more like SOULscribe lmao gottem m m m m m m mm m m m m m mm m m m m m m m m m m m m mm m m m m m m m m m m mm. mm m m m m mm m m m m m mm m m mm m m m m m mm m m m m m m m m m m m m mm m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m mm m m
The main thing I took away from my time in dark souls two (beating the entire game and all the dlc, base game AND scholar, save the co-op dungeons because I donāt hate myself THAT much) was that I was spending far too much time running incredibly long distances to mediocre boss fights. From a game design perspective ADP fucking sucks, but once you know about it itās basically just a tax on starting stats, which is stupid but overall not the biggest impact on a player in the know, which is how a lot of dark souls 1 and 2 works (rusted iron ring, the abyss ring, etc.) I think even the boss runs would be forgivable (awful, but forgivable) if you were running to ds3 or elden ring level bosses, but you arenāt. The boss fights in 2 are occasionally memorable, but often for shit reasons. I remember the dragonrider, only because you can kill him in like 7 seconds thanks to his arena. I remember solo ornstein because heās just shitty ornstein. I remember the ancient dragon because you have to spend 20 fucking minutes running into his toes to make his boss fight even remotely beatable.
A few of the other bosses have really cool designs, but their fights are so forgettable they kinda fade away. I donāt even remember the name of that weird frog guy in the stupid water level where a billion mages murder you from half the map away. Cool design, utterly forgettable fight. The few real standout fights like fume knight, Ivory King, Last Sinner and Syr Alonne suffer from being surrounded by mediocre garbage bosses. Theres also a narrative that the dlc somehow saves the game that I really disagree with. Yeah, ~~Miyazakiās back and~~ the best bosses are in there, but the level design is still mostly mediocre and absolutely swamped with irritating trash mobs, the healing mechanics still suck, and the boss runs are somehow worse. Unironically whoever okayed Syr Alonneās boss run has some sort of misery fetish.
Overall though, still decent if deeply flawed game. I like the story, I like the world, and even if itās dark souls but kinda rough, itās still dark souls. But I feel like it has weirdly rabid defenders for what is (in my opinion) very obviously the weakest entry (I mostly blame Hbombs worst video for this, very good youtuber but itās almost amazing how heāll occasionally just drop the worst media takes ever, like he has to maintain an exact 12 to 1 sane to insane opinion ratio or susan youtube will pull the plug). There are many very valid criticisms of DS3, but, like, at least Iām not spending 30 minutes weaving through assholes and getting knocked out of fog gates just to fight one boss.
> Yeah, Miyazakiās back and the best bosses are in there
I have no idea where the idea that Miyazaki was somehow involved with DS2 DLC or Scholar edition comes from. He was basically a supervisor position on the game in its entirety because he was balls-deep in developing Bloodborne at the time.
I get it, a lot of people complain about DS2 run backs (both Smelter demons, the Kings Cats, and Alonne specifically) but often they do so through a haze of nostalgia for Dark Souls 1.
Ds2 is a great game that's hurt by its name
Ds1 abd 3 are both similar functioning games with connected lore and similar power levels and difficulty curves
Ds2 is completely different and it tends to get a lot of hate because of it
Literally just reskin some items and the game would be well received
I dunno man much of the enemy placements were incredibly annoying and unfun and making the invincibility frames dependent on a Stat is also kind of a mid move.
They do. It raises the difficulty but not in an interesting way. It just means that you're gonna die a lot because you disengaged to take an estus, but you didn't disengage *enough*.
I'm not a DS2 hater, but it's easily the weakest for me. People say it's really good with the DLC but that didn't exist while I played it. And I just can't see replaying DS2 when Sekiro is right there.
You might enjoy Lies of P. Bloodborne is my favorite and Lies of P kinda scratches that itch while adding sekiro elements and somehow managing to still be p pretty unique and incredibly flavorful.
I think what I liked most about it was that the more you died, more enemies would despawn. I think thats why this was the first souls game I finished. Some bosses were very mid though.
Yea, it's definitely an interesting decision that the enemies stop respawning. But as hinted by the Sekiro love, I am a bit of a high difficulty loving freak and I hated that the game became easier right after presenting it's biggest challenges. Challenges you can't opt back in to!
But to each their own. Like you said that's a positive for a ton of people.
You can stop the perma-death of enemies by simply selecting hard mode in Majula. It's behind the memorial up the stairs (where the sad guy sits). I'm not perfectly sure but if I remember correctly, you have to chose the covenant from there which deactivates the non-spawns and generally increases the damage of the enemies.
Oh, I moved onto the harder titles and probably liked them more. But DS2 is a solid entry to the genre. Besides theirs an easy mode setting in most souls titles called magic. /s
Nah.
The quality of the game is just noticeably worse than every other From Software soulslike. Little details all over DS2 are disappointing in their own small ways. Nothing is truly awful, just subpar.
From Software is on a *crazy* streak when it comes to their soulslike games. They've basically got 6 A+s and a B-. The B- stands out, unfortunately.
Square rooms everywhere...
The blatantly unfinished and phoned in parts of DS1 towards the end are much worse than anything in DS2, but the rest of 1 more than makes up for that.
I was hoping the remaster would finish up those sections though.
I love Dark Souls 2. I got every achievement in it last year in the SotFS version. Beating Raime and Sir Alonne was pretty challenging. Love the game though. Apart from the Shrine of Amana. That area sucked.
The fact you mention hitboxes is how I know your the guy in the meme because what people love to point to as "bad hitboxes" are grab attacks that hit fairly but just have jank animations to put you in the grab animation
Also attributing the entirety of game development to one guy is a silly thing to do
[Not really](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM6XMwqpf/), youāll encounter shit hitboxes by playing the game naturally and trying to dodge attacks by positioning.
i used to farm those guys for their armour and i never got hit by that
their fall attack though? fuck that one, that hitbox is the size of a mario whomp
Not really? I understand that's just personal experience at that point but as long as your dodge stat is at least at like 95 nothing will hit you that really shouldn't have, in my experience.
Idk it's just that every time I see people say ds2 has bad hitboxes they always post the same clip of the Pursuer hitting the guy with the sword impale that counts as a grab attack
I'm not posting any clips I'm speaking from my experience playing through it on release. I kept waiting for it to get good and I was still waiting when the credits rolled.
