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[daxy]

I had none of the issues you described, but then again I put points into adaptability and got decent at rolling out of the way of attacks that each enemy warn you ahead of time a million miles away are coming. Even then though, Dark Souls II isn't as generous as BB and DS1 with the invincibility frames and length of the dodge, so you need to learn to dodge 'through' attacks sometimes.

No Man's Wharf and the pit are pretty rad, because you will not see a damn thing without a torch.

 

[DoctorFling]

I really liked No Man's Wharf. That's my insightful contribution.

 

[Screaming Meat]

It does three things really well:

1) Number of builds you can make

2) Online PvP

3) DLC

 

[CountAntonius]

Poor Dark Souls 2. Forever the middle child of the franchise.

 

[Yopis]

Had finished all the other Souls games near launch except this. Started a few months after first Bloodbourne run. Initially was jarring, but not bad,just different. Honestly don't think this is a bad game.

Hell in this forum when BB came out, people were hating, and saying it wasn't a souls game. If not fun move on. Any fucking game can be picked apart. If your focus is on the negative then move on to something you would enjoy more.

Everything has fun to be found. All the reference whining ensures, about troubled development, is we won't hear about such times again from the devs mouth.

 

[Jimnymebob]

I'm playing through DSII via SotFS for the first time, and currently I'm probably enjoying it more than the previous 2 Souls games. My only complaints so far is that adaptability is a super dumb stat and everything that that affects should be the same as Dark Souls as default; it's a mandatory stat basically, and that I'm currently up to the 4th or 5th boss in a row that consists of fighting something along with a bunch of normal enemies just to make it 'difficult'.

I played through the previous games dual wielding a Uchigatana and Shotel, but I couldn't imagine playing this game without a shield. Thankfully I'm enjoying using the Grand Lance with a Greatshield. That thing hits like a truck.

Area wise I'm preferring it to Dark Souls so far. It's not reached the peak of Undead, Darkroot or Anor Londo yet, but there's not really been a bad area yet. They're just kind of not offensive but not memorable so far, but I'd rather have that than a bad level like everything that came after Anor Londo aside from Duke's and Kiln. Of course, I'm only up to the Gutter, Brightstone and the area that has a poison swamp as soon as soon as you get to it, so my enjoyment of the level design could lessen as I get further through the game.

 

[Azriell]

I played through DS2 twice earlier this year. I had never played it before but I love the series.

There are definitely some things off with the game, but I never experienced any sort of input lag. I'm not sure how it compares to the other games in many regards because it's been almost a year since I played BB, and a few years since Dark Souls 1, and way longer since Demon's Souls. Weapons did feel a little slow to me, but I switched to 1h axes pretty early on and rode that train for the entire first play through. I had no complaints with my axes, and on my second go I had no real complaints with sorcery and Moonlight Great sword. Estus drinking sucks (raise agility, it makes you drink faster), but that's why healing gems are awesome.

It's been shown that hitboxes or animations are bullshit in DS2. There is no defending some of what the game will pull. Likewise, enemies ability to spin and track you during attacks (causing them to magically spin in place like a car on a rotating stage) is the biggest bullshit. There's no defending these choices.

Also, yes, the number of enemies the gave likes to throw at you is so dumb. I don't want to fight a bunch of weak trash mobs, I want to fight one dangerous and cool enemy at a time. These games are always worse when you have to play unlocked, so please don't make me.

The worst thing in the game is the world design IMO. There are too many times when I had to consult a guide to figure out where butgo. And I don't mean how to get through an area, I mean which zone should I backtrack through to find the thread.

But I still like the game. It's easily the worst in the series, but I still think it's a good game.

 

[takriel]

I fully agree with you, OP. It's strangely the one game I come back to the most, though.

 

[tskeeve]

Agreed. I actually didn't mind the game's progression/pacing, graphics, story, etc., and I did appreciate the improved spell variety, but the general input problems (and no, adaptability does NOT help with the weapon inputs) put me off the game big time. Swinging a weapon felt so much less satisfying than DeS, DS1, and BB. I don't really know how they screwed up the weapon feel that much. Hoping DS3 is a return to form.

 

[eot]

The same thing happens in Dark Souls 1

Looks stupid there too, but a) that hollow actually misses without the guy even dodging and b) he isn't Havel the Rock one shotting you.

