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[ByWatterson]

Dark Souls 2 is dope. Full stop.

 

[checkcola]

The hardcore Souls fanatics seem to hate DS2 and the causal gamers are always onto the next new release. So, the answer seems to be no based on those two factors.

 

[EviLore]

Two crowns in hand. Fume and Alonne were great duels, verticality of Brume Tower was on-point. Shulva was a bit of a meat grinder at times but satisfying to get through too.

TBH it’s a great game. Clunky movement but you get used to it. Important to understand the stats and viable builds going in, helps to be a Souls veteran since so much is non-obvious.

 

[Jigsaah]

Elden Ring players should actually play Nioh 2, the best souls game out there.

I played Nioh 2 and I would have to disagree. If it were more open world I could see it, but it feels like a menu simulator. I spent more time figuring out what I wanted to keep, sell, upgrade then I was on actual missions. It wasn't until I became pretty powerful that I started not caring and selling anything that wasn't purple or blue . I got the set I wanted, Went through the skill trees I wanted (which was also convoluted). Don't get me wrong, overall I really liked Nioh 2, but it's definitely not as good as Elden Ring. I will say this, regular enemies in Nioh 2 are more interesting to fight than the trash mobs in Elden Ring. Bosses still goes to Elden Ring though.

 

[TintoConCasera]

I agree about windmill to hell transition, it's ridiculous and I never understood why they even accepted that, they should have just made some magic portal or whatever if they were too lazy to think about something else, anything else than the elevator lol. But outside of this specific example, I enjoyed the world and locations of DS2 in general.

I prefer DS2 gameplay for multiple reasons, an obvious one being the amount of builds / weapon types you can have, it was really rich and deep, and DS 3 wasn't as good on that point, it removed the twinblades which I really loved in DS2 for example. Another reason is that I think DS2 feels better, it's faster than DS1, but the overal animations, weapons and gameplay were fitting with this faster pace.
In DS3, the game was faster, but it felt like it tried to be closer to DS1 at the same time, so you have a core experience closer to what DS1 was, but with the speed of Bloodborne, which was supposed to be a shield-less gameplay, and the result is something that felt weird and very "floaty" to me, kind of like if you modified the speed in DS1 but if it wasn't originally intended for that.

And a final reason is related to the overall balancing of the builds and also PVP. DS3 is faster, a lot faster than DS1 and maybe even DS2, but it's not just that, all builds no matter their type and weight will still be very fast and control like what used to be light weight / dex builds in the older games, and because of this there's absolutely no advantage, speed wise, to play a dex build in DS3 anymore, because someone with a heavy armor and big 2 handed weapon will be almost as fast as you with your lite clothes and dagger. It made the PVP quite ridiculous, less interesting because you just had to use raw strenght and nothing else. I understand not everyone care about PVP, but I feel this also impacted the single player experience, even if to a lesser degree.

I don't think Dark Souls 3 is a "bad" game, I just think it's the worse Dark Souls (I haven't played bloodborne nor Elden Ring yet, waiting for PC performance improvements on that one). I still finished it and played it for quite a well, but I didn't love my experience with it, and what bother me the most is how this episode is praised while Dark Souls 2 is hated, even if they share some of the things people complain about, I feel like there is some unfair judgement around this.

Well, can't say I agree but I respect your opinion. I had a good time with DS2, and while I think it has some faults, I think most of my disappointment come from the fact that I had just recently played DS1 for the first time, and expected something similar to it. But I enjoyed some of my time with DS2, for sure.

And hey! Give ER a try on PC. It depends on your settings, as for example I was able to play it fine without any stutters, but just some crashes during fast traveling. But hey, there were like 4 or 5 crashes in 160 hours, so it's not that bad.

 

[zombrex]

DS2 was really a fantastic game, they certainly went with bigger and better and quantity over quality in trying to improve on the first game.
I think it has higher highs than DS1(especially if you include the DLC) which is overall a smaller yet more tightly designed game.
That said Ds1 has lower lows than Ds2 such as Demon Ruins / Lost Izalith, the invisible platforms in Crystal Caves.

DS2 also lacks thematic consistency which is why sometimes areas feel weird or out of place compared to DS1. They were going for variety which is a good thing but needed to tie it all together better.