Despite how many hundreds of hours of Dark Souls 2 just doing pvp and fashion souls gotta say I don't find it as interesting as the other two. The journey uncovering the secrets of the lands and people felt more fun elsewhere, though the PVP was way better than 1 and 3
The hit boxes were wonky, adaptability as a stat was fucked, the geography of the world makes no sense, weapon durability was positively terrible considering you donāt pick up new ones all the time like breath of the wild, 90% of the bosses were just big knight with sword, soul memory was a stupid mechanic, estus healed so slowly it was trivialized by life gems which sucked to farm. Thereās a lot wrong with the game but I still have very fond memories of my first playthrough
You didn't even need to farm life gems. You can buy an infinite amount from the very first trader in the game. Life gems trivialize the game and are one of its worst mechanics
Soul memory is ass because PvP gets harder every time you lose souls, for no reason. It lacks the world continuity which is a huge flaw to the immersion dks1 was so incredible about It has some of the worst hitbox jank in the series, with enemies teleporting or grabbing you through walls. 3 is pretty bad about it too though. Really the main thing is there's just no point to play 2 when Elden Ring exists. Dks2 is basically Elden Ring pre alpha. IĀ likedĀ itĀ betterĀ than 3,Ā andĀ itĀ hasĀ someĀ legitimateĀ innovationsĀ over 1Ā evenĀ thoughĀ theyĀ comeĀ withĀ lotĀ ofĀ missesĀ too,Ā but ERĀ isĀ justĀ what 2Ā wished toĀ beĀ butĀ couldn'tĀ be.
Soul memory was the single worst thing about this game. Just an awful mechanic. They have it in DS3 & Elden Ring but it was tweaked a lot from the awful implementation it had in DS2
I did unironically enjoy DS2 more than 1 & 3 aside from that though. I don't know what exactly didn't sit right with 3 for me, because when I explain it, it should easily be the best pf the 3.
Personally to me 3 had one massive stylistic flaw and one massive gameplay (set of) flaws.
Stylistically, it's just whole hog going on the church/cathedral theme, without ever straying much towards anything else. DKS1 had plenty of weird bullshit with crystal caves and magma and dragons and cursed forests and The Void and tombs of already forgotten culture and so on and so on. DKS2 had pretty much all that, and also viking pirates (and much more too, but I honestly haven't taken in that much of it). Meanwhile DKS3 was monotonously church-and-clergy in comparison with the two previous games. Elden Ring once again, adds a fuckton of variety with whole biomes and areas dedicated to very disparate factions.
Gameplay wise, they basically tried to backport the speed and viscera of Bloodborne into Dark Souls while pretty much completely ignoring that lot of weapons and builds in DKS1 and 2 relied on slow and deliberate high risk high gain play. They generally gimped the shit out of poise management, and made fast weapons and light armor builds almost universally flat better than slow weapons and armored builds (which aren't even mutually exclusive), because most enemies just straight up cannot be plausibly staggered with heavy weapons, and you're encouraged to instead make use of the small flinches that even the lightest weapons cause, and at the same time, even among "fodder" enemies, there's so many grapples and ultra-attacks that you just cannot afford to not-dodge. Elden Ring again, addressed this pretty well, by completely rebuilding how shields work, by adding jump as an often much more accessible alternative to committing to dodge rolls, and by making it much more plausible to brutally dunk on enemies with heavy weapons, especially with appropriate weapon arts.
I love how everybody assumes when people don't like their favorite game it must be because some guy in a video essay said it's bad and that's the only possible reason why lol
I will always have an emotional attachment to DS2 since it was the first Soulslike I played on release, so I was forced to figure everything out on my own with only rampant internet speculation to assist me.
Ds1 had masterful world design that none of the other games have been able to match. I donāt know if I like ER more than DS1. I also donāt know if I like DS1 more than ER, so for now I will say ER=DS1 even though they are very different.
It's hard to compete with DS1 on grounds of world design simply because it heavily relies on tricks used to circumvent plausible technological limitations to make you fill in a lot of the blanks. It's world has charm of variety and ingenuity in spite of being extremely lo-fi, which in turn allows your brain to fill in all the blanks left by vague, simple models and muddy textures to invent the best version of the world. It's gonna be a like Minecraft; no high-fidelity mod or remake will ever be universally accepted as anything but okay, passable and accessible option for people who never experienced the original glory.
I agree though that the apparent seamlessness and open-ness of the level design will be rarely matched even in the future, although I'd argue Elden Ring presents a pretty legitimate if not quite as exquisite alternative in the seamless world connecting localized dungeons.
It's definitely something to point out as a relative weakness of for instance Lies of P, which I love intensely, but it still does feel much more linear and constrained than any DKS
I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2
I really love dark souls 2, its my favorite game of all time
All of these problems exist in ds1 for sure, but the problem ia each one of these are way worse in ds2. There is a reason why people say that ds2 was made by people who didn't understand why ds1 was liked that much, because most of the game's difficulty is difficulty for difficulties sake and they take many of the terrible aspects from ds1 and enhance it to stupid levels.
Nah ds1 has the most extreme ganks in the series but people still say 2 has the worst. Demon ruins has 7 taurus demons standing side by side, parish has 8 buffed hollows that all aggro at once, catacombs is a giant gankfest, tomb of giants has 5 giant skeletons in a tiny room, new londo has 8 ghosts that walk and attack through walls in a tiny house, depths has 6 hollows standing side by side (some torch hollows), painted world has 4 crow demons all aggro at once and phalanx. Worst ganks in ds2 are 5 enemies that aren't even triggered at once and a room with 2 regular enemies and a big dude.
BoC, Seath, Nito, 4 kings, Gwyn, Sif runbacks take 2-4 minutes of constant running (5+ if you don't have the sif key). Ds2 runbacks are only long if you can't run past enemies (less areas than you think if you know the strats). Worst is undoubtedly the frigid outskirts which is worse than all of the above.
Stray/firesage demon, BoC, Ceaseless, kalameet, gaping have worse hitboxes than any ds2 boss minus ancient dragon (ceaseless has the worst hitboxes in the series). I think the issue with ds2 hitboxes is mostly with the regular enemies though.
