Darksiders?

Never looked into these until I saw some news about Darksiders 3 and it looks cool. The first two games don't look good to me at all though. Are they any good?

1st one is solid but nothing great, it's Zelda dungeons with puzzles meets GoW-esque combat, I beat it in 2016.

2 is an unfinished mess that gets worse the more you play due to THQ going bankrupt at the time. It tries too many things and fails at all of them because of it. It's open world, has Zelda dungeons with puzzles, now has parkour, combat is surprisingly solid and based on bayo this time complete with pause/dial combos and 3 x dodge(no dodge offset). And what destroys all of the combats potential is random loot RPG bilge, yay.

None of these things are great but it gives a decent shot at all of them, but it's lack of focus is its undoing. Darksiders 1 worked well because it was just simple puzzles and simple combat, nothing innovative just a very solid title.

I gave up at the second open world area, some undead skeleton kingdom, games a mess.

Darksiders 3 is a new developer or so I hear. Must be why it looked decent to me while the others looked average.

Also saw they were re-released on PS4? Which are the better versions?

Edit: Thanks for the video. Honestly looks like a low budget DMC3 mixed with Castlevania Curse of Darkness. I'm willing to give it a try. Don't agree with the guy's complaint over the skeleton who dashes in with a sword attack. What the hell? It's slow as fuck. Do people really need traffic light signals to play action games these days?

Apparently it will be the free game sometime this week in PSNPLUS, Darksiders 2 that is. Darksiders 1 is one I played a lot and to be honest, it's pretty cool. It is basically Zelda with a more complex combat system, but one that obviously wasn't thought through by experts.

Example, block has an instant reaction. So if you press it, you block, no matter what you're doing. But if you let go, there is no animation, you just stop blocking in that frame the button held is no longer being registered. This sounds very casual friendly but it actually allows for the absolute breaking of the game. I'm not lying that you can for instance do your regular attack chain's first hit, wait until the hit connects, tap block, attack again, to basically attack at the speed of sound. Bosses that have multiple phases can be killed in one phase by mashing this 'exploit'. Same goes with jump canceling with certain weapons, just breaks it into pieces. They really didn't test that at all, just put mechanics in and never thought people who liked things like DMC would even attempt it it seems.

Both games are on Christmas sale here on PS4. Any idea how the PS4 versions are?

Birdman wrote:Both games are on Christmas sale here on PS4. Any idea how the PS4 versions are?

The superior versions by far, have all the DLC and patches, improvements and graphical enhancements.

Change Log for Darksiders 1:

• Support for up to 4k video output resolution
  
• Doubled all the texture resolutions
  
• Re-rendered all cutscenes in high quality
  
• Rendering improvements and rework
  
• Better shadow rendering quality
  
• Post processing effects
  
• Optimized framerate
  

Change Log for Darksiders 2:

• Darksiders II with All DLCs included and integrated into the game, offering a total playtime of more than 30 hours
  
• Improved Graphic Render Engine for higher visual quality especially in terms of lighting and shadows
  
• Improved and reworked level, character and environment graphics
  
• Running in native 1080p resolution
  
• Reworked and tuned game balancing and loot distribution
  

Hmm. Sounds good. They aren't high priority, but it's highly likely I'll grab them at some point before Christmas. I recently became super interested in The Sexy Brutale so I'm getting that tomorrow. It's very similar to a few other games I absolutely love. Didn't even know what it was like until I finally looked up a video about 30 mins ago.

Borrowed the first game. Will give it a go tonight.

Let me know what you think :)

I'm up to...I don't actually know. I've just been running through each area not really paying attention.

So far, I have to say it's the most average action game I've played. So far not a single aspect stands out. Not a single original bone in its body.

The combat is pretty boring. I bought some more moves but they're so nondescript that I all I could to do describe them would be to say 'swings the sword'.

That guard cancel thing you told me about is pretty useful. You can do the same thing in Genji on PS2 though the mechanics are different.

Not sure if I'll play it all the way through. It feels like a chore, and the music and setting is boring.

I still experiment though. The last hit on the basic sword string bounces the enemy and you can jump and air combo, or use the launch move to hit them higher. Basic stuff that can most likely be expanded upon with more upgrades but I'm finding it hard to care.