Also if people remember one of the reasons for backlash when the game was released were changes to the stat system which tried to make characters more varied and balanced but meant you needed to invest more in stats to have a character with equal roll invincibility frames compared to DS1 which threw many people off. This was to make using shields more meaningful but it frustrated people as rolling was the best strategy in DS1 and suddenly it no longer worked as before. It was a minor yet fundamental change and the devs did not consider this changed the feeling and flow of gameplay for people who played Dark Souls 1 for hundred if not thousands of hours. It's actually a good example to devs to be very careful about making changes to the way characters control and feel in sequels.

 

[bitbydeath]

DS2 needs to patch out the bug where your health continues to get lower after you die.

 

[BodhiHogie]

When I think back about my fond memories of the souls series, Dark Souls 2 SotfS is the first game that comes to mind, followed by Bloodborne. They are artistically up there on the list, and like a few others have said here, I also felt that DS3 dropped the ball in certain regards to the point where I felt that was not the game they wanted to make at the time, but they were asked to.

DS2 artistically just had more memorable locations to me.

Thanks for the great screenshots. The memories come flooding back. I really enjoyed Souls 2. And Majula is the greatest hub level by a huge margin. What a mood it set. It’s like the artists at From have been accessing my dreams all along.

 

[Larxia]

Well, can't say I agree but I respect your opinion. I had a good time with DS2, and while I think it has some faults, I think most of my disappointment come from the fact that I had just recently played DS1 for the first time, and expected something similar to it. But I enjoyed some of my time with DS2, for sure.

And hey! Give ER a try on PC. It depends on your settings, as for example I was able to play it fine without any stutters, but just some crashes during fast traveling. But hey, there were like 4 or 5 crashes in 160 hours, so it's not that bad.

Well like I said I was initially disappointed by DS2 too because of how great the exploration in DS1 is, it was very unique and fantastic, so I understand your point of view there too, it's just that I think DS3 has the same issue and after a while I started to actually like the specific qualities that DS2 has.

About Elden Ring, I don't know, it seems pretty bad (performance / optimization wise) from everything I heard, and I also wish I could turn off chromatic aberration, currently you can only do it with a mod but you have to play offline, which is a shame...

 

[Aldynes]

It's not a coincidence that Elden Ring draws inspiration from DS2. Yui Tanimura, who directed Scholar of the First Sin, is co-director of Elden Ring. I consider DS2 by far, the best Souls-game. I've had so much fun with that game. It was disheartening to see all the hate the game got.

For me I was really bummed out by the downgrade graphically, it was incredible in the first video I've saw back then, firsts impressions counts, then when the game came out, the vanilla version felt weird as the levels were designed with the lack of light in mind and the player having to rely on using torches for his progression, I guess this is why some levels felt off visually, the ennemy placement was erratic or made situations too difficult sometimes on the unfair side of things, the curious decision to have rolling invulnerability frames AND the speed of using Estus Flasks tied to a stat was baffling too.

I tend to buy games at discounts when it's single player ( I play Souls games offline ) so I first experienced the game on Xbox one / PS4 era, with The Scholar edition, I love DS2, it's my favorite game in the series due to that I think, the levels are memorable and the progression is non linear, the DLC are great.

 

[rofif]

No, Dark Souls 2 is a bad dark souls game and can't imagine how anyone can grade it higher than other entries. Anyways,here's a really good explanation way it sucks:

It's that bs video which made everyone hate ds2.
it is in fact my fav Dark Souls game.
Dreamy feel of the world, melancholic theme of forgetting who you are, variety of biomes, great level design, huge amount of gear and builds.
So what you take elevator up to the lava castle?! GREAT !!! It's a surprise which lends itself to lands not making any sense. You can even see that in Ringed city in ds3. How lands converge and change.
We don't know if Drangleic is just another land, another world or hell. In ds1, there are also a lot of impossible places like lake of ash. It's a theme of these games!

Dark Souls 1 might objectively be better but I like ds2 the most.
People are way to harsh on ds2 for no reason. This fucking video is to blame.

