Dark Souls 2

[Venom 105]

Started new thread because I could only find a couple mentioning dark souls 2 news from like 8 years ago.

[Venom 105]

This is a weird game. This game has some of the high points of my journey through the soul series. It also has many of the low points. There are lots of really good parts in the game and lots of terrible parts in the game. The weird thing is you can tell the developers new where the bad parts are. The bad and good parts are always separated. The bad areas are usually self contained and grouped together on the same part of the game as other bad areas. The bad areas have the weaker (in terms of design not difficulty) bosses and the good areas have the good bosses. The bad parts generally have weirdly placed bonfires just to make them playable.
 

It’s honestly so polarising to the point that the only explanation to how this happened is that during development they got bored of making a good game and decided to have a competition on who could make the worst bit of content. Then they spent all there time maximising misery in these areas. When the deadline approached they realised half the game was bad and threw in random out of place fixes to make it barely playable. 
 

[Venom 105]

I guess I should start with the changes from ds1 to ds2. This seems to be were a lot of players have problems with the game. The main difference is the use of an abundant healing source in the form of life gems. Either this change to healing shaped a lot of the game or this was added in order to make the game playable. This extra healing method is needed due to the much longer boss runs and runs between bonfires. With only the estus moving around the world would be to frustrating as there are so many more enemies to deal with. They are placed much closer together as-well. This essentially guarantees you'll take damage while doing boss runs and will run out of estus frequently whilst exploring. To save these from being frustrating life gems add pretty much limitless healing from the mid game onwards. I am personally fine with this healing system I like the combo of gems and estus. I do however think it was accomplished better in bloodborne. 
 

Another major change is the splitting of endurance into 3 stats. This means that you start out with almost no i frames on dodges. You have to spend more levels on endurance stats. But this is countered by levels being much cheaper early and mid game. Also healing takes along time longer than it should for a game of this pace. But again it’s a stat you can level up so you heal a bit faster. This is a weird change. It just makes the game more cumbersome whilst having the only significant difference be that soul level 1 runs are hard cause dodges have almost no i frames.

 

Overall these changes were made so a faster paced game with enemy span combat could work. In ds1 the hardest parts where when multiple enemies had to be dealt with at once and the really leant into this idea in ds2. But again (in terms of normal enemies) I think bb did this better by having healing be fast paced as well.

 

 

 

[Venom 105]

The bosses in ds2 base game where on the most part really good. I realy enjoyed how well humanoid duals were done throughout the game from start to finish. I also think the group fights with multiple bosses were some of the best of that type in the series. Ruin sentinels was fun and a well designed fight allowing you to learn the boss before having to face 2 at once. Gargoyles was much better in this game than in ds1 even though there where many more. I also really enjoyed fights like the pursuer, the flexile sentry and the mirror knight. They are all really well designed duals and that type of boss isn’t found a lot in the other groups. Where the boss quality drops a bit is in the large monster style fights and the fights with lots of normal enemies. Bosses like the rotten and old iron king are very boring fights gameplay wise whilst they look cool. The skeleton lords and chariot are very easy and boring group fights. The giant fights are very slow. I did enjoy demon of song but it was very easy. 
 

The smelter demon was a boss I loved and hated. It was a hard fight but a 1 on 1 duel. The reason it’s good and bad is it feels satisfying when it works but he has many hitbox problems both in dealing and taking damage. Other bosses like the spider boss look realy cool but are very easy. And velstat is boring but a decent challenge. The only realy bad bosses are the royal rat authority and the ancient dragon. The rat is just an rng check st the begging to see if you can win the fight. He is also just a relay buggy version of sif without that check so boring as a boss and annoying due to the toxic rats you have to kill at the start before he comes in. Then the ancient dragon just has a huge health pool and has lots of 1 shot aoe attacks with buggy hit boxes. Either it’s a very hard fight with lots of rng involved or you just sit in his toes and it’s a very long boring fight.

