off of Dex, too.
Currently learning to hit with the spear without auto-aim... + backstabs.
Btw, I have a hunter so I have the bow and stuff, I wonder, where is the bow most useful? I try to avoid using it but I like keeping it for utility, but so far everything seems perfectly killable by melee, and the things I can't kill by melee (red eyes knight), the bow is not too helpful because they block. The only use I found for it so far is to kill this one knight who's on top of some ledge throwing fire and unreachable. And he gives less souls than the arrows needed to kill him are worth.
There was also this random dragon who kept breathing fire on a wall path and I tried shooting at him but either my aim is really bad or I dunno. Either way, I wasn't able to reach him with any weapon... o.O He didn't bother me much but I wanted to kill him...
Oh ya, and just so you know, someone beat the game in less than an hour:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWi6t8Psv9w&playnext=1&list=PL54332434AB708410
I'm so excited for the "sequel" Dark Souls!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7U-a9pJtHQ
Pst... if you want a cheat sheet:
http://demonssouls.wikidot.com/
About the red eyed knights... to kill them you'll have to move on to other stages and become powerful enough, then come back and take out the red eyed knights if you want (they're tough!). To give you an idea, the Boletarian Palace World is the last world I finished (and it's the one you start in), I finished all others first before beating the final two stages of the palace. And it's a good thing I did, cause it's hard. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but there are some tough bosses ahead.
Bows are useful for later stages (I use the term 'later' loosely, you can do the worlds in whatever order you want), although you are not forced to ever use one. Some ranged attack, be it a bow or a spell, will make your life easier in a lot of stages. Later on you'll find these huge flying stingrays that you can't kill with melee attacks (you can not kill them if you want, but they will make your life a living hell). Also, some monsters are very very tough once they get close to you (an example being the red eyed knight, but others are much worse) so it's always better to take them out before they are right in front of you. The bow, if you are powerful enough, will help you accomplish that. You can't always do that though.
About the dragons: there are two dragons in the Boletarian Palace, and you can kill them both. Yes, even with arrows. It might take you 30 minutes of waiting and aiming, but you can do it and it will net you tons of souls for a low level character. I assume it was the red one, correct? Was it in the bridge right before the lever, or the one where you go inside a tunnel with wolves?
You can kill the Red Dragon if you sit atop the first tower in 1-2 and pelt him with about 150ish arrows and he'll drop around 30,000 souls take awhile but is well worth it if you are patient.
Also, any monster you see should be reachable. The guy your thinking of you can get too him if you jump off the side at the bridge across the Red-eyed Knight where you fought the Blue-eyed Knight; it's little hard to see but there's a hole on the wall that lets you jump off the bridge(also get a crossbow!). As for the Red-eyed Knight if you want an easy way of killing him I got a trick that I learned from a friend; you can lure him down near the pit filled with floating white things near the beginning, and run around it till he charges and falls for a free 3,000 souls. Trying to take him down early in the game is really tough, so if you want a different measure try the pit. He's more of a You Shall Not Pass guy anyways.
The game saves all progress. It just respawns the monstere every time you die, but it doesn't discard your souls (you can get them back), and it saves all the shortcuts you have opened (like, opening a gate).
I'm still figuring out the whole parry-riposte thing myself.
I can definitely see how that's possible. If you play it long enough, you'll be able to run through it very fast, although he probably used exploits as well.
I've been there. Their information is a bit lacking, though, IMO.
Um, the tutorial boss.
Well, it seems that he's still killable at my level. I do damage to him, so as long as I can dodge all his stuff well I can kill him.
I know you can abuse the bad AI but I wanted to kill him properly.
Huh? All the other archstones/worlds are closed for me, I thought Boletarian was the entry world. I figured I have to kill the boss here to unlock the other worlds.
OK, good to know.
Yeah, it was the red one on the bridge (he doesn't show up anymore). Haven't seen any tunnel with wolves yet. I did find 2 dragons resting on hills guarding goodies. Tried to get the goodies but all I got is some random stuff + this stupid shield that seems like it should block flame but I'm not sure... and I don't think I can get to the dragons, they're too high up. But if I used a bow there, it would be rather easy to kill them. They just sit there, and the fire is easily dodgeable.
How many arrows does a dragon require? I've only got 70.
I'm also not sure what use are the soul points to me now, I have nothing to spend them on.
Btw, is there any easy way to use firebombs? Going into the inventory, selecting them, and going "Use Item" just seems too slow to be viable.
All enemies are "killable" at any level. What I meant was that realistically, you don't have the stats to take a red eyed knight comfortably, it's probably a waste of time and effort. Better to move on and come back later, some enemies are actually designed so that you can't kill them the first time you meet them.
It is the entry world, but you don't have to complete it to move on. As soon as you kill Phalanx (and it's easy) all other worlds are unlocked. So you don't need the entire world, just the first stage. After that, you can enter the first stage in any World, and if you kill the boss of that stage you can move to the next one within that world, and the same applies for all stages basically.
Alright, so... when it appears on the bridge, you may notice that as long as you're near the bridge, the dragon keeps flying over and spitting fire in the same exact area each time. If you stand on the other side of the bridge and wait for it to pass over you (without standing in the fire) you can shoot 1 arrow each time it flies over you. Unfortunately you can't kill it here, as it flies away when it's low on life.
If you kill any of the dragons and come back to the area in which they rest (can't kill them there) they won't be there anymore and you can pick up the goodies. This stage is actually meant for you to come back later in many occasions. You may have noticed right where you start, in the first area of the first stage, to your left there is another area which is on a lower level, and you can't pass because there's a locked door. But before I go on, have you heard about World Tendency?
Anyways, soon after you kill Phalanx you'll meet the red dragon again, and this time you can kill it by doing something very similar to what I've just described.
Depends on your damage. Bring over 200.
Soul points are experience, basically. You may have noticed you're not getting better by killing enemies. After you kill Phalanx you'll be able to buy your levels, that's how it works. You kill stuff, get souls, and spend them on levels and weapons. Each time you increase your soul level, the price to go up again increases. At first the increase will be barely noticeable, but later on it's gonna get very expensive. That's why saving is important, and dying is so painful. There's nothing worse than the first time you lose 100,000 souls and die again, losing them forever.
No no, you don't have to use them like that. I don't remember the menus now, but there's one in which you select what weapon goes with what button. And you have a button that swaps the item according to a list you make. Sort of like the dual weapon system in Diablo II, but with more slots. Go to Equipment and just by tinkering you'll find the way to do it. Once in combat you can switch weapons by pressing a button. Going into the inventory will only get you killed, very quickly, too.
Oh and about the shield... Some items appear only once in the entire game, I think that shield appears a few times though. But save it. Later you might find an enemy with a fire attack that just one-shots you. That's when you'd use the shield.