No Man's Wharf is one of the best areas in the whole series. Fight me.

What is cheap about it?

Difficulty: must not be anything that happens in other Bloodsouls games

I wouldn't go that far, but I think it's one of the better areas in Dark Souls II simply because it doesn't suffer from bonfire spam and it's kind of interesting visually. There are a few encounters I'm not too fond of though.

As for Bloodborne, to be completely honest I was disappointed by a lot of the areas in that game too. It's a step up from Dark Souls II, but the good ones still aren't as good or memorable as Dark Souls' and even though there are shortcuts the world isn't really interconnected the same way. There's like two major connections you can find and they're both useless for traversing the world, and would be even if there wasn't fast travel.

 

[DevilSnake]

I've been going back through the game on PS4 and still enjoy it a lot more than other game franchises, but every now and then things keep cropping up that hold it back from being at the standards of BB, DS1 & DeS for me.

Most of the enemies including bosses are just boring humanoid bipeds you side step, instead of varied attack patterns the devs just adjust the poise and resistances for most things. There weren't many David vs Goliath moments.

The collision boxes in the game are terrible, you have some brilliant areas completely ruined by them. Fume knight was one of the cheapest bosses I've ever gone against in this aspect.

The run button doesn't always work in combat at 60fps, far too many times I've tried it and had my character just refuse to run (it's not a controller issue I've tried multiple controllers and had 3 others encounter the same issue). The estus flask also varies in healing time despite being fully upgraded.

The world design suffers from trying to be interconnected while having large variety, they should have just reverted back to a nexus system. Warping to the DLC and having giant interconnected areas was significantly better than the jarring transitions between most areas in the base game.

Also Soul Memory is a terrible system for co op, it was a useless barrier for multiplayer & didn't even make sense for PVP.

Other than that the game is still fantastic & better than most games i've played, it also made some genuine improvements. It's a nice game to play inbetween BB & DS3.

 

[EvilKatarn]

Ok real question.

What's so bad about Shrine of Amana? It was easy unpatched and was later made even easier.

Dark Souls 2 is a horrible pile of garbage and I have sadly wasted 200 hours combined on vanilla and scholar.

 

[dan2026]

Aren't the hit boxes busted in DSII anyway?

So even if you have the best roll the enemies still fuck you over.

 

[Liamc723]

Dark Souls 2 is a horrible pile of garbage and I have sadly wasted 200 hours combined on vanilla and scholar.

Oh the hyperbole hahaha.

Dark Souls 2 was fine, nothing wrong with it.

 

[takriel]

People defending this game as a good Souls game don't get what makes a Souls game actually good. Now come at me, bros.

 

[ChetWilson]

You should never play Tomb of the Giants, or Blighttown.

I really liked No Man's Wharf. That's my insightful contribution.

The main issue is where NMW is placed in the game, timeline wise, compared to everything else.

If you take a look at Blighttown, by that time, a typical player has more than likely rung one bell, beat 5ish bosses, has at least a decent set of gear with some upgrades, has experienced a ton of of "cheap" ambushes, and has been playing ENOUGH to learn most of the mechanics of the game by that point. He has learned that stuff can come out of nowhere, that he can be swarmed, but he has the tools necessary to deal with those issues.

If you look at NMW, it's possible a typical player hasn't even gone to forest of the giants, went through Heidi's tower of flame where you have 1 at a time fights with slow giants, and has just beaten dragonrider. Now comparing NMW to blighttown, there are so many more cheap ambushes. Literraly 50% of the encounters in NMW are more than you bargained for. Try and attack the first dog? Corpse arises behind you. Charge the first archer, 1 viking comes behind you, 1 is shooting you from a ledge, and 1 comes out of the water. Charge one the 2nd houses? All 5 mobs come out and attack you. Go up the stiars? Some viking jumps down on you. Go past the stairs, you get swarmed by 4 dogs, get covered in black oil, and a fire archer is going ape on you.

EVERY ENCOUNTER IN NMW IS LIKE THIS.

Sure, in the ideal setup, someone beat forest, has some gear, preferably the flame longsword and some armor. But still, Blighttown is the product after a long buildup of teaching you to play. NMW is literally a baptism by fire for anyone new to the series.

 

[Benzychenz]

Aren't the hit boxes busted in DSII anyway?