 

I enjoyed the triple set of final bosses at the end of the game. Whilst only the first was challenging they where all varied and it was fun to knock them out one after another. Probably my favourite ending bosses in the games I’ve played so far.  The darklurker was a very fun fight with a very annoying boss run. The boss run takes about 5-6 minutes and costs a rare material to attempt it can also be very hard to complete depending on the build. Also to even unlock the boss you have to complete lots of annoying trials that kind of force cheesy builds in order to be possible.

 

Overall the boss quality was much better than ds1 with many base game bosses reaching the heights of ds1 dlc bosses.

[Venom 105]

The levels are where the ugly side of ds2 shows it’s head. There are some good levels in the game. The starting one is alright and no man’s warf is one of my favourites so far. The first pass of heides tower was a very good early game area. Drangleic caste was also really good. Unfortunately that is where the list of good levels stops. 
 

There are some okay levels like the gutter being a less annoying blightown. The area with snake boss wasn’t bad either.  Neither was the areas leading up to the lost sinner boss fight. 
 

The really bad levels come in the form of the gulch. Which is just a bunch of statues that spit poison darts at you. Hunter copse has a terrible boss run due to enemy spam. The iron keep has way to many enemies. I have heard in the original game this was a good area because they didn’t have so many enemies in this area. They just added a shit ton in the scholar of the first sin edition. There are levels where you force poisoned upon leaving the bonfire. The final area is just a long walk where you have to wait 20 seconds to start it as a door opens.  
 

The game does have a nice balance of long and short levels though which is a refreshing change. 

[Venom 105]

The dlc of ds2 shatters the height of the highs and plunged below the depths of the lows. Each dlc is very clearly separated into a good bit and a bad bit. This is done very clearly by having the bad off to the side behind a locked door. Then the good bit contains a intricate and well crafted level with lots of paths and loot. It always has clever design. The good bit also has 2 bosses both of good to great quality.

 

The bad bit in 2/3 cases contains a small cave with tons of enemy’s and a short but frantic run to the boss. In these cases the bosses are a group of 3 enemy’s taken from somewhere else in the game and put into an awkward arena. For this boss you just glitch out the ai by running in circles in varying speeds. And the other boss is the smelter demon again but blue and with different timings on his attacks. In the 3rd dlc the bad bit instead has a huge open space with nothing in it. There is also a snow storm so you can’t see where you are going and nothing further than 2m away can be seen. It also has randomly spawning horse creatures that spear form nowhere and do way to much damage and have way to long attack lengths. Then the boss is just 2 of one of the dlcs other bosses. This one I didn’t do because actually getting to the boss could take 30 mins of attempts. And the boss is boring to do.
 

The good bosses in the dlcs are amazing. The dragon fight is a nice challenge. Then the fume knight and sir alonne are my 5th and 3rd favourite bosses respectively. They are both fun fights and quite challenging. The old ivory king is an amazing encounter and cool team fight. 

The dlc is overall amazing especially since the bad bits can be ignored. But it just brings everything into question. Why do the bad bits exist. They are clearly sectioned of from the main bit in all 3 cases. It’s clear fromsoft new what parts of this game where bad int he base game. But then they went out of there way to make more bad stuff for the dlc for no reason. I can only assume they where trying expand upon ds2 buying having some great bits and then some out of place terribleness for no reason. 
 

So far this is the worst game in the series. But if you can get past the bad stuff and the weird systems the highs of this game are worth experiencing. It would be a shame if they were forgotten which seems to be what has happened with general public opinion on this game.

[J4MES OX4D 9,805]

I didn't like Dark Souls 2 - horrendous hitboxes, worse movement and combat mechanics, terrible enemy placement and quantity in many areas, some really poor level design in some locations and losing health on death felt brutally unfair. The absence of Hidetaka Miyazaki in a game director role really showed and the senior game designers that oversaw the project missed the key points of what made the original so special and instead infuriated players with cheap difficulty aspects on top of sloppy mechanics. 

[Jason 1,245]

Yeah.  For sure the weakest entry into the soul series, and the one I’ve played the least. I have multiple completions of the other games but this one just felt bland. The introduction of power stance was cool though.