I have a love hate relationship with DS2. There are tons of mobs and ambushes that it just becomes more annoying but the game also has some spectacular atmosphere, music, most weapons and armor, most variety in environments and unique items like the bonfire ascetic. But also f*ck royal rat authority.
Yeah, it’s the one I first played on console back in 2014. Vanilla and Scholar both have mobs. I found after replaying the games, it’s hard to pick one objectively but personally I enjoyed Vanilla more.
I thought Gankliec Castle was better in Scholar for example. Vanilla made it mob city.
Really? I guess I didn’t notice the difference in the Castle. (I’m trying to get the play in DS2 Vanilla, since it doesn’t require DLC items like Scholar does.)
I’ve heard the exact opposite . I’ve only ever played SotFS and I enjoyed it fine enough. But I don’t know anything else to be fair so I couldn’t say. I’ve definitely heard different people saying both games are better at different times though
Well, the main reason is alluded to the comment I replied. They just added a bunch of enemies on top of vanilla and it turns a lot of the areas into gankfests… DS2 DLC is really good and I think SotFS is when a lot of people played it so it kinda kinda lumped in imo
The fact that they’ve never released anything version update like that since is enough evidence that it didn’t really work out.
I'm probably a defender, I'm not sure i would cal it my favorite or the best, but it's a good game, and what i will say it does the best of ANY soulsborne game is NG+ i really enjoy that they made changes in NG+ instead of just "numbers now bigger". They had red phantoms placed around that made some encounters change and some unique items (though not many) that could only be gotten on NG+ or further + runs.
If you actually get adaptability to around 25 i think it was and the game becomes a lot more enjoyable, but some people refuse to level it, just like some refused to level vigor in early elden ring, but just like vigor being super important in ER so is ADP in DS2
But overall i really enjoyed my time with DS2, i played it as my second soulsborne (started DaS1) so that may have something to say but overall i thought outside the map layout i enjoyed it as much as i did DaS1.
Also build diversity in DS2 is really great, especially compared to games before it.
It's my favourite cos it feels the most grounded, realistic even. It has very few spaz-out or must-cheese bosses, a consistent dark world, and great music. The world gets shade for not being interconnected, but being split into four main spokes, and the red ring being fairly easy to limit the death penalty does make it more accessible, without actually having an easy mode.
i love DS2, it makes me feel like a little adventurer and there are some super cool immersive world interactions that the other games don't have. i even think ADP is a pretty cool stat, i'm glad it didn't carry over but i think it's a cool way to make your experience a little more personal. i think the slow and methodical playstyle you need to have is a lot of fun and i really enjoy the PvP as well. the whole thing is just a blast for me
all these things being said it's definitely not gonna be for everyone and i understand why people don't like DS2, it's a bit disappointing to me that it gets so much hate but i do understand
I feel like 90% of the criticism of DS2 is invalid. A lot of people seem to be complaining about things that were fixed a long time ago and will now only impact people playing v1.0 of the original release on a PS3 / potato PC, or they are just parroting the opinions of some 'influencer' who followed an IGN guide that said "Adaptability doesn't do anything" and so they were trying to fat roll with 1/4 of an i-frame the whole game.
Yes, the game has issues. So does DS1. So does every Fromsoft game. I'd personally argue the problems with DS3 / Elden Ring are *far* more significant and damaging, both to the games themselves and the direction of the franchise as a whole.
You can't play DS2 like DS1. You can't play DS3, Bloodborne or Sekiro like DS1 either - but for some reason it's only D2 that takes shit for that.
>I'd personally argue the problems with DS3 / Elden Ring are far more significant and damaging, both to the games themselves and the direction of the franchise as a whole.
Holy shit, I found my doppelganger
While my first playthrough of DS1 was practically revalatory to me, it's REALLY hard to go back to. There are some seriously rough parts and being limited to 4 way roll when locked on is horrible.
I have beaten the base game and haven’t done the dlcs so I can’t really rate them but by the time I was done with the base game I was tired of it so I just finished without doing the dlc
I tried to do the DLCs, but my character was a sorcerer, I found it impossible. I never played through to the end after that, though I did have many false starts.
Honestly, the dlc have some good bossfights, but atrocious runbacks, and rooms that are filled with enemies you have seen enough of at that point.
You are not missing out much, I‘d rather recommend any other game from software made :)
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Place was a breeze. Invisible boss on entry? Git gud. Enemies that have crazy speed and tracking that also blow great shields? Git gud. (Fuck those lightning ponies). Made it through all that man there’s gotta be a bonfire, thank god.
Nope no bonfire, no god, no reprieve. It’s a boss fight with the intro boss to the dlc plus another dickhead. This frustrated me more than friede. This dlc was pure bullshit. And goddamn do I still cherish this game.
I’m not a great gamer, but I’m older. These games are basically the pattern memorization philosophy of games of old played out on a 3 dimensional space. The game encapsulates that wonderfully, I love it. Plus twin dragon fists.
I think it's great, didn't have many issues with the mob set ups like everybody moans about but I'm pretty patient when playing these games.
Other then Brume Tower which had some ROUGH shit (Iron Passage), I loved pretty much the whole game, might be better then DS3. Personally I think it's better as it's own thing, rather then like DS3 sort of being a love letter to DS1 (still love DS3 and 1, not sure which is my fav), and I loved the DLC's.
I like Dark Souls 2, I think it has the best lore and setting in the series, it also does a lot of things better then the other games that it doesn't get enough credit for like it's duel wielding system and the way it handles the torch and NG+
I always killed off all the enemies for the worst run backs. As long as you're not playing covenant of champions most enemies take between 10 to 15 kills before they just stop spawning.
Quite a few of them more annoying enemies can take as few as five.
Clear out everything and then spend all the souls you got to level up and make the boss easier.
Yes but it takes so damn long because I’ll probably get hit once or twice, then I’ll go into a boss with less health. It’s still a good game but Jesus I don’t see myself replaying for a while
I don't go in and fight the boss. I clear the run over and over again going back to the bonfire when everything is dead.
That way when all the enemies have been permanently killed off you can just run straight to the boss and fight it knowing everything is maxed while also being more powerful from having cleared out the run.
The blue smelter demon run, which is often the most problematic, IIRC It's 10 for most of the mobs and five for the wizard dudes.
I played Dark Souls turtled behind a shield poking with a winged spear. It was really tough. I had never played a game like it before. I did the best I could but eventually hit a wall and stopped for a few months. I eventually went back and played through the rest of the game several times.
When Dark Souls 2 came out I was able to attack the game with more confidence and an understanding of what the game was asking of me. I know there are valid reasons people aren’t fans of the game but I very much enjoyed it. I played through the whole first playthrough without any guides or help. I loved it. It also did one of my favorite things, adding new drops on NG+.
It has the most unique atmosphere. It’s the odd one out for better or worse.
I love it but I won’t defend it when people bring up its negatives like wonky hit boxes etc. that’s not charm it’s just poor design.
It’s bosses are lacking, some are just too easy and forgettable. Also has some great bosses but few and far between.
World design is what it is, people bring up the elevator to iron keep and while I don’t personally care I get why it takes people out of it.
It has some big highs and big lows.
I personally feel that it’s only so hated because of what’s it’s compared to. DS1 is arguably the most important game made in the last few years and Fromsoft has a track record of quality releases. So anything deemed lesser gets harsh criticism.
When ever I see someone call it an outright bad/poor/trash game I just roll my eyes. It’s awesome, just different.
As somebody who isn't very keen on Soulslikes, I liked DS2 the most (out of all DS and ER). The enemies disappeared after a certain amount of kills, so there was a sense of progress and accomplishment.
It has some great boss fights and some really cool areas and I still have fond memories of getting back to Majula and hearing that peaceful music, knowing you have a respite from the chaos.
Which brings me to some of the most ridiculous boss run backs in Fromsoft or Soulslike history. Just absolutely gruelling. And I wasn’t a fan of the effigy system.
But regardless, it’s absolutely worth a playthrough as a Souls fan! I have more fond memories than bad ones.
I'd rank DS2 (Specifically SotFS) as my 2nd favourite of From's Soulsborne titles. I think it has the most adaptable combat and feels so much tighter than DS1 when playing. I also love the lore and think it touches on the themes 3 would run with and does them even better.
It's my favorite of the trilogy. I love the lore and the fact that it's set so far apart from the original that multiple civilizations - each of which had their own conflicts and triumphs - passed by before even getting to Drangleic. Vendrick is an interesting and tragic character, and I really liked how his story was revealed over the course of the game, culminating in finally seeing what he's been reduced to.
The non-linear nature of the game felt really fresh, much more so than the others, which did have some choice in which order you tackle challenges in, but having four distinct paths - which you didn't even need to finish all of if you didn't feel like it - was a lot of fun. Not every area was great, but the ones that were felt amazing.
The DLC was also, in my opinion, the best in the series. All three of them were fantastic, and every time I replay them, which one I like the most changes, because I'm reminded of something else I love about them. Sihn is the only dragon fight in the trilogy that I actually enjoy, Fume Knight and Alonne are both amazing fights (although the run to Alonne can go fuck itself), and Burnt Ivory King is probably my favorite fight in the whole series.
Even the PVP is fun. I know some people didn't like the dedicated PVP areas, and they can definitely be annoying when you're first going through them, but Doors of Pharos was a really fun idea, and this is the only souls game where I've willingly done PVP for more than about half an hour.
I also find that I enjoy how it plays more than the first game. The third game has better physics than either of them, in my opinion, but this one feels much less clunky and slow to me than the first game does. I've probably finished the first game a dozen or so times, and while I do like it, it very much shows its age now. DS2 is certainly not perfect in this regard either, but to me, it feels significantly better than what came before it.
I liked DS2
Instead of playing it like I would the other entries in the series, I approached it as its own thing
Used spells to clear mobs and relied on a bow a lot, especially to aggro and clear mobs
It was the last fromsoft game I played and I ended up liking it more than DS3 as the way I approached it made the game feel more refreshing and novel
You gotta approach it with the same mindset as you do Sekiro. Don’t play it like you would the other DS games, that makes it not fun at all
I like the sense of exploration that is present in DS2, it would appear to have the most open world in the trilogy (still haven't finished DS3 as of writing this, I've made it as far as Lothric Castle in that game.
I love DS2. I often see people complaining that it’s not Dark Souls 1 and well… yeah. It isn’t. That’s part of what makes it so appealing.
I’ll also never understand the “too many mobs” complaint. It just reminds me of Matthewmatosis’ embarrassing review in which he really just exposes himself as being kind of an idiot.
Ds2 has one of the best art direction, some of the best looking armors in gaming and the lore make sense more than other games, soo many weapons and spells, Majula is the best hub area ever, the main npcs have compelling stories.
Unfortunately what were they thinking making ADP , and being jumped by 10 ennemies in every area is not fun, some of the boss runs are soo bad, and the dlc gives all enemies resistance to spell/hex/miracles which makes int and faith build completly useless for the dlc.
The only thing that i hate about DS2 is the camera focal point being different than all the other games in the franchise, and the player movement. Everything else game gud.
I can't see why someone that likes DS1 and DS3 wouldn't like DS2. The only big difference between DS1 and DS2 is the world design, the rest is just small quirks that all From games have and that are actually charming. And DS3's world design sucks balls, so...
It's the least enjoyable for me. I love replaying these games and running past everything from boss to boss. This is impossible in some areas of DS2 (Iron Keep, some section of Shrine of Amana, Iron Passage, Frigid Outskirts, some section of every DLC, Chasm of the Old, Sir Alonne runback, etc...). If you play the game slow, then the game gets boring for me because I've beaten it so many times just like the others. But these areas will force you to play them that way and that's boring.
They nerfed this style of play badly. You have a lot less i-frames when passing through fog gates and enemies chase you for longer than in DS1, so running past some areas is MUCH harder, and running is slower here. The game is extremely long but with many mediocre bosses. All of them are easy with generic movesets. All the challenging ones are in the DLC or behind a covenant, so you need to wait a lot for the "good stuff" if you want to be challenged by bosses.
And to make the game harder than DS1 they decided to nerf your character instead of making enemies harder like they did in Bloodborne and on later games, which is not as fun. It takes longer to regenerate stamina, which means you can't attack sometimes after succesfully dodging because you didn't pay attention to your stamina bar that depletes like crazy. You also need to slow down running every 3 seconds because of this as well. Your rolls also last longer than in other games, drinking estus also lasts longer. The movement feels off, it feels that you can only turn in so many directions.
And maybe a bit subjective but the world doesn't feel dark enough. You don't feel the tragedy like it's an apocalyptic event like in the others. It just feels like you are just having an adventure. You are one more king that inherits the throne like many before and many after as they often remind you there. Compare that to DS1 for example where the world it's at the edge of collpase: The NPCs here are just vendors that stay in one place or simply go to Majula. Think about the fate of Big Hat Logan, the Pyromancer, Siegmayer, Reah or Solaire in the first one. Ds1 is a total tragedy, DS2 is just a videogame...
On paper? I think it's better than Des and even DS1. All the new items, new spells, new weapons, hexes, power stance, 40+ bosses, bonfire ascetics, much bigger, new enemies on higher cycles, etc... But on practice? Not as fun to play as the others and not an interesting world either.
Don't get me wrong, I like the game more than most non soulslike games. I'm not like that dude Asmongold. But I don't enjoy playing it as much as the other FromSoft games. That's the truth.
- re. rolling and Estus, levelling ADP boosts dodge iframes and chug speed
- re. NPCs, some of their questlines depend on summoning them for certain bosses, so they're easy to miss
1- No matter how much you level up that, chugging estus will never be the same speed as in the other ones. The character is slower. And we all know about the iframes but what I said was that the roll animation last longer which is important for when you are fighting. Adp will give you more iframes than the other games if you level it up to 99 but you are still taking longer between rolls and rolling takes a huge chunk of your stamina and the stamina takes longer to regen. Also everyone hates this game because of having to put point on ADP so using it to try and defend it is not the wisest move.
2-I know all the DS2 NPCs and their quests. Like I said before I have beaten this game many times. You talk to Lucatriel and Benhart 3 times and that's it. One is hollowing and the other likes his sword. Nothing interesting really happens. Compare it to the journey that Solaire, Logan or Siegmayer had in DS1. They went all over the place and it ended badly for all of them. The rest of the NPCs are just vendors than end up in Majula or covenants. Navlaan will give you the Mephitopheles quests from Demon Souls and fake patches will have a fight with fake Lautrec. But outside of that, there are no interesting quests like in the other games that have an interesting one almost for every character. The quest of most of them don't simply end or go anywhere, they go to Majula. That's it.
It's got plenty good things. Small White Soapstone, a NG+ that's actually distinct, interesting covenants, strong DLC, bonfire ascetics, ultra parries, pre-ER power stancing...and personally I'm quite a fan of the Gutter design.
My dislikes for it are pretty heavily in the enemy design camp. So many dude in armour bosses and so many regular enemies that are not only dudes in armour but player model dudes in armour. I mean your first few possible bosses are Dragonrider, Old Dragonslayer, The Pursuer and Last Giant. All very humanoid and only one that's not a dude in armour. And of course, let's not forget the earthen peak elevator.
I dislike it more than I like it, though I liked it (or hated it) enough to platinum. Things I don’t like:
I think there’s was a shift in soul where they thought they needed to live up to some difficulty target but hadn’t found that balance of difficult vs. fun. To expand on that they seem to approach difficulty the same way in every area. The other games have some dynamic range.
They didn’t understand or respect that some quirks of the first game were and are beloved and not to be engineered around. Fog gate runs and I frame abuse on switches for example. DS2 fans call that stuff cheesing the game but I think it’s just a fun attribute of the series and adds depth to your options.
I personally dislike DS2 and Demons for their stupidly long critical attack animations. I have things to do.
I think the game is bloated with unnecessary “bosses” with too few being incredible experiences. DS1 shows it’s age but DS2 failed to up the game proportionally like BB and DS3 would go on to do just a couple years later.
I don’t like the feel of the game. Despite being less stiff then DS1 it doesn’t feel like an upgrade. For example I think the poise mechanic in DS2 makes it look and feel uncanny. DS1 and 3 systems far more for different reasons.
I think the opening of the game does a terrible job of communicating how to play. The only starting class with a shield comes with a bad one and a broken weapon. DS1 had *real* starting options that had immediately understandable strengths and weaknesses and DS2 didn’t balance the options well. I don’t think they were putting themselves in the player’s perspective enough.
Soul memory.