So even if you have the best roll the enemies still fuck you over.

I thought I was clever taking a mimic from behind, but then its foot touched me and I was teleported into its mouth

 

[Sande]

I was with you OP until you started complaining about dying. One of DS2's main problems is that it's way too easy even in the Covenant of Champions.

But yeah, the combat is extremely clunky and the enemy design is atrocious. I still somehow really enjoyed it for the first couple of playthroughs. I think Scholar of the First Sin makes the game way worse btw. The original DS2 didn't rely (as much) on simply throwing enemies at you and the enemies weren't as ridiculously aggressive.

 

[JWNSY]

The worst game I've spent 300 hours playing, have platinumed and am looking to buy again for the forth time..

so definitely not a bad game. the limited estus and bad rolls to start can be painful and scholar sure seemed to have more gank squad ambushes but did improve in a lot of other areas. The weirdest addition in SotFS is the ability to to zipline and skip the best looking zone as soon as the player gets there.
My biggest gripe however was the world(location and lore wise) did not appeal to me as much as DaS or Bloodborne

 

[Neo-Saiyan]

I'm in the middle of playing through Demon's/Dark/ Bloodbourne games back to back before Dark 3 comes out and OP's summary makes me not even want to play Dark 2

 

[ChetWilson]

It does three things really well:

1) Number of builds you can make

2) Online PvP

3) DLC

Yeah, the issue was at what cost though? If those were just added/improved and everything else was the same as DS1, then it would be a +. But we ended up with quite a few more changes to fundamental gameplay mechanics that few people were happy with.

I'm in the middle of playing through Demon's/Dark/ Bloodbourne games back to back before Dark 3 comes out and OP's summary makes me not even want to play Dark 2

It's a good play as a caster, like a Hexer. I'm not sure if I'd go through it again with a melee build.

 

[Keinu]

The main issue is where NMW is placed in the game, timeline wise, compared to everything else.

If you take a look at Blighttown, by that time, a typical player has more than likely rung one bell, beat 5ish bosses, has at least a decent set of gear with some upgrades, has experienced a ton of of "cheap" ambushes, and has been playing ENOUGH to learn most of the mechanics of the game by that point. He has learned that stuff can come out of nowhere, that he can be swarmed, but he has the tools necessary to deal with those issues.

If you look at NMW, it's possible a typical player hasn't even gone to forest of the giants, went through Heidi's tower of flame where you have 1 at a time fights with slow giants, and has just beaten dragonrider. Now comparing NMW to blighttown, there are so many more cheap ambushes. Literraly 50% of the encounters in NMW are more than you bargained for. Try and attack the first dog? Corpse arises behind you. Charge the first archer, 1 viking comes behind you, 1 is shooting you from a ledge, and 1 comes out of the water. Charge one the 2nd houses? All 5 mobs come out and attack you. Go up the stiars? Some viking jumps down on you. Go past the stairs, you get swarmed by 4 dogs, get covered in black oil, and a fire archer is going ape on you.

EVERY ENCOUNTER IN NMW IS LIKE THIS.

Sure, in the ideal setup, someone beat forest, has some gear, preferably the flame longsword and some armor. But still, Blighttown is the product after a long buildup of teaching you to play. NMW is literally a baptism by fire for anyone new to the series.

Are you saying a difficult area shouldn't be accessible early in the game? If so, there are some skeletons from DS1 who would like a word with you. Seriously, both Souls game teach you to try another route if you are having trouble, how is NMW any different?

 

[Ferr986]

People defending this game as a good Souls game don't get what makes a Souls game actually good. Now come at me, bros.

thatsbait.gif

 

[Weltall Zero]

I agree 100%, Dark Souls II is unmitigated shit. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise on lazy arguments like "hyperbole" or "git gud".

Oh christ another of these threads.......really. I dont want to try to reiterate whats been discussed in like 500 other threads looking to gain ground by being purposely controversial.

You don't do the same thing as another 500 people to be controversial. You do it because it's the truth.

 

[ChetWilson]

Are you saying a difficult area shouldn't be accessible early in the game? If so, there are some skeletons from DS1 who would like a word with you. Seriously, both Souls game teach you to try another route if you are having trouble, how is NMW any different?

I'm saying the comparison of NMW to Blighttown is flawed.