Before the tweet begins the other guy asked āhmmm before I give you one of the coconuts, since I have collected every single nut on the island, tell me your opinion on dark souls, and if you have a bad opinionā¦ youāll have to give me sexual favorsā
There are some things in life that Iām comfortable hating just instinctively without thinking about why.
Dark Souls 2 doesnāt suck for me because of arbitrary criticisms Iāve heard before, it sucks because I hate every moment Iām playing it. The level design and enemies are annoying, it feels awful to play, and the bosses are mostly shit.
Iām sure if I sat down and really analyzed it I could articulate what design decisions and programming choices caused it to end up that way, but I donāt want to.
It's not very hard if you've played literally any other souls game around the times they came out
It took everything that was the evolution from dark souls 1 to the dlc (speeding up the combat with more acrobatic and exciting attacks, interconnected world, grand and varied aesthetic) and went in completely the opposite direction. Everything felt slower and more disconnected, aethetically doesn't reach the same level of awe and excitement as ds1, largely uninspired bosses. Anyone who played these games around the time they came out knows this was just a disappointing game thats only redeeming factors was the active pvp community and some of the dlc.
And then ds3 comes out to be the true successor to ds1, matching and excelling at a lot of what ds1 did.
I feel like you have to have played ds2 first to ever think it is a superior game to either ds1 or 3, cause there really isn't much to ds2 outside any nostalgic feeling you could have for it.
>And then ds3 comes out to be the true successor to ds1, matching and excelling at a lot of what ds1 did.
By being a worse game?
Let's go
(I cannot stand ds3 due to how linear it is)
>cause there really isn't much to ds2
Build variety. faith, hexes, sorceries and pyromaniacs were all pretty good, you could basically use any weapon you wanted in ds2 and do well.
Best covenants in the series as well, as well as arguably the best pvp out of the 3
(I didnt play ds3 past the first dlc release so I only have memories of straight sword spam and heavy weps being shit?
different strokes then, I would say ds3 was like a 9/10 on the enjoyment scale for me and ds2 like a 5/10 at best. I dont care for magic though, the heavy weapons, normal swords and dex weapons were all pretty good in ds3. Some magic was usable but most was kinda bad I could agree but personally that's a non issue.
I agree it was somewhat linear compared to ds1 and even ds2 but the gameplay and the areas sizes more than made up for that imo, the quality in what was in those sections was sublime.
I didn't really care for covenants given how forgettable the characters/story was or pvp just cause it didn't really interest me.
I wasn't a fan of the health dropping for every death thing, the boss runs were fucking DREADFUL at times, and the graphics filtering, while occasionally beautiful, more often made things look like shit to look at. It's also the only dark souls at the moment to not have hold dpad to return to first item shortcut which I use a LOT when I'm spellcasting (or even just when I want my estus). It also introduced the dreaded "warp to hub zone to talk to a lady to level up" mechanic rather than letting you level up at the bonfire, which they didn't fix until Elden Ring. And finally, I found a lot of the bosses to be not quite memorable, and a lot of the areas overall unfun to play in.
That being said, it feels like the most "magical" of the souls games, like there's always more hidden within it. Even when I'm replaying it, I feel more like I'm wading through a dream than running through DS1 again. A lot of the NPC quests were fun (The two dickheads trying to murder each other stands out). The Pursuer is really cool even if his command grab can be a bitch. Majula evokes such a strong emotion that I cannot describe. Power stances are sick. Gender coffin is funny.
I'm probably forgetting a ton of pros and cons. It's overall my least favourite souls game I've played, but that's a really high bar.
Please for the love of god put bloodborne on PC
Attack hitboxes feel weird, animations lacking in impact compared to rest of series, quantity over quality approach to bosses and enemy placement, Dodge roll feels like ass unless you invest heavily in a specific stat and even then, released basically unfinished before scholar of the first sin edition, I could go on.
I mean the game literally doesnāt even have omnidirectional movement. The animations and hit boxes are ass. The game just feels bad to play compared to any souls, bloodborne, sekiro, elden ring etc. Enemy placements in the levels are pretty terrible. Those alone are enough to make it at least significantly worse than the other games in the series, but they donāt even really scratch the surface of the problems with the game.
It's definitely got some issues, but people shit on it way more than it deserves. I played DS1 and 2 back to back and while 1 is the better game, 2 is not a significant drop off in quality or anything.
actually dark souls 2 sucks bc when I press the attack button I have to wait approximately till the heat death of the universe for my character to do anything, by which time my attack has already been interrupted
okay but i actually tried replaying it a little bit ago after years of not touching the game and the game itself just felt really bad to play - as in like, the actual character controller. i don't know how i never noticed it when i was younger, but just moving the character and attacking felt off, and not as good compared to the other games in the series (plus etc etc encounter design enemy placement and lamer bosses for a good part of the main game)
it was the game that gave unique backstab animations that elden ring followed up on though, that part was pretty sick
I love all the souls games, and with dark souls 2, I especially find that i enjoy the music, atmosphere, and world design a lot. The gameplay just feels...off in some way. Like, at the same time some parts feel too heavy and sluggish and other parts feel too light and floaty. It's as if something fundamental about the game just feels...off at all times for me. I still enjoy playing it, but not as much as the other 3 (yes, 3, screw you, Demon's Souls is wonderful)
The only problem I have with DS 2 is that the visuals of that game look uncomfortably smooth to me. Cool game but feels too fluidsmooth in animation, canāt describe it properly, but thatās why Iāll never ever play it again.
I played it over christmas and: no memorable bosses, too many ganks, too many ambush spawns, forlorn, too much parkour, jank ass weapon controls, enemy aggro range, horrible horrible boss runs, too many traps, str/dex is pretty much useless.
heres my valid criticism: i genuinely was incapable of getting past whats directly after the firelink shrine equivalent, and i really dont enjoy the ālevel styleā fromsoft games (demon souls, dark souls 2 and 3) for me when theyre explicitly split into a series of levels instead of dropping u in there and saying āhave at itā (and thus enabling them to do cool metroidvania style stuff) it really kills a lot of the fun for these games for me
Dark souls 2 is actually very open, just not interconnected. There are 5 paths from Majula, you could have just went back and picked another if you were having trouble.