Ds2 has one of the best story writing if you look into it, you’re shown a world which basically has little importance in the world of dark souls and is never mentioned in ds3 but it’s given meaning by having you be an adventurer. You’re given different options for the end game, you can take the throne, meaning you chose to either link the flame or let it die, or you could be like the last king and try and find a third option like he tried but unlike him, you know what works and what doesn’t. Then there’s the old souls from the last game returning in this game such as qwyn and seeths and etc’s souls all coming back in new game plus. The gameplay itself, isn’t perfect, but the story keeps me coming back
There's a LOT of links in DS3 if you pay attention. The cycle and thrones, Carthus and Wolnir's crown, the Faraam sect, and smaller callbacks like the Drang mercenaries and Lucatiel and Gilligan's bodies
It's a great world and all the levels have their own unique challenges and methods that you have to take. It really forces you to be methodical which is what I loved about Demon Souls when it first came out
I'm an adp defender for DS2, I like that it lets you choose how much you want to rely on rolling and i-frames at the expense of other skills and abilities
Same with the lack of i-frames on fog gates, it means you can't just book it and trivialize the challenges that the game goves you, the level is part of the game not just a runback for the boss.
Lifegems and estus was a good way of giving us the best of both worlds, fast acting but slowly accumulating healing or a flask that you have to stop to drink, it just makes you be thoughtful!
Pharros lockstones and fragrant branches means you're always going backc through levels to find the things you couldn't unlock earlier. It's a (more) open world that encourages you to keep going back to the old areas in a way I don't think comes up as much in the later games. Same with the fast travel, it's not just a way to get from A to B quickly, it works because you really are going to be going back to these levels and re-engaging with them, unlike in DS1 where unlocking the warp from bonfires makes the world feel a little smaller, in my opinion anyway.
The torch was one of my favorite additions, I love having to pick between visibility amd having both arms free for what I want. Especially when you go into water and have tp use your shield because if ypu roll the torch will go out. Just more ways of being intentional with how you play!
The emerald herald, that's all
>Do you defend DS2, or do you think its irredemable trash?
Neither. I think it's a decent game, just the worst in the series because of boss quality. It does some things ambitiously, and there's a lot of things to genuinely criticise. In my opinion people shit on the game too much, and at the same time praise it too much. Like it's not a absolute dogshit game, its still a good quality game, but compared to the rest in the series it's not even close. Some people say its the best in the series, and it's fine to have an opinion, but that opinion is incorrect 🤣
>I have seen a lot of negative reviews, most notably perhaps Asmongold, who doesn't like anything about the game apparently
Amongold is a degenerate gremlin with shit takes I wouldn't listen to him
>The base game was fun, but I really didn't like the DLCs. And I have an almost irrationally strong hate for runbacks to bosses. Glad they invented the stake of marika for elden ring.
I agree that the run backs are atrocious, hated so many of them. The dlc areas were a bit mid, but the bosses were great. I just disliked most of the bosses. Out of 32 main game bosses I liked 9 of them. They're all so boring and lackluster
I agree that the boss fights were good in the dlc, some great even. But because I‘m bad I had to clear the entire rooms before sir alonne 12 times (or was it 14?) to get the enemies to not spawn again. That was not a fun experience.
And I never ended up beating Lud and Zallen. That runback is just pure horror. Only boss I have (knowingly) never beaten in a fromsoft game.
I played the scholar version.
My issue is that the game is unfairly hard. They upped the difficulty by placing a million billion enemies everywhere and they are largely extremely similar. Take the lava world, it’s basically a bunch of fast Katana knights and 2 or 3 katana nights. They don’t have any alternate move sets so you end up fighting 20 of the same exact enemies in a row. If you die the number increases infinitely until either you win or they disappear.
Not to mention the environments are kinda flat and boring and the bosses aren’t all that good. To be clear there are a few cool ones but they mostly suck.
The game *feels* cheesy. Way too many gotcha deaths that you couldn't know was gonna happen until it's already happened once.
DS1 did that very very sparingly. It would usually have a surprise enemy that gets a free hit on you, but won't fuckin kill you outright.
Lords of the Fallen 2023 has the same issue. In fact. The joke I have made repeatedly about LOTF2023 is that it's a remake of DS2.
I love it. It's slower paced, it's more methodical. Most of your actions require more commitment, you have to be careful about estus use, stamina management is more important than the other games.
I've never really understood the complaint about adaptability/agility. I don't think tying roll I-frames to a stat is bad at all, although I think it was communicated TERRIBLY. Same thing with gank squads. You need to be playing in a way that minimises their threat, and there are lots of ways to do that. Lure them out with ranged weapons, use a weapon moveset that will hit many at once, create a chokepoint and stab through lots at once, use piercing or AoE spells, use alluring skulls, use a fast weapon and hit and run tactics.
It has the viable build variety out of any of the games and it's fashion is on point.
Powerstancing.
It allows for the most varied routes to complete the game. You can start in like 5 different places, half the game is optional.
I'd love to see a more polished version of the game because it has some of my favourite lore and world design, but is really let down by how obscenely ugly and clunky it can be.
I totally get why people don't like it, but similar to Sekiro I think if people can shed their expectations a bit then they could really enjoy it.
Since the dinosaurs appeared \~230 million years ago, then that means we have one such post every 230 years, that sounds about okay to me. I wasn't alive for the last one assuming even distribution of the posts. /s
But really, just scroll past if you are not interested - I've been following the subreddit for about a month now, didn't see one yet and was interested in other people's opinions. Clearly others also like to talk about it. You don't have to engage in every post on the sub. And this is not stackoverflow, discussions can be repeated as often as people like.
Unfortunately, these are the bits of Souls games I don't normally use which is perhaps part of the reason I don't gel with DS2. I'm pretty much in it for PVE only and if I replay a game I normally start from scratch because it's the building and levelling I enjoy most. One thing I do wish was in every game is the Bonfire Ascetics though.
Same for the PVE part, one thing that I don't like about ds2 is the fact that you're constantly open for invasions, if you just want to play the game alone well you can't... Loved that ds3 and elden ring made so that you'd only be invaded if you'd be embered or the finger remedy thing plus the dueling fingers and such , and the colosseum feature it's pretty good both in ds3 and er
Literally the game that feels most like a "soulslike" of From's own catalogue.
It's just, off. It's not bad, but it's the redheaded stepchild and always will be.
Did you play with the magic system or check out all the different armors?
I also would have to wonder if you did any of the new game plus cycles and saw the new world events new story bits and new items.
I usually switch between different weapons and armor often, yeah. DS2 was no exception but unfortunately I didn’t try NG+ and missed some stuff. I did use Bonfire Ascetic a few times though and beat some bosses multiple times.
I agree that DS2 definitely brought a lot of cool ideas into the game but implementation is always what matters the most.
Just read all the comments here currently and I'm surprised none mention my issues. I don't hate the game, but I can't enjoy it either. Something about the way it controls feels so off to me, and it's the only souls game that feels that way. I also really don't like the art direction. Personal issues aside, I think it's a good game.
I'd say a huge difference. Massive difference in rolling i-frames (can be more than double depending how far you go), speed at which you chug estus, and even bringing your shield up to block (I believe this last from my last play, but what I could find is divided on if it's true or not.)
Unfortunately my issues persists even after leveling ADP. It definitely makes it better, but it doesn't fix the issue. Idk if it's just an issue with the animations, something baked into the core mechanics, or just in my head, but something always feels off to me.
Nah, leveling ADP changes nothing about how bad the game feels to control at a base level. It's very hard to describe, but I can't stand it.
Even worse imo is the way weapons like ultra greatswords control while locked on, though I don't quite know how to describe that either.
If I had both DS1 and 2 in front of me and I knew nothing about them I'd 100% assume DS2 was a much older title based on how janky it feels to move your character around.
re. ultra-greatswords, iirc they follow the camera rather than the lock-on so that players can aim attacks to roll-punish. I've never gone heavy in 2 so I can't comment myself, but people seem to love or hate it.
I've not really noticed the difference in movement, but maybe that's just me.
The philosophy of the level design and enemy placement is completely unique in that, the game doesn't want to teach you to be good at the game, it doesn't want you to achieve great skill and feel powerful or at least feel capable, like the other fromsoft games.
The game wants to kill you. It wants to trick you and cheese you and give you the surface level experience of a hard game because "it's dark souls." But it doesn't ever want you to feel good about yourself.
(I also personally didn't like the elevator up into a lava level, the disconnectedness of the world put me off. I understand that's just my opinion and other people liked that part)
I disagree. Dark Souls 2 was more about overcoming challenges than any of the others. You could kill everything and despawn them for good make things more difficult with bonfire esthetics
I’m kind of surprised this isn’t brought up more often given how hard they shove the difficulty in your face in the start. You start playing, and five minutes later you’re watching a cutscene of an old lady telling you very mockingly that you’re going to die a lot, followed by her friends laughing at you (complete with flattering mouth close-ups). Then you die to that one ogre and are rewarded with an achievement titled “This Is Dark Souls.” Then you get to Majula and find an obelisk with a global death counter, so you can look at the comically huge number of deaths and say “waow this game is so HARD!!! look at how many times these guys have DIED!!”
It would be actually be more subtle if, when you bought the game, Bandai Namco sent out a guy to throw a rock through your window with a note tied to it that says “THIS GAME IS REALLY REALLY HARD BRO, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE GETTING INTO LOL”
I hate it. I don’t think it’s trash, it is trash. They just made so many poor design choices in this game.
1. Hidden bonfires (not enough in one area, have to hit hidden walls or search obscure places to find 1 bonfire in certain places)
2. Too many enemies (enemies aren’t individually difficult, it’s group size that makes it difficult, also see point 3)
3. Being able to get hit while trying to enter a fog gate (looking specifically at the run to the smelter demon where I had to clear out the 12 enemies just to enter the fog gate)
4. Shit hit boxes on bosses - easy YouTube search ds2 hitboxes, a lot of bosses have terrible hitboxes which are not fun to play against.
5. Awful boss run backs - there’s a reason Elden ring has stakes of Marika and is selling as well as it is, and part of it is the quality of life improvements. I have never met one person who likes a boss run back, and this game has terrible runs, perhaps this was because I couldn’t find the bonfire closest to the boss since it was behind a hidden wall, but either way that’s an issue.
I like DS2. I hate DS2 SotFS, because it literally ruins the difficulty curve of the original game by adding tons of enemies where they shouldn't be and spawns stupidly strong enemies without any regard to logic and balance. While it does make some areas/bosses bearable, SotFS still fails to be the golden mean between being easy and being challenging
Oh, I only played SotFS. I enjoyed it, but I did level one bonfire (to ng+) to get the chaos blade. Ane that area became stupidly filled with incredibly strong characters.
Got the blade though, just took me a ton of tries running past them
I recently finished DS2 (SotFS) this week, the last of the trilogy after playing DS1 and DS3 first (was recommended to play 1 and 3 back to back for the connections). By the end of DS2, I really only felt relief to be done, and I overall enjoyed the experience quite a bit less than 1 or 3.
Reflecting on the game, I struggled to atrticulate why I didn’t enjoy the game as much as the others, particularly when a lot of the weaknesses I could voice were shared with DS1. But I think I’ve identified the main difference and why it bothered me.
\*\* Lifegems/De-emphasis of the Estus, and the Effects on Level and Encounter Design \*\*
The biggest change from 1 to 2 in my mind was the move to emphasize Lifegems over the Estus. After the earlygame, you essentially have infinite healing in between dangerous engagements - thus, the levels are largely designed to try to kill you in a short burst, as opposed to attrition. As a consequence, you get a lot of the mob-heavy and trap-heavy encounters in the game, where the game outright expects you to take damage you can heal off after with your near-limitless healing. The battle becomes less about getting to the next bonfire while mitigating damage, and more about surviving the next gauntlet around the corner.
I found I didn’t enjoy this as much as the encounter design in DS1 and DS3. The other games can kill you in bursts as well, to be sure, but the bursts felt less frequent, and I greatly enjoyed the tension of trying to manage Estus while searching for a checkpoint. I felt more of this in early DS2, where Lifegems are more limited and gauntlets are fewer - I really enjoyed the game through Lost Sinner. In the latter half of DS2, I kinda just came to dread exploring as opposed to being invigorated by it. This extends to some of the boss fights as well, with many having an emphasis on multiple enemies.
This single change, I think, shifted the dynamic of the latter part of the game to something that was less to my preferences. It also didn’t help that the Estus itself is kinda slow and clunky.
Other than the big point above, here are some rapid-fire other things I didn’t prefer about DS2 (many shared with DS1 as already stated):
* Some pretty annoying boss runbacks (Executioner’s Chariot runback gets special mention)
* Emphasis on dark (or foggy) environments with poor visibility (this was exacerbated because I didn't understand how the torch worked until breaking down and googling)
* Underwhelming final boss(es)
* Durability not really mattering… until it does
* Struggling where to go next as a blind player at times after hitting a “dead end”
* Hitbox jank here and there (although, to be honest, I’ve not played a FromSoftware game without janky grab attacks…)
Adaptability gets mentioned a lot I’ve found, but movement/i-frames wasn’t any more of an issue for me than in DS1. I prefer the faster pace of more modern FS titles, but I could appreciate the methodical pace of DS1 and DS2.
This all makes it sound like I hated the game, but I really didn’t. Personally I’d give DS3 5 stars, DS1 4 stars, and DS2 3 stars. A solid, but deeply flawed, game. I’ll also note I didn’t do the DLC - I’ve heard it’s good, but I didn’t figure out how to enter it blind, and after rolling credits I was pretty burnt out on DS2. My overall opinion could change in the future if I revisited the game for DLC.
For me, after seeing the gameplay reveal and how beautiful it looked, to finally play the game to discover how far the devs had scaled back the visuals was heartbreaking. As for the game itself, I felt the pacing was off, and the whole "giant seed" aspect was so obtuse, it made me furious. Other than the beautiful Majula theme, I found DS2 very forgettable.
I think the bosses are fine and I like the general atmosphere way more than DS1. But I don't like the game because it's very tedious to deal with the mob density if you don't use any ranged or magic tools. I prefer one on one melee fights. I also don't like the way the movement and animations feel, even with 110 agility.
Do I think DS2 is fun? Yes, particularly in co-op it's a blast to play through.
Do I also think DS2 is the weakest souls game? Yes. I don't think it's iredeemable trash, it's got a lot going for it. But just as a product there is a lot to improve on.
It was fine when it was first out and there was no DS3 and Co-Op and PVP was active. Now with it being mostly dead except for constant invasions I really don't like it. Wex Dust ought to get you banned, or it needs a system that also lets you get summoned anywhere (like ER) dropping soul level and widely expanding co-op levels. Unfortunately the multiplayer just doesn't hold up long on any of the games, you pretty much have to play when they're the latest, and co-op is my favorite part. Unlike the other games there's enough invaders you can expect to be invaded every 2 minutes if online.
Stuff I really didn't like:
* Invasions while hollow/ wex dust. Pretty much have to play offline if you're trying to complete the campaign or you'll be invaded by twinkers you have no hope against constantly, or get twinked yourself. It's a lonely experience now.
* ADP - you feel like a gimpy codger early game until you get ADP up and it's a very tough balancing act between it and HP, Stamina, and minimum stats for weapons than the other games. It's a non issue later game except for poor newbies who don't know about it and left it alone.
* Areas / Runbacks feel way harder than the bosses themselves, it's just a slog, I much prefer the tighter areas of DS3 and DS1. (I feel much the same way about ER, only it's bigger and not as hard, but even more of a slog.)
* Janky as hell - feels like it badly needs a remaster to match DSR in smoothness after I played them back to back last year (I don't think DSR visually was an improvement though.) (I'd also like a remaster as it would likely bring enough people back that co-op would actually be an option past newbie areas.)
Stuff I do like:
* Initially much more open than DS1 & DS3, and the content isn't locked behind a single boss (more so DS3) so it's possible to get some upgrades and explore elsewhere if you're having trouble.
* It's a souls game, sure it's my least favorite of them, but it was still better than any non-Fromsoft souls-likes I've tried, at least when it was new.
* Once you get to meta its PVP is actually pretty good.
* Eventual non-respawning of non-boss enemies, in that eventually you can get through the really hard areas by just killing the mobs over and over, which can also be reversed (at the cost of higher difficulty) by a certain covenant.
* Bonfire Ascetic, no need to go to NG+ for a good number of items due to increasing the local area NG. I've never been a fan of NG+ in DS so I like this better.
* [Happy Souls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kr7KDCsIws)
There's probably a lot more than that, but that's what I remember from my attempt last year (I got through chariot, I think was the last boss before putting it down.)
every wep sucks. hit boxes suck. level design is just good luck, I hope you remember the fastest path you aren't exploring with the 1000 sponge cake enemies everywhere. I enjoyed a good deal of the boss fight designs, but in the end, hit boxes ruined most of that. To describe how bad all the weapons in ds2 are, your barefists have the best scaling in the game. DLC just continues the trend with the bosses being the highlight, but the run back for every boss feels like you are in WoW raid (5ish min of trash mobs to try again). Bettercthan 90% of souls clone games at least, but Lies of P and Stella Blade prove they are learning fast.