As for your argument, DS1 tells you it's a bad idea to go there because the skeletons reform after death, suggesting you are missing something. NMW suggest you are terribad.

 

[derwalde]

Im with you OP.

 

[Look! The Pie!]

Oh, look, it's the weekly "Let's all pile in on DS2" thread. I'm just amazed nobody's linked to that Matthewmatosis video yet.

Sure, the game had flaws. It's not quite as good as its predecessor. But it's still a very, very good game, and I'm still finding it thoroughly enjoyable after plugging ~200 hours into it. If someone tells me with a straight face that DS2 is a "bad game", I'm just going to assume they haven't, in fact, played any games that are actually bad.

Also, some of the things people find to complain about are downright weird.

"The transition from Earthen Peak to Iron Keep made no sense!"

No, it didn't, and it could (and should) have been executed better. But did it really ruin your enjoyment of the game? If so, I'm assuming you were similarly outraged when you first got to Darkroot and discovered it had magically become night-time. Or when you saw New Londo clearly visible from Firelink, but when you actually got down there it was apparently underground.

"Something something enemy placement! The game throws hordes of mobs at you!"

Yeah, it's terrible. DS1 would never.
Oh, wait, I just played through Undead Burg again (you know, the starting area for most players) and there were several spots where the game gangbanged me. People seem to have this weird case of false memory syndrome where they think DS1 and Demon's were just a series of duels where the player never had to worry about facing multiple opponents at once. And even the most commonly bitched-about instance of this in DS2, the knights in Lost Bastille, can be managed easily if you take things slowly by drawing the enemies one or two at a time instead of rushing in with all guns blazing.

"Reused enemies! Humanoid bosses in armour! Worst game ever!"

DS1 reused the Asylum Demon like three times. And Lost Izalith literally had a field full of Taurus and Capra Demons. Yet this is apparently acceptable because it was only one area and the rest of the game was so well designed. Also, I'm sure I once saw somebody provide a list of all the bosses from each game, and the ratio of dudes in armour wasn't actually much higher in DS2 (I can't remember which thread it was in, because these DS2 hate threads all seem to run together after a while).

 

[Mandelbo]

I played DS2 first and hated how adaptability was required to have a functional roll. Then I played DS1 and there I had to keep a 20~25% load for the same thing.

And now I like adaptability.

I can't help but disagree with this - the two aren't really comparable at all in my view since rolls work completely differently in both games. In DS1 there are three tiers of roll: light, mid and heavy. Each of these roll types has a unique, very easily identifiable animation that tells you that your roll is going to be either more or less effective - the light roll looks quicker than the mid roll, and the mid roll looks quicker than the heavy roll. You therefore don't really need to be told that a lower equip load results in a better dodge because the game shows you that visually.

In DS2, there are only two roll animations but there are vastly more possibilities for the effectiveness of your dodge since it relies on both equip load and agility rather than just equip load. If you're under 70% equip load your roll will always look the same regardless of how effective it actually is, which is incredibly misleading. Sure, a lower equip load lets you roll further, but your roll is not actually better. Your i-frames are tied to agility, which has a very nebulous description:

"Boosts ease of evasion and other actions."

What does that actually tell you? If you didn't know beforehand that boosting agility increased your i-frames, would you be able to tell what it did? Say we have a new player who knows nothing about the souls games and what all the stats mean. They might put some points into adaptability since it's tied to agility and the description sounds just vague enough to imply importance, but since the gains from agility are very slow and there is no immediate visual feedback, they may deem that adaptability isn't worth the points, since other stats have obvious and clear effects. Increasing vigor makes your health bar bigger, increasing endurance makes your stamina bar bigger and therefore allows you to make more attacks, increasing strength makes bigger numbers come out of enemies, and so on.

It's needlessly confusing, poorly implemented and absolutely unnecessary in my opinion. I'm glad it's been axed from DS3.

 

[SoulUnison]

I got to the first boss, used a life gem, tried to roll when I normally would roll and promptly got killed.

Close, uninstall, eject, burn etc etc.

So you died once, threw a temper tantrum and refused to play again?

That doesn't sound like the game's fault.

 

[Raylan]

Absolutely agree OP. Dark Souls 2 is a terrible Souls game.

