It doesn’t add invincible frames or speed up the roll, just a visual change and +3 Dex. There is a seperate ring that increases iframes at the cost of defense though.
Welp, that’s every boss down. I’ve already headed into NG+.
What a game. I loved every second of it, and the final boss is by far the best one of any Souls game and probably my favorite one in the game itself. I thought the bosses in this one were consistently awesome from start to finish, even though a lot of them were pretty easy. But the game was definitely a lot more challenging than DSII, so that’s at least a plus.
5 years of waiting, and I think I might have finally found a Souls game that surpasses Dark Souls 1 for me. I love the call outs to previous games. I love the sense of convuluted and distorted themes throughout, it’s as if Lordran and Drangelic violently clashed into each other over the course of thousands of years to make the confusing and treacherous landscape we see in DSIII. There’s something really artistic in this game that DSII simply lacked. I love that it’s back.
I wanna detail my full impressions, but I’ll do it once I’m not forced to use mobile. I have some really, REALLY interesting insights to share on some almost irrefutable evidence that Bloodborne and this game exists in the same universe. Mostly revolving around Oceiros.
This game was a fantastic send off for the series. Even without the inevitable DLC content, I am satisfied.
When you have a great run going on your 4th restart of the game, because im ocd like that in how i start off my souls runs, but then you find out that Luck scaling with anri sword is OD, so you prepare to start your 5th run. lool.
One day im going to get further than farrons keep before starting over again. I should probably just continue with this good strength build i have now. Character is pretty powerful, with a shit ton of health for being only at the road of sacrifice. I should just upgrade the broadsword, and keep it moving. 
I finished the game last night. The end game bosses were painfully easy. Even so the boss fights were still great. Overall I think the game is great. Shits all over DaS2. I’ll put it on the same league as DaS1. Bloodbourne is still my favorite Souls game personally.
I really, REALLY like the last boss. I went through a roller coaster of emotions while fighting it
[details=Spoiler]I absolutely loved how they even represented a dex/pyro, I straight up laughed at how awesome that was. Just before that I had noticed that there were all different kinds of weapons spread around like it was UBW or some shit, and when I saw him switch weapons I was like fuuuuuck yesss, then I noticed that he switches weapons to types of player builds and I was fucking floored with how awesome that was.
Then once you get him down that first time, DUN DUN DUN! Oh shit man I really started to get emotional then. Fuck, thematically they did such a good job on this boss. You can fucking FEEL all the history, the emotions, the DETERMINATION, or even the despair of those who came to link the fire before you. I actually felt the only way I could respect them was to do the same.
I’m really glad I chose this ending first, it fit right in with the emotions I personally had. I’m actually kind of dreading seeing the other endings now, which is AWESOME. Bloodborne did the same thing to me, where all of the endings were painful or uneasy, and the only one that wasn’t was the simple one. [/details]
[details=Spoiler]It’s such an incredible boss. It’s like you’re fighting yourself. You’re fighting the monarch undead that you played as in the first two games, and at the same time Gwyn, and all the others who might have inherited the flame. It is literally an amalgamation of all the past Lords Of Cinder, taking form and defending itself. It’s everything and nothing, light and darkness, yourself and everyone else all at the same time. An absolutely perfect send off for this series. The way they mixed in Gwyn’s theme too was too fucking perfect. You won’t feel the emotional impact of that fight unless you’ve played the other games, and I love that about it.
Easily, EASILY my favorite fight in the game. It makes me wanna do a Lord of Cinder build, which I guess would just be putting 99 points into every stat lmao. [/details]
“…You, is that not… The soul of the man who fell on this spot, he was a dear friend. I wish to pay proper respect, with that Soul. Would you be willing to part with it?.”
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So someone on reddit went and did some reverse engineering of the PC version, hacking poise into the game. “But wait, I thought poise was already in the game?” you ask. Well it is… but just for enemies; currently, the poise stat is a real stat in the game for players, but it is DISABLED. No one really knows the reason why, but the values for poise on armor are there AND are being calculated, but for whatever reason, From has poise disabled for player characters. Wondering if they’re going to enable it in the future.
beat the game here’s my thoughts
Spoiler
The good
+probably the best gameplay in a souls game, it’s very refined and I didn’t have too many issues with my own character’s hitboxes
+AMAZING boss fights, looks like they focused on quality over quantity this time unlike Dark Souls 2
+I LOVED the amount of bonfires in every area.
+nostalgic moments like seeing familiar faces and seeing the word “Anor Londo” show up
The bad:
-a lot of the “same old”. Not a big deal but kinda wish there was more new stuff.
-Did not like how stupidly non-linear the game was, feels like the level layout made everything confusing. I dislike getting lost in video games, I always want progress which is why I didn’t mind the linear design of DS2 as much.