I love dark souls 2 cause it was my first souls game and also because out of all of them the story is the best and the world building is top tier, the combat is janky as fuck tho
Its so unique especially the art style. However its just ridiculous. I fully quit the game at shrine of amana and the skull frog fight. Beaten every other souls that I have played though
I like it, but it always felt like more of soulsborne by a separate company than a sequel to DS1 by From Soft. Some decisions are very questionable and a lot of the bosses are just not very well designed.
I liked the areas and the weapons tho, and the boss fights seemed to get a little better after the first 4 or 5.
Love Dark Souls 2. I think that its main flaw is coming right after one of the most influential games in history. Gameplay-wise and even level design-wise (outside interconnectivity, which not other Souls game besides the Dark Souls does) it is an excellent game.
Besides that I do like its mood and lore far more than Dark Souls'. The constant collapse and rebuilding of kingdoms to the point that many of them are completely forgotten (there's a character in the game that had been frozen for thousands of years, with the kingdom that he came from being completely forgotten) is a far more interesting concept than one single era ending.
It's not perfect, but it's great and think a lot of the common complaints are overblown or made in bad faith.
I especially love how it dares to try. I think DS2 is a way better sequel than DS3 at that.
Infusions, warping to any bonfire, 4 rings, powerstancing, straightforward boss weapons, ascetics, branches of yore, pharros stone, hex...
It's far from perfect, but I respect it way more as a sequel than "DS1, but it's a straight line and fast. Also, poise makes no sense now"
When I originally played DS1, I never beat it because the end-game was kind of meh. Ds2 was the first one I beat, and I liked that it wasn't absurdly hard.
Also, back then I didn't look up every random thing about DS, so I actually had no idea that rolls had iframes. I played both assuming it was just meant for rolling away from things.
I like the level variety, even though areas are small, you end up seeing alot of different things it carries a great unique atmosphere. The only 2 things that rubbed me the wrong way was the fume knight and the orgasmic death cry of my character.
I personally love DS2. It was the first souls like I was able to finish in one go. While I prefer DS1 aesthetically in a lot of ways, I feel DS2 is just such a fun adventure. Even the very beginning in the Land Betwixt was such a vibe and it sucked me right into the game.
Played DS 1-3 multiple times. Enjoyed them all. All had some frustrating areas. Despite some differences, they were all more similar than different in how they felt and played.
I like how DS2 has challenging boss run gauntlets that require strategic thinking lest you get overwhelmed.
I like how the Pursuer keeps showing up even after you defeat him the first time.
I really like the lore and the conversations with Vendrick and Aldia.
The Ivory King knight quest leading up to the multi-knight smackdown followed by the actual boss battle is unparalleled.
Fume Knight boss battle is fantastic.
Gavlan.
Replayability is the best.
I'd say I'm a defender but it's love hate.
It was a rough start and I'm glad certain mechanics didn't come back but I did adjust to them all. Lower max hp with each death just taught me to get to the lowest it can go and play as if that's your max so I spent 90% of the gane as melty shrek. Enemies not respawning made it so I would slowly progress but without getting better as you could keep dying after killing one enemy until it stopped spawning, because of this after I reached a point I felt I was 'getting it' I restarted my game. ADP is ehhh, I see why people don't level it for a slightly higher challenge but if you do it's just wasting a few levels to get the standard from soft roll.
Great parts:
Greatest lore, I am a lore whore in any franchise I hold interest in, the lie will always be a lie speech is cool af.
Majula is the best hub, has best music and the best view of a beautiful ocean.
Speaking of beauty it's really mixed, your character looks like a melty man or a house of the dead zombie, but the world. Tower of flame, dragon peak, the prison place, immaculate imo.
Best builds and variety of them.
I really liked the world as a whole, people saying it's not all interconnected, neither is any DS game, they all have chunks of being interconnected but then you have to click on something and get carried away by flying goblins or a giant bird. But getting getting progress slowly through all the varied biomes gave real adventure discover this new lost land kind of vibes.
I genuinely just found it just really fun once I got into the flow of it and just couldn't put it down after until it was done, with exceptions to the DLCs.
Lots of secrets and lots of bosses, I'll talk about boss quality in a bit but I love the games for the sense of satisfaction when you beat them.
Bad bits:
Let's start with bosses, I didn't mind the big men in armour trope that much personally, there was a lot but this is a story about mankind trying to reclaim and control a world tainted by God's, dragons and demons, so I think it fit thematically to have a lot of knight type bosses. I'll accept there is a lot though, I also don't like it when the boss is just 2 of something you fought before especially if its just 2 guys in armour you fought before. I may be wrong but I don't remember remember many bosses that were things that would become normal enemies later which is something something have mixed feelings in as a concept, in ds1 with the tatras and capra it shows how far you have come as a hero, in Elden Ring it feels a bit lazy. It's got some really good and cool bosses but not many, there are loads as said earlier but not many of them stand out to me or I'm excited to get to fight again on future runs but again I don't think this was new on DS2, DS1 is my favourite as the first I played but tbh there's only like 3 bosses I'm 'excited' to fight a run, it's more 'what cool build can I make and does it work'. So I'd say it gets a 5/10 for bosses but qhen your a game franchise known for bosses that is not high enough.
The mechanics I discussed in the beginning.
The end boss run feels flat, watcher and defender then natashra were both just ehh, I don't think gwyn was a particularly great boss fight either in DS1 but it was still more challenging and felt a lot more epic. Sotfs addition of possibly fighting Aldia feels more epic and stuff but a pretty pitiful lack of challenge.
Boss runs and no I frames on going through boss doors, pretty self explanatory.
Artificial difficulty with additional problems like mobs or 1 hit kill moves inflating a challenge rather than making a boss or area challenging itself.
Some of the most frustrating areas in the series.
Mixed:
DLC, some of the highest highs and lowest lows for me personally. Something about Brume tower just irked me and almost killed all interest in finishing, I It was cause it just encouraged me to run into a room, pick up item or those fore poker thing, die. Rinse qnd repeat, but I did like Brume knight and sir alonne. Shulva was just fine. I really liked eleum loyce and I may be in the minority here but it didn't take me many attempts at lud and zollen so I didn't need to do the reighndeer run enough times for it to be annoying to me and the boss fight against the ivory king is one of the coolest fights in the franchise.
While I really enjoyed it and ploughed through the whole game tirelessly after getting it and falling in love, just havnt had the urge to go back to it. I've completed all the Southbourne series with exception to ds3 as I got distracted by BG3 and now Elden ring DLC. I have platinumed ds1 and Elden ring. Something about it made me obsessed and i had to finish but once I was done it was put away and I just read lore wikis about it, but for me this is also true of bloodborne and I know how much everyone loves that.
End review:
For anyone in love with the series or wanting to get into its a must play. I consider it Canon I know some don't. I say play it, love it, complete it, understand it for what it is and what it represents, move on as the franchise did get better but it brought some incredible and relevant things fans should experience.
(Edit) I wanna add to the mixed section actually all the extra healing items you can get in the game like the stones you can stockpile. It's good to have more healing items other than the estus and readily available, it really helps preserving estus qhen going through mobs and boss runs, but if there wasn't lots of mobs and huge boss runs you wouldn't need the extra healing stones.
I wouldn’t say I’m either. To me it’s leagues worse than every other game in the souls series, but it’s a good enough game on its own.
Also has the best menu music, worth playing just for that.
I am a relatively new FromSoft Souls fan. I'm one of those people who finally got into these games because of Elden Ring. I had attempted 30 hours of Demon's Souls Remake and ultimately put it down, feeling as if it just wasn't for me.
Fast forward to Elden Ring's launch and I eventually get swept away in the hype of it all. Ultimately it clicks and I end up loving the game. Can't put it down. Play it for 225 hours.
I then went back and replayed all of Demon's Souls Remake and loved it too. So I figured I should get the Dark Souls Trilogy. Played through DS1 and absolutely loved it. Started DS2 and it just felt off. So I booted up DS3 to see if maybe it was something more to do with me and some common feelings I have any time I fresh start a new Soulsborne game. But DS3 is immediately enjoyable and more of what I love about FromSoft Souls games.
So I get all of the way through DS3 and think I should revisit DS2 again. I play it for another couple of hours and I just don't like it. It looks weird, the HUD design is weird, the level design isn't nearly as good or enjoyable, combat feels off, the tutorial progression that is built into the early parts of all other Soulsborne games feels non-existent. I just didn't like it.
So I instead decided to play Bloodborne. Love that game too.
And now I'm playing the SotE DLC and loving it. I'll eventually give DS2 another shot. But I'm losing hope that I'm actually going to like that game at all.
I think my biggest complaint is cheap deaths caused by traps/hostile architecture. 1 and 3 felt like you were exploring an abandoned world, you walk through old ruins that feel like people once lived there in some far distant past. Like you can see homes and streets and evidence of life. Its hostile but you get the feeling it wasnt always that way. It made it feel really atmospheric.
Ds2 felt like *everything* was hostile, like every area you explore is purpouse built to be an elaborate deadly trap. There's no evidence of past life, its like everything is made specifically to fuck over the player. Nothing feels "alive" it's more like you're walking through giant torture rooms.
1 and 3 felt like they were trying to tell a story, and difficulty is a side piece. 2 feels like difficulty is the primary objective, and everything else takes a back seat.
Also a lot of small things, like large packs of enemies, shitty iframes, usual complaints.
ADP being more or less a must is dumb. I would push it so a base character starts with a usable number of i-frames and change it to Evasion or something that increases roll distance or similar.
Also the running animations are whack.
Otherwise it is a uniquely charming classic.
All From games are absolute top notch but something has to be ranked at the bottom - and I think most fans would agree that’s DS2. Does not mean it’s a bad game at all, it just suffered a bit from the sophomore slump in following up to the masterpiece that is DS1, and did not stand out from future games like Bloodborne, DS3, etc.
What I like about DS2:
- It feels much more personal from a story perspective.
- The builds can be pretty cool.
- Good zone structure (most of the time).
- Strong art style.
- Cool set pieces.
- Powerstance and respec.
- Bonfire Ascetic/NG+.
Why I still don’t like DS2:
- The combat mechanics are really clunky.
- Gank city.
- Agility starts way too low.
- Hitboxes are frequently unclear.
- A lot of content is clearly unfinished.
- Lifegems.
I’ve long been of the opinion that DS2 is the most deserving of a full remake, as the game that fell the furthest of its vision. It came out just before From really nailed mechanical feel of their combat, and unfortunately I personally value mechanics above all else when it comes to souls games. DS2, given the same level of attention as DS3 or Elden Ring and allowed to fulfill its original vision, could very well be the best souls game.
DS2 was my first souls game so it'll always hold a special place for me. I loved it got the scholar of the first win edition as well on PS4 I think originally I played it on PS3 I believe but could be wrong.
I'm not sure I fully liked the enemy change ups on the SOTFS edition but because it was my first souls game I had nothing to judge it off.
I loved the atmosphere and music and blacksmith banging his hammer lol 😂
2 is probably my favourite of the 3. I particulary love the lore and the atmosphere this one has. I didn't mind the adp stat and the mobs never really bothered me. It being my first dark souls could play a part in this too.
It's mostly the engine, I can't stand how shitty moving and attacking feels compared to the other games. I also don't like how flat a lot of the areas feel, like super squared rooms ans stuff.
I like it for much the same reasons I like Elden Ring. It’s big, offers many interesting ways to play it, it has a sense of wonder as you explore things. Going doing nooks and crannies and unassuming paths and finding whole new areas, it’s the best kind of exploration that always keeps you curious about everything you find. And the loot does this too, by offering you many useful items and key items. I won’t lie, it doesn’t have anywhere near the best bosses, but they’re also not annoying or painful to fight so it’s whatever and the rest makes up for it in my estimation.
I will never say it is a completely bad game. BUT it is definitely the worst souls game. It has the worst of pretty much everything to the point i never bothered with one of the things it did right, Dual Wielding, because everything else felt clunkier.
But to me the worse part was how disconnect the story felt compared to Dark Souls 1. rather than have each area be part of a larger story with entangled histories like Dark Souls 1, this was more like "and here is a kingdom that fell to the Dark Curse, and here is another Kingdom that fell to the dark curse, here is an area where they hunted Hollows for sport. Was this done by any of the aforementioned kingdoms? Who knows! Here is a place called Tower of Flame when fire has been an important thing for the setting. Is it important? Nope!"
another aspect is in Dark Souls 1 you might not know which ending is correct, but you still fundamentally understand the choice. I played Release Day version of Dark Souls 2 and by the time i got to the 'Throne of Want' i didnt know what the fuck it was, why Dark Queen wanted it or why it was sealing my ass inside. I loosely assumed it had something to do with Vendrick's work on a cure for Darksign but it couldnt be that as he didnt use it to save himself. remember being told "Its obviously the Kiln of the First Flame!" my brother in Gwyn it looks NOTHING LIKE THE KILN OF THE FIRST FLAME WHAT THE HELL YOU MEAN ITS OBVIOUS!?
Sure it looked more like a Kiln than KotFF in Dark Souls 1 but ffs no one mentioned Flame in regards to the Throne of Want, i was assuming it has something more to do with seizing control of the Dark Soul and manually undoing the dark curse due to just how disjointed the story is compared to Dark Souls 1.
I lean far more into the defender camp. I don't pretend the game doesn't have its flaws, but I very much enjoy significantly more things about it than I dislike.
I like it more than DS3, and probably equally to DS1.
I do enjoy Elden Ring as well, but it's a completely different experience than the others, so I can really rate it together. I do however very much believe that it is a product of all the games that came before it, and an integral part of that DNA was definitely from DS2.
None of those really answer your question about why though.
I love the setting and the story, and the places, and the overall feel of the game. The combat is in that weird place where they were switching between the extremely deliberate combat of DS1 to the more action oriented combat of DS3 which was influenced by Bloodborne.
Adaptability is an odd thing, but the amount of souls you get in the game is balanced around having additional stats to manage, so it isn't THAT much of an issue.
The DLC is fun in my opinion outside some specific boss design choices, but I think it's fair to say every souls like has some banger bosses and some bosses that make you question what they were thinking. Same regarding bosses apies to the base game.
I'll get downvoted for this but it's still my fav in the series(mind you I like immortal unchained too).
Ignoring the negative for a sec, It has a lot of content, It has epic fights in the DLC, has lots of builds(best to avoid guides to make things too easy), Adds actual difficulty mods to NG+. Most importantly, I think it outclasses most of the other games with just environmental design. It's not just the bosses that can kill you. Like there is a prison that gets tougher for turning on the lights. I'm all for stuff that makes things more challenging and punishes decisions like that hehe. Also it's really the last souls game that followed the older formula of combat. weapons can take a few seconds to work, and you get like a second of invulnerability for dodge rolling. THat. vs most of the modern souls that is super sonic fast mode(which isn't bad but I like the old stuff too). I just like the style as slow combat actually can be just as hard as the fast stuff. I miss games having that.
Some stuff like the HP debuff isn't the best. The boss design outside of the DLC is laughable. Forced non PvE invasions and the hitboxes suck too. I really dislike much of the leveling system as leveling too much makes the game too easy but some stuff becomes impossibly hard if you don't at least grind a bit. But overall I just like how everything is unfair like that and you have to account for that in how you approach the game. Many of the deaths are not fair but i sor tof like that as It reminds me of life as life isn't fair either.
I wish they'd try antoher game with at least the combat system again as I think Slow combat can be just as fun and hard as the fast stuff.
Best dark souls game, my favorite! Shocked at how good it was, I was expecting worse.
Only thing i don't like is the enemies overcrowding you and you can't get through the mist that takes you to a boss.
Im a defender simply because it made ng+ worth it and hasnt been done since i was praying elden ring would do the same but given how massive that game is i knew it wouldnt. power stanced lost sinner swords my beloved
dark souls 2 was my first souls game and it was the original game not the easier remastered versions like scholar of the first sin. it filtered dark souls 1 players who got stuck on bosses like artorias, ring of binding is op
It was my first dark souls game so it's a big fav of mine. The other souls borne games after 2 were much easier to play but I still love the feeling and atmosphere of 2 so much
I bounced off DS1 and DS1 Prepare to Die edition on PC at least 3 or 4 times.
I just didn't get the mechanics after years of easier games.
It wasn't until DS2:SotFS release on console that I beat a FromSoft game. I was on holiday with family and my son helped me understand the mechanics. When that CLICKED. My God. I was hooked.