 

[Necromanti]

I thought I was clever taking a mimic from behind, but then its foot touched me and I was teleported into its mouth

It's a shame they didn't learn their lesson with Bloodborne, either (like with those damned slime things that drop from the ceiling in the Chalice dungeons that suck you into a grab attack, or the dumb hitbox on Ebrietas' charge), but I'm sure it's not an easy issue to fix. I didn't have half as many issues in any of the Souls games.

 

[Gestahl]

Absolutely agree OP. Dark Souls 2 is a terrible Souls game.

Yep played SotFS a couple months ago and it was soul crushing tedium. I was able to jump from Bloodborne to DS1 nearly painlessly, but that shit was just so boring and went on and went

 

[Murkas]

Just gonna copy my thoughts from the other thread:

My thoughts, gonna start of the post by saying that Dark Souls 2 is a good game that I still come back to and have poured hundreds of hours split across PS3+PC and PC+PS4 for SOTFS, but yes it is disappointing compared to the other games.

My problems with the game.

Soul Memory, Adaptability, level design, and hit box issues have been discussed to death so I won't be going in depth with them but they were my most major issues with the game. But adaptability and broken hit boxes were highlighted when I did a SL1 run and fought Velstadt, jesus that was painful. Also a gaffer earlier on posted a video on controlling your characters attacks mid combo and how you couldn't do that in DS2 which was one thing that drove me crazy.

Difficulty = swarms of enemies.

Near enough every level has multiple swarm of enemies to gang up on you which I don't feel is good design, a good few well placed enemies trump it every time. Yes the other games did it but when they did it was "oh shit, loads of enemies!", not "oh shit, again?" You clear one room with a swarm of enemies, next room has another swarm waiting for you. And it massively spilt into their boss design, why make a good boss like Fume Knight? Let us just throw mobs and multiple bosses at them. Compared to the other games, I will probably forget some:

Demon's Souls:
Maneaters
Storm King
Maiden Astrea

Dark Souls:
Capra Demon
Belfry Gargoyles
Smough and Ornstein
Gravelord Nito

Bloodborne:
Shadows of Yharnam
Rom

Now, Dark Souls 2:
Ruin Sentinels
Lost Sinner/ Flexile Sentry NG+
Skeleton Lords
Prowling Magus, if you can call this a boss
5(!) Belfry Gargoyles
Duke's Dear Freya
Royal Rat Authority
Royal Rat Vanguard
Executioner's Chariot, an actual good fight, the mobs are preventing you from pushing the switch, designed for the boss and arena in mind.
2 Dragonriders
Watcher & Defender, who again, I'll admit is a good fight, compliment each other and you got the gimmick of beating them at the same time or will revive each other
3 Graverobbers
Elena, Squalid Queen
Lud & Zallen
Burnt Ivory King, probably my favourite fight in the whole game, full on brawl between 2 teams.

It feels like they went for quantity and not quality, plus there were too many dudes in armour as bosses. In the other games it was rarer so when I saw one, I felt a difficult fight was ahead, why? Because the character I'm controlling is a dude in armour, so after destroying monsters and soldiers, a dude in armour as a boss felt intense. But again, in DS 2, there was too many.

After finishing the games so many times, sometimes, I just wanna run though a level, annoying to due in DS2 do to the mobs of enemies chasing you down, and in SOTFS case, chasing you through the whole level because of the giant aggro range, and even if I do manage to run past, they'll fuck me up when I'm pushing a door, pulling a switch, going through a fog gate due to no longer being invincible during those animations like before, and sometimes running to a boss was just really bad, like the optional bosses in the DLC areas, but apparently those areas were designed to be cooped.

I'm probably gonna go against the grain and say the DLC areas also had problems, from a level design standpoint they were top notch, the lifts in Shulva, activating the Brume Tower with the smelter sceptre, playing Eleum Loyce again after breaking the ice, loved it. But they still suffered from the same problems I had with the game, enemies looked the same, green armoured soldiers of Shulva, metal armoured soldiers for Brume, and blue ice armoured soldiers in Loyce. I paid extra money to fight a blue Smelter Demon, and in Loyce, 3 of the 4 bosses are the same.

Animations, the animation for DS1 felt fluid and weighty, but "off" in DS2 and nothing highlighted it more for me then when you get launched. Here is DS1 , gets launched into the air, then the body rolls and falls into the floor and bounces, here is DS2, couldn't find a better video but hopefully you know what I mean and you've had it happen to you, the body is just frozen in animation in the air. When I first saw that, I purposely got hit again by the ironclad soldier because I wanted to see it again, I know I don't wanna be all "B TEAM" but what am I really supposed to say after seeing that?

