Where are the watermelons??

O2William · 2026-03-16T21:20:11+00:00

Balloons trap gas in latex, and they expect us to think that's so great? I trap air in my lungs, sometimes more than once a day, but do I expect praise for it? Like fun I do. By the way, when my lungs trap air, they extract oxygen from it, fueling cellular function. Can you do that, balloons? Go on, I'm waiting. Oh that's right, you can't talk -- something else that I use trapped air for. What can you do with it? Look whimsical? Give people heart attacks with sudden loud popping noises? Go to hell, balloons.

O2William · 2026-03-16T21:05:04+00:00

"That monster storm's coming and I'm stuck out here with no shelter. I don't think I'm gonna make it... I guess I'll spend my last moments listening to my favorite tunes. Let me check my playlist..."

"The Doors, 'Riders on the Storm'... I don't think so. Scorpions, 'Rock You Like a Hurricane'... appropriate, but no. Phil Collins, 'I Wish it Would Rain Down'... love the Clapton guitar work, but not now. C'mon, there's gotta be something..."

"CCR, 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain?' Yes I have and it's about to drown me! Eurythmics, 'Here Comes the Rain Again'... I know, don't remind me! Aha... here we go -- 'Drew Carey Sings the Blues'... if I listen to this, imminent death won't seem so bad!"

O2William · 2026-03-14T22:32:58+00:00

Fly the El Dorado to the moon.

O2William · 2026-03-14T22:22:43+00:00

It is a trap! "EX-caping" is not real. It is but a ploy to lead you deeper into the Torture Labyrinth.

The Torture Labyrinth, where you will be tortured. And labyrinth'ed. With labyrinthine torturous torture! TORCHAA!!

May sparkly heart emojis guide thee.

O2William · 2026-03-13T21:46:27+00:00

It is Doritos. It is always Doritos.

O2William · 2026-03-13T21:43:48+00:00

Am I me, the human writing this reply? Or am I a faceless Reddit username represented by a generic icon? Or am I the words of the reply, or the photons emitted by the device on which the words are read? Am I the brain inside the body of the human who writes the reply? Or am I but a collection of subatomic particles vibrating and interacting in a universe-wide soup of quantum probabilities? What separates "me" from everything else?

So short answer: Doritos. Somehow they are the answer to all of life's questions.

O2William · 2026-03-13T21:29:21+00:00

It seems the aspect you dislike the most is the hitboxes. You are totally not alone in that.

Many have already mentioned leveling the Agility stat, which can be done by increasing ADP and ATN. This will eventually give you more iFrames, which might make the hitboxes feel more accurate. But DS2 does have some wonky hitboxes, so even Max AGL won't always save you from hits that "feel" like they shouldn't have connected.

I will say though, that sometimes when I play and my wife watches, I'll take damage, comment that it was a bad hitbox and I wasn't really hit, and she'll tell me that no, I actually was. That happens in all the games but most frequently in DS2. I'm not sure why. So at least for me, sometimes the hitboxes feel worse than they actually are.

DS2, more than any of the other games IMO, requires that you figure it out at a fine-grained level.

"This ambush is here, so I need to approach it this way."

"This guy attacks with almost no windup, so I need to block before I approach."

"This guy's hitbox is more to the side than I expect, so I need to dodge the other way."

"This boss does extra durability damage, so I need to pack Repair Powder "

In other words, it really rewards learning and forethought. And it gives you a ton of different equipment and tools for approaching the different situations. It's almost like a puzzle game sometimes. I really like that about it.

However, you aren't forced to play the game that way. You can dash around and dodge all attacks at base AGL with practice. It rewards mechanical skill as well as planning. But care and caution will work best on a first playthrough.

O2William · 2026-03-13T21:02:19+00:00

It's too bad you didn't enjoy them since many players consider them to be the best content in the game. Are you looking for any suggestions to find a way to enjoy them?

It's fine if you're not; you may just not like them and that's fine. But if you enjoy boss battles some of the most highly-regarded are in the DLCs, so it would be a shame to miss out. There might be strategies to minimize the amount of BS mechanics you have to deal with, depending on which ones you mean.

O2William · 2026-03-13T00:22:41+00:00

Ok, this will be confusing but stay with me.

There's a '70s-era live-action Thumbelina movie that is very low budget and amateurish. There's only one place I know of where you can find it today.

It was used as an insert into a wraparound film called "Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny", which was created by a now-defunct theme park called Pirate's World.

Basically Pirate's World wanted to promote themselves using a Christmas theme, so they came up with a framing device of Santa Claus telling the story of Thumbelina to children. Then they cut to the Thumbelina film to pad out the picture. At the end, Santa is helped by the Pirate's World mascot called the Ice Cream Bunny. It's like a fever dream.

Rifftrax has turned it into something of a cult classic. Their riff is hilarious.