-Had a TON of “When the heck do I attack this enemy” moments. Since enemies have poise and you don’t it just makes things frustrating when you’re using a slower weapon. I’m sure a patch will address this
Very enjoyable game.
Starting class: Herald
Main weapon: heavy Battle axe
Stats: mostly focused on vit, vgr and str
Favorite boss: Nameless King, seriously this fight was SO AMAZING! The second phase with the music change and the fact that he starts walking towards slowly like a boss at the start was TOO GOOD. The final boss is a close second favorite, too bad I was too tanky by the time I faced him.
I do fucking love how dangerous some of the general enemies are so far. All the knights that used to be backstab fodder are much harder to back stab so you gotta deal with their moveset and the most cool thing about weapon arts is that those knights uses them to mix you up. Can’t spam rolls when they do some ST tier shit and read your roll with a weapon stance lunge. Blocking becomes much more dangerous even on a greatshield when they can guard break it with a weapon art, or the occasionally stomp art to armor through a poke and raw launch you.
Enemies aggroing eachother is such a cool interaction as well.
I found a lot of enemies to be more dangerous then the bosses lol.
[details=Spoiler]What new stuff did you want? There’s a freaking ton of new stuff, whether it’s weapons, areas, enemies, strats, lore, etc.
It’s funny you complain about non-linearity because I’ve seen people complain that it’s too linear lol. I mean, that’s your opinion, I’m not saying your wrong, it’s just funny. Personally I like it, but yeah.
What? Patch what? Every enemy has a strat that works against them. Just like every game before it, not every weapon works in every situation. You have to actually carry different types of tools if you want to deal with every enemy effectively. Granted, any setup CAN deal with any enemy, but not easily, as you’ve discovered. This isn’t actually a bad point, it’s good. It encourages you to find alternatives and look at the tools you have and try different things.
A good example is the skeletons. Did you know that if you hit a skeleton with a hammer type weapon they instantly either crumble or get knocked down, allowing you AMPLE time to kill them or knock them down again, making those ninja skeletons or even groups of skeletons way, WAY less of an issue. For knights with a ton of poise, grab a medium shield with good stability and circle strafe, don’t roll, while blocking. You’re guaranteed to reach their back on some attacks, the only ones you need to roll away from are the shield bashes or if you’re low on stamina. There’s strats for every enemy that make sense, you just have to carry multiple tools
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Yeah for this game especially I wouldn’t rock only a heavy weapon without something to cover it’s bad matchups until some more buffs come around.
*UGS vs dogs when you could have a off hand rapier to avoid unnecessary damage, Farron GS can be an slight exception.
It’s a shame that the heavier weapons aren’t too great at dpsing some of the more dangerous knights now that they have a fair amount of health. The heavy stamina required per swing and how dangerous enemy movesets are now makes the playstyle quite risky. They atleast have the knockdown potential and oki at the least and the occasional high risk high reward counter hit stabs + oki.
Good for ambushing a unwary grouped up mob with a charged R2 to one shot them all or heavy damage and free oki on a unwary dangerous mob.
It’s so fucking terrifying to get your heavy weapon completely poised through by a enemy with a ultra greatsword into a raw launched for a for all of your health/majority of your health into a oki situation. I’ve been meaty guard broken by weapon arts, had my wake up rolls tracked, shits scary.
In my experience, Great Hammers(or Hammers in gneral) don’t have this problem as much. I think they just nerfed UGS poise damage in general to make Great Hammers more appealing.
Great Hammers feel pretty awful if you ask me. I started using Great Axes instead and never looked back. Black Knight Great Axe is sex.
Yeah I kinda noticed that as well. Makes me think though, pure STR builds along the strengths of the DS2 str builds would have been quite amazing in this game, if not too amazing. Indefinitely intentional that they didn’t bring back the old power stance mechanic because stuff like dual great clubs would absolutely destroy even the knights in this game. Seems like they wanted builds to not be as nearly overpowered as DS2 to initially keep the enemies to be consistently more dangerous without them being immediately invalidated by 2 swings of a power stanced great club.
Great Axe in early game was pretty amazing. Though it was quite the investment weight and str wise, on top of the short as hell range, so I had a pocket GA for some mobs until my butcher axe, estoc and later Dark sword started severely outpacing it.
BKGA is definitely freaking amazing, but I love Large Club and Drang Hammers. Especially Drang Hammers, holy shit those are excellent
The whole game PVE wise seems to be balanced in a way that no matter what enemies are still dangerous. Fighting the Lothric Knights late game in the area between Vordt and Dancer they still took two hits to kill with my GS and they still did decent enough damage that I had to pay attention to the fight. Nothing like the other Souls games where running though early areas of the game during the late game can be done on Auto Pilot.
Apparently a new speed run world record was set with a Barbed Straight sword Luck build
Makes sense. I mean who needs raw damage when everything just explodes from bleed damage?