Fynn
is an EoFF Hero and/or Heroine
Radical Dreamer

My real issue is that I barely even remember what led up to this besides Fawful possessing the amnesiac Bowser. It has been years since I touched this game.

That's what I'm trying, but the game is a bit more involving with the timed button press combat.

I'm in the final dungeon. I'm just working my way through Bowser's kids before I beat down his possessed ass.

I'm simply trying to finish up loose ends so I can start playing all of my new stuff.

Actually, come to think of it, the Souls series really does feel like a spiritual successor to Vagrant Story in terms of style. You'll know what I mean whenever you get a chance to play it.

I know I should be playing Mario and Luigi right now, but I actually kind of got back into Terra Battle.

Yeah, it's one of the reasons why I got into Souls as much as I did.

I honestly feel those tracks remind me more of Assassin's Creed surprisingly enough. Like I can get where you get the Xeno vibe from, but the style isn't quite right.

Also, I like your new profile pic.

Gear is absolutely important. The director initially built the combat around realistic combat. Wearing heavy armor gives you better defense, but restricts your dodging ability and consumes more stamina. The opposite is true with light armor or magic gear. Weight Load is a major mechanic in the series (except Bloodborne) and Dark Souls introduced Poise as well which is a stat that determines how easy it is to stagger you or your opponent.

The game uses a variety of different weapons with slight variations to their attack ability making certain weapons better for some occasions than others. Shields run the gambit of being small and ineffective for defense but great for parry, while Heavy Greatshields offer great protection at the cost of being cumbersome and lacking the ability to parry attacks. There are three different types of magic with different tools and stats needed to utilize them well, with each having their own unique flavors to combat from beam spam sorcery, defensive miracles, or pyromancy's complimentary style with melee combat.

All gear, weapons, and magic are tied to your stats. You can't use greatswords or heavy armor until you have enough strength and certain magic is restricted by how much intelligence or faith you have. Sine leveling works like MegaTen where one level allows you to only raise one stat, you have to consciously build what you want your character to do.

My Demon's Souls character was a tanky strength build whereas my DS1 character was a stregnth/dex Ranger type build with emphasis on dodging. You can choose from a multitude of starting classes, but you're free to build them however you want. The character building in this game is surprisingly deep and their are multiple ways to deal with bosses and certain areas of the game. I think if I was to knock it for anything, it's that until Bloodborne, building character models in the series was an uphill battle that often resulted in the player making sure they always wore a helmet. I think I just made all my characters look like Misurugi's ugly stunt double.

Bloodborne turns a few things on it's head because it drops the need for equipment load and poise. The game is designed to be more fast paced and feels closer to games like Devil May Cry than the traditional Souls series. Armor is still important for giving you an edge over certain types of damage, but it's the weapons that are more important.

You're character carries one melee weapon and usually a gun as their left weapon. Guns mostly do minimal damage, but you can use them to stun an opponent while their in the middle of an attack and give you an opening to perform a heavy visceral attack against them. Weapons are "Trick Weapons" which have two forms, a simple one handed form and then usually a powerful secondary two handed form. For instance, my starting weapon as the Threaded Cane. In it's simple form, it's a cane sword which can do both slash and thrust damage. In it's secondary form, it's a chain-whip sword that's great for crowd control and it's serrated blades do extra damage to beast type enemies. The cool weapon I just picked up, the Rakuya, is a double bladed saber in it's normal form and then turns into duel-wielding blades in it's advance form. Bloodborne doesn't have magic in the traditional sense, instead it has Hunter Tools which do similar affect and work off your arcane stat, but consume bullets instead of mana or spell charges. Most of them are similar to various sorcery and miracles from the Souls series.

For the most part, it's all similar until you get to Bloodborne and DSIII. Bloodborne is more fluid with animations and doging with an emphasis on speed. The trick weapons also switch up combat a lot since you can switch back and forth between two very different playstyles in mid combo. DSIII incorporated a lot of these changes for speed and made duel-wielding finally a viable combat option in Dark Souls, which is something else it took from Bloodborne.

It's a bit hard to describe DS's combat style. It's very resource heavy with you having to pace your use of staminia for all combat and then there is a return to item management as well. Of anything, the combat simply gets smoother with each game, with Demon's Souls' having the clunkiest combat.

Hopefully Bloodborne may see a PC release, but I wouldn't bet on it. Also, it's not a big deal to start Dark Souls, but I do think you would get a kick out of the lore and overall game design. Once you got past the cheap deaths of course.

Well Bloodborne got me back to reading Lovecraft, I'm getting ready to start The Shadow over Innsmouth.

Sadly, Bloodborne is a PS4 exclusive and Demon's Souls is PS3 exclusive, but the rest of Dark Souls is on PC. I think you would actually get a kick out of Dark Souls. It's almost like a playable mythology. Not to mention, debating the lore will be fun with you.