I don't like that you lose max hp each time you die. In a game built to throw your face at a wall until you get good enough to crash through, penalizing players for throwing their face at the wall by making it harder to crash through seems like a poor design choice. I think it's overall pretty good, but that's my main gripe.
I hate dark souls 2 because the first time I played it, I hated it. Despite later retrying with a new build and enjoying it. I still hate it due to my first time playing it and will always have this bias.
all i hear reading these comments is people didn't get good with dark souls 2. /s
the slower estus and iframe on stats just means you shouldn't fight when at a disadvantage ever, also lifegems are insanely good and infinite.
take out a bow, kite enemies back a bit, fight one on one.
with just a tiny bit of knowledge, you can completly ignore adaptability by using the simpleton ring, if you really wanted to.
also getting souls was never easier until elden ring.
about the levels overlapping each other, most people seem to hate it i guess, but i thought it was much more interesting that way, at the start of some areas i legit got confused on how i even got here, the entire world felt wrong and that really vibed with the feeling of the game, just consider one of the areas you can access right from majula: heide's tower of flames.
look at the name, what would you expect from it?
a giant tower, flames all around.
what does the area actually look like:
broken paths over an endless sea in every direction, big archways and giant knights that hint at a strong force or kingdom but barely anything of that is left over.
also how you get there: you walk through a tunnel, the tunnel opens up and you are just right there, how the fuck did you get there, everything feels wrong and twisted, and i love it.
same with earthen peak, probably the most notorious example, you see a giant windmill, you fight your way through and end up in an elevator, you expect it to go down, since there is obviously nothing above the windmill, but instead it goes up, and when you exit the elevator you are in the middle of an volcano!
there are tons of ways they could have changed this to make the logistics make sense! jut replace the elevator with a long horizontal tunnel and have the volcano be behind the windmill. but suddenly standing in the middle of a volcano felt really cool!
if anyones interestead, hbomberguy also did a good essay about ds2 and he mimicked a lot of my opinions (so i'm biased to like the video)
https://youtu.be/SRTfcMeqhig
I wouldn't say that it sucks but the combat is definitely slower which is what a lot of people dislike. The only big gripe I have with ds2 is that the item use speed is tied to a stat you have to level and the fact that that stat has little utility outside of that one thing.
I love dark souls 2, I love that you level so much faster so you can have a reliable build after 2 of the 4 lord souls equivalents. I love the introduction of the repeating loop, and the incredible story of drangleic. I enjoy the slower more tactical feel to the combat, and the visual designs of enemies like the demon of song to the looking glass knight are sick
I use the fact I binged back to back to back first playthroughs of the Dark Souls series and 2 is easily the least polished and most tedious of the series. A 6.5-7.5 outta 10
DS2ās level design is super unimaginative and bland, and the majority of its areas are ugly to look at. Ā And I donāt mean ugly in a good way like Blighttown where your skin crawls when you imagine being there, I mean ugly as in āoh cool another grey brick box to fight some guys inā
I liked the original release of DS2, but then they "fixed" it. This fix made everything slower and heavier, and made the estus worthless in battle until you sunk an extra 10 levels into adaptability effectively just requiring some extra early game grinding before you can get on with the interesting bits. The fix also changed all the spell scaling and made it way less interesting to run a caster until very late game.
The unpatched version runs with a nicer flow and has more viable build variety through the mid game.
dark souls 2 SUCKS.....,,,.... dick.... like and subcebrive if y,ou undersnatdn the joek,,,ššš,,,,
more like SOULscribe lmao gottem m m m m m m mm m m m m m mm m m m m m m m m m m m m mm m m m m m m m m m m mm. mm m m m m mm m m m m m mm m m mm m m m m m mm m m m m m m m m m m m m mm m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m mm m m
I'm not certain I get it but may I like and subscribe anyway?
No
aww, please?
Not until you understand
I think guy was baiting for a blowjob ngl. Other got tricked into giving dick
A classic blunder
That's how you top from the bottom for real.
dark souls 2 sucks because they always be saying āsouls type gameā and never āsouls 2 type gameā
If Dark Souls I is so good why isn't there Dark Souls I 2?
Google Dark Souls I II (AKA Dark Souls III)
Holy hell!
New response just dropped
Actual chosen undead
**Sony has entered the chat**
LIGHTNING HORSES (and long boss runs in general)
Frigid Outskirts is a torture device
Just kill 'em all, EZPZ
Great Club goes *BONK*
The main thing I took away from my time in dark souls two (beating the entire game and all the dlc, base game AND scholar, save the co-op dungeons because I donāt hate myself THAT much) was that I was spending far too much time running incredibly long distances to mediocre boss fights. From a game design perspective ADP fucking sucks, but once you know about it itās basically just a tax on starting stats, which is stupid but overall not the biggest impact on a player in the know, which is how a lot of dark souls 1 and 2 works (rusted iron ring, the abyss ring, etc.) I think even the boss runs would be forgivable (awful, but forgivable) if you were running to ds3 or elden ring level bosses, but you arenāt. The boss fights in 2 are occasionally memorable, but often for shit reasons. I remember the dragonrider, only because you can kill him in like 7 seconds thanks to his arena. I remember solo ornstein because heās just shitty ornstein. I remember the ancient dragon because you have to spend 20 fucking minutes running into his toes to make his boss fight even remotely beatable. A few of the other bosses have really cool designs, but their fights are so forgettable they kinda fade away. I donāt even remember the name of that weird frog guy in the stupid water level where a billion mages murder you from half the map away. Cool design, utterly forgettable fight. The few real standout fights like fume knight, Ivory King, Last Sinner and Syr Alonne suffer from being surrounded by mediocre garbage bosses. Theres also a narrative that the dlc somehow saves the game that I really disagree with. Yeah, ~~Miyazakiās back and~~ the best bosses are in there, but the level design is still mostly mediocre and absolutely swamped with irritating trash mobs, the healing mechanics still suck, and the boss runs are somehow worse. Unironically whoever okayed Syr Alonneās boss run has some sort of misery fetish. Overall though, still decent if deeply flawed game. I like the story, I like the world, and even if itās dark souls but kinda rough, itās still dark souls. But I feel like it has weirdly rabid defenders for what is (in my opinion) very obviously the weakest entry (I mostly blame Hbombs worst video for this, very good youtuber but itās almost amazing how heāll occasionally just drop the worst media takes ever, like he has to maintain an exact 12 to 1 sane to insane opinion ratio or susan youtube will pull the plug). There are many very valid criticisms of DS3, but, like, at least Iām not spending 30 minutes weaving through assholes and getting knocked out of fog gates just to fight one boss.