Minor issues I had:

Weapon durability issue, I honestly think FROM should just do away with that altogether, but in DS2 it happened too often which is what they were going for I believe, didn't like it.

PVP, yes they made it better, no more fishing for lagstabs, but why is invading consumable now? Hated that, just give me an infinite invading item like you always have. If I wanna invade as a Blue Sentinel, I gotta grind enemies for crushed blue eye orbs, if respawn rates finish, buy them from an NPC (but only on NG+, also increasing my soul memory), or enter a duel and win, and to enter a duel, I have to put a token of fidelity on the line, which I get from successfully cooping and beating a boss, awesome.

I have to win 500 times to max out pvp covenants and get the spell rewards, why such a grindy number, you had it 30 for Dragon covenant and heirs to the sun, why not keep it at that? Or like you did in DS1? And if I don't like it, I gotta go to NG+3 to buy it? I just want Wrath of the Gods ffs

Too many NPC merchants, split across, for example, there's probably about 5 NPCs selling different kind of miracles, cut that down to 1 or 2!

You give me Ornstein, you give me his spear, his ring, but not his armour, wtf man.

Waifus not as good.

Like I said in the beginning, there is still a good game somewhere here, but compared to the other 3, this comes up at the bottom,, DS2 compared to other games? I'd play DS2 every time.

 

[Lux R7]

Just gonna copy my thoughts from the other thread:

good post.

 

[nailbombxx]

Oh, look, it's the weekly "Let's all pile in on DS2" thread. I'm just amazed nobody's linked to that Matthewmatosis video yet.

Sure, the game had flaws. It's not quite as good as its predecessor. But it's still a very, very good game, and I'm still finding it thoroughly enjoyable after plugging ~200 hours into it. If someone tells me with a straight face that DS2 is a "bad game", I'm just going to assume they haven't, in fact, played any games that are actually bad.

Also, some of the things people find to complain about are downright weird.

"The transition from Earthen Peak to Iron Keep made no sense!"

No, it didn't, and it could (and should) have been executed better. But did it really ruin your enjoyment of the game? If so, I'm assuming you were similarly outraged when you first got to Darkroot and discovered it had magically become night-time. Or when you saw New Londo clearly visible from Firelink, but when you actually got down there it was apparently underground.

"Something something enemy placement! The game throws hordes of mobs at you!"

Yeah, it's terrible. DS1 would never.
Oh, wait, I just played through Undead Burg again (you know, the starting area for most players) and there were several spots where the game gangbanged me. People seem to have this weird case of false memory syndrome where they think DS1 and Demon's were just a series of duels where the player never had to worry about facing multiple opponents at once. And even the most commonly bitched-about instance of this in DS2, the knights in Lost Bastille, can be managed easily if you take things slowly by drawing the enemies one or two at a time instead of rushing in with all guns blazing.

"Reused enemies! Humanoid bosses in armour! Worst game ever!"

DS1 reused the Asylum Demon like three times. And Lost Izalith literally had a field full of Taurus and Capra Demons. Yet this is apparently acceptable because it was only one area and the rest of the game was so well designed. Also, I'm sure I once saw somebody provide a list of all the bosses from each game, and the ratio of dudes in armour wasn't actually much higher in DS2 (I can't remember which thread it was in, because these DS2 hate threads all seem to run together after a while).

Dark Souls may have had some similar flaws in some places, but they were far less major and numinous and wrapped up in a game that played better and looked better.

For example, there are plenty of areas in the other games that trick you by luring you into an area with 7 different enemies attacking you at once. It usually could be avoided if you were cautious, though. However Dark Souls 2 uses that trick way too often in a way that is unavoidable. So many areas and bosses depend on that kind of encounter to be challenging. The expansion makes this even worse by peppering even more enemies into existing areas. I feel like there are very very few singularly tough to fight enemies in this game and that's really disappointing, I feel like the developers knew that and had to make up swarms of enemies to compensate.

Now that people mention how Dark Souls 2 is mostly humanoids it really does remind me how there is a great lack of giant monsters in this game, unlike the previous game. That would be okay if it was all extremely well designed (its not).