Still looking forward to Darksiders 3 though. From the videos it looks far more polished and fluid than the first game. New developer too.

Yeah like I said, it wasn't all that amazing, still pretty fun. It gets better combat wise when you get the two other melee weapons, but frankly, if the game doesn't pull you in now it never will. The second is more of the same but added a loot system to it as well for whatever reason.

Darksiders 1 felt like it paid off near the end with the amount of cool stuff they end up giving war, the final boss being pretty fun, and that ending cutscene.

Darksiders 2 I never did the DLC, but I really enjoyed the combat, so despite any flaws it had as a game, I enjoyed it just because I could have a lot of fun in the combat.

Darksiders 3 looks promising and based on the conversations I had with a THQ Nordic dev, there is a lot of heart being pumped into it. Sort of like how Titan Quest has become a sort of passion project/revival for them, Darksiders and Red Faction will be as well. Red Faction will be their next big thing after Darksiders, but they want to keep as much focus in Darksiders right now as they can.

Played a little more and feel no will to continue. I won't return it immediately, but will hold onto it for another week just in-case. My friend said I can borrow it until I finish it anyway, but I don't think I will.

Fair enough, i don't think i'll ever play my copy again. You'll like the combat in 2 much more but the game is a mess due to poor design decisions regarding combat namely and tons of others. I think it was being made and released why THQ was crumbling.

Air combat seems tacked on, like they were just trying to copy DMC or something. When you launch, and rise with the enemy, it's barely above the ground. Even small enemies can still hit you, and you don't even rise above larger ones who will just swat you out of the air with ease.

Feels like the focus is ground combat and crowd control. The scythe just became available and claims to deal with crowds better so I might grab that.

Overall, so far it's not a bad game at all. Just, so average in every possible way. I'll still give 2 a try. Actually, I will finish 1, just to be fair on it and see everything it has to offer.

Just got the throwing star thing. Usable in combos to keep an enemy in the air a little longer.

Some of the puzzles so far are cool. Like this one where there's a red crystal wall, an inert bomb, and a live one high on the wall. You need to grab inert bombs and make a line from the active one to the wall, then detonate the live one with the boomerang, causing a chain explosion.

The game sort of starts to fall apart when you get to the underworld skeleton kingdom(or some shit). It's the second open world area you enter.

For some reason I dislike Darksiders. There's just some deep-seated incompatibility with me and what these games are trying to do. I finished the first game while gritting my teeth. The second game bugged out at one point, and I was happy it happened because it was a good excuse to start playing something else and never look back. I do appreciate how broken both of the games are, though.

AKheon wrote:For some reason I dislike Darksiders. There's just some deep-seated incompatibility with me and what these games are trying to do. I finished the first game while gritting my teeth. The second game bugged out at one point, and I was happy it happened because it was a good excuse to start playing something else and never look back. I do appreciate how broken both of the games are, though.

For me it's the art-style, Todd's style just never sat right with me. As an artist I can appreciate it and how the entire game just has this singular style...but I just don't like the style haha.

Not touching this again.

Found out how to stay in the air longer and weird stuff with guard cancel but it's just so boring. As I've said, the game offers nothing unique and badly tries to copy the good shit that came before it.

Why am I forcing the game to do DMC combos? I can just play DMC3 instead of using a glitch to try and make the game into something else.

Which one, 1 or 2?

1. And Im not going to bother with 2.

Your dissing the combat but there also part dungeon puzzlers, so what of those?

Some of the puzzles were ok but I don't care for them. Don't really like the world and atmosphere.

Fair enough, can't say I recall the world being particularly noteworthy and I beat the whole of 1. Can't say your missing much.

2 tries too many things and fails at just about all of them due to that distinct lack of focus(and THQ bankruptcy around the time so it's doubled rushed). The combat is a surprise improvement over the first but it's all so half baked. If they focused solely on the combat they could have made something pretty neat, it's got some killer animations too.

The problem is they've done nothing to make it stand out. It really seems like they looked at all the greats and said, "Oooh we'll take that, and that, oh and that looks cool". Then did all those concepts incredibly half-assed to the point that it seems intentional.