And I also blame SOTFS edition and the shitty DLC.
SOTFS made it too difficult, randomized items and enemies in less logical places and just added gank squads.
DLC looks amazing but have the same base enemy in each 3 areas. Levels feel like puzzles ad not souls dungeons. The gear does not scale up to the dlc. Game was designed to end at 10 weapons and dlc feels like it should go further.
Enemies are tanks, you die quickly and there are huge amounts of gank squads.

I highly recommend to stick to original ds2 release. But SOTFS alone is great too... just not the dlc imo. They went way too much into "dark souls is hard" hurrdurr direction"
I do not agree with it. Dark Souls games are not about being hard. Not the way ds2 dlc want it to be. not the way ds3 or er want it to be.

edit: It was just too much hype after ds1 and they fucked up the graphical downgrade. but the game was always good. And the 60fps durability was broken on pc for WAY TOO LONG. only fixed with sotfs and last vanilla patch

 

[rofif]

Two crowns in hand. Fume and Alonne were great duels, verticality of Brume Tower was on-point. Shulva was a bit of a meat grinder at times but satisfying to get through too.

TBH it’s a great game. Clunky movement but you get used to it. Important to understand the stats and viable builds going in, helps to be a Souls veteran since so much is non-obvious.

You noticed the 8 directional snap movement?
I never noticed it in 2013 huh

 

[Filben]

Never played it because after DS1 it looked from videos and screenshots more of the same and I had my fill with DS1. So I skipped it and when I wanted that From Software experience again there was DS3 already so I played that instead.

I won't return to DS2, though; that train's left the station. When I'm done with Elden Ring in like 50hours maybe I guess there's another From Software game around.

 

[EviLore]

It's that bs video which made everyone hate ds2.
it is in fact my fav Dark Souls game.
Dreamy feel of the world, melancholic theme of forgetting who you are, variety of biomes, great level design, huge amount of gear and builds.
So what you take elevator up to the lava castle?! GREAT !!! It's a surprise which lends itself to lands not making any sense. You can even see that in Ringed city in ds3. How lands converge and change.
We don't know if Drangleic is just another land, another world or hell. In ds1, there are also a lot of impossible places like lake of ash. It's a theme of these games!

Dark Souls 1 might objectively be better but I like ds2 the most.
People are way to harsh on ds2 for no reason. This fucking video is to blame.

And I also blame SOTFS edition and the shitty DLC.
SOTFS made it too difficult, randomized items and enemies in less logical places and just added gank squads.
DLC looks amazing but have the same base enemy in each 3 areas. Levels feel like puzzles ad not souls dungeons. The gear does not scale up to the dlc. Game was designed to end at 10 weapons and dlc feels like it should go further.
Enemies are tanks, you die quickly and there are huge amounts of gank squads.

I highly recommend to stick to original ds2 release. But SOTFS alone is great too... just not the dlc imo. They went way too much into "dark souls is hard" hurrdurr direction"
I do not agree with it. Dark Souls games are not about being hard. Not the way ds2 dlc want it to be. not the way ds3 or er want it to be.

edit: It was just too much hype after ds1 and they fucked up the graphical downgrade. but the game was always good. And the 60fps durability was broken on pc for WAY TOO LONG. only fixed with sotfs and last vanilla patch

I'm welcoming the level of challenge from the DLCs since the base game was mostly smooth sailing. As far as the lack of enemy types, clearly the game didn't have an unlimited budget, but they worked with what they had to keep things interesting.

 

[CosmicComet]

Nioh 2 is a prequel and is better than 1, although Nioh is fantastic too. But if you only wanna play one game, then should be 2.

Nioh 2 is technically a prequel and a sequel to Nioh.

 

[levyjl1988]

The geographical locations and logic is definetly incoherent and disjointed, but alas it is the black sheep. There are two distictive games for Dark Souls 2. Dark Souls 2 for Xbox 360 and Dark Souls 2 for Xbox One. Each is its own different game because of different enemy spawns and item relocation.

 

[kingpotato]

Will Elden Ring reignite the HBO series Game of Thrones???????

 

[nightmare-slain]

i'm a long way away from finishing ER but i'm probably going to replay DS2 after it. already said it but it's my fav dark souls game.

 

[Osaka_Boss]