As many people have said the area progression does make little sense but that doesn't annoy me as much as how, inconsistent, barren and rushed a lot of the environments look. Crappy flat textures galore.

I don't understand why people are so ardent about being blind to the flaws of this game. I like the game too, I enjoy it for what it is but also I know when something deserves criticism. It does deserve some slack for having a troubled development and getting quite a few things right but its flaws still need to be noted.

 

[Kazuhira]

Worst souls game buuuuuutt it's still a great game and i still play it from time to time.
I found it easier than ds1 tbh,you can level up so fast in this game.
Bow and standard/poison arrows turns the game into a cakewalk.

 

[Mman235]

What about the levels? First we have the Boletarian Palace/Undead Burg clone that is completely unremarkable except for the fact that it's the first place where you'll get to know the all-new feature of "out of nowhere gang bangs". The NPC told me I should be careful when going through this door, what could he mean? Oh I see, door closed, 5 guys incoming. There's a cool looking giant sword hanging here with an item at the end, let's get there for a nice moment of relief under the beautiful sunlight. What's that? Oh, 4 guys coming out of fucking nowhere trapped me in this narrow corridor and I've got a guaranteed visit to the latest bonfire because my stamina bar only blocks 3 attacks while theirs is always full and the only escape route is the 50 meters-deep drop. How cool.

Or you could avoid the ambush an NPC flat out warned you about and find an alternative way?

Anyways after I manage to get through the amount of bullshit moments of the zone, I get to the boss. The Last Giant. Damn, sounds cool. Well too bad, the pigs in Majula (what in the holy fuck was that, by the way?) were harder than this complete joke of a "boss". People say Bloodborne is easy? The two wolves in the main bridge before Cleric Beast are definitely harder to beat than The Last Giant and the Dragonrider or whatever his name is combined. I've only faced these two but they are without a doubt the worst bosses in the entire franchise by far. Terrible is an understatement. The Dragonrider is an offense. The previous zone is somewhat hard then you get to a boss that doesn't even hit you, is terribly uninspired and easier than the knights you've had to beat before him. Then after you kill this excuse for a boss, the white knights start attacking you, so that means you have to deal with the big knights and the awkward, unpredictable and stupid attacks of the white ones at the same time, which is a considerably harder feat than beating the boss. Top-notch design right there.

Ignoring the ones you're supposed to lose to pretty much all the first bosses in the series are a joke, because they're a tutorial+early confidence boost (which the DS2 ones do just fine). Outside of subjective art style stuff nothing about Phalanx or Asylum Demon is any more impressive. Dragonrider is actually the first early boss in the series to kill me the first time I tried so I guess it's technically the hardest? Bloodborne is the first game where the early bosses are designed as a legitimate threat compared to later stuff.

Also the wolves on the bridge are the hardest thing in Bloodborne's early game by a mile if you don't cheese them and the pigs aren't supposed to be fought early either (and the games always have optional enemies far tougher than the actual bosses in their early parts).

Ok real question.

What's so bad about Shrine of Amana? It was easy unpatched and was later made even easier.

A lot of people don't realise that the game is built around always have a bow or other ranged option (which is much easier to do than in the other games, and bows themselves are much better for non-cheese usage). That's the only explanation I can think of post-patch anyway.

Aren't the hit boxes busted in DSII anyway?

So even if you have the best roll the enemies still fuck you over.

With some exceptions (namely grabs) most of the hit box complaints come from low agility, so no.

No Man's Wharf is one of the best areas in the whole series. Fight me.

Also this. Though SOTFS unfortunately made it a bit worse.

 

[Bedameister]

Man this thread wants me to replay it again. And maybe this time I will be able to finish the DLCs. (I know I suck at Souls games and some bosses are just to hard for me).
It's the worst Souls game but it is still a very good game imo

 

[Jawmuncher]

Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne are about on par with each other.

 

[Nere]

The main issue is where NMW is placed in the game, timeline wise, compared to everything else.

If you take a look at Blighttown, by that time, a typical player has more than likely rung one bell, beat 5ish bosses, has at least a decent set of gear with some upgrades, has experienced a ton of of "cheap" ambushes, and has been playing ENOUGH to learn most of the mechanics of the game by that point. He has learned that stuff can come out of nowhere, that he can be swarmed, but he has the tools necessary to deal with those issues.

