Venom

Ahh the dlc. 
In these games the dlc is usually a big step up in quality than the base game. Artorious of the abyss gave ds1 good bosses and difficulty. The crowns gave ds2 amazing bosses and very good and unique level design. The old hunters added difficulty and variety to bb. Ds3 does not continue this tradition. The ds3 dlc is still amazing but it’s more like the best of ds3 as opposed to a step beyond. It contains two bosses in my top 5 and one of witch is my favourite of all time. The level design is of the quality of cathedral in terms of difficulty and uniqueness. I would highly recommend it if you enjoyed the base game. 
 
Now onto specifics. Dlc 1 is on the shorter end contains 1 very large area and 2 bosses. The first of which is an okay fight with a small guy and a large wolf. It’s relatively easy and not that original but it’s okay. The level is quite challenging and unique. Probably my favourite snowy level. The final boss of the dlc sister friede and farther ariandel is my faviourte fight to date. It’s a long 3 phase fight but each phase you can master individually. The first phase using invisibility well while introducing some tells and timings that will be useful in a later phase. The second phase is one of the best duo fights that has been done by from. Both this a demon princes make me wonder why people look back to the shit show of a fight that is Onstein and Smough as an example of a good duo fight when ds3 has much better (and actually good examples). The final phase is a fight that dose long combos well without being boring. There are lots of possible moves all of which are punishable. Love the fight it’s a masterpiece.
 
Dlc 2 is a longer dlc that dosent quite reach the same highs. Dreg keep is a cool use of verticality and the ringed city revel looks awesome rivalling anor londo. The ring city itself is quite challenging and long. The boss in this dlc the gets into my top 5 is demon princes. It’s an easier fight but it’s an example of a duo fight done really well. The cycling agro is really cool and you can learn to types of play to speed up the fight. (Targeting the aggressive one and targeting the passive one) then you can keep damage on the same prince the whole fight. Then the second phase is a impressive fight and the switching moves based on kill order is a cool mechanic. 
The other main bosses in this dlc are midir and gael. I’ll start with midir. He’s a large dragon which when you learn the fight is awesome to play against. There can be a lot of trial and error to learn the fight though. This is fine for a boss and can be fun. However he is placed weirdly at the end of a long boss run which is not good for a trail and error fight. Also it’s clear both him and gael are fights designed with max healing (or close to) in mind. This my skew my opinion on them as my fights were on a much lower amount of healing. Gael phase 1 is amazing and then each of his next to phase look cooler than the last. Unfortunately they also get more and more boring each phase. Phase 2 can be okay if you play very aggressive but your almost guaranteed to take chip damage doing this and this took away from my limited healing. Phase 3 is just baiting out the same 3 combos over and over and waiting for the small punish window. Overall for me it was like an 8-9 min fight playing aggressively and I could only take 8-9 hits which meant a minute of flawless play for each hit taken. The fight was clearly not designed for this and so aswell as being boring In the later phases it took quite a few attempts before I could do them flawlessly aswell. Despite the sour note they are still both nice challenges and a decent finale to the trilogy. Though I do think doing friede last would be better.

The levels is where I can start to pick up on some problems with the game. After ds2 these levels were very easy to go through. Which isn’t a good or bad thing just different. Most of the levels in this game are well designed with there paths and interconnectivity. But most of them felt unoriginal. They felt like some of the better levels in the earlier games just without providing anything new. The exceptions being irrethyll dungeons which was a new setting but not to interesting level design wise. And the cathedral. The cathedral is the hardest level in the base game. It’s very long and loops back to the same bonfire like 4/5 times. The enemy’s are challenging and the setting is unique. Unfortunately this area is capped with the worst boss in the game. I would have loved to see more varied levels but what is here is pretty good gameplay and looks amazing. Just more originality would have been better.

Importantly however there is nothing offensively bad here which is more than can be said for any of the other games I’ve played.

First of the base game is of a higher standard then any of the other games I’ve played so far (ds1,ds2,bb,er). There are some amazing fights in here. Gundyr is a interesting opening boss compared to the other games which are usually quite simple. And Vordt is really unique as a fight and a lot of fun. Abyss watchers is very cool and a nice early spike in difficulty. Pontiff at the time was one of my fav fights in the series. He is very well designed with a truly unique concept for phase 2. Took a while to learn the timings but very satisfying when I did. The rematch against gundyr is in my top 5 bosses still. I love the aggression in the fight and it constantly feels active either in punishes or dodges. Princes is again a difficult but awesome fight with a really cool teleport concept.  The nameless king is one of the coolest boss arenas ever. The first phase is easy whilst unique and the second is a fun duel. Another great boss.