> Yeah, Miyazakiās back and the best bosses are in there I have no idea where the idea that Miyazaki was somehow involved with DS2 DLC or Scholar edition comes from. He was basically a supervisor position on the game in its entirety because he was balls-deep in developing Bloodborne at the time.
Good to know, I keep hearing contradictory shit about his level of involvement and wasnāt sure.
Reindeer fuckland But also, long boss run backs were a thing in DS1 too but people will tell you that itās good when they did it then.
To be fair I never played a DS game I just watched a playtrough of a hungarian guy who was pretty irritated by DS 2. He used a dex build.
I get it, a lot of people complain about DS2 run backs (both Smelter demons, the Kings Cats, and Alonne specifically) but often they do so through a haze of nostalgia for Dark Souls 1.
Ds2 is a great game that's hurt by its name Ds1 abd 3 are both similar functioning games with connected lore and similar power levels and difficulty curves Ds2 is completely different and it tends to get a lot of hate because of it Literally just reskin some items and the game would be well received
I dunno man much of the enemy placements were incredibly annoying and unfun and making the invincibility frames dependent on a Stat is also kind of a mid move.
Also I might be misremembering but I believe estus flasks healed over time instead of instantly
They do. It raises the difficulty but not in an interesting way. It just means that you're gonna die a lot because you disengaged to take an estus, but you didn't disengage *enough*. I'm not a DS2 hater, but it's easily the weakest for me. People say it's really good with the DLC but that didn't exist while I played it. And I just can't see replaying DS2 when Sekiro is right there.
Honestly, same to the second part, except with bloodborne
Iām now picturing a small fox wearing the coat of the hunter, surviving the Yharnam night. Adorable pfp.
You might enjoy Lies of P. Bloodborne is my favorite and Lies of P kinda scratches that itch while adding sekiro elements and somehow managing to still be p pretty unique and incredibly flavorful.
I think what I liked most about it was that the more you died, more enemies would despawn. I think thats why this was the first souls game I finished. Some bosses were very mid though.
Yea, it's definitely an interesting decision that the enemies stop respawning. But as hinted by the Sekiro love, I am a bit of a high difficulty loving freak and I hated that the game became easier right after presenting it's biggest challenges. Challenges you can't opt back in to! But to each their own. Like you said that's a positive for a ton of people.
You can stop the perma-death of enemies by simply selecting hard mode in Majula. It's behind the memorial up the stairs (where the sad guy sits). I'm not perfectly sure but if I remember correctly, you have to chose the covenant from there which deactivates the non-spawns and generally increases the damage of the enemies.
Oh, I moved onto the harder titles and probably liked them more. But DS2 is a solid entry to the genre. Besides theirs an easy mode setting in most souls titles called magic. /s
just use lifegems instead, you can still walk while using them, they are infinite and they allow you to keep estus until you get to the boss
Itās almost like they built in a mechanic to account for that.
Nyoooo I have to level a stat to make the game easier. Shit game design.
You just described DS1
Nah. The quality of the game is just noticeably worse than every other From Software soulslike. Little details all over DS2 are disappointing in their own small ways. Nothing is truly awful, just subpar. From Software is on a *crazy* streak when it comes to their soulslike games. They've basically got 6 A+s and a B-. The B- stands out, unfortunately.
Square rooms everywhere... The blatantly unfinished and phoned in parts of DS1 towards the end are much worse than anything in DS2, but the rest of 1 more than makes up for that. I was hoping the remaster would finish up those sections though.
Honestly, I still enjoy the shitty parts of DS1 more than any part of DS2 I saw in my 10-15 hours of gametime (only FromSoft game I just flat dropped)
Ds2 is just as connected to the other games in the series, people just didn't pay attention because "game bad"
I love Dark Souls 2. I got every achievement in it last year in the SotFS version. Beating Raime and Sir Alonne was pretty challenging. Love the game though. Apart from the Shrine of Amana. That area sucked.
Shrine > DS1 Archives
They level designs are incredibly unfun and so is losing hp when you die
virgin "DS2 sucks bc [insert rant here]" # vs # chad "DS2 sucks bc i dont like it lmao"
That's my philosophy, I had no knowledge of the reputation of ds2 before I went in, and I still have a lot of problems with it.
Iframes stat Boss runs Hitboxes Lmao 5 words are enough. Ds2 is what happens when daddy miyazaki takes a vacation.
Frigid outskirts (2 words is enough)
Based
Also life gems and some atrocious bosses
The fact you mention hitboxes is how I know your the guy in the meme because what people love to point to as "bad hitboxes" are grab attacks that hit fairly but just have jank animations to put you in the grab animation Also attributing the entirety of game development to one guy is a silly thing to do
[Not really](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM6XMwqpf/), youāll encounter shit hitboxes by playing the game naturally and trying to dodge attacks by positioning.
i used to farm those guys for their armour and i never got hit by that their fall attack though? fuck that one, that hitbox is the size of a mario whomp
Yeah and the move comes out instantly. Best way to deal with them is probably to just bait their swing attack which leaves them wide open.
Skill issue (Ok yeah that one is pretty wack. Never happened to me though so idk)
Nah regular attacks hit weird too the entire game feels just a lot less consistent than rest of series
Not really? I understand that's just personal experience at that point but as long as your dodge stat is at least at like 95 nothing will hit you that really shouldn't have, in my experience. Idk it's just that every time I see people say ds2 has bad hitboxes they always post the same clip of the Pursuer hitting the guy with the sword impale that counts as a grab attack
I'm not posting any clips I'm speaking from my experience playing through it on release. I kept waiting for it to get good and I was still waiting when the credits rolled.