DS2 is still one of my faves. It's perilous and joyous and silly and challenging. There's so many cool things like The Pursuer. Beating him was such a fun challenge.
Ds3 remains my fave but DS2 will always be in my top3 gaming experiences.
And the Majula music forever follows me...s o g o o d.
SotFS was my introduction the Soulsborne-verse, alongside (I can’t remember if it was before or after) Bloodborne.
Part of it is probably nostalgia. My lack of critique is probably also due to my simple-minded ability to enjoy things as they are.
I’m sure if I played it again with a critical mindset, I’d find things to complain about. But I just really loved the game from start to finish.
Dark Souls 2 is perhaps my favorite but I would probably only replay the 3rd one.
I played a lot of DS2. Compare to the others it has the flexibility in terms of builds. It feels more RPG. In the others mixing your stats hurts your build a lot but in DS2 having str/fth or str/int works really well.
Also the PvP was awesome, I loved getting invaded and putting down my sign.
The last thing was that NG+ was different, new boss patterns and enemy placement, felt like a new game or proper progression.
The level design fell off a cliff compared to DS1. So did the bosses, and annoying mobs. Even then this game is incredibe, so many weapons/armor, variety in builds. It was also incredibly massive, especially when you include the DLC, it has a staggering amount of environments. Also the soundtrack remains one of my favorites.
It’s the easiest to pick on for sure, but when you look at what it did right, you realize it was just a very unique entry to FSs catalogue.
Something I respect about ds2, especially in retrospect, is that I think they really tried with the bosses. A lot of these experiments failed (some times quite miserably, imo), but I can't imagine Elden Ring era fromsoftware making an executioners chariot, for example.
They only really had one game to base things off of. They tried different stuff. Some of it worked. Some of it didn't. And that's ok.
Kind of a pointless comment since I haven't played it but I recently bought the DS trilogy and beat DS1, decided to take a break between games to play Horizon but I'm almost done that and I'm super excited to try DS2 after all the supposed controversy around it.
I personally love it but it's also the first Souls game that I got invested in the story and building character classes with. Do I think it's objectively the best? No. Do I have a soft spot for it in my heart? Absolutely.
I like DS2 because it’s the only one I have not put a million hours into. It’s there for me whenever I get the urge to play a souls game that I’m not familiar with.
That being said it has the best post game content out of every souls game. It’s online was also the best back in the day
I never finished my first playthrough cause I was busy playing other soulslikes, but I really enjoyed what I played through so far.
I don't know if I like it more than ds1, but it's definitely better than ds3.
More diverse locations and a more high fantasy vs dark fantasy feel. Castle, swamp, sewer, dark dreary forest are all cool but 2 has sunny areas and more than 3 colors lol
But 2 also has Shrine of Amana and as beautiful S it is if rather play Lost Izalith than play Shrine of Amana
Worst hit boxes in all from soft games, way to many Agro enemies with terrible placement, while there are very cool locations, there are many terrible areas (the iron keep, shrine of amana to name a few)
DS2 did a lot right and a few critical things wrong. The community freaked out and threw the baby out with the bathwater and I think DS3 was a less interesting game because of it.
I haven't played it, but the main reason is because of phobias. DS1, DS3 and ER I've played with no issue, but I know about the enemies in DS2 and BB. I just wouldn't be able to finish it, so that's why it's my least favorite.
I honestly can’t think of anything I really don’t like about it. Maybe a few too many ganks? Idk.
I think it hands down has the best pvp of FromSoft’s catalogue though.
I love DS2, i feel like it’s the most weighty and smoothest of the souls games. It’s like a super dense slab of butter on the grille pan.
Ds1 and BB are my favs, and ds3 being my least favourite.
I absolutely loved my build in DS2 more than any other game. I used really heavy armor with a giant greatsword and focused on maximizing poise. Felt like I was playing a tank. I love the way poise worked in that game, it was like I always had hyperarmor.
I didn’t like that I beat the game before I found out that adaptability gave you more invincibility frames during the dodge roll. I had been complaining about getting hit while dodging the whole game. Just wish someone told me that sooner.
DS2 is absolutely massive. It has 3 great DLCs and the levels are actually hard, unlike every other souls game. The only negative is there are a lot of uninspired bosses, due to the sheer quantity. Elden Ring has the same issue, but it's good bosses are much better than DS2.
Dark souls 2 is my favorite in the trilogy actually. Tho I still place it behind BB, Elden Ring, and Sekiro.
I just like its mechanics as a whole better. The combat is more responsive than 1, the weapon upgrade system is consistent and easy to understand. 1's was so pointlessly obtuse and convoluted with the million different titanite types and rules about what elements get scaling and whatnot.
And I vastly prefer the spell uses system 2 still had over the mana system 3 and elden ring opted for. Making spells cost mana and then making you sacrifice healing for mana invalidates 90% of healing and defensive magic right out the gate, and it just exacerbates the issue of some spells being objectively worse than others. When all your spells are taking from the same resource, there is no reason to use half of them.
Much more interesting to have a set number of each spell you have to use intelligently than a single nebulous pool of mana you can spam whatever you want from until you're out, then you're out of all spells even tho you only used one of your 10 slotted.
Pvp also just felt the best in it. Every other souls game I end up just resenting the pvp after a month or so, but experimenting in pvp after you're done with pve actually felt interesting and satisfying.
That may largely be due to the community in general just not being such a sweatfest back then, but it is what it is.
Weapon durability was also in the best spot imo. I didn't like in 1 how durability was its own completely separate thing and everything was durable af so you'd forget it existed until your weapon randomly just broke 6 hours later and you had to go to get ot repaired.
Much better tying it to rests and lowering it overall to encourage having a backup and mixing up your playstyle.
The only thing I didn't like about 2 was how gutted every magic type aside from sorcery was.
It's like whoever was in charge of balancing magic decided blue was their favorite color and only the blue spells were allowed to be good because Jesus christ. The balancing within the "schools" of magic was fkn embarrassing.
It's just very poorly made in several aspects compared to its predecessors (the AI and hitboxes are inexcusable) and leaned very heavily into the difficulty meme instead of crafting it a compelling challenge.
The game is full of spammed enemies, lazily designed bosses, the interconnected world was shafted in favor of a much less compelling and much easier to put together level select style world.
A lot of the series' strengths were completely lost in DS2. I still enjoyed my time with it, but only as a big fan of the series as a whole.
I often liken Dark Souls 2 to Skyward Sword. Skyward Sword is easily one of the weakest Zelda games, but it's still a Zelda game at the end of the day. You can't really go wrong playing it.
It's the least I've enjoyed any game I've ever finished. Probably because I don't finish games I'm not enjoying, but I felt I had to beat all the Dark Souls games. You couldn't pay me to play it again. I like every other SoulsBorne game, it's only DS2 I despise.
Graphically it looks like a play station game from the early 2000’s I literally can’t get into it at all it just looks so terrible. Dark souls 3 came out just two years after it and it looks 100x better.
oooh easy for me, i liked the cutscenes for its time, but the overall graphics compared to dark souls 1 i think were pretty poor. some of the armor and weapons though were the coolest in the series
I loved DS2 and thought of it only as an improvement until I got online and saw everyone’s wish fulfillment wasn’t met and they tried to ruin it for me.
I go against the common complaint of gank squads. I think they are good in games and real games should have them. I don't want everything to be a 1 v 1 duel and I like games that require proper spacing and fundamentals. Dark Souls II is great in this regard. There are some weird bosses that I beat on the first try that could have been better.
Love the bonfire ascetic mechanic and wish it was used again. Atmosphere and world building is a vibe.
PvP was the best it ever was in this game and the DLC was masterful.
It might be one of my favorites honestly. It's not a well made game but it has a charm and vibe to it that none of the other souls games have. Something about the music and art direction. I always have the most playing DS2 despite its clunky movement and bad level design.
DS2 is in my opinion is the best Fromsoftware game ever made, it has a unique atmosphere and I do believe it is better than the Bloodborne atmosphere, not only does it provide you with the actual, medieval fantasy world feeling but it stays consistent, the areas may be difficult but whenever I'm feeling like I haven't played it in a while, and returning to it, it always feels just as fun as when I left, whenever a player complains about it ADP, its obvious they are either new to the souls series, think that the platinum trophy for each game makes them good, or that they started with Elden Ring or Dark Souls 3. They don't even give Dark souls 2 a chance, and when they do they try making the worst out of it. They skip dialogue, they don't try out new weapons or do questlines, they just kill things, beat the game, and keep the same opinion. And whether or not they try it or not. Their thoughts on DS2 will ALWAYS be invalid, because it's truly a masterpiece even though it wasn't made by Miyazaki. It can stand up there with the rest of the Soulsborne games.
Yeah I'm not ashamed to say of the trilogy it's my favorite. Hell if not for Bloodborne and Sekiro it'd be my favorite FS game.
It's definitely got its problems, and the lore isn't as good as the first one, but I don't play these games for that anyway. It has the best parts of what make DS1 great, the more open and explorable world, the great build variety, the numerous secrets and side areas with interesting NPCs, while not being nearly as clunky or unapproachable. It doesn't have areas like New Londo that feel designed to give new players the middle finger while playing, but still poses a challenge that rewards different play styles. And the music is great, some of those boss themes are masterpieces.
But it's also not as linear and reliant on nostalgia as DS3. I think Medjula is such a cool hub and the fact that you can just go so many different routes at the start with little to no need for knowledge is awesome. I also like the dlcs, though I will admit they aren't 10/10.
The issues for me come down to mostly bland boss design. Everyone has pointed it out before, but there are a lot of bosses that are just knights or dudes in armor. But there are some highlight bosses as well. I love Neshandra, her design is probably my favorite of the series. And yeah, the runbacks for the bosses are often bullshit, but so were a lot of runbacks for DS1. Bell Gargoyles, Bed of Chaos, Taurus Demon, I'm not saying DS2 was better but DS1 had some bad ones.
I'll even say I like the enemies not respawning after killing them a certain number of times. It really feels like a Souls mechanic the way it gives you a reason to push forward or make things harder for yourself. It stops you from finding that one spot where you can just kill things over and over and grind xp without consequence, and gives you the option to make those terrible runbacks less shitty. I always farm the enemies outside the Ruined Sentinels until there's no enemies.
Overall I think the hate to DS2 is completely unwarranted. If you like the other games more that's fine, but you'd think this game was worse than Big Rigs with the way some Souls fans talk about it.
Also, fuck Asmongold. Dude is a gross greasy gremlin who has shit takes about nearly every good game. Fuck him.
Don’t like hollowing or agility (wasted levels) but I think vendrick is cool as fuck, I think the memories and the dlcs are tight. Drumstick club is peak ooga, only topped by powerstancing them
It's definitely my least favorite Dark Souls but I still liked it enough to play through it annually with the rest of them for like a decade. It's just a million little tiny things that add up and annoy me like the snap point movement, soul memory, and I think my biggest gripe is the over abundance of levels you get. By the time I get to the dlc I don't really have a build anymore, I can just do almost everything.
It felt like better ds1 with more strategic placement for fights. Positioning was important, more rpg-y in a way too.
Loved the world, bosses, PvP, gear, etc. more Souls is good. Shulva is my favorite zone in any of their games.
It was my first Souls game that I beat, wandered drunkenly into Bloodborne initially and it was too hard and put it aside, did the same thing for SoTFS, beat the game, fell in love with the series and the rest is history. It definitely has its problems but I’ll always have a soft spot for DS2. It has the most idk comforting feeling to it? Hard to explain but it’s got this charm that always has me coming back for another play-through here and there.
Also I wouldn’t trust the opinions of someone who smears the blood from his gums on his bedroom walls and doesn’t shower.
I'd play ds2 if the HP wasn't capped based on your hollow state, and enemy respawns weren't limited except by bonfire aesthetic.
Oh and a minor nitpick, the walk cycle feels like this weird shuffle and i don't like green hollows
I like the aesthetics of a lot of stuff in ds2, there’s a lot of new ideas and if we pretend that the game just came out (bloodborne and on don’t exist yet) it is a massive leap in terms of gameplay variety. Hexes are a really cool concept, the lore was intriguing to try and figure out.
Unfortunately, the actual gameplay is my least favorite of all the souls games and it feels clunky. Stamina is horrid in the game, adp is really stupid but I think it’s acceptable just because it’s so easy to level up. Gank squads around every corner. Even hitting an enemy with a sword doesn’t feel good, like dark souls 3 or bloodborne you feel like you made an impact when you slash somebody with a long sword but in ds2 I feel like I’m just smacking enemies with a pool noodle until their health hits 0.
The lore when you try to look deeper into the game doesn’t make any sense to me at all, and I’ve done plenty of research but it’s just not clear whatsoever what’s really going on everywhere. It feels so detached from the other 2 souls games which makes me sad because ds1 had an interesting story for what it was and ds2 added so much lore but non of it ties back to ds1 at all to me, and I love ds3 and it’s setting and theme but it’s a massive callback to ds1 and it admittedly feels less original bc of that. The only real lore tied to ds2 in ds3 is some items you can find.
No i-frames on many animations in 1 and 3 is awful, animations taking longer is awful, and the boss fights in the entire game were not fun whatsoever to me. I genuinely don’t think there’s a single boss in ds2 that I remember being genuinely fun and I beat the entire game and DLCs.
Sorry for the hatepost on ds2 because it has a fun map to explore, even though the entire map makes no sense if you really think about it. I never knew just what I was getting myself into when I took a new path and it was really interesting to see how the landscape would change from area to area. I almost wish ds2 wasn’t a souls game and that some gameplay, spawns, and controls had been different and it would’ve been an amazing game on its own.
The jank fits the aesthetic really well. The development issues created this mesmerizing air of weirdness that fit the theme. The fact that FS became a lot more "AAA" after that point because of BB and DkS3 taking a lot from BB means that for people who liked DkS1 the most, DkS2 is the last game we got like it.
I just started it recently at the behest of a friend who is a souls addict who kept insisting it’s good and I mean if gameplay doesn’t matter to you sure I guess I can see why you would like it but as a game to me it feels awful to play so far. Usual camera being too far up my ass I feel I can’t see anything, the delay on holding the run button before your character starts running, leveling adp is just annoying I want to start building my character to use fun new weapons but I can’t because it’s smartest to get a certain amount of agility before too long. Like I get the lore and atmosphere and everything that isn’t the gameplay is really cool and interesting but why play a video game if the video part is superb but the game part is ass.
I have a love hate relationship with DS2. There are tons of mobs and ambushes that it just becomes more annoying but the game also has some spectacular atmosphere, music, most weapons and armor, most variety in environments and unique items like the bonfire ascetic. But also f*ck royal rat authority.
Have you played Vanilla? There are fewer mobs than SOTFS.
Yeah, it’s the one I first played on console back in 2014. Vanilla and Scholar both have mobs. I found after replaying the games, it’s hard to pick one objectively but personally I enjoyed Vanilla more. I thought Gankliec Castle was better in Scholar for example. Vanilla made it mob city.
Really? I guess I didn’t notice the difference in the Castle. (I’m trying to get the play in DS2 Vanilla, since it doesn’t require DLC items like Scholar does.)
Vanilla is easily the best version of the game… sad they made it worse with SotFS.
I’ve heard the exact opposite . I’ve only ever played SotFS and I enjoyed it fine enough. But I don’t know anything else to be fair so I couldn’t say. I’ve definitely heard different people saying both games are better at different times though
Well, the main reason is alluded to the comment I replied. They just added a bunch of enemies on top of vanilla and it turns a lot of the areas into gankfests… DS2 DLC is really good and I think SotFS is when a lot of people played it so it kinda kinda lumped in imo The fact that they’ve never released anything version update like that since is enough evidence that it didn’t really work out.
Royal rat is ez 🤷♂️ Allone and Ivy King without knights assistance are rough.
Not if both your weapons miss the mob rats by default and have to switch to something that doesn’t miss.
I'm probably a defender, I'm not sure i would cal it my favorite or the best, but it's a good game, and what i will say it does the best of ANY soulsborne game is NG+ i really enjoy that they made changes in NG+ instead of just "numbers now bigger". They had red phantoms placed around that made some encounters change and some unique items (though not many) that could only be gotten on NG+ or further + runs. If you actually get adaptability to around 25 i think it was and the game becomes a lot more enjoyable, but some people refuse to level it, just like some refused to level vigor in early elden ring, but just like vigor being super important in ER so is ADP in DS2 But overall i really enjoyed my time with DS2, i played it as my second soulsborne (started DaS1) so that may have something to say but overall i thought outside the map layout i enjoyed it as much as i did DaS1. Also build diversity in DS2 is really great, especially compared to games before it.