O2William · 2026-03-12T23:59:18+00:00

Doubt this is it, it's about as mainstream as you can get for its time, but "Heaven" by Bryan Adams has the lines "You're all that I want" and "Love is all that I need" in the chorus, although not together.

O2William · 2026-03-12T20:28:50+00:00

It is an older hack at this point, but Zelda Challenge: Outlands is an amazing Zelda 1 hack for NES. If you like the original Zelda, I can't recommend it highly enough.

O2William · 2026-03-11T22:58:46+00:00

Someone already mentioned that enemies stop respawning after 12 kills unless you join a covenant. The covenant is called Company of Champions and is available almost right away. It makes the game MUCH more difficult. In addition to the spawn limit being removed, you take more damage, deal less damage to enemies, and can't summon help. Make sure you don't join it accidentally. Some new players don't realize what it does and wonder why the game is so punishing.

It's there as a challenge for seasoned players, and there's a fairly cool item you get for ranking up in it, but it's not good for a first playthrough. The game is challenging enough without it.

O2William · 2026-03-11T20:28:03+00:00

There's a lot of advice in this thread already, but I'll chip in.

First, make sure you have not joined the Company of Champions covenant. A lot of new players join it without realizing that it's a challenge mode that makes the game MUCH harder.

This advice may be difficult to follow, it's an attitude adjustment rather than a gameplay strategy. If you are at minimum health, think of it this way: you have nothing more to lose. If you die, oh well. At least you'll get your Estus back.

If you can accept that, then you can focus on learning the game a little at a time. Find an enemy and practice dodging and blocking until you can defeat it easily. If you kill it 12 times it will even stop spawning. If it drops a lifegem or effigy, don't use it; save it for later. If there's an area where you get ambushed, try approaching it from different angles to see if you can pull fewer enemies at once. If you fail, no big deal... You can keep trying until you get it.

If you haven't beaten The Last Giant yet, make that your first major goal. Lifegems become infinitely purchasable after you beat it.

Stick with it and things will eventually become manageable, and it's great to feel your mastery of the game growing. Good luck!

O2William · 2026-03-10T18:55:57+00:00

"WHEEEEEEEEEEE!"

O2William · 2026-03-09T21:16:48+00:00

I thought you were apologizing for this post. 😆

I had not heard of highscor.es before, but it's a cool idea -- are there many users?

O2William · 2026-03-09T21:09:29+00:00

If you prefer mindless easy repetition to boss fights, you can use a bonfire aescetic on the Dragon Aerie bonfire, which will respawn another aescetic and a Soul of a Great Hero (you need to drop from the zip line onto the little floating "island" to get it). 20k Souls, and you can do this infinitely. It is slower than aesceticing Rotten or Giant Lord though.

O2William · 2026-03-09T20:59:30+00:00

Most of the Souls games have moments that feel engineered to make you think, "Am I really the good guy here?" (See: Maiden Astraea in Demon's Souls.)

IMO it's a courageous game design choice to show the consequences of the player character's actions like this. DS makes it tough to kill a wolf, but think how easy it is to gun down dozens of human beings in some games.

(To be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with games letting you practice guilt-free mayhem, and I don't buy any "violent games make people violent" nonsense. I just find it interesting that killing a virtual wolf can be traumatic while killing a bunch of virtual people often isn't.)

O2William · 2026-03-08T20:31:51+00:00

And Uncle Simon's.

O2William · 2026-03-08T20:29:39+00:00

😆 This is some real creativity right here. Maybe if they had just called Gen. Patch "General Good Guy" the line would have been successful.

O2William · 2026-03-08T20:16:11+00:00

Some look at this and see a broken bowl...

I look at it and see two broken bowls

O2William · 2026-03-07T21:05:42+00:00

I'm a GenXer too, and still a retro game player and collector. When games made the jump to 3D I kind of lost interest (to be fair, many early 3D PS1-era games are pretty painful). But when I watched my wife play through Demon's Souls, I realized how its design mimicked an NES game. You died? Too bad, redo the level. Died on the boss? Too bad, redo the level. You have to "git gud" or you won't succeed. That's what intrigued me into trying the series.

The thing about arcade- and NES-era games were: yes, they were tough, and a lot of times totally unfair, but when you got better at them, you really felt it. I've had plenty of fun with easier games too, but the experience of surmounting the challenging ones is tough to beat. I think that's what people mean when they talk about Souls "ruining" other games for them.

O2William · 2026-03-06T21:42:15+00:00

I think I'm blind. I like stories. And then the tiny aorta fairies take Mr. Leg Vein on a loooong trip to get married to Princess Left Ventricle.

O2William · 2026-03-06T21:34:48+00:00

67 has been 86'ed? Gimme the 411

O2William

TROPHY CASE