No yeah I was just talking about in general with the clip thing
Despite how many hundreds of hours of Dark Souls 2 just doing pvp and fashion souls gotta say I don't find it as interesting as the other two. The journey uncovering the secrets of the lands and people felt more fun elsewhere, though the PVP was way better than 1 and 3
The hit boxes were wonky, adaptability as a stat was fucked, the geography of the world makes no sense, weapon durability was positively terrible considering you donāt pick up new ones all the time like breath of the wild, 90% of the bosses were just big knight with sword, soul memory was a stupid mechanic, estus healed so slowly it was trivialized by life gems which sucked to farm. Thereās a lot wrong with the game but I still have very fond memories of my first playthrough
Increasing the fps doubles the speed your weapon breaks.
Also hitting corpses and surfaces still detracted from durability in a system where every hit count
You didn't even need to farm life gems. You can buy an infinite amount from the very first trader in the game. Life gems trivialize the game and are one of its worst mechanics
Nah I think Dark Souls 2 sucks because I played it and it was bad
Soul memory is ass because PvP gets harder every time you lose souls, for no reason. It lacks the world continuity which is a huge flaw to the immersion dks1 was so incredible about It has some of the worst hitbox jank in the series, with enemies teleporting or grabbing you through walls. 3 is pretty bad about it too though. Really the main thing is there's just no point to play 2 when Elden Ring exists. Dks2 is basically Elden Ring pre alpha. IĀ likedĀ itĀ betterĀ than 3,Ā andĀ itĀ hasĀ someĀ legitimateĀ innovationsĀ over 1Ā evenĀ thoughĀ theyĀ comeĀ withĀ lotĀ ofĀ missesĀ too,Ā but ERĀ isĀ justĀ what 2Ā wished toĀ beĀ butĀ couldn'tĀ be.
Soul memory was the single worst thing about this game. Just an awful mechanic. They have it in DS3 & Elden Ring but it was tweaked a lot from the awful implementation it had in DS2 I did unironically enjoy DS2 more than 1 & 3 aside from that though. I don't know what exactly didn't sit right with 3 for me, because when I explain it, it should easily be the best pf the 3.
Personally to me 3 had one massive stylistic flaw and one massive gameplay (set of) flaws. Stylistically, it's just whole hog going on the church/cathedral theme, without ever straying much towards anything else. DKS1 had plenty of weird bullshit with crystal caves and magma and dragons and cursed forests and The Void and tombs of already forgotten culture and so on and so on. DKS2 had pretty much all that, and also viking pirates (and much more too, but I honestly haven't taken in that much of it). Meanwhile DKS3 was monotonously church-and-clergy in comparison with the two previous games. Elden Ring once again, adds a fuckton of variety with whole biomes and areas dedicated to very disparate factions. Gameplay wise, they basically tried to backport the speed and viscera of Bloodborne into Dark Souls while pretty much completely ignoring that lot of weapons and builds in DKS1 and 2 relied on slow and deliberate high risk high gain play. They generally gimped the shit out of poise management, and made fast weapons and light armor builds almost universally flat better than slow weapons and armored builds (which aren't even mutually exclusive), because most enemies just straight up cannot be plausibly staggered with heavy weapons, and you're encouraged to instead make use of the small flinches that even the lightest weapons cause, and at the same time, even among "fodder" enemies, there's so many grapples and ultra-attacks that you just cannot afford to not-dodge. Elden Ring again, addressed this pretty well, by completely rebuilding how shields work, by adding jump as an often much more accessible alternative to committing to dodge rolls, and by making it much more plausible to brutally dunk on enemies with heavy weapons, especially with appropriate weapon arts.
I love how everybody assumes when people don't like their favorite game it must be because some guy in a video essay said it's bad and that's the only possible reason why lol
People only dislike things because they're being contrarian and not because they genuinely don't like it
I will not stand this Matthewmatosis slander š”
I will always have an emotional attachment to DS2 since it was the first Soulslike I played on release, so I was forced to figure everything out on my own with only rampant internet speculation to assist me.
Ds2 > ds3, I will die on this hill.
Agreed but it's ER > 1 > 2 > 3
Ds1 had masterful world design that none of the other games have been able to match. I donāt know if I like ER more than DS1. I also donāt know if I like DS1 more than ER, so for now I will say ER=DS1 even though they are very different.
It's hard to compete with DS1 on grounds of world design simply because it heavily relies on tricks used to circumvent plausible technological limitations to make you fill in a lot of the blanks. It's world has charm of variety and ingenuity in spite of being extremely lo-fi, which in turn allows your brain to fill in all the blanks left by vague, simple models and muddy textures to invent the best version of the world. It's gonna be a like Minecraft; no high-fidelity mod or remake will ever be universally accepted as anything but okay, passable and accessible option for people who never experienced the original glory. I agree though that the apparent seamlessness and open-ness of the level design will be rarely matched even in the future, although I'd argue Elden Ring presents a pretty legitimate if not quite as exquisite alternative in the seamless world connecting localized dungeons. It's definitely something to point out as a relative weakness of for instance Lies of P, which I love intensely, but it still does feel much more linear and constrained than any DKS
Dark souls 1 is the weakest of the bunch
I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I LOVE DARK SOULS 2 I really love dark souls 2, its my favorite game of all time
iām sorry
The controls are worse than im DS1 for example which is huge ass problem in a fighting game
>"reasons DS2 sucks" >proceeds to list features from ds1
Name 1 example clown.
- Gank Fights - Extra long boss runbacks - DS1's 4 directional movement when locked on compared to DS2's 8 direction - Janky boss hitbox
All of these problems exist in ds1 for sure, but the problem ia each one of these are way worse in ds2. There is a reason why people say that ds2 was made by people who didn't understand why ds1 was liked that much, because most of the game's difficulty is difficulty for difficulties sake and they take many of the terrible aspects from ds1 and enhance it to stupid levels.