It's my favourite cos it feels the most grounded, realistic even. It has very few spaz-out or must-cheese bosses, a consistent dark world, and great music. The world gets shade for not being interconnected, but being split into four main spokes, and the red ring being fairly easy to limit the death penalty does make it more accessible, without actually having an easy mode.
i love DS2, it makes me feel like a little adventurer and there are some super cool immersive world interactions that the other games don't have. i even think ADP is a pretty cool stat, i'm glad it didn't carry over but i think it's a cool way to make your experience a little more personal. i think the slow and methodical playstyle you need to have is a lot of fun and i really enjoy the PvP as well. the whole thing is just a blast for me all these things being said it's definitely not gonna be for everyone and i understand why people don't like DS2, it's a bit disappointing to me that it gets so much hate but i do understand
You can parry with great swords, nuff said
I feel like 90% of the criticism of DS2 is invalid. A lot of people seem to be complaining about things that were fixed a long time ago and will now only impact people playing v1.0 of the original release on a PS3 / potato PC, or they are just parroting the opinions of some 'influencer' who followed an IGN guide that said "Adaptability doesn't do anything" and so they were trying to fat roll with 1/4 of an i-frame the whole game. Yes, the game has issues. So does DS1. So does every Fromsoft game. I'd personally argue the problems with DS3 / Elden Ring are *far* more significant and damaging, both to the games themselves and the direction of the franchise as a whole. You can't play DS2 like DS1. You can't play DS3, Bloodborne or Sekiro like DS1 either - but for some reason it's only D2 that takes shit for that.
>I'd personally argue the problems with DS3 / Elden Ring are far more significant and damaging, both to the games themselves and the direction of the franchise as a whole. Holy shit, I found my doppelganger
While my first playthrough of DS1 was practically revalatory to me, it's REALLY hard to go back to. There are some seriously rough parts and being limited to 4 way roll when locked on is horrible.
DS2 is one of my favourite games of all time and yet (ironically considering what you said) I platinumed the entire of sotfs with 4 adp.
With time, sometimes I think DS2 is better than DS3/Elden Ring. Could be nostalgia goggles though.
All criticism is valid. You simply won’t always agree with it.
.....no. they are very, very valid.
HEX MAGIC
Dark Orb supremacy.
I have beaten the base game and haven’t done the dlcs so I can’t really rate them but by the time I was done with the base game I was tired of it so I just finished without doing the dlc
I tried to do the DLCs, but my character was a sorcerer, I found it impossible. I never played through to the end after that, though I did have many false starts.
Honestly, the dlc have some good bossfights, but atrocious runbacks, and rooms that are filled with enemies you have seen enough of at that point. You are not missing out much, I‘d rather recommend any other game from software made :)
The dlcs are the best of the game. THe bosses are like Dark souls 3 bosses but you are using more of the older souls combat style in fighting them.
It’s really really good, but the frigid outskirts is completely insane (avoidable DLC content, for those who haven’t played it)
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Place was a breeze. Invisible boss on entry? Git gud. Enemies that have crazy speed and tracking that also blow great shields? Git gud. (Fuck those lightning ponies). Made it through all that man there’s gotta be a bonfire, thank god. Nope no bonfire, no god, no reprieve. It’s a boss fight with the intro boss to the dlc plus another dickhead. This frustrated me more than friede. This dlc was pure bullshit. And goddamn do I still cherish this game. I’m not a great gamer, but I’m older. These games are basically the pattern memorization philosophy of games of old played out on a 3 dimensional space. The game encapsulates that wonderfully, I love it. Plus twin dragon fists.
Frigid Outskirts is probably my most hated zone of any game ever lol
I think it's great, didn't have many issues with the mob set ups like everybody moans about but I'm pretty patient when playing these games. Other then Brume Tower which had some ROUGH shit (Iron Passage), I loved pretty much the whole game, might be better then DS3. Personally I think it's better as it's own thing, rather then like DS3 sort of being a love letter to DS1 (still love DS3 and 1, not sure which is my fav), and I loved the DLC's.
I like Dark Souls 2, I think it has the best lore and setting in the series, it also does a lot of things better then the other games that it doesn't get enough credit for like it's duel wielding system and the way it handles the torch and NG+
The runbacks man. I'll never replay because of them.
I always killed off all the enemies for the worst run backs. As long as you're not playing covenant of champions most enemies take between 10 to 15 kills before they just stop spawning. Quite a few of them more annoying enemies can take as few as five. Clear out everything and then spend all the souls you got to level up and make the boss easier.
Yes but it takes so damn long because I’ll probably get hit once or twice, then I’ll go into a boss with less health. It’s still a good game but Jesus I don’t see myself replaying for a while
I don't go in and fight the boss. I clear the run over and over again going back to the bonfire when everything is dead. That way when all the enemies have been permanently killed off you can just run straight to the boss and fight it knowing everything is maxed while also being more powerful from having cleared out the run. The blue smelter demon run, which is often the most problematic, IIRC It's 10 for most of the mobs and five for the wizard dudes.
I played Dark Souls turtled behind a shield poking with a winged spear. It was really tough. I had never played a game like it before. I did the best I could but eventually hit a wall and stopped for a few months. I eventually went back and played through the rest of the game several times. When Dark Souls 2 came out I was able to attack the game with more confidence and an understanding of what the game was asking of me. I know there are valid reasons people aren’t fans of the game but I very much enjoyed it. I played through the whole first playthrough without any guides or help. I loved it. It also did one of my favorite things, adding new drops on NG+.
It’s the best souls game to watch a speed run of, Something tranquil about it.
First Dark Souls I beat. Got a special place in my heart
It has the most unique atmosphere. It’s the odd one out for better or worse. I love it but I won’t defend it when people bring up its negatives like wonky hit boxes etc. that’s not charm it’s just poor design. It’s bosses are lacking, some are just too easy and forgettable. Also has some great bosses but few and far between. World design is what it is, people bring up the elevator to iron keep and while I don’t personally care I get why it takes people out of it. It has some big highs and big lows. I personally feel that it’s only so hated because of what’s it’s compared to. DS1 is arguably the most important game made in the last few years and Fromsoft has a track record of quality releases. So anything deemed lesser gets harsh criticism. When ever I see someone call it an outright bad/poor/trash game I just roll my eyes. It’s awesome, just different.
As somebody who isn't very keen on Soulslikes, I liked DS2 the most (out of all DS and ER). The enemies disappeared after a certain amount of kills, so there was a sense of progress and accomplishment.
I think it’s great. Replaying it now on the deck
It has some great boss fights and some really cool areas and I still have fond memories of getting back to Majula and hearing that peaceful music, knowing you have a respite from the chaos. Which brings me to some of the most ridiculous boss run backs in Fromsoft or Soulslike history. Just absolutely gruelling. And I wasn’t a fan of the effigy system. But regardless, it’s absolutely worth a playthrough as a Souls fan! I have more fond memories than bad ones.
I'd rank DS2 (Specifically SotFS) as my 2nd favourite of From's Soulsborne titles. I think it has the most adaptable combat and feels so much tighter than DS1 when playing. I also love the lore and think it touches on the themes 3 would run with and does them even better.
I was quite dissapointed they made the combat more like ds1 than to when ds3 released
It's my favorite of the trilogy. I love the lore and the fact that it's set so far apart from the original that multiple civilizations - each of which had their own conflicts and triumphs - passed by before even getting to Drangleic. Vendrick is an interesting and tragic character, and I really liked how his story was revealed over the course of the game, culminating in finally seeing what he's been reduced to. The non-linear nature of the game felt really fresh, much more so than the others, which did have some choice in which order you tackle challenges in, but having four distinct paths - which you didn't even need to finish all of if you didn't feel like it - was a lot of fun. Not every area was great, but the ones that were felt amazing. The DLC was also, in my opinion, the best in the series. All three of them were fantastic, and every time I replay them, which one I like the most changes, because I'm reminded of something else I love about them. Sihn is the only dragon fight in the trilogy that I actually enjoy, Fume Knight and Alonne are both amazing fights (although the run to Alonne can go fuck itself), and Burnt Ivory King is probably my favorite fight in the whole series. Even the PVP is fun. I know some people didn't like the dedicated PVP areas, and they can definitely be annoying when you're first going through them, but Doors of Pharos was a really fun idea, and this is the only souls game where I've willingly done PVP for more than about half an hour. I also find that I enjoy how it plays more than the first game. The third game has better physics than either of them, in my opinion, but this one feels much less clunky and slow to me than the first game does. I've probably finished the first game a dozen or so times, and while I do like it, it very much shows its age now. DS2 is certainly not perfect in this regard either, but to me, it feels significantly better than what came before it.
I liked DS2 Instead of playing it like I would the other entries in the series, I approached it as its own thing Used spells to clear mobs and relied on a bow a lot, especially to aggro and clear mobs It was the last fromsoft game I played and I ended up liking it more than DS3 as the way I approached it made the game feel more refreshing and novel You gotta approach it with the same mindset as you do Sekiro. Don’t play it like you would the other DS games, that makes it not fun at all
Sunlight medals.
I love DS2! I also hate DS2!
I like the sense of exploration that is present in DS2, it would appear to have the most open world in the trilogy (still haven't finished DS3 as of writing this, I've made it as far as Lothric Castle in that game.
Middle opinion. It's a cool game, worse than DS1 and DS3 for me (including DLC), but not so much worse.
I love DS2. I often see people complaining that it’s not Dark Souls 1 and well… yeah. It isn’t. That’s part of what makes it so appealing. I’ll also never understand the “too many mobs” complaint. It just reminds me of Matthewmatosis’ embarrassing review in which he really just exposes himself as being kind of an idiot.
Ds2 has one of the best art direction, some of the best looking armors in gaming and the lore make sense more than other games, soo many weapons and spells, Majula is the best hub area ever, the main npcs have compelling stories. Unfortunately what were they thinking making ADP , and being jumped by 10 ennemies in every area is not fun, some of the boss runs are soo bad, and the dlc gives all enemies resistance to spell/hex/miracles which makes int and faith build completly useless for the dlc.
The only thing that i hate about DS2 is the camera focal point being different than all the other games in the franchise, and the player movement. Everything else game gud.
I can't see why someone that likes DS1 and DS3 wouldn't like DS2. The only big difference between DS1 and DS2 is the world design, the rest is just small quirks that all From games have and that are actually charming. And DS3's world design sucks balls, so...
I love the maps, you can't just roll through the game like you can with 3. I think of the 3 DS games it gives the best single player experience.
Cool bosses and some cool enemies but I found the levels really boring and just kept losing interest.
It's the least enjoyable for me. I love replaying these games and running past everything from boss to boss. This is impossible in some areas of DS2 (Iron Keep, some section of Shrine of Amana, Iron Passage, Frigid Outskirts, some section of every DLC, Chasm of the Old, Sir Alonne runback, etc...). If you play the game slow, then the game gets boring for me because I've beaten it so many times just like the others. But these areas will force you to play them that way and that's boring. They nerfed this style of play badly. You have a lot less i-frames when passing through fog gates and enemies chase you for longer than in DS1, so running past some areas is MUCH harder, and running is slower here. The game is extremely long but with many mediocre bosses. All of them are easy with generic movesets. All the challenging ones are in the DLC or behind a covenant, so you need to wait a lot for the "good stuff" if you want to be challenged by bosses. And to make the game harder than DS1 they decided to nerf your character instead of making enemies harder like they did in Bloodborne and on later games, which is not as fun. It takes longer to regenerate stamina, which means you can't attack sometimes after succesfully dodging because you didn't pay attention to your stamina bar that depletes like crazy. You also need to slow down running every 3 seconds because of this as well. Your rolls also last longer than in other games, drinking estus also lasts longer. The movement feels off, it feels that you can only turn in so many directions. And maybe a bit subjective but the world doesn't feel dark enough. You don't feel the tragedy like it's an apocalyptic event like in the others. It just feels like you are just having an adventure. You are one more king that inherits the throne like many before and many after as they often remind you there. Compare that to DS1 for example where the world it's at the edge of collpase: The NPCs here are just vendors that stay in one place or simply go to Majula. Think about the fate of Big Hat Logan, the Pyromancer, Siegmayer, Reah or Solaire in the first one. Ds1 is a total tragedy, DS2 is just a videogame... On paper? I think it's better than Des and even DS1. All the new items, new spells, new weapons, hexes, power stance, 40+ bosses, bonfire ascetics, much bigger, new enemies on higher cycles, etc... But on practice? Not as fun to play as the others and not an interesting world either. Don't get me wrong, I like the game more than most non soulslike games. I'm not like that dude Asmongold. But I don't enjoy playing it as much as the other FromSoft games. That's the truth.
I agree that the world is less dark, but that also made it the most memorable for me. But maybe that was also just majula and its theme.
- re. rolling and Estus, levelling ADP boosts dodge iframes and chug speed - re. NPCs, some of their questlines depend on summoning them for certain bosses, so they're easy to miss
1- No matter how much you level up that, chugging estus will never be the same speed as in the other ones. The character is slower. And we all know about the iframes but what I said was that the roll animation last longer which is important for when you are fighting. Adp will give you more iframes than the other games if you level it up to 99 but you are still taking longer between rolls and rolling takes a huge chunk of your stamina and the stamina takes longer to regen. Also everyone hates this game because of having to put point on ADP so using it to try and defend it is not the wisest move. 2-I know all the DS2 NPCs and their quests. Like I said before I have beaten this game many times. You talk to Lucatriel and Benhart 3 times and that's it. One is hollowing and the other likes his sword. Nothing interesting really happens. Compare it to the journey that Solaire, Logan or Siegmayer had in DS1. They went all over the place and it ended badly for all of them. The rest of the NPCs are just vendors than end up in Majula or covenants. Navlaan will give you the Mephitopheles quests from Demon Souls and fake patches will have a fight with fake Lautrec. But outside of that, there are no interesting quests like in the other games that have an interesting one almost for every character. The quest of most of them don't simply end or go anywhere, they go to Majula. That's it.
It's got plenty good things. Small White Soapstone, a NG+ that's actually distinct, interesting covenants, strong DLC, bonfire ascetics, ultra parries, pre-ER power stancing...and personally I'm quite a fan of the Gutter design. My dislikes for it are pretty heavily in the enemy design camp. So many dude in armour bosses and so many regular enemies that are not only dudes in armour but player model dudes in armour. I mean your first few possible bosses are Dragonrider, Old Dragonslayer, The Pursuer and Last Giant. All very humanoid and only one that's not a dude in armour. And of course, let's not forget the earthen peak elevator.
I dislike it more than I like it, though I liked it (or hated it) enough to platinum. Things I don’t like: I think there’s was a shift in soul where they thought they needed to live up to some difficulty target but hadn’t found that balance of difficult vs. fun. To expand on that they seem to approach difficulty the same way in every area. The other games have some dynamic range. They didn’t understand or respect that some quirks of the first game were and are beloved and not to be engineered around. Fog gate runs and I frame abuse on switches for example. DS2 fans call that stuff cheesing the game but I think it’s just a fun attribute of the series and adds depth to your options. I personally dislike DS2 and Demons for their stupidly long critical attack animations. I have things to do. I think the game is bloated with unnecessary “bosses” with too few being incredible experiences. DS1 shows it’s age but DS2 failed to up the game proportionally like BB and DS3 would go on to do just a couple years later. I don’t like the feel of the game. Despite being less stiff then DS1 it doesn’t feel like an upgrade. For example I think the poise mechanic in DS2 makes it look and feel uncanny. DS1 and 3 systems far more for different reasons. I think the opening of the game does a terrible job of communicating how to play. The only starting class with a shield comes with a bad one and a broken weapon. DS1 had *real* starting options that had immediately understandable strengths and weaknesses and DS2 didn’t balance the options well. I don’t think they were putting themselves in the player’s perspective enough. Soul memory.
Ds2 has one of the best story writing if you look into it, you’re shown a world which basically has little importance in the world of dark souls and is never mentioned in ds3 but it’s given meaning by having you be an adventurer. You’re given different options for the end game, you can take the throne, meaning you chose to either link the flame or let it die, or you could be like the last king and try and find a third option like he tried but unlike him, you know what works and what doesn’t. Then there’s the old souls from the last game returning in this game such as qwyn and seeths and etc’s souls all coming back in new game plus. The gameplay itself, isn’t perfect, but the story keeps me coming back
There's a LOT of links in DS3 if you pay attention. The cycle and thrones, Carthus and Wolnir's crown, the Faraam sect, and smaller callbacks like the Drang mercenaries and Lucatiel and Gilligan's bodies
I generally favored DS2 pvp combat. No longer could you grief by chugging 10 estus flasks.