That said, I do recognize it as a not bad. It's playable, and the combat isn't horrible, just as I said above, not even trying to be anything but a poor amalgam of better stuff.

Darksiders 2 looks way smoother from what I've seen, but I'm put off by the RPG elements. How heavy are they? I might be convinced to rent it if they aren't too pervasive.

Birdman wrote:Not touching this again.

Found out how to stay in the air longer and crazy stuff with guard cancel but it's just so boring. As I've said, the game offers nothing unique and badly tries to copy rhe good shit that came before it.

Why am I forcing the game to do DMC combos? I can just play DMC3 instead of using a glitch to try and make the game into something else.

This was basically my feeling, the game allowed pretty open combat but it really wasn't made with it in mind..the puzzles and dungeons were okay but nothing too special. I feel it was pretty popular because it mixed it together, but also because it was on PC which lacked DMC and Zelda and this had both styles of those games. Giving them a flavor of what's to come.

I might end up getting Darksiders 2. Christmas sales are on here and it's only $30. I'm doing some research and like I said earlier in this topic, it does look like a better game.

Watched a few combo videos, and started to get ideas on some possibilities. I'll deal with RPG stuff. Doesn't seem too horrible.

Got it.
Feels much better already, but still has that western made feel to it. Just feels odd at times.

I'm playing the hardest difficulty since it is a level up game.
I just got past the hub area with the shops, and I'm now in a nice grassy area. Seems the horse can only be summoned is larger areas like this.

Got an ability that lets me summon undead pals so I'm going to focus on this part of the skill tree.

Looks like they've removed guarding in favor of dodging.

Dodging has the lag after 3 dodges.

I don't have much combo potential at the moment. Weapons and moves are quite expensive. I'm guessing due to the difficulty level.

I'm more interested in my zombie minions though. Looking forward to powering these up.

Just got a gun too. Might see if I can do a ranged build using the zombies to keep the heat off. Looking through the skill tree, they eventually get some really useful stuff like exploding upon death and making enemies focus on them.

So who's getting DS3? I am. Looks pretty good.

I love that fire dash during the platforming part.

Looks like some people got it early and full playthroughs are popping up. I've watched a little but the players are so awful I can't be bothered and I'm getting it on Wednesday anyway.

Looks decent though. Fury moves well and the enemies seem quite aggressive.

Interesting, I'm reading you can attack bosses in any order and that they scale in difficulty. So you might fight Sloth first, but I fight him third, meaning I'll get a harder version? We'll also have different abilities.

Sounds like the Mega Man structure. I wonder how well this will work in an action game?

So it's actually only boss 4 and 5 you can choose.

It's funny how easily a game can be accused of 'trying to be Souls'. DS3 has tough enemies and apparently you get ambushed a lot. Instant Souls.

A lot of complaining going around like the dodge not being lenient enough and the enemies too aggressive. Well thank God for that.

I was told you start with every move for Fury's whip and the special forms add something. Sadly it seems you cant change forms while attacking, but can be changed instantly when you're doing nothing. Knack 2 is like this.

Hmmm.

So from what I'm reading and seeing, the combat is very grounded.

More Souls details have emerged like losing your currency upon death. I hate that mechanic.

Also you have a refillable flask for health.

Many enemies have super armor and don't flinch. Lots of dodging required.

Regarding DS2, I'll probably quit. I can already see where the zombie summon build is going. Not much fun. I don't think any action game other than Chaos Legion got summoning AI partners right.

Edit: Some tech has popped up.

If you want a new level of stupid from one of our 'friends', take a look at this topic.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/209492-darksiders-iii/77240407?page=1

Got it.
Here's the whip moveset.

Slash - S
Cross slash - S,S
Flurry - S,S,S
Judge, Jury - S,S,S,S
Executioner - S,S,S,S,S

The above is the basic whip string when pressing S five times. Don't know why they have to give every input a name.

Rude Awakening - Neutral L3+R1, delay, S

L3 is for movement, and R1 is dodge. By not pressing a direction Fury will backflip. This is why it wants you to leave the stick alone, so you'll do the backflip and not a dash in a direction. After the back flip, she leaps forward with a spinning slash.

Chains Cycle - press and hold S
This does a spinning combo. You can hold any S in the string and have this come out. Hits all around you.