The final boss is by far the best finale in the series. Soul is a really cool fight and quite challenging. Most of these games either have a disappointing finale or in the case of ds2 a neutral one. 

Even the worse boss in this game are still better than the average boss in ds1,ds2 and bb. The gimmick fights are less good but still not bad or annoying.
 
I’ve heard this boss quality continues in sekiro and I know from playing it that Elden ring matches it in some fights. I find it hard to believe that from will ever top this level of consistent good boss design. 
 
When I was playing the later fights I was doing so with about 1/3 the amount of total healing you can have. This provided a good level of difficulty for me. With full healing I would say these fights would be on the easier side and so would recommend to anyone who enjoys the challenge to play with less than max healing.
 

Just finished this game with a playtime of 22 hours. Loved it. It’s my favourite of the series. The boss quality in this game in amazing and is consistently of the quality that the others only occasionally reach. The level design is generally good and never frustrating. Highly recommended.

Ahh the dlc. 
In these games the dlc is usually a big step up in quality than the base game. Artorious of the abyss gave ds1 good bosses and difficulty. The crowns gave ds2 amazing bosses and very good and unique level design. The old hunters added difficulty and variety to bb. Ds3 does not continue this tradition. The ds3 dlc is still amazing but it’s more like the best of ds3 as opposed to a step beyond. It contains two bosses in my top 5 and one of witch is my favourite of all time. The level design is of the quality of cathedral in terms of difficulty and uniqueness. I would highly recommend it if you enjoyed the base game. 
 
Now onto specifics. Dlc 1 is on the shorter end contains 1 very large area and 2 bosses. The first of which is an okay fight with a small guy and a large wolf. It’s relatively easy and not that original but it’s okay. The level is quite challenging and unique. Probably my favourite snowy level. The final boss of the dlc sister friede and farther ariandel is my faviourte fight to date. It’s a long 3 phase fight but each phase you can master individually. The first phase using invisibility well while introducing some tells and timings that will be useful in a later phase. The second phase is one of the best duo fights that has been done by from. Both this a demon princes make me wonder why people look back to the shit show of a fight that is Onstein and Smough as an example of a good duo fight when ds3 has much better (and actually good examples). The final phase is a fight that dose long combos well without being boring. There are lots of possible moves all of which are punishable. Love the fight it’s a masterpiece.
 
Dlc 2 is a longer dlc that dosent quite reach the same highs. Dreg keep is a cool use of verticality and the ringed city revel looks awesome rivalling anor londo. The ring city itself is quite challenging and long. The boss in this dlc the gets into my top 5 is demon princes. It’s an easier fight but it’s an example of a duo fight done really well. The cycling agro is really cool and you can learn to types of play to speed up the fight. (Targeting the aggressive one and targeting the passive one) then you can keep damage on the same prince the whole fight. Then the second phase is a impressive fight and the switching moves based on kill order is a cool mechanic. 
The other main bosses in this dlc are midir and gael. I’ll start with midir. He’s a large dragon which when you learn the fight is awesome to play against. There can be a lot of trial and error to learn the fight though. This is fine for a boss and can be fun. However he is placed weirdly at the end of a long boss run which is not good for a trail and error fight. Also it’s clear both him and gael are fights designed with max healing (or close to) in mind. This my skew my opinion on them as my fights were on a much lower amount of healing. Gael phase 1 is amazing and then each of his next to phase look cooler than the last. Unfortunately they also get more and more boring each phase. Phase 2 can be okay if you play very aggressive but your almost guaranteed to take chip damage doing this and this took away from my limited healing. Phase 3 is just baiting out the same 3 combos over and over and waiting for the small punish window. Overall for me it was like an 8-9 min fight playing aggressively and I could only take 8-9 hits which meant a minute of flawless play for each hit taken. The fight was clearly not designed for this and so aswell as being boring In the later phases it took quite a few attempts before I could do them flawlessly aswell. Despite the sour note they are still both nice challenges and a decent finale to the trilogy. Though I do think doing friede last would be better.