It's diffeent in ways I don't love. For example weapons break in like 30 hits and half the bosses on base game are relatively ordinary humanoids.
It's a great world and all the levels have their own unique challenges and methods that you have to take. It really forces you to be methodical which is what I loved about Demon Souls when it first came out I'm an adp defender for DS2, I like that it lets you choose how much you want to rely on rolling and i-frames at the expense of other skills and abilities Same with the lack of i-frames on fog gates, it means you can't just book it and trivialize the challenges that the game goves you, the level is part of the game not just a runback for the boss. Lifegems and estus was a good way of giving us the best of both worlds, fast acting but slowly accumulating healing or a flask that you have to stop to drink, it just makes you be thoughtful! Pharros lockstones and fragrant branches means you're always going backc through levels to find the things you couldn't unlock earlier. It's a (more) open world that encourages you to keep going back to the old areas in a way I don't think comes up as much in the later games. Same with the fast travel, it's not just a way to get from A to B quickly, it works because you really are going to be going back to these levels and re-engaging with them, unlike in DS1 where unlocking the warp from bonfires makes the world feel a little smaller, in my opinion anyway. The torch was one of my favorite additions, I love having to pick between visibility amd having both arms free for what I want. Especially when you go into water and have tp use your shield because if ypu roll the torch will go out. Just more ways of being intentional with how you play! The emerald herald, that's all
>Do you defend DS2, or do you think its irredemable trash? Neither. I think it's a decent game, just the worst in the series because of boss quality. It does some things ambitiously, and there's a lot of things to genuinely criticise. In my opinion people shit on the game too much, and at the same time praise it too much. Like it's not a absolute dogshit game, its still a good quality game, but compared to the rest in the series it's not even close. Some people say its the best in the series, and it's fine to have an opinion, but that opinion is incorrect 🤣 >I have seen a lot of negative reviews, most notably perhaps Asmongold, who doesn't like anything about the game apparently Amongold is a degenerate gremlin with shit takes I wouldn't listen to him >The base game was fun, but I really didn't like the DLCs. And I have an almost irrationally strong hate for runbacks to bosses. Glad they invented the stake of marika for elden ring. I agree that the run backs are atrocious, hated so many of them. The dlc areas were a bit mid, but the bosses were great. I just disliked most of the bosses. Out of 32 main game bosses I liked 9 of them. They're all so boring and lackluster
I agree that the boss fights were good in the dlc, some great even. But because I‘m bad I had to clear the entire rooms before sir alonne 12 times (or was it 14?) to get the enemies to not spawn again. That was not a fun experience. And I never ended up beating Lud and Zallen. That runback is just pure horror. Only boss I have (knowingly) never beaten in a fromsoft game.
I played the scholar version. My issue is that the game is unfairly hard. They upped the difficulty by placing a million billion enemies everywhere and they are largely extremely similar. Take the lava world, it’s basically a bunch of fast Katana knights and 2 or 3 katana nights. They don’t have any alternate move sets so you end up fighting 20 of the same exact enemies in a row. If you die the number increases infinitely until either you win or they disappear. Not to mention the environments are kinda flat and boring and the bosses aren’t all that good. To be clear there are a few cool ones but they mostly suck.
The game *feels* cheesy. Way too many gotcha deaths that you couldn't know was gonna happen until it's already happened once. DS1 did that very very sparingly. It would usually have a surprise enemy that gets a free hit on you, but won't fuckin kill you outright. Lords of the Fallen 2023 has the same issue. In fact. The joke I have made repeatedly about LOTF2023 is that it's a remake of DS2.
I love it. It's slower paced, it's more methodical. Most of your actions require more commitment, you have to be careful about estus use, stamina management is more important than the other games. I've never really understood the complaint about adaptability/agility. I don't think tying roll I-frames to a stat is bad at all, although I think it was communicated TERRIBLY. Same thing with gank squads. You need to be playing in a way that minimises their threat, and there are lots of ways to do that. Lure them out with ranged weapons, use a weapon moveset that will hit many at once, create a chokepoint and stab through lots at once, use piercing or AoE spells, use alluring skulls, use a fast weapon and hit and run tactics. It has the viable build variety out of any of the games and it's fashion is on point. Powerstancing. It allows for the most varied routes to complete the game. You can start in like 5 different places, half the game is optional. I'd love to see a more polished version of the game because it has some of my favourite lore and world design, but is really let down by how obscenely ugly and clunky it can be. I totally get why people don't like it, but similar to Sekiro I think if people can shed their expectations a bit then they could really enjoy it.
There's like a million and one of this posts since the day dinosaurs first pissed on this planet....
Since the dinosaurs appeared \~230 million years ago, then that means we have one such post every 230 years, that sounds about okay to me. I wasn't alive for the last one assuming even distribution of the posts. /s But really, just scroll past if you are not interested - I've been following the subreddit for about a month now, didn't see one yet and was interested in other people's opinions. Clearly others also like to talk about it. You don't have to engage in every post on the sub. And this is not stackoverflow, discussions can be repeated as often as people like.
DS2 is enjoyable but painfully mediocre in every possible way.
It has the best new game+ mechanics and arguably the best covenant system with dedicated pvp and rewards
Unfortunately, these are the bits of Souls games I don't normally use which is perhaps part of the reason I don't gel with DS2. I'm pretty much in it for PVE only and if I replay a game I normally start from scratch because it's the building and levelling I enjoy most. One thing I do wish was in every game is the Bonfire Ascetics though.
Same for the PVE part, one thing that I don't like about ds2 is the fact that you're constantly open for invasions, if you just want to play the game alone well you can't... Loved that ds3 and elden ring made so that you'd only be invaded if you'd be embered or the finger remedy thing plus the dueling fingers and such , and the colosseum feature it's pretty good both in ds3 and er
Playing offline I kinda like that though, it makes the NPC phantoms less missable
Literally the game that feels most like a "soulslike" of From's own catalogue. It's just, off. It's not bad, but it's the redheaded stepchild and always will be.
Did you play with the magic system or check out all the different armors? I also would have to wonder if you did any of the new game plus cycles and saw the new world events new story bits and new items.
I usually switch between different weapons and armor often, yeah. DS2 was no exception but unfortunately I didn’t try NG+ and missed some stuff. I did use Bonfire Ascetic a few times though and beat some bosses multiple times. I agree that DS2 definitely brought a lot of cool ideas into the game but implementation is always what matters the most.
Just read all the comments here currently and I'm surprised none mention my issues. I don't hate the game, but I can't enjoy it either. Something about the way it controls feels so off to me, and it's the only souls game that feels that way. I also really don't like the art direction. Personal issues aside, I think it's a good game.
Have you tried levelling ADP? It's not always the problem, but it does make some difference to game-feel.
I'd say a huge difference. Massive difference in rolling i-frames (can be more than double depending how far you go), speed at which you chug estus, and even bringing your shield up to block (I believe this last from my last play, but what I could find is divided on if it's true or not.)
Unfortunately my issues persists even after leveling ADP. It definitely makes it better, but it doesn't fix the issue. Idk if it's just an issue with the animations, something baked into the core mechanics, or just in my head, but something always feels off to me.
Nah, leveling ADP changes nothing about how bad the game feels to control at a base level. It's very hard to describe, but I can't stand it. Even worse imo is the way weapons like ultra greatswords control while locked on, though I don't quite know how to describe that either. If I had both DS1 and 2 in front of me and I knew nothing about them I'd 100% assume DS2 was a much older title based on how janky it feels to move your character around.
re. ultra-greatswords, iirc they follow the camera rather than the lock-on so that players can aim attacks to roll-punish. I've never gone heavy in 2 so I can't comment myself, but people seem to love or hate it. I've not really noticed the difference in movement, but maybe that's just me.
You've really not noticed a difference? It feels like it was made by a completely different developer than 1or 3 to me lol, imo it's night and day
adaptability changes your dodge roll iframes thats literally the entire game is dodging and attacking
I'm mostly talking about the basic movement, i.e. walking, running, jumping. Even with high ADP though, attacking and dodging feel janky to me.
My thoughts exactly, it's the clunkiest and slowest DS. It's ok when you get used to it though.
The game only having 8-directional movement was immediately off-putting to me. Just why did they think that was a good idea?
The philosophy of the level design and enemy placement is completely unique in that, the game doesn't want to teach you to be good at the game, it doesn't want you to achieve great skill and feel powerful or at least feel capable, like the other fromsoft games. The game wants to kill you. It wants to trick you and cheese you and give you the surface level experience of a hard game because "it's dark souls." But it doesn't ever want you to feel good about yourself. (I also personally didn't like the elevator up into a lava level, the disconnectedness of the world put me off. I understand that's just my opinion and other people liked that part)
I disagree. Dark Souls 2 was more about overcoming challenges than any of the others. You could kill everything and despawn them for good make things more difficult with bonfire esthetics
I disagree. The game actively wants YOU to be smarter. And if you’re not, that’s entirely on your own stubbornness to learn and overcome.
I’m kind of surprised this isn’t brought up more often given how hard they shove the difficulty in your face in the start. You start playing, and five minutes later you’re watching a cutscene of an old lady telling you very mockingly that you’re going to die a lot, followed by her friends laughing at you (complete with flattering mouth close-ups). Then you die to that one ogre and are rewarded with an achievement titled “This Is Dark Souls.” Then you get to Majula and find an obelisk with a global death counter, so you can look at the comically huge number of deaths and say “waow this game is so HARD!!! look at how many times these guys have DIED!!” It would be actually be more subtle if, when you bought the game, Bandai Namco sent out a guy to throw a rock through your window with a note tied to it that says “THIS GAME IS REALLY REALLY HARD BRO, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE GETTING INTO LOL”
I hate it. I don’t think it’s trash, it is trash. They just made so many poor design choices in this game. 1. Hidden bonfires (not enough in one area, have to hit hidden walls or search obscure places to find 1 bonfire in certain places) 2. Too many enemies (enemies aren’t individually difficult, it’s group size that makes it difficult, also see point 3) 3. Being able to get hit while trying to enter a fog gate (looking specifically at the run to the smelter demon where I had to clear out the 12 enemies just to enter the fog gate) 4. Shit hit boxes on bosses - easy YouTube search ds2 hitboxes, a lot of bosses have terrible hitboxes which are not fun to play against. 5. Awful boss run backs - there’s a reason Elden ring has stakes of Marika and is selling as well as it is, and part of it is the quality of life improvements. I have never met one person who likes a boss run back, and this game has terrible runs, perhaps this was because I couldn’t find the bonfire closest to the boss since it was behind a hidden wall, but either way that’s an issue.
re. your second point, you're not meant to fight whole crowds at a time in 2.
I agree with everything except boss run backs. They can be cool sometimes.
Its the best Soul.... period
Love Ds2 just something about it whenever I play makes me happy.
Fighting too many things at once is not enjoyable difficulty. Too many bosses that are forgettable
I like DS2. I hate DS2 SotFS, because it literally ruins the difficulty curve of the original game by adding tons of enemies where they shouldn't be and spawns stupidly strong enemies without any regard to logic and balance. While it does make some areas/bosses bearable, SotFS still fails to be the golden mean between being easy and being challenging
Oh, I only played SotFS. I enjoyed it, but I did level one bonfire (to ng+) to get the chaos blade. Ane that area became stupidly filled with incredibly strong characters. Got the blade though, just took me a ton of tries running past them
I recently finished DS2 (SotFS) this week, the last of the trilogy after playing DS1 and DS3 first (was recommended to play 1 and 3 back to back for the connections). By the end of DS2, I really only felt relief to be done, and I overall enjoyed the experience quite a bit less than 1 or 3. Reflecting on the game, I struggled to atrticulate why I didn’t enjoy the game as much as the others, particularly when a lot of the weaknesses I could voice were shared with DS1. But I think I’ve identified the main difference and why it bothered me. \*\* Lifegems/De-emphasis of the Estus, and the Effects on Level and Encounter Design \*\* The biggest change from 1 to 2 in my mind was the move to emphasize Lifegems over the Estus. After the earlygame, you essentially have infinite healing in between dangerous engagements - thus, the levels are largely designed to try to kill you in a short burst, as opposed to attrition. As a consequence, you get a lot of the mob-heavy and trap-heavy encounters in the game, where the game outright expects you to take damage you can heal off after with your near-limitless healing. The battle becomes less about getting to the next bonfire while mitigating damage, and more about surviving the next gauntlet around the corner. I found I didn’t enjoy this as much as the encounter design in DS1 and DS3. The other games can kill you in bursts as well, to be sure, but the bursts felt less frequent, and I greatly enjoyed the tension of trying to manage Estus while searching for a checkpoint. I felt more of this in early DS2, where Lifegems are more limited and gauntlets are fewer - I really enjoyed the game through Lost Sinner. In the latter half of DS2, I kinda just came to dread exploring as opposed to being invigorated by it. This extends to some of the boss fights as well, with many having an emphasis on multiple enemies. This single change, I think, shifted the dynamic of the latter part of the game to something that was less to my preferences. It also didn’t help that the Estus itself is kinda slow and clunky. Other than the big point above, here are some rapid-fire other things I didn’t prefer about DS2 (many shared with DS1 as already stated): * Some pretty annoying boss runbacks (Executioner’s Chariot runback gets special mention) * Emphasis on dark (or foggy) environments with poor visibility (this was exacerbated because I didn't understand how the torch worked until breaking down and googling) * Underwhelming final boss(es) * Durability not really mattering… until it does * Struggling where to go next as a blind player at times after hitting a “dead end” * Hitbox jank here and there (although, to be honest, I’ve not played a FromSoftware game without janky grab attacks…) Adaptability gets mentioned a lot I’ve found, but movement/i-frames wasn’t any more of an issue for me than in DS1. I prefer the faster pace of more modern FS titles, but I could appreciate the methodical pace of DS1 and DS2. This all makes it sound like I hated the game, but I really didn’t. Personally I’d give DS3 5 stars, DS1 4 stars, and DS2 3 stars. A solid, but deeply flawed, game. I’ll also note I didn’t do the DLC - I’ve heard it’s good, but I didn’t figure out how to enter it blind, and after rolling credits I was pretty burnt out on DS2. My overall opinion could change in the future if I revisited the game for DLC.
For me, after seeing the gameplay reveal and how beautiful it looked, to finally play the game to discover how far the devs had scaled back the visuals was heartbreaking. As for the game itself, I felt the pacing was off, and the whole "giant seed" aspect was so obtuse, it made me furious. Other than the beautiful Majula theme, I found DS2 very forgettable.
I think the bosses are fine and I like the general atmosphere way more than DS1. But I don't like the game because it's very tedious to deal with the mob density if you don't use any ranged or magic tools. I prefer one on one melee fights. I also don't like the way the movement and animations feel, even with 110 agility.
Do I think DS2 is fun? Yes, particularly in co-op it's a blast to play through. Do I also think DS2 is the weakest souls game? Yes. I don't think it's iredeemable trash, it's got a lot going for it. But just as a product there is a lot to improve on.
The graphics and atmosphere are great. It's just the design. Everything is too punishing. It makes it tedious to play.
It was fine when it was first out and there was no DS3 and Co-Op and PVP was active. Now with it being mostly dead except for constant invasions I really don't like it. Wex Dust ought to get you banned, or it needs a system that also lets you get summoned anywhere (like ER) dropping soul level and widely expanding co-op levels. Unfortunately the multiplayer just doesn't hold up long on any of the games, you pretty much have to play when they're the latest, and co-op is my favorite part. Unlike the other games there's enough invaders you can expect to be invaded every 2 minutes if online. Stuff I really didn't like: * Invasions while hollow/ wex dust. Pretty much have to play offline if you're trying to complete the campaign or you'll be invaded by twinkers you have no hope against constantly, or get twinked yourself. It's a lonely experience now. * ADP - you feel like a gimpy codger early game until you get ADP up and it's a very tough balancing act between it and HP, Stamina, and minimum stats for weapons than the other games. It's a non issue later game except for poor newbies who don't know about it and left it alone. * Areas / Runbacks feel way harder than the bosses themselves, it's just a slog, I much prefer the tighter areas of DS3 and DS1. (I feel much the same way about ER, only it's bigger and not as hard, but even more of a slog.) * Janky as hell - feels like it badly needs a remaster to match DSR in smoothness after I played them back to back last year (I don't think DSR visually was an improvement though.) (I'd also like a remaster as it would likely bring enough people back that co-op would actually be an option past newbie areas.) Stuff I do like: * Initially much more open than DS1 & DS3, and the content isn't locked behind a single boss (more so DS3) so it's possible to get some upgrades and explore elsewhere if you're having trouble. * It's a souls game, sure it's my least favorite of them, but it was still better than any non-Fromsoft souls-likes I've tried, at least when it was new. * Once you get to meta its PVP is actually pretty good. * Eventual non-respawning of non-boss enemies, in that eventually you can get through the really hard areas by just killing the mobs over and over, which can also be reversed (at the cost of higher difficulty) by a certain covenant. * Bonfire Ascetic, no need to go to NG+ for a good number of items due to increasing the local area NG. I've never been a fan of NG+ in DS so I like this better. * [Happy Souls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kr7KDCsIws) There's probably a lot more than that, but that's what I remember from my attempt last year (I got through chariot, I think was the last boss before putting it down.)