Killer Queen - Press and hold S,S.
Not sure on this one. I'm guessing it means to hold the second S, so you'll do the first two hits on the basic string, which then triggers Chain Cycle. But why only list it after the second S and not every one like the basic combo list?  I guess they couldn't be bothered.

Ripcord - S, delay, S
This delay can come after an S of the basic string. Fury will stab and extend the whip like what Ivy does, and this pulls in lightweight enemies.

Ripcord Plus - S, delay, press and hold S
This makes Ripcord go into Chain Cycle.

Air Initiation - S, delay, S,S
This is Ripcord, but after the third S when she's pulled them in, she uppercuts them into the air.

Unholy Exorcism - S, delay, S,S,S
Adds an extension to the previous move. After the uppercut she stabs them in the air then pulls the whip back. It's just one string in the end and having the enemy launch is kind of pointless.

Flip Saw - press the direction you're facing+S+R1
This move is pretty good as it's a single move, not something stuck in a string. She'll flip forward while spinning the whip hitting multiple times. Can be added to strings. I'd rather do this after that launch.

Aerial slash - S in the air.

Aerial Cross slash - S,S in the air.

Aerial Flurry - S,S,S in the air.
First two cause you to float while the third brings you spinning down.

Gravel Grinder  - R1 in the air.
She comes down fast in a stomp.

Razor Onslaught - R1+S
Comes down with the spinning slash.

After perfect dodging, you have two attacks as well.

Will post some more stuff after I've progressed a bit.

The game looks excellent to be honest, that said I'm waiting it out a bit. I'm hearing a lot of talk about issues. I might get the PC version when I have a controller for my PC (it als already around 40 bucks on PC compared to the 60 on console). I also saw your post on Gamefaqs, fighting the good fight.

I have a few questions though:

- is the game lineair, or can it be played as such?
- is leveling a big part of it (i.e. if you're underleveled fights are a drag) etc
- I heard about...bonfires? Really?
- heard enemies are extremely agressive, true?

Fun to see delay attacks making a return. Surprised to see there's no launcher despite hearing notes of jumps. Any knockdown tools? Stingers?

> Don't know why they have to give every input a name.
The originals were heavily inspired by God of War among other things, which does the same thing.

I'm hearing a lot of talk about issues.
I haven't had any crashes yet, but the freeze when you enter certain areas is a joke. The game is not even really that graphic intensive. How can it not handle this?

is the game lineair
It has been described to me as the Souls structure. Each area links into the next and you'll find places where it loops back to a previous area. The devs described it as one huge dungeon.

In my limited play time, I've passed quite a few areas that require an ability to progress, so you have that Metroid aspect as well.

So far, I haven't encountered any hugely open areas. I'm in a destroyed city area (think Nier A) and it's mostly streets though pretty wide, with some larger arena-like areas.

is leveling a big part of it
Doesn't seem like it. I'm on the hardest mode and enemies hit extremely hard, but so far the regulars go down pretty fast. I've encountered this large four armed ogre that took a beating, but it's nothing like GoW 2018.

Leveling up is like Souls. You get souls from kills or items, then feed them to Vulgrim. Once the bar is full you get an attribute point. You can upgrade 3 stats. Health, strength and arcane. All the RPG stuff from DS2 is gone it seems.

I heard about...bonfires?
Similar I guess. These are areas where you find Vulgrim, the demon merchant. Here you can fast travel, buy items, level up, and it's also where you appear when you die. You have a refillable health item too.

heard enemies are extremely agressive, true?
They are. Not sure if they're NG level, but they attack constantly.

The ranged enemies are interesting and act in a way I don't see often. This one I've encountered a few times so far, throws some weird metal thing. Like a disc that returns I think. If I tried to jump in, he just shot me out of the air. It was in a large area with some higher parts and wrecked cars, when I approached he actually ran backwards, and jumped up to higher platforms or over cars to maintain his range. Like, I've seen ranged enemies in games make small efforts to back up if you approach, but never to this extent.

Any knockdown tools? Stingers?
Flip Saw's final spin where she slams down makes light enemies smash flat on the ground face first, but they don't stay there long. No stinger move yet.