If you look at NMW, it's possible a typical player hasn't even gone to forest of the giants, went through Heidi's tower of flame where you have 1 at a time fights with slow giants, and has just beaten dragonrider. Now comparing NMW to blighttown, there are so many more cheap ambushes. Literraly 50% of the encounters in NMW are more than you bargained for. Try and attack the first dog? Corpse arises behind you. Charge the first archer, 1 viking comes behind you, 1 is shooting you from a ledge, and 1 comes out of the water. Charge one the 2nd houses? All 5 mobs come out and attack you. Go up the stiars? Some viking jumps down on you. Go past the stairs, you get swarmed by 4 dogs, get covered in black oil, and a fire archer is going ape on you.

EVERY ENCOUNTER IN NMW IS LIKE THIS.

Sure, in the ideal setup, someone beat forest, has some gear, preferably the flame longsword and some armor. But still, Blighttown is the product after a long buildup of teaching you to play. NMW is literally a baptism by fire for anyone new to the series.

NMW is an optional area and there are no cheap ambushes literally all of them can be avoided after you know the area a bit, blightown is just as hard for a new player.

 

[Bedameister]

NMW is an optional area and there are no cheap ambushes literally all of them can be avoided after you know the area a bit, blightown is just as hard for a new player.

Yes. NMW is actually great. Loved that area.

 

[Malio]

Completely disagree. While a bit 'different' in some mechanics and world connectivity, I loved DS2 as much as Demon Souls and Dark Souls. I can't wait for the new one!

 

[Hibiki Kurosawa]

I can't really agree with anything you just said. Dark Souls 2 is fantastic.

Sure, a step back vs. Dark Souls 1 in some areas (like interconnected world design), but also a huge step forward in others (like gameplay and spell variety, multiplayer and coop integration/quality, etc.). But I've posted about that more than enough.

I also don't believe that integrating stats more closely with mechanics is a bad thing in an RPG.

This is pretty true, though I feel the game begins to drag later on. Still a great game, just with a dull world with bad design compared to the first Dark Souls.

 

[Easy_D]

Poor Dark Souls 2. Forever the middle child of the franchise.

I thought middle children were usually forgotten, not eternally picked on.

 

[DaciaJC]

Old hunters worse of after having the masterfully designed Research hall, shit ton of weapons better than anything in DS2 DLC and having three of the greatest bosses in Ludwig, Orphan and Maria? Yeah no. Ludwig alone beats every single boss in DS2's dlc. It is not in the same league as Old Hunters.

Nah, mate, Ludwig is cool and all, but Sir Alonne ranks with the very best of 'em.

 

[Neoweee]

This is pretty true, though I feel the game begins to drag later on. Still a great game, just with a dull world with bad design compared to the first Dark Souls.

I'm under the impression that 2 falls off less than 1 does. People actually like Dragon Shrine, Dragon Aerie, Undead Crypt, and the Memories, at least over Lost Izalith, Archives, and Crystal Caves.

 

[Zaventem]

I actually just finished Scholar. Game is dope.
Adaptability is awesome when you realize it helps you're ability to dodge. It's brilliant.

So brilliant they ditched it had an awakening that putting a stat tied to dodging was a rubbish idea and ditched it for 3.

 

[RoadHazard]

I started playing it a while ago, and while I am enjoying it and fully intend to finish it it does feel clunkier and just worse to play than DkS1. I also came to it right from the amazingly fluid and smooth BB, so yeeeeah...

 

[Mandelbo]

I'm under the impression that 2 falls off less than 1 does. People actually like Dragon Shrine, Dragon Aerie, Undead Crypt, and the Memories, at least over Lost Izalith, Archives, and Crystal Caves.

Heeyy, I love the Duke's Archives! The Crystal Caves aren't great because of the invisible platform stuff but I wouldn't say they're awful. Lost Izalith *is* awful, though

 

[Hibiki Kurosawa]

I'm under the impression that 2 falls off less than 1 does. People actually like Dragon Shrine, Dragon Aerie, Undead Crypt, and the Memories, at least over Lost Izalith, Archives, and Crystal Caves.

In my opinion, goodness no! Dark Souls latter half had some really cool stuff that I loved. DSII is just a drag with some weird/stupid level design stuff.