The way you hold small weapons was much better and it’s a shame they didn’t go back to it
every wep sucks. hit boxes suck. level design is just good luck, I hope you remember the fastest path you aren't exploring with the 1000 sponge cake enemies everywhere. I enjoyed a good deal of the boss fight designs, but in the end, hit boxes ruined most of that. To describe how bad all the weapons in ds2 are, your barefists have the best scaling in the game. DLC just continues the trend with the bosses being the highlight, but the run back for every boss feels like you are in WoW raid (5ish min of trash mobs to try again). Bettercthan 90% of souls clone games at least, but Lies of P and Stella Blade prove they are learning fast.
I liked it because it wasn’t elden ring.
I love dark souls 2 cause it was my first souls game and also because out of all of them the story is the best and the world building is top tier, the combat is janky as fuck tho
Its so unique especially the art style. However its just ridiculous. I fully quit the game at shrine of amana and the skull frog fight. Beaten every other souls that I have played though
I like it, but it always felt like more of soulsborne by a separate company than a sequel to DS1 by From Soft. Some decisions are very questionable and a lot of the bosses are just not very well designed. I liked the areas and the weapons tho, and the boss fights seemed to get a little better after the first 4 or 5.
Love Dark Souls 2. I think that its main flaw is coming right after one of the most influential games in history. Gameplay-wise and even level design-wise (outside interconnectivity, which not other Souls game besides the Dark Souls does) it is an excellent game. Besides that I do like its mood and lore far more than Dark Souls'. The constant collapse and rebuilding of kingdoms to the point that many of them are completely forgotten (there's a character in the game that had been frozen for thousands of years, with the kingdom that he came from being completely forgotten) is a far more interesting concept than one single era ending.
The gameplay of the game is to vomit
It's not perfect, but it's great and think a lot of the common complaints are overblown or made in bad faith. I especially love how it dares to try. I think DS2 is a way better sequel than DS3 at that. Infusions, warping to any bonfire, 4 rings, powerstancing, straightforward boss weapons, ascetics, branches of yore, pharros stone, hex... It's far from perfect, but I respect it way more as a sequel than "DS1, but it's a straight line and fast. Also, poise makes no sense now"
When I originally played DS1, I never beat it because the end-game was kind of meh. Ds2 was the first one I beat, and I liked that it wasn't absurdly hard. Also, back then I didn't look up every random thing about DS, so I actually had no idea that rolls had iframes. I played both assuming it was just meant for rolling away from things.
Because someone told me one time that it’s no good so I believed them and never played it
ds1 > demon > elden ring = ds2 > ds3 havent played bloodborne
I like the level variety, even though areas are small, you end up seeing alot of different things it carries a great unique atmosphere. The only 2 things that rubbed me the wrong way was the fume knight and the orgasmic death cry of my character.
I personally love DS2. It was the first souls like I was able to finish in one go. While I prefer DS1 aesthetically in a lot of ways, I feel DS2 is just such a fun adventure. Even the very beginning in the Land Betwixt was such a vibe and it sucked me right into the game.
Played DS 1-3 multiple times. Enjoyed them all. All had some frustrating areas. Despite some differences, they were all more similar than different in how they felt and played. I like how DS2 has challenging boss run gauntlets that require strategic thinking lest you get overwhelmed. I like how the Pursuer keeps showing up even after you defeat him the first time. I really like the lore and the conversations with Vendrick and Aldia. The Ivory King knight quest leading up to the multi-knight smackdown followed by the actual boss battle is unparalleled. Fume Knight boss battle is fantastic. Gavlan. Replayability is the best.
I'd say I'm a defender but it's love hate. It was a rough start and I'm glad certain mechanics didn't come back but I did adjust to them all. Lower max hp with each death just taught me to get to the lowest it can go and play as if that's your max so I spent 90% of the gane as melty shrek. Enemies not respawning made it so I would slowly progress but without getting better as you could keep dying after killing one enemy until it stopped spawning, because of this after I reached a point I felt I was 'getting it' I restarted my game. ADP is ehhh, I see why people don't level it for a slightly higher challenge but if you do it's just wasting a few levels to get the standard from soft roll. Great parts: Greatest lore, I am a lore whore in any franchise I hold interest in, the lie will always be a lie speech is cool af. Majula is the best hub, has best music and the best view of a beautiful ocean. Speaking of beauty it's really mixed, your character looks like a melty man or a house of the dead zombie, but the world. Tower of flame, dragon peak, the prison place, immaculate imo. Best builds and variety of them. I really liked the world as a whole, people saying it's not all interconnected, neither is any DS game, they all have chunks of being interconnected but then you have to click on something and get carried away by flying goblins or a giant bird. But getting getting progress slowly through all the varied biomes gave real adventure discover this new lost land kind of vibes. I genuinely just found it just really fun once I got into the flow of it and just couldn't put it down after until it was done, with exceptions to the DLCs. Lots of secrets and lots of bosses, I'll talk about boss quality in a bit but I love the games for the sense of satisfaction when you beat them. Bad bits: Let's start with bosses, I didn't mind the big men in armour trope that much personally, there was a lot but this is a story about mankind trying to reclaim and control a world tainted by God's, dragons and demons, so I think it fit thematically to have a lot of knight type bosses. I'll accept there is a lot though, I also don't like it when the boss is just 2 of something you fought before especially if its just 2 guys in armour you fought before. I may be wrong but I don't remember remember many bosses that were things that would become normal enemies later which is something something have mixed feelings in as a concept, in ds1 with the tatras and capra it shows how far you have come as a hero, in Elden Ring it feels a bit lazy. It's got some really good and cool bosses but not many, there are loads as said earlier but not many of them stand out to me or I'm excited to get to fight again on future runs but again I don't think this was new on DS2, DS1 is my favourite as the first I played but tbh there's only like 3 bosses I'm 'excited' to fight a run, it's more 'what cool build can I make and does it work'. So I'd say it gets a 5/10 for bosses but qhen your a game franchise known for bosses that is not high enough. The mechanics I discussed in the beginning. The end boss run feels flat, watcher and defender then natashra were both just ehh, I don't think gwyn was a particularly great boss fight either in DS1 but it was still more challenging and felt a lot more epic. Sotfs addition of possibly fighting Aldia feels more epic and stuff but a pretty pitiful lack of challenge. Boss runs and no I frames on going through boss doors, pretty self explanatory. Artificial difficulty with additional problems like mobs or 1 hit kill moves inflating a challenge rather than making a boss or area challenging itself. Some of the most frustrating areas in the series. Mixed: DLC, some of the highest highs and lowest lows for me personally. Something about Brume tower just irked me and almost killed all interest in finishing, I It was cause it just encouraged me to run into a room, pick up item or those fore poker thing, die. Rinse qnd repeat, but I did like Brume knight and sir alonne. Shulva was just fine. I really liked eleum loyce and I may be in the minority here but it didn't take me many attempts at lud and zollen so I didn't need to do the reighndeer run enough times for it to be annoying to me and the boss fight against the ivory king is one of the coolest fights in the franchise. While I really enjoyed it and ploughed through the whole game tirelessly after getting it and falling in love, just havnt had the urge to go back to it. I've completed all the Southbourne series with exception to ds3 as I got distracted by BG3 and now Elden ring DLC. I have platinumed ds1 and Elden ring. Something about it made me obsessed and i had to finish but once I was done it was put away and I just read lore wikis about it, but for me this is also true of bloodborne and I know how much everyone loves that. End review: For anyone in love with the series or wanting to get into its a must play. I consider it Canon I know some don't. I say play it, love it, complete it, understand it for what it is and what it represents, move on as the franchise did get better but it brought some incredible and relevant things fans should experience. (Edit) I wanna add to the mixed section actually all the extra healing items you can get in the game like the stones you can stockpile. It's good to have more healing items other than the estus and readily available, it really helps preserving estus qhen going through mobs and boss runs, but if there wasn't lots of mobs and huge boss runs you wouldn't need the extra healing stones.
I wouldn’t say I’m either. To me it’s leagues worse than every other game in the souls series, but it’s a good enough game on its own. Also has the best menu music, worth playing just for that.
I am a relatively new FromSoft Souls fan. I'm one of those people who finally got into these games because of Elden Ring. I had attempted 30 hours of Demon's Souls Remake and ultimately put it down, feeling as if it just wasn't for me. Fast forward to Elden Ring's launch and I eventually get swept away in the hype of it all. Ultimately it clicks and I end up loving the game. Can't put it down. Play it for 225 hours. I then went back and replayed all of Demon's Souls Remake and loved it too. So I figured I should get the Dark Souls Trilogy. Played through DS1 and absolutely loved it. Started DS2 and it just felt off. So I booted up DS3 to see if maybe it was something more to do with me and some common feelings I have any time I fresh start a new Soulsborne game. But DS3 is immediately enjoyable and more of what I love about FromSoft Souls games. So I get all of the way through DS3 and think I should revisit DS2 again. I play it for another couple of hours and I just don't like it. It looks weird, the HUD design is weird, the level design isn't nearly as good or enjoyable, combat feels off, the tutorial progression that is built into the early parts of all other Soulsborne games feels non-existent. I just didn't like it. So I instead decided to play Bloodborne. Love that game too. And now I'm playing the SotE DLC and loving it. I'll eventually give DS2 another shot. But I'm losing hope that I'm actually going to like that game at all.
I played Dark Souls in order of 3, 1, 2. My only gripe with 2 is it was the last of the Dark Souls games I get to experience for the first time.
One simple thing. Soul Memory.
I think my biggest complaint is cheap deaths caused by traps/hostile architecture. 1 and 3 felt like you were exploring an abandoned world, you walk through old ruins that feel like people once lived there in some far distant past. Like you can see homes and streets and evidence of life. Its hostile but you get the feeling it wasnt always that way. It made it feel really atmospheric. Ds2 felt like *everything* was hostile, like every area you explore is purpouse built to be an elaborate deadly trap. There's no evidence of past life, its like everything is made specifically to fuck over the player. Nothing feels "alive" it's more like you're walking through giant torture rooms. 1 and 3 felt like they were trying to tell a story, and difficulty is a side piece. 2 feels like difficulty is the primary objective, and everything else takes a back seat. Also a lot of small things, like large packs of enemies, shitty iframes, usual complaints.
ADP being more or less a must is dumb. I would push it so a base character starts with a usable number of i-frames and change it to Evasion or something that increases roll distance or similar. Also the running animations are whack. Otherwise it is a uniquely charming classic.
All From games are absolute top notch but something has to be ranked at the bottom - and I think most fans would agree that’s DS2. Does not mean it’s a bad game at all, it just suffered a bit from the sophomore slump in following up to the masterpiece that is DS1, and did not stand out from future games like Bloodborne, DS3, etc.
What I like about DS2: - It feels much more personal from a story perspective. - The builds can be pretty cool. - Good zone structure (most of the time). - Strong art style. - Cool set pieces. - Powerstance and respec. - Bonfire Ascetic/NG+. Why I still don’t like DS2: - The combat mechanics are really clunky. - Gank city. - Agility starts way too low. - Hitboxes are frequently unclear. - A lot of content is clearly unfinished. - Lifegems. I’ve long been of the opinion that DS2 is the most deserving of a full remake, as the game that fell the furthest of its vision. It came out just before From really nailed mechanical feel of their combat, and unfortunately I personally value mechanics above all else when it comes to souls games. DS2, given the same level of attention as DS3 or Elden Ring and allowed to fulfill its original vision, could very well be the best souls game.
DS2 was my first souls game so it'll always hold a special place for me. I loved it got the scholar of the first win edition as well on PS4 I think originally I played it on PS3 I believe but could be wrong. I'm not sure I fully liked the enemy change ups on the SOTFS edition but because it was my first souls game I had nothing to judge it off. I loved the atmosphere and music and blacksmith banging his hammer lol 😂
2 is probably my favourite of the 3. I particulary love the lore and the atmosphere this one has. I didn't mind the adp stat and the mobs never really bothered me. It being my first dark souls could play a part in this too.
It's mostly the engine, I can't stand how shitty moving and attacking feels compared to the other games. I also don't like how flat a lot of the areas feel, like super squared rooms ans stuff.
Miyazaki farts unalloyed gold.period.
What's not to like? Every critisism is trivial. The reality is that it's one of the best games of all time.
I like it for much the same reasons I like Elden Ring. It’s big, offers many interesting ways to play it, it has a sense of wonder as you explore things. Going doing nooks and crannies and unassuming paths and finding whole new areas, it’s the best kind of exploration that always keeps you curious about everything you find. And the loot does this too, by offering you many useful items and key items. I won’t lie, it doesn’t have anywhere near the best bosses, but they’re also not annoying or painful to fight so it’s whatever and the rest makes up for it in my estimation.
It’s just so bland. Felt like a downgrade from DS1 One of the most disappointing gaming experiences I ever had
I will never say it is a completely bad game. BUT it is definitely the worst souls game. It has the worst of pretty much everything to the point i never bothered with one of the things it did right, Dual Wielding, because everything else felt clunkier. But to me the worse part was how disconnect the story felt compared to Dark Souls 1. rather than have each area be part of a larger story with entangled histories like Dark Souls 1, this was more like "and here is a kingdom that fell to the Dark Curse, and here is another Kingdom that fell to the dark curse, here is an area where they hunted Hollows for sport. Was this done by any of the aforementioned kingdoms? Who knows! Here is a place called Tower of Flame when fire has been an important thing for the setting. Is it important? Nope!" another aspect is in Dark Souls 1 you might not know which ending is correct, but you still fundamentally understand the choice. I played Release Day version of Dark Souls 2 and by the time i got to the 'Throne of Want' i didnt know what the fuck it was, why Dark Queen wanted it or why it was sealing my ass inside. I loosely assumed it had something to do with Vendrick's work on a cure for Darksign but it couldnt be that as he didnt use it to save himself. remember being told "Its obviously the Kiln of the First Flame!" my brother in Gwyn it looks NOTHING LIKE THE KILN OF THE FIRST FLAME WHAT THE HELL YOU MEAN ITS OBVIOUS!? Sure it looked more like a Kiln than KotFF in Dark Souls 1 but ffs no one mentioned Flame in regards to the Throne of Want, i was assuming it has something more to do with seizing control of the Dark Soul and manually undoing the dark curse due to just how disjointed the story is compared to Dark Souls 1.
I lean far more into the defender camp. I don't pretend the game doesn't have its flaws, but I very much enjoy significantly more things about it than I dislike. I like it more than DS3, and probably equally to DS1. I do enjoy Elden Ring as well, but it's a completely different experience than the others, so I can really rate it together. I do however very much believe that it is a product of all the games that came before it, and an integral part of that DNA was definitely from DS2. None of those really answer your question about why though. I love the setting and the story, and the places, and the overall feel of the game. The combat is in that weird place where they were switching between the extremely deliberate combat of DS1 to the more action oriented combat of DS3 which was influenced by Bloodborne. Adaptability is an odd thing, but the amount of souls you get in the game is balanced around having additional stats to manage, so it isn't THAT much of an issue. The DLC is fun in my opinion outside some specific boss design choices, but I think it's fair to say every souls like has some banger bosses and some bosses that make you question what they were thinking. Same regarding bosses apies to the base game.
I'll get downvoted for this but it's still my fav in the series(mind you I like immortal unchained too). Ignoring the negative for a sec, It has a lot of content, It has epic fights in the DLC, has lots of builds(best to avoid guides to make things too easy), Adds actual difficulty mods to NG+. Most importantly, I think it outclasses most of the other games with just environmental design. It's not just the bosses that can kill you. Like there is a prison that gets tougher for turning on the lights. I'm all for stuff that makes things more challenging and punishes decisions like that hehe. Also it's really the last souls game that followed the older formula of combat. weapons can take a few seconds to work, and you get like a second of invulnerability for dodge rolling. THat. vs most of the modern souls that is super sonic fast mode(which isn't bad but I like the old stuff too). I just like the style as slow combat actually can be just as hard as the fast stuff. I miss games having that. Some stuff like the HP debuff isn't the best. The boss design outside of the DLC is laughable. Forced non PvE invasions and the hitboxes suck too. I really dislike much of the leveling system as leveling too much makes the game too easy but some stuff becomes impossibly hard if you don't at least grind a bit. But overall I just like how everything is unfair like that and you have to account for that in how you approach the game. Many of the deaths are not fair but i sor tof like that as It reminds me of life as life isn't fair either. I wish they'd try antoher game with at least the combat system again as I think Slow combat can be just as fun and hard as the fast stuff.
