What the fuck am I supposed to be doing in this game? I'm going through the Watching Woods...

What the fuck am I supposed to be doing in this game? I'm going through the Watching Woods, havent found any sanctuary there except for the one that starts with a blacksmith, and I'm not making any progress at all. If I go up, the Mad Alchemist wrecks my shit. If I go down, I get to Sunken Keep and a giant wrecks my shit. Should I just be putting down all the statues and buffing all low tier weapons weapons?
Any other content spoiler-free tips for a begginer? Help me git gud.

Is this game any good? I know it's supposed to be a 2D souls-like game, but is this actually accurate or just a meme?

I'm too much at the start to say if it's actually good, but it really is 2D Souls and I'm having fun.

you can just run past the giant, but I don't know what kind of advice are you expecting. If you're coming from souls you already know improving weapons helps, but is not necessary. Git gud is a meme, because that's what you need to succeed. The only advice I can think of, is drop your equip load and forget about shields, rolling in this games is pretty busted due to it's 2D nature.

pls respond
Am I fucked if I said no to this guy?

I think that guy had something to do with the true ending or something. Don't remember.

no, it doesn't matter

>you can just run past the giant, but I don't know what kind of advice are you expecting
The giant I mean is the boss at the entrance of Sunken Keep, just forgot his name. I guess since its the next area I should be buffing weapons, but I'm not too sure about wasting materials on low tier equipment.
>The only advice I can think of, is drop your equip load and forget about shields, rolling in this games is pretty busted due to it's 2D nature.
Thanks. I was turtling the whole way.

It doesent matter what you say to him ever. He just mocks you.

You should be able to beat Alchemist at this point. The giant boss is slightly harder but still manageable.

There should be a sanctuary slightly below and to the right of the Alchemist.

>The giant I mean is the boss
krakean cyclops?

>but I'm not too sure about wasting materials on low tier equipment
you can transmute your gear into other weapons and only lose 1 upgrade level, you need to drop some NPC to do this, don't remember which. You can probably already make some of the best weapons in the game with transmutation.
also like souls, starter weapons are not always bad

There's a sanctuary right besides the alchemist.
Upgrade your weapons as much as you can.
Use buff papers and shit and don't let the adds touch you.
Alchemist is a shit-show of adds and poison, but you should be able to fuck him up.
The Kraken whatever can be beat without being hit... He's basically a clone of the intro boss. It will take some trial and error, but he only has like 4 moves.
Summon a faction leader and start doing bounties for some extra health/mana flasks. Most of the meme faction-specific flasks suck nuts... just get regular health and mana.
If you're still stuck, find the Zweihander and upgrade it.

Does this game have any replayablility besides maybe trying new weapons? Like, a new game plus with new enemies and placements, new areas and encounters something like that? I hate getting gud in games that dont bother to utilize that gud after you hve finished it

If you played it without guides, there is definitely tons of shit you missed.

NG+ only makes enemies stronger I think, maybe some new items spawn, but not many
That said, the game has many routes you can take to complete it, with large sections skippable, so you can start a new playthrough for a different experience

>havent found any sanctuary there except for the one that starts with a blacksmith
There's another path left of the platforms where you fight the Mad Alchemist, it takes you to another sanctuary with another faction you can join(which is pretty shit).
>If I go up, the Mad Alchemist wrecks my shit
Use the Claymore and equip the tunic set you find in the Watching Woods for elemental resistance bonuses, chances are you can stunlock him with each swing of the Claymore.
Otherwise just git gud at dodging since it's unlikely you have access to guns that early.
>I get to Sunken Keep and a giant wrecks my shit
Learn to dodge, the Kraken giant has super slow wind ups you can either parry or simply roll through, unless you're one of those mongs who use heavy armor with piss poor stats so you can't roll for shit.
>Any other content spoiler-free tips for a begginer?
Offering statues in a sanctuary is good for the bonus you gets, using a guide in the Village of Smiles allows you to farm salt very early in the game for instance thanks to the mobs that spawn in the pumpkin fields, you can powerlevel fairly fast in there for a while.
Captains give you some fetch quests that allow you to level up your loyalty rank inside a faction, for each level you get to choose to carry one more item, a HP potion, a Fatigue potion and some other items with different effects depending on the faction.
More importantly though, levelling up a faction's level allows both blacksmiths and merchants to give you more items related to that faction, each faction has specific weapons or armors you can get, some factions get certain items earlier than others, Mountainsmiths for instance get guns earlier than other factions, each faction also has either high level forge items or actually shop exclusive items, so keep that in mind.