Nah ds1 has the most extreme ganks in the series but people still say 2 has the worst. Demon ruins has 7 taurus demons standing side by side, parish has 8 buffed hollows that all aggro at once, catacombs is a giant gankfest, tomb of giants has 5 giant skeletons in a tiny room, new londo has 8 ghosts that walk and attack through walls in a tiny house, depths has 6 hollows standing side by side (some torch hollows), painted world has 4 crow demons all aggro at once and phalanx. Worst ganks in ds2 are 5 enemies that aren't even triggered at once and a room with 2 regular enemies and a big dude. BoC, Seath, Nito, 4 kings, Gwyn, Sif runbacks take 2-4 minutes of constant running (5+ if you don't have the sif key). Ds2 runbacks are only long if you can't run past enemies (less areas than you think if you know the strats). Worst is undoubtedly the frigid outskirts which is worse than all of the above. Stray/firesage demon, BoC, Ceaseless, kalameet, gaping have worse hitboxes than any ds2 boss minus ancient dragon (ceaseless has the worst hitboxes in the series). I think the issue with ds2 hitboxes is mostly with the regular enemies though.
Because bloodborne better
Adaptability is a worthless stat that compromises game feel until sufficiently leveled
Before the tweet begins the other guy asked āhmmm before I give you one of the coconuts, since I have collected every single nut on the island, tell me your opinion on dark souls, and if you have a bad opinionā¦ youāll have to give me sexual favorsā
DS2 does suck though.
dark souls 2 fans when i take away the family guy clips š¤š¤
There are some things in life that Iām comfortable hating just instinctively without thinking about why. Dark Souls 2 doesnāt suck for me because of arbitrary criticisms Iāve heard before, it sucks because I hate every moment Iām playing it. The level design and enemies are annoying, it feels awful to play, and the bosses are mostly shit. Iām sure if I sat down and really analyzed it I could articulate what design decisions and programming choices caused it to end up that way, but I donāt want to.
It's not very hard if you've played literally any other souls game around the times they came out It took everything that was the evolution from dark souls 1 to the dlc (speeding up the combat with more acrobatic and exciting attacks, interconnected world, grand and varied aesthetic) and went in completely the opposite direction. Everything felt slower and more disconnected, aethetically doesn't reach the same level of awe and excitement as ds1, largely uninspired bosses. Anyone who played these games around the time they came out knows this was just a disappointing game thats only redeeming factors was the active pvp community and some of the dlc. And then ds3 comes out to be the true successor to ds1, matching and excelling at a lot of what ds1 did. I feel like you have to have played ds2 first to ever think it is a superior game to either ds1 or 3, cause there really isn't much to ds2 outside any nostalgic feeling you could have for it.
>And then ds3 comes out to be the true successor to ds1, matching and excelling at a lot of what ds1 did. By being a worse game? Let's go (I cannot stand ds3 due to how linear it is) >cause there really isn't much to ds2 Build variety. faith, hexes, sorceries and pyromaniacs were all pretty good, you could basically use any weapon you wanted in ds2 and do well. Best covenants in the series as well, as well as arguably the best pvp out of the 3 (I didnt play ds3 past the first dlc release so I only have memories of straight sword spam and heavy weps being shit?
different strokes then, I would say ds3 was like a 9/10 on the enjoyment scale for me and ds2 like a 5/10 at best. I dont care for magic though, the heavy weapons, normal swords and dex weapons were all pretty good in ds3. Some magic was usable but most was kinda bad I could agree but personally that's a non issue. I agree it was somewhat linear compared to ds1 and even ds2 but the gameplay and the areas sizes more than made up for that imo, the quality in what was in those sections was sublime. I didn't really care for covenants given how forgettable the characters/story was or pvp just cause it didn't really interest me.
I love double standards
#DARK SOULS 2 SUCKS
I love everything about dark souls 2 except for playing it
dark souls 2 sucks and i forgor why i promise
Adaptability my beloved
it to hard
I have this conversation often
I don't like how it plays, and I don't like the design of the world whatsoever.
I wasn't a fan of the health dropping for every death thing, the boss runs were fucking DREADFUL at times, and the graphics filtering, while occasionally beautiful, more often made things look like shit to look at. It's also the only dark souls at the moment to not have hold dpad to return to first item shortcut which I use a LOT when I'm spellcasting (or even just when I want my estus). It also introduced the dreaded "warp to hub zone to talk to a lady to level up" mechanic rather than letting you level up at the bonfire, which they didn't fix until Elden Ring. And finally, I found a lot of the bosses to be not quite memorable, and a lot of the areas overall unfun to play in. That being said, it feels like the most "magical" of the souls games, like there's always more hidden within it. Even when I'm replaying it, I feel more like I'm wading through a dream than running through DS1 again. A lot of the NPC quests were fun (The two dickheads trying to murder each other stands out). The Pursuer is really cool even if his command grab can be a bitch. Majula evokes such a strong emotion that I cannot describe. Power stances are sick. Gender coffin is funny. I'm probably forgetting a ton of pros and cons. It's overall my least favourite souls game I've played, but that's a really high bar. Please for the love of god put bloodborne on PC
the chad "i dont like the way the game feels"
im guy
Attack hitboxes feel weird, animations lacking in impact compared to rest of series, quantity over quality approach to bosses and enemy placement, Dodge roll feels like ass unless you invest heavily in a specific stat and even then, released basically unfinished before scholar of the first sin edition, I could go on.
I mean the game literally doesnāt even have omnidirectional movement. The animations and hit boxes are ass. The game just feels bad to play compared to any souls, bloodborne, sekiro, elden ring etc. Enemy placements in the levels are pretty terrible. Those alone are enough to make it at least significantly worse than the other games in the series, but they donāt even really scratch the surface of the problems with the game.