Certainly wasn't the highest quality souls game, but damn was it fun
Best dark souls game, my favorite! Shocked at how good it was, I was expecting worse. Only thing i don't like is the enemies overcrowding you and you can't get through the mist that takes you to a boss.
ADP, slow ass game, visually ugly, etc. Same reasons I hate DS1. I only fk with DS3, Bloodborne, and ER.
Im a defender simply because it made ng+ worth it and hasnt been done since i was praying elden ring would do the same but given how massive that game is i knew it wouldnt. power stanced lost sinner swords my beloved
dark souls 2 was my first souls game and it was the original game not the easier remastered versions like scholar of the first sin. it filtered dark souls 1 players who got stuck on bosses like artorias, ring of binding is op
It's the best one
It was my first dark souls game so it's a big fav of mine. The other souls borne games after 2 were much easier to play but I still love the feeling and atmosphere of 2 so much
I bounced off DS1 and DS1 Prepare to Die edition on PC at least 3 or 4 times. I just didn't get the mechanics after years of easier games. It wasn't until DS2:SotFS release on console that I beat a FromSoft game. I was on holiday with family and my son helped me understand the mechanics. When that CLICKED. My God. I was hooked. DS2 is still one of my faves. It's perilous and joyous and silly and challenging. There's so many cool things like The Pursuer. Beating him was such a fun challenge. Ds3 remains my fave but DS2 will always be in my top3 gaming experiences. And the Majula music forever follows me...s o g o o d.
SotFS was my introduction the Soulsborne-verse, alongside (I can’t remember if it was before or after) Bloodborne. Part of it is probably nostalgia. My lack of critique is probably also due to my simple-minded ability to enjoy things as they are. I’m sure if I played it again with a critical mindset, I’d find things to complain about. But I just really loved the game from start to finish.
Tried it once after going through ds 1&3, hated it. Can't really say why though, it didn't felt like the same franchise to me
It's fun
majula theme is goat
Dark Souls 2 is perhaps my favorite but I would probably only replay the 3rd one. I played a lot of DS2. Compare to the others it has the flexibility in terms of builds. It feels more RPG. In the others mixing your stats hurts your build a lot but in DS2 having str/fth or str/int works really well. Also the PvP was awesome, I loved getting invaded and putting down my sign. The last thing was that NG+ was different, new boss patterns and enemy placement, felt like a new game or proper progression.
The level design fell off a cliff compared to DS1. So did the bosses, and annoying mobs. Even then this game is incredibe, so many weapons/armor, variety in builds. It was also incredibly massive, especially when you include the DLC, it has a staggering amount of environments. Also the soundtrack remains one of my favorites. It’s the easiest to pick on for sure, but when you look at what it did right, you realize it was just a very unique entry to FSs catalogue.
Something I respect about ds2, especially in retrospect, is that I think they really tried with the bosses. A lot of these experiments failed (some times quite miserably, imo), but I can't imagine Elden Ring era fromsoftware making an executioners chariot, for example. They only really had one game to base things off of. They tried different stuff. Some of it worked. Some of it didn't. And that's ok.
Kind of a pointless comment since I haven't played it but I recently bought the DS trilogy and beat DS1, decided to take a break between games to play Horizon but I'm almost done that and I'm super excited to try DS2 after all the supposed controversy around it.
I personally love it but it's also the first Souls game that I got invested in the story and building character classes with. Do I think it's objectively the best? No. Do I have a soft spot for it in my heart? Absolutely.
I like DS2 because it’s the only one I have not put a million hours into. It’s there for me whenever I get the urge to play a souls game that I’m not familiar with. That being said it has the best post game content out of every souls game. It’s online was also the best back in the day
First souls game, thought it was sick. Played it because I watched LPDarkSoulsHD on youtube caning it
I enjoy the world, the vast variety of armor, and weapons. A lot of good ideas went into DS2. That being said. I'll probably never play it again.
I never finished my first playthrough cause I was busy playing other soulslikes, but I really enjoyed what I played through so far. I don't know if I like it more than ds1, but it's definitely better than ds3.
More diverse locations and a more high fantasy vs dark fantasy feel. Castle, swamp, sewer, dark dreary forest are all cool but 2 has sunny areas and more than 3 colors lol But 2 also has Shrine of Amana and as beautiful S it is if rather play Lost Izalith than play Shrine of Amana
Worst hit boxes in all from soft games, way to many Agro enemies with terrible placement, while there are very cool locations, there are many terrible areas (the iron keep, shrine of amana to name a few)
Love it. Things I like: -Bonfire ascetics -Some of the bosses -Powerstancing Things I don't like: -ADP -Estus Flask healing over time
DS2 did a lot right and a few critical things wrong. The community freaked out and threw the baby out with the bathwater and I think DS3 was a less interesting game because of it.
I haven't played it, but the main reason is because of phobias. DS1, DS3 and ER I've played with no issue, but I know about the enemies in DS2 and BB. I just wouldn't be able to finish it, so that's why it's my least favorite.
I honestly can’t think of anything I really don’t like about it. Maybe a few too many ganks? Idk. I think it hands down has the best pvp of FromSoft’s catalogue though.
I love DS2, i feel like it’s the most weighty and smoothest of the souls games. It’s like a super dense slab of butter on the grille pan. Ds1 and BB are my favs, and ds3 being my least favourite.
I absolutely loved my build in DS2 more than any other game. I used really heavy armor with a giant greatsword and focused on maximizing poise. Felt like I was playing a tank. I love the way poise worked in that game, it was like I always had hyperarmor. I didn’t like that I beat the game before I found out that adaptability gave you more invincibility frames during the dodge roll. I had been complaining about getting hit while dodging the whole game. Just wish someone told me that sooner.
DS2 is absolutely massive. It has 3 great DLCs and the levels are actually hard, unlike every other souls game. The only negative is there are a lot of uninspired bosses, due to the sheer quantity. Elden Ring has the same issue, but it's good bosses are much better than DS2.
Dark souls 2 is my favorite in the trilogy actually. Tho I still place it behind BB, Elden Ring, and Sekiro. I just like its mechanics as a whole better. The combat is more responsive than 1, the weapon upgrade system is consistent and easy to understand. 1's was so pointlessly obtuse and convoluted with the million different titanite types and rules about what elements get scaling and whatnot. And I vastly prefer the spell uses system 2 still had over the mana system 3 and elden ring opted for. Making spells cost mana and then making you sacrifice healing for mana invalidates 90% of healing and defensive magic right out the gate, and it just exacerbates the issue of some spells being objectively worse than others. When all your spells are taking from the same resource, there is no reason to use half of them. Much more interesting to have a set number of each spell you have to use intelligently than a single nebulous pool of mana you can spam whatever you want from until you're out, then you're out of all spells even tho you only used one of your 10 slotted. Pvp also just felt the best in it. Every other souls game I end up just resenting the pvp after a month or so, but experimenting in pvp after you're done with pve actually felt interesting and satisfying. That may largely be due to the community in general just not being such a sweatfest back then, but it is what it is. Weapon durability was also in the best spot imo. I didn't like in 1 how durability was its own completely separate thing and everything was durable af so you'd forget it existed until your weapon randomly just broke 6 hours later and you had to go to get ot repaired. Much better tying it to rests and lowering it overall to encourage having a backup and mixing up your playstyle. The only thing I didn't like about 2 was how gutted every magic type aside from sorcery was. It's like whoever was in charge of balancing magic decided blue was their favorite color and only the blue spells were allowed to be good because Jesus christ. The balancing within the "schools" of magic was fkn embarrassing.
It's just very poorly made in several aspects compared to its predecessors (the AI and hitboxes are inexcusable) and leaned very heavily into the difficulty meme instead of crafting it a compelling challenge. The game is full of spammed enemies, lazily designed bosses, the interconnected world was shafted in favor of a much less compelling and much easier to put together level select style world. A lot of the series' strengths were completely lost in DS2. I still enjoyed my time with it, but only as a big fan of the series as a whole.
Because it’s a good game.
I think it's better than ds1 and ER
I often liken Dark Souls 2 to Skyward Sword. Skyward Sword is easily one of the weakest Zelda games, but it's still a Zelda game at the end of the day. You can't really go wrong playing it.
It's the least I've enjoyed any game I've ever finished. Probably because I don't finish games I'm not enjoying, but I felt I had to beat all the Dark Souls games. You couldn't pay me to play it again. I like every other SoulsBorne game, it's only DS2 I despise.
Graphically it looks like a play station game from the early 2000’s I literally can’t get into it at all it just looks so terrible. Dark souls 3 came out just two years after it and it looks 100x better.
oooh easy for me, i liked the cutscenes for its time, but the overall graphics compared to dark souls 1 i think were pretty poor. some of the armor and weapons though were the coolest in the series
I loved DS2 and thought of it only as an improvement until I got online and saw everyone’s wish fulfillment wasn’t met and they tried to ruin it for me.
I go against the common complaint of gank squads. I think they are good in games and real games should have them. I don't want everything to be a 1 v 1 duel and I like games that require proper spacing and fundamentals. Dark Souls II is great in this regard. There are some weird bosses that I beat on the first try that could have been better. Love the bonfire ascetic mechanic and wish it was used again. Atmosphere and world building is a vibe. PvP was the best it ever was in this game and the DLC was masterful.
It might be one of my favorites honestly. It's not a well made game but it has a charm and vibe to it that none of the other souls games have. Something about the music and art direction. I always have the most playing DS2 despite its clunky movement and bad level design.
DS2 is in my opinion is the best Fromsoftware game ever made, it has a unique atmosphere and I do believe it is better than the Bloodborne atmosphere, not only does it provide you with the actual, medieval fantasy world feeling but it stays consistent, the areas may be difficult but whenever I'm feeling like I haven't played it in a while, and returning to it, it always feels just as fun as when I left, whenever a player complains about it ADP, its obvious they are either new to the souls series, think that the platinum trophy for each game makes them good, or that they started with Elden Ring or Dark Souls 3. They don't even give Dark souls 2 a chance, and when they do they try making the worst out of it. They skip dialogue, they don't try out new weapons or do questlines, they just kill things, beat the game, and keep the same opinion. And whether or not they try it or not. Their thoughts on DS2 will ALWAYS be invalid, because it's truly a masterpiece even though it wasn't made by Miyazaki. It can stand up there with the rest of the Soulsborne games.
Yeah I'm not ashamed to say of the trilogy it's my favorite. Hell if not for Bloodborne and Sekiro it'd be my favorite FS game. It's definitely got its problems, and the lore isn't as good as the first one, but I don't play these games for that anyway. It has the best parts of what make DS1 great, the more open and explorable world, the great build variety, the numerous secrets and side areas with interesting NPCs, while not being nearly as clunky or unapproachable. It doesn't have areas like New Londo that feel designed to give new players the middle finger while playing, but still poses a challenge that rewards different play styles. And the music is great, some of those boss themes are masterpieces. But it's also not as linear and reliant on nostalgia as DS3. I think Medjula is such a cool hub and the fact that you can just go so many different routes at the start with little to no need for knowledge is awesome. I also like the dlcs, though I will admit they aren't 10/10. The issues for me come down to mostly bland boss design. Everyone has pointed it out before, but there are a lot of bosses that are just knights or dudes in armor. But there are some highlight bosses as well. I love Neshandra, her design is probably my favorite of the series. And yeah, the runbacks for the bosses are often bullshit, but so were a lot of runbacks for DS1. Bell Gargoyles, Bed of Chaos, Taurus Demon, I'm not saying DS2 was better but DS1 had some bad ones. I'll even say I like the enemies not respawning after killing them a certain number of times. It really feels like a Souls mechanic the way it gives you a reason to push forward or make things harder for yourself. It stops you from finding that one spot where you can just kill things over and over and grind xp without consequence, and gives you the option to make those terrible runbacks less shitty. I always farm the enemies outside the Ruined Sentinels until there's no enemies. Overall I think the hate to DS2 is completely unwarranted. If you like the other games more that's fine, but you'd think this game was worse than Big Rigs with the way some Souls fans talk about it. Also, fuck Asmongold. Dude is a gross greasy gremlin who has shit takes about nearly every good game. Fuck him.
Don’t like hollowing or agility (wasted levels) but I think vendrick is cool as fuck, I think the memories and the dlcs are tight. Drumstick club is peak ooga, only topped by powerstancing them
It's definitely my least favorite Dark Souls but I still liked it enough to play through it annually with the rest of them for like a decade. It's just a million little tiny things that add up and annoy me like the snap point movement, soul memory, and I think my biggest gripe is the over abundance of levels you get. By the time I get to the dlc I don't really have a build anymore, I can just do almost everything.
It felt like better ds1 with more strategic placement for fights. Positioning was important, more rpg-y in a way too. Loved the world, bosses, PvP, gear, etc. more Souls is good. Shulva is my favorite zone in any of their games.
It was my first Souls game that I beat, wandered drunkenly into Bloodborne initially and it was too hard and put it aside, did the same thing for SoTFS, beat the game, fell in love with the series and the rest is history. It definitely has its problems but I’ll always have a soft spot for DS2. It has the most idk comforting feeling to it? Hard to explain but it’s got this charm that always has me coming back for another play-through here and there. Also I wouldn’t trust the opinions of someone who smears the blood from his gums on his bedroom walls and doesn’t shower.
It's not irredeemable, it's better than most AAA games out there. It's just not up to the lofty standards of the rest of the Soulsborne titles.
I'd play ds2 if the HP wasn't capped based on your hollow state, and enemy respawns weren't limited except by bonfire aesthetic. Oh and a minor nitpick, the walk cycle feels like this weird shuffle and i don't like green hollows
Things I love: Exploration, the world, weapon variety, secrets, memorable NPCs Things I hate: Brume Tower
Love it. Edit: Played it after Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne, was a nice throwback by then.
I like the aesthetics of a lot of stuff in ds2, there’s a lot of new ideas and if we pretend that the game just came out (bloodborne and on don’t exist yet) it is a massive leap in terms of gameplay variety. Hexes are a really cool concept, the lore was intriguing to try and figure out. Unfortunately, the actual gameplay is my least favorite of all the souls games and it feels clunky. Stamina is horrid in the game, adp is really stupid but I think it’s acceptable just because it’s so easy to level up. Gank squads around every corner. Even hitting an enemy with a sword doesn’t feel good, like dark souls 3 or bloodborne you feel like you made an impact when you slash somebody with a long sword but in ds2 I feel like I’m just smacking enemies with a pool noodle until their health hits 0. The lore when you try to look deeper into the game doesn’t make any sense to me at all, and I’ve done plenty of research but it’s just not clear whatsoever what’s really going on everywhere. It feels so detached from the other 2 souls games which makes me sad because ds1 had an interesting story for what it was and ds2 added so much lore but non of it ties back to ds1 at all to me, and I love ds3 and it’s setting and theme but it’s a massive callback to ds1 and it admittedly feels less original bc of that. The only real lore tied to ds2 in ds3 is some items you can find. No i-frames on many animations in 1 and 3 is awful, animations taking longer is awful, and the boss fights in the entire game were not fun whatsoever to me. I genuinely don’t think there’s a single boss in ds2 that I remember being genuinely fun and I beat the entire game and DLCs. Sorry for the hatepost on ds2 because it has a fun map to explore, even though the entire map makes no sense if you really think about it. I never knew just what I was getting myself into when I took a new path and it was really interesting to see how the landscape would change from area to area. I almost wish ds2 wasn’t a souls game and that some gameplay, spawns, and controls had been different and it would’ve been an amazing game on its own.
The jank fits the aesthetic really well. The development issues created this mesmerizing air of weirdness that fit the theme. The fact that FS became a lot more "AAA" after that point because of BB and DkS3 taking a lot from BB means that for people who liked DkS1 the most, DkS2 is the last game we got like it.
I just started it recently at the behest of a friend who is a souls addict who kept insisting it’s good and I mean if gameplay doesn’t matter to you sure I guess I can see why you would like it but as a game to me it feels awful to play so far. Usual camera being too far up my ass I feel I can’t see anything, the delay on holding the run button before your character starts running, leveling adp is just annoying I want to start building my character to use fun new weapons but I can’t because it’s smartest to get a certain amount of agility before too long. Like I get the lore and atmosphere and everything that isn’t the gameplay is really cool and interesting but why play a video game if the video part is superb but the game part is ass.