The levels is where I can start to pick up on some problems with the game. After ds2 these levels were very easy to go through. Which isn’t a good or bad thing just different. Most of the levels in this game are well designed with there paths and interconnectivity. But most of them felt unoriginal. They felt like some of the better levels in the earlier games just without providing anything new. The exceptions being irrethyll dungeons which was a new setting but not to interesting level design wise. And the cathedral. The cathedral is the hardest level in the base game. It’s very long and loops back to the same bonfire like 4/5 times. The enemy’s are challenging and the setting is unique. Unfortunately this area is capped with the worst boss in the game. I would have loved to see more varied levels but what is here is pretty good gameplay and looks amazing. Just more originality would have been better.

Importantly however there is nothing offensively bad here which is more than can be said for any of the other games I’ve played.

First of the base game is of a higher standard then any of the other games I’ve played so far (ds1,ds2,bb,er). There are some amazing fights in here. Gundyr is a interesting opening boss compared to the other games which are usually quite simple. And Vordt is really unique as a fight and a lot of fun. Abyss watchers is very cool and a nice early spike in difficulty. Pontiff at the time was one of my fav fights in the series. He is very well designed with a truly unique concept for phase 2. Took a while to learn the timings but very satisfying when I did. The rematch against gundyr is in my top 5 bosses still. I love the aggression in the fight and it constantly feels active either in punishes or dodges. Princes is again a difficult but awesome fight with a really cool teleport concept.  The nameless king is one of the coolest boss arenas ever. The first phase is easy whilst unique and the second is a fun duel. Another great boss.

The final boss is by far the best finale in the series. Soul is a really cool fight and quite challenging. Most of these games either have a disappointing finale or in the case of ds2 a neutral one. 

Even the worse boss in this game are still better than the average boss in ds1,ds2 and bb. The gimmick fights are less good but still not bad or annoying.
 
I’ve heard this boss quality continues in sekiro and I know from playing it that Elden ring matches it in some fights. I find it hard to believe that from will ever top this level of consistent good boss design. 
 
When I was playing the later fights I was doing so with about 1/3 the amount of total healing you can have. This provided a good level of difficulty for me. With full healing I would say these fights would be on the easier side and so would recommend to anyone who enjoys the challenge to play with less than max healing.
 

Just finished this game with a playtime of 22 hours. Loved it. It’s my favourite of the series. The boss quality in this game in amazing and is consistently of the quality that the others only occasionally reach. The level design is generally good and never frustrating. Highly recommended.

Ahh the dlc. 
In these games the dlc is usually a big step up in quality than the base game. Artorious of the abyss gave ds1 good bosses and difficulty. The crowns gave ds2 amazing bosses and very good and unique level design. The old hunters added difficulty and variety to bb. Ds3 does not continue this tradition. The ds3 dlc is still amazing but it’s more like the best of ds3 as opposed to a step beyond. It contains two bosses in my top 5 and one of witch is my favourite of all time. The level design is of the quality of cathedral in terms of difficulty and uniqueness. I would highly recommend it if you enjoyed the base game. 
 
Now onto specifics. Dlc 1 is on the shorter end contains 1 very large area and 2 bosses. The first of which is an okay fight with a small guy and a large wolf. It’s relatively easy and not that original but it’s okay. The level is quite challenging and unique. Probably my favourite snowy level. The final boss of the dlc sister friede and farther ariandel is my faviourte fight to date. It’s a long 3 phase fight but each phase you can master individually. The first phase using invisibility well while introducing some tells and timings that will be useful in a later phase. The second phase is one of the best duo fights that has been done by from. Both this a demon princes make me wonder why people look back to the shit show of a fight that is Onstein and Smough as an example of a good duo fight when ds3 has much better (and actually good examples). The final phase is a fight that dose long combos well without being boring. There are lots of possible moves all of which are punishable. Love the fight it’s a masterpiece.
 