There is some real trouble with crowds. No idea how the Crucible is going to work unless you unlock some serious offensive abilities later. I don't even have the first form yet but I'll update here with every ability I get.

Just got the fire form.

Interestingly, these forms act similarly to Knack 2's in that you are still default Fury but with the form overlaying her. So you still have all the whip stuff because it only uses the square button. The forms use triangle.

These forms also grant you your secondary weapon, and you can link their attacks. In a way it's sorta like how Rising does sub-weapons.

The fire form gives you these chain blade things. The command list is the same inputs more or less, though obviously the attacks are different. The chains attack quite fast with multiple hits. Nothing very interesting there. They do grant a ground and air charge attack though, but with these enemies that isn't the most useful tool.

Now, on to the most interesting aspect and what I was looking forward to trying the most which was form switching. Due to how they overlap, and with only one form, there's no reason not to stay in it at all times, but you can still switch it off so I could test activating it during a whip combo.

You hold L1 and press circle to change to fire form, but holding L1 makes you unable to attack. However, hitting this during an animation is fine, and you will instantly change. There's no power up animation or anything, unlike Knack 2.

I won't be able to tell how useful this is until I get more forms, and even then, it seems like all it lets you do is throw out different ground attacks.

In fire, if you press triangle after any whip attack, she throws out the chain thing like a boomerang. This is the only interesting thing from these. I was able to do that whip launch and throw while they were floating, but seems they don't really juggle. Need to check if I can link Flip Saw.

Losing interest very fast. Doubt I'll finish it.

Hm, why is that? From what I'm reading the title sounds pretty darn interesting!

The combat isn't keeping me interested at all.
It would probably get better with other forms but I find I don't care now. Gave it a chance.

The framerate and load times are quite hideous too. That long freeze when you enter certain areas is criminal. Whatever happens on the screen get paused even if you're mid attack.

Feels very heavy to play. The jump completely slows down your running momentum to near non-existence.

I can't believe how bad western devs are at action games. What's wrong with these people? It's absolutely incredible how they can't even get a game to run or play as good as a PS2 game.

I think this is it. I will never touch a western made action game again.

Definitely wait for a sale on this.

The third boss takes a while to die if you don't put something into attack or arcane. And it's an annoying, unfun boss that spends most of its time jumping around out of reach on junk towers.

Arcane, for some reason, powers the counter from a perfect dodge. I don't like this. You have to press the attack button immediately to do the attack and exploit the opening. You can wait a little and attack normally but you get less of a window. It annoys me that the counter isn't running on the same stat 100% as my whip.

I get wrath attacks and DT running on arcane. That's fine, but on a counter hit? What?

I'm going to beat this boss and get the third form, so I can see how switching mid combo works with three. At this point I'm forcing myself to continue which is a good sign this isn't the game for me.

Edit: Made this boss go out of bounds lol.

So I got the lightning form which has a spear but it has even less moves than the previous two.

You cant switch mid combo unless you are using a whip attack. This is dumb because while you can go into whip strikes, it's at some point along in the string so you have no freedom and it will still reach a final strike because it doesn't reset to the first hit.

I cant understand this. What's with this limit? I guess it doesn't even matter, because as I said, you'll be just unloading a string of ground attacks with no real difference other than 'does damage' and the enemies attacking means you'll be dodging out most of the time.

Laugh or break down in tears?
The latest update.

Improvements:
Multiple improvements to help performance and loading. Performance improvements should also significantly reduce stuttering in high-density areas.
Updated Story mode to be more forgiving.
Adjusted invulnerability windows across all difficulties. The windows are consistent on Balanced, Challenging and Apocalyptic and even more significant on easy.
Modified hit indicators for better readability.
Added version number on the main menu.

Yeah, bowing down to whining and reducing difficulty and adding longer iframe window is an 'improvement'.

When reading the patch notes, my face went from happy to absolutely depressed. Great to hear about increased performance, but really? Making difficulty modes easier? Increasing i.frames for the mainstream Souls crowd and journalists? Shame.

Also, funny to see Hype in that video. I never heard of the guy before, until this morning when I got 3 videos of him recommended to me haha. Seems like a good guy. The note he makes about journalists going to call DMCV the "Dark Souls of God of War" is so true it hurts.