As for the rest, you're playing a 2D soulsborne, so everything you learned from those games applies here, especially how OP is riposte against anything you can use on it.

Its a extremely solid adaptation.
It could have looked better, but you can drown those sorrows in good looking armor sets.

>you can't lower the faceguard on steel helmet
why does it trigger me so?

>
>haven't played in months
>don't know where the fuck to go now

this is even less beginner friendly than dark souls 1

are there throwing spears in that game

At the least your movespeed increases with upgrades
So traversing waste sections of the world become easier and easier.

>Spindlebeasts

no
you can dress in a potato suit and hit people with giant scissors though

onehanded sword and robes plathrough it is then

there is also a long jump trick/exploit for traversing faster

It only really works on extremely high stats and either naked or with extremely light equipment though.

>see one
>try to jump over it
>Get impaled
>Have shitloads of HP and armor, so survive
>Fail dodging it, and die
>It just walks back to where it strunted along
>Like a mega death unicorn

Fuck those unicorn dudes.

Who thought that was a good idea

you're not supposed to fight them, they're a punishment for failing the platforming section above
instead of putting deathspikes there, you can try to dodge the rapehorses

>First time in the Pitchwoods
>See a Spindlebeast
>Well alright time to...
>OBLITERATED
>Go back to it
>Can't impale me if I can outrun you, faggot
>Another Spindlebeast coming from the opposite direction
>OBLITERATED
>mfw

At least now I'm so good I can roll through them, but fuck spindlebeasts

Is it normal I find this game floaty and unsatisfying as shit?

They have very low HP, so you can kill them with 1 proper swing of your CHAOS ZWEIHENDER +5 (I meant anything with decent reach and damage)

I'm pretty satisfied with it, it's not really a masterpiece or a must play, but it's an alright game if you're into 2D metroidvanias.
It is a bit floaty though.
>They have very low HP
Not on NG+ cycles, they have actually very high HP scaling and can still oneshot you easily, so you either avoid them or just bait and kill them one by one, they don't even drop anything they're just there for your salt, in more ways than one.

You could
Or you could get instantly impaled, because they are rather quick at impaling.

It only meets a two of the five requirements for a non-floaty game:
>Attacks prevent free-movement? Yes.
>Hit-stop?
No.
>Hit-stun?
Yes.
>Block-stun?
No.
>Pronounced full-body animation?
Occasionally, but the models suck and feel rinkydink.

I blame the movement system actually being good.

>jump back in after not playing since PS4 release
>find some big ass dragon boss
>die immediately

help

what are you talking about

Look lads, no offense to the OP or anything, but I don't know how anybody has trouble with this game.
I don't even know where the meme that it's a hard game came from. It's IMPOSSIBLE to not be overpowered in the game. I've played through numerous times, I've never not been so strong that I kill bosses in seconds.

Even youtubers who are shit at games steam roll through it, so how are people having trouble? Where is the difficulty?

OP, you say you're near the mad alchemist? Want one of the many ways to break the game? Join up with the Creed next to the mad alchemist then, the forest one. You get poison throwing daggers from that creed. Poison kills 90% of the bosses in seconds after you've unloaded them with daggers.

What is blockstun?

lightning dragon near what i assume is the bottom of the map

it was long ago since i played the game, but it wasn't that hard.
Mad Alchemist shouldn't be a difficult boss.
Git gud

Skourzh?
Just buff yourself and get your thunder resistances up, dodge when needed.
It's just a casual filter for most because if you don't kill him fast he'll spam more and more delayed spells and slimes, OP is probably still not accustomed to the game.

A period where your actions are limited after a block.

interesting, name some good, lesser talked about games that do fullfill the criteria on your list

Practically every fighting game.
But filling all? Nothing besides fighting games that I know of.
Take for example Dark Souls. No hit-stop, and the block-stun system is pretty weak (you're always safely +frames on block and can always roll away). Either way, doing 3-and-a-half out of 5 is good enough for Dark Souls to be not floaty.
The biggest offender is always the ability to attack-while-moving. This makes any game that has it (Skyrim, Chivalry, M&B, etc) feel like you're a spinning top or some shit and it reworks fundamentals (spacing, attack selection, punishing misses, etc) into shimmying back-and-forth.

Thats a pretty good list user.
That said, Hit Stop is far less important than non free movement.

No suitable graphic device found. Anything i can do about this since its the first and only game that does this? googling leads to shit like restarting computer, reinstalling game and deleting file 32