Dlc 2 is a longer dlc that dosent quite reach the same highs. Dreg keep is a cool use of verticality and the ringed city revel looks awesome rivalling anor londo. The ring city itself is quite challenging and long. The boss in this dlc the gets into my top 5 is demon princes. It’s an easier fight but it’s an example of a duo fight done really well. The cycling agro is really cool and you can learn to types of play to speed up the fight. (Targeting the aggressive one and targeting the passive one) then you can keep damage on the same prince the whole fight. Then the second phase is a impressive fight and the switching moves based on kill order is a cool mechanic. 
The other main bosses in this dlc are midir and gael. I’ll start with midir. He’s a large dragon which when you learn the fight is awesome to play against. There can be a lot of trial and error to learn the fight though. This is fine for a boss and can be fun. However he is placed weirdly at the end of a long boss run which is not good for a trail and error fight. Also it’s clear both him and gael are fights designed with max healing (or close to) in mind. This my skew my opinion on them as my fights were on a much lower amount of healing. Gael phase 1 is amazing and then each of his next to phase look cooler than the last. Unfortunately they also get more and more boring each phase. Phase 2 can be okay if you play very aggressive but your almost guaranteed to take chip damage doing this and this took away from my limited healing. Phase 3 is just baiting out the same 3 combos over and over and waiting for the small punish window. Overall for me it was like an 8-9 min fight playing aggressively and I could only take 8-9 hits which meant a minute of flawless play for each hit taken. The fight was clearly not designed for this and so aswell as being boring In the later phases it took quite a few attempts before I could do them flawlessly aswell. Despite the sour note they are still both nice challenges and a decent finale to the trilogy. Though I do think doing friede last would be better.

The levels is where I can start to pick up on some problems with the game. After ds2 these levels were very easy to go through. Which isn’t a good or bad thing just different. Most of the levels in this game are well designed with there paths and interconnectivity. But most of them felt unoriginal. They felt like some of the better levels in the earlier games just without providing anything new. The exceptions being irrethyll dungeons which was a new setting but not to interesting level design wise. And the cathedral. The cathedral is the hardest level in the base game. It’s very long and loops back to the same bonfire like 4/5 times. The enemy’s are challenging and the setting is unique. Unfortunately this area is capped with the worst boss in the game. I would have loved to see more varied levels but what is here is pretty good gameplay and looks amazing. Just more originality would have been better.

Importantly however there is nothing offensively bad here which is more than can be said for any of the other games I’ve played.

First of the base game is of a higher standard then any of the other games I’ve played so far (ds1,ds2,bb,er). There are some amazing fights in here. Gundyr is a interesting opening boss compared to the other games which are usually quite simple. And Vordt is really unique as a fight and a lot of fun. Abyss watchers is very cool and a nice early spike in difficulty. Pontiff at the time was one of my fav fights in the series. He is very well designed with a truly unique concept for phase 2. Took a while to learn the timings but very satisfying when I did. The rematch against gundyr is in my top 5 bosses still. I love the aggression in the fight and it constantly feels active either in punishes or dodges. Princes is again a difficult but awesome fight with a really cool teleport concept.  The nameless king is one of the coolest boss arenas ever. The first phase is easy whilst unique and the second is a fun duel. Another great boss.

The final boss is by far the best finale in the series. Soul is a really cool fight and quite challenging. Most of these games either have a disappointing finale or in the case of ds2 a neutral one. 

Even the worse boss in this game are still better than the average boss in ds1,ds2 and bb. The gimmick fights are less good but still not bad or annoying.
 
I’ve heard this boss quality continues in sekiro and I know from playing it that Elden ring matches it in some fights. I find it hard to believe that from will ever top this level of consistent good boss design. 
 
When I was playing the later fights I was doing so with about 1/3 the amount of total healing you can have. This provided a good level of difficulty for me. With full healing I would say these fights would be on the easier side and so would recommend to anyone who enjoys the challenge to play with less than max healing.
 

Just finished this game with a playtime of 22 hours. Loved it. It’s my favourite of the series. The boss quality in this game in amazing and is consistently of the quality that the others only occasionally reach. The level design is generally good and never frustrating. Highly recommended.

Ahh the dlc. 
In these games the dlc is usually a big step up in quality than the base game. Artorious of the abyss gave ds1 good bosses and difficulty. The crowns gave ds2 amazing bosses and very good and unique level design. The old hunters added difficulty and variety to bb. Ds3 does not continue this tradition. The ds3 dlc is still amazing but it’s more like the best of ds3 as opposed to a step beyond. It contains two bosses in my top 5 and one of witch is my favourite of all time. The level design is of the quality of cathedral in terms of difficulty and uniqueness. I would highly recommend it if you enjoyed the base game. 
 
Now onto specifics. Dlc 1 is on the shorter end contains 1 very large area and 2 bosses. The first of which is an okay fight with a small guy and a large wolf. It’s relatively easy and not that original but it’s okay. The level is quite challenging and unique. Probably my favourite snowy level. The final boss of the dlc sister friede and farther ariandel is my faviourte fight to date. It’s a long 3 phase fight but each phase you can master individually. The first phase using invisibility well while introducing some tells and timings that will be useful in a later phase. The second phase is one of the best duo fights that has been done by