Well the board is a casual infested hole. I think this is the type the Darksiders games attract for the most part. No one talks real mechanics. I've mentioned form switching and stuff a few times but didn't get any bites.

People are still whining after the patch, though in general it seems well received. They still complain that they still get hit and enemies track too well.

I played the first one recently. I liked it for the most part, but I thought the pacing was really strange. The game starts off like I expected it to, with a good mix of combat and Zelda-esque exploration, but then the 2/3rd of the game is almost all combat, then the final part is ALL puzzles. Pretty annoying, they could have done a much better job there. The combat itself is pretty boring. The Chaoseater is so much better than anything else they give you, so despite the fact that you can wield a Scythe, it's pretty pointless as the only thing it's really good for is crowd control, but even then the Chaoseater can already do that. And while I never used the Gauntlet, it seemed like it didn't fit at all with the GoW combat system. Who the hell is going to try and do short range punches when you have a 7 foot sword that demolishes everything? You can mix up your combos a bit, but there's no reason to when the aerial hold Square instantly gives you an Obliteration Technique on 85% of all enemies. It's also just not that fun, even if you do mix up combos. It gets the job done, but not something I would return to, at least not for the combat.

This game borrows from a lot of games, but isn't better or equal to any of them, so the only thing it accomplishes is that it's pretty forgettable fun. Which I guess isn't such a bad thing at the end of the day.

Also, when I got the Portal gun I damn near fell out of my chair. Like, really guys? They had no shame whatsoever when they ripped that off lol

Besides the gameplay, I enjoyed the art direction of the environments, although I've never been a big fan of the WoW character designs. Some of the puzzles had me stumped for a bit which was nice. Although it probably contributed to the poor pacing. I didn't really care much for the story, and thought it was kind of messy. War is boring as shit. No personality at all. No reason to root for him really.

I started the second one, but I'm not sure how far I will get. I feel like I'm gonna end up dropping it sooner or later.

PC:
Improvements:
• Added new option for Combat. Upon loading a save or starting a new game, players will be prompted to choose between “Default” and “Classic” combat. “Classic” mode should feel more like previous Darksiders titles allowing Fury to dodge interrupt her attacks as well use items instantly. “Default” mode is the original combat mode for Darksiders III. The option can be changed at any point in gameplay options while playing. This has no other effects on difficulty or achievements.
• Improved ledge grab detection on Fury so she can more consistently grab ledges.
• Additional optimizations to help stuttering while streaming.
• Added “Health Lurcher” item to Vulgrim that allows player to purchase refills for Nephilim’s Respite .
• Added “Echo Mark” item to Vulgrim that allows player to refund their spent attribute points.
• Added a few new checkpoints.
• Raised the level cap to 200. Also, rebalanced leveling curve post level 80 as well as stat rewards..

Fixes:
• Fixes for random crashes
• General performance improvements.
• Fix for Force Coral where it wouldn’t break correctly. This will also fix previous saves with this issue.
• Fix for some checkpoints that weren’t registering.
• Cycling difficulty options while in game will not affect actual difficulty unless it is changed.
• Fix for Abraxis Health bar showing up but he is missing.

Balance Changes:
• Fury will no longer take damage while performing an Arcane Counters.
• Havoc Form does more Damage.
• Increased Havoc Generation on Obscurus Enhancement.
• Increased Health and Damage amounts on Fortifier Enhancement.
• Increased Health Regeneration on Leviathan Enhancement.
• Increased Lurcher Reward from destroying breakables on Leviathan Enhancement.
• Increased Chance to Spawn Wrath when killing an Enemy on Rage Enhancement.

In regards to Darksiders 1, you could do a lot of wacky things in that game with the weapon-switching that basically locked down complete enemies. The fists were especially good since they had so many easy exploits to them like the instant-air-slam which gave you so much DPS the game melted.
I agree the game was very much a patchwork of what was done before, but only really had its own charm due to its art-style (which honestly, wasn't for me).

> patch notes
The Classic Combat sounds interesting, taking a cue and not trying to be Dark Souls like so many others. Other than that it sounds like straight up buffs to make the game easier, really feels like damage-control is being done. Shame.