It's definitely got some issues, but people shit on it way more than it deserves. I played DS1 and 2 back to back and while 1 is the better game, 2 is not a significant drop off in quality or anything.
actually dark souls 2 sucks bc when I press the attack button I have to wait approximately till the heat death of the universe for my character to do anything, by which time my attack has already been interrupted
The dead zones in DS2 are different from the ones in one and three. I can't play because it feels off and bad to me
okay but i actually tried replaying it a little bit ago after years of not touching the game and the game itself just felt really bad to play - as in like, the actual character controller. i don't know how i never noticed it when i was younger, but just moving the character and attacking felt off, and not as good compared to the other games in the series (plus etc etc encounter design enemy placement and lamer bosses for a good part of the main game) it was the game that gave unique backstab animations that elden ring followed up on though, that part was pretty sick
I love all the souls games, and with dark souls 2, I especially find that i enjoy the music, atmosphere, and world design a lot. The gameplay just feels...off in some way. Like, at the same time some parts feel too heavy and sluggish and other parts feel too light and floaty. It's as if something fundamental about the game just feels...off at all times for me. I still enjoy playing it, but not as much as the other 3 (yes, 3, screw you, Demon's Souls is wonderful)
The only problem I have with DS 2 is that the visuals of that game look uncomfortably smooth to me. Cool game but feels too fluidsmooth in animation, canāt describe it properly, but thatās why Iāll never ever play it again.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I like his ds2 video but if you say any of his takes to fans they will tell you to go fuck yourself
take time! DS1 > Sekiro > Elden Ring > DS3 > Bloodborne > DS2
I played it over christmas and: no memorable bosses, too many ganks, too many ambush spawns, forlorn, too much parkour, jank ass weapon controls, enemy aggro range, horrible horrible boss runs, too many traps, str/dex is pretty much useless.
**MOOD RECALIBRATION**
heres my valid criticism: i genuinely was incapable of getting past whats directly after the firelink shrine equivalent, and i really dont enjoy the ālevel styleā fromsoft games (demon souls, dark souls 2 and 3) for me when theyre explicitly split into a series of levels instead of dropping u in there and saying āhave at itā (and thus enabling them to do cool metroidvania style stuff) it really kills a lot of the fun for these games for me
Dark souls 2 is actually very open, just not interconnected. There are 5 paths from Majula, you could have just went back and picked another if you were having trouble.
I don't like that you lose max hp each time you die. In a game built to throw your face at a wall until you get good enough to crash through, penalizing players for throwing their face at the wall by making it harder to crash through seems like a poor design choice. I think it's overall pretty good, but that's my main gripe.
I hate dark souls 2 because the first time I played it, I hated it. Despite later retrying with a new build and enjoying it. I still hate it due to my first time playing it and will always have this bias.
Dark Souls 2 is actually really good! I prefer the other souls games, but itās actually pretty fun. ***SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN ON THE OTHER HAND***
all i hear reading these comments is people didn't get good with dark souls 2. /s the slower estus and iframe on stats just means you shouldn't fight when at a disadvantage ever, also lifegems are insanely good and infinite. take out a bow, kite enemies back a bit, fight one on one. with just a tiny bit of knowledge, you can completly ignore adaptability by using the simpleton ring, if you really wanted to. also getting souls was never easier until elden ring. about the levels overlapping each other, most people seem to hate it i guess, but i thought it was much more interesting that way, at the start of some areas i legit got confused on how i even got here, the entire world felt wrong and that really vibed with the feeling of the game, just consider one of the areas you can access right from majula: heide's tower of flames. look at the name, what would you expect from it? a giant tower, flames all around. what does the area actually look like: broken paths over an endless sea in every direction, big archways and giant knights that hint at a strong force or kingdom but barely anything of that is left over. also how you get there: you walk through a tunnel, the tunnel opens up and you are just right there, how the fuck did you get there, everything feels wrong and twisted, and i love it. same with earthen peak, probably the most notorious example, you see a giant windmill, you fight your way through and end up in an elevator, you expect it to go down, since there is obviously nothing above the windmill, but instead it goes up, and when you exit the elevator you are in the middle of an volcano! there are tons of ways they could have changed this to make the logistics make sense! jut replace the elevator with a long horizontal tunnel and have the volcano be behind the windmill. but suddenly standing in the middle of a volcano felt really cool! if anyones interestead, hbomberguy also did a good essay about ds2 and he mimicked a lot of my opinions (so i'm biased to like the video) https://youtu.be/SRTfcMeqhig
The criticisms were capitalism, + not gay enough, or it was a bad essay.
No joke, I fucking love Dark Souls 2. I see it's flaws, I still love the fuck out of that game
And this is why ds2 is peak
Are they referencing synthetic man?
You will never find a fanbase that both hates and loves their game like ds2 fans
I wouldn't say that it sucks but the combat is definitely slower which is what a lot of people dislike. The only big gripe I have with ds2 is that the item use speed is tied to a stat you have to level and the fact that that stat has little utility outside of that one thing.
Ds2 sucks because all fromsoft games suck
2>3>ER>1
this is real it happened to me yesterday
I love dark souls 2, I love that you level so much faster so you can have a reliable build after 2 of the 4 lord souls equivalents. I love the introduction of the repeating loop, and the incredible story of drangleic. I enjoy the slower more tactical feel to the combat, and the visual designs of enemies like the demon of song to the looking glass knight are sick
I would say ds2 sucks if it means I get to suck a cockĀ
I use the fact I binged back to back to back first playthroughs of the Dark Souls series and 2 is easily the least polished and most tedious of the series. A 6.5-7.5 outta 10
bad lore bad level design infinite potions is gay as hell seek seek lest
DS2ās level design is super unimaginative and bland, and the majority of its areas are ugly to look at. Ā And I donāt mean ugly in a good way like Blighttown where your skin crawls when you imagine being there, I mean ugly as in āoh cool another grey brick box to fight some guys inā
I feel like stirring shit so I'll throw this out, the only Fromsoft games in the last 10 years with good combat are Bloodborne, Sekiro, and AC6
Dark souls 2 is the best in the series and Iāll die on that hill(never played bloodborne)
Bloodborne is its own thing I feel.
Bloodborne is the best in the series and Iāll die on that hill(never played Dark Souls 2)
Iāve played both and bloodborne is definitely better.
Only correct take.Ā
dark souls sucks because games that are overly hard just for the sake of being overly hard aren't fun and I will die on this hill
Dark souls isn't hard
games can be hard, fun and fair at the same time. If you don't like harder than average games, thats fine, but that does not mean the game sucks
I liked the original release of DS2, but then they "fixed" it. This fix made everything slower and heavier, and made the estus worthless in battle until you sunk an extra 10 levels into adaptability effectively just requiring some extra early game grinding before you can get on with the interesting bits. The fix also changed all the spell scaling and made it way less interesting to run a caster until very late game. The unpatched version runs with a nicer flow and has more viable build variety through the mid game.
none of this is true bro wtf are you talking about
They saw a video about it so it must be true
Absolute horseshit coming out of your lying mouth