Posted April 13, 2016
As some of you may remember, I posted a thread a while back, where I asked for some information regarding Steam and how it handles retail/disc copies of games, among other things.
Well, I received my copy of Dark Souls 3 today and wanted to share a little info myself, based on my experience with Steam so far, since it might help people who are interested in the game, or other AAA releases not available here at GOG.
First things first: I was able to install the game almost entirely from the discs. If you're on a slow or limited internet connection, that's about 20 GB worth of data you don't have to download -- praise the sun! In fact, I think even the Steam client was mostly included on the disc(s). It only downloaded some small updates, and about 200MB of additional data/patches for the game itself.
Now the bad part: Steam was kind of a bitch throughout the process. I went offline during the main portion of the installation, since all the data was being pulled from the discs, but for some reason it requires you to be online whenever you swap the installation disc... ? In any case, the installation process got screwed up, and then wouldn't let me resume installation from disc, and instead Steam attempted to download the whole thing. Yeah... no. It eventually worked, after uninstalling and restarting the game installation, this time with permanent web connection. Aside from that little hiccup, the rest of the installation, account creation etc. was a little tedious but went smoothly enough. TL;DR: Best make sure you're online throughout the entire installation process, or at least go back online before you insert the next installation disc. That should hopefully save you some trouble and wasted time.
I guess my overall opinion of Steam hasn't changed. It's all nice and well as an online game distributor and gaming platform, as long as you know what to expect of it. But Steam as a mandatory requirement tied to retail game copies needs to die a slow, fiery death. Or maybe a quick one... As long as there's plenty of fire. Oh, also potentially relevant: "Offline mode" seems to work so far. Once I was done with the whole installation mess ( and deactivated any annoying features of the client ), Steam didn't really bother me about anything, and I was able to launch and play DS3 while offline.
As for Dark Souls 3 itself, I'd say it delivers everything a fan of the series would expect. Judging by my first few hours in the game, it seems like a blend of all the previous games ( including a bit of Demon's Souls and Bloodborne ). On a pure technical level, it's not really on par with games such as Witcher 3, but it runs smoothly, and the art direction and designs are amazing, as expected.
Initial annoyances with Steam and the installation process aside, I'm happy to be able to play the game now. ( As I mentioned in the other thread, it only happens about once or twice a year that a AAA game release actually has me this excited. ) Thanks again, to everyone who helped me out!
P.S.: I lied, there's no cheese in this thread. Yet. But feel free to share some pictures of your local cheese fetishist gathering. It's cool, I won't judge. ♥
Well, I received my copy of Dark Souls 3 today and wanted to share a little info myself, based on my experience with Steam so far, since it might help people who are interested in the game, or other AAA releases not available here at GOG.
First things first: I was able to install the game almost entirely from the discs. If you're on a slow or limited internet connection, that's about 20 GB worth of data you don't have to download -- praise the sun! In fact, I think even the Steam client was mostly included on the disc(s). It only downloaded some small updates, and about 200MB of additional data/patches for the game itself.
Now the bad part: Steam was kind of a bitch throughout the process. I went offline during the main portion of the installation, since all the data was being pulled from the discs, but for some reason it requires you to be online whenever you swap the installation disc... ? In any case, the installation process got screwed up, and then wouldn't let me resume installation from disc, and instead Steam attempted to download the whole thing. Yeah... no. It eventually worked, after uninstalling and restarting the game installation, this time with permanent web connection. Aside from that little hiccup, the rest of the installation, account creation etc. was a little tedious but went smoothly enough. TL;DR: Best make sure you're online throughout the entire installation process, or at least go back online before you insert the next installation disc. That should hopefully save you some trouble and wasted time.
I guess my overall opinion of Steam hasn't changed. It's all nice and well as an online game distributor and gaming platform, as long as you know what to expect of it. But Steam as a mandatory requirement tied to retail game copies needs to die a slow, fiery death. Or maybe a quick one... As long as there's plenty of fire. Oh, also potentially relevant: "Offline mode" seems to work so far. Once I was done with the whole installation mess ( and deactivated any annoying features of the client ), Steam didn't really bother me about anything, and I was able to launch and play DS3 while offline.
As for Dark Souls 3 itself, I'd say it delivers everything a fan of the series would expect. Judging by my first few hours in the game, it seems like a blend of all the previous games ( including a bit of Demon's Souls and Bloodborne ). On a pure technical level, it's not really on par with games such as Witcher 3, but it runs smoothly, and the art direction and designs are amazing, as expected.
Initial annoyances with Steam and the installation process aside, I'm happy to be able to play the game now. ( As I mentioned in the other thread, it only happens about once or twice a year that a AAA game release actually has me this excited. ) Thanks again, to everyone who helped me out!
P.S.: I lied, there's no cheese in this thread. Yet. But feel free to share some pictures of your local cheese fetishist gathering. It's cool, I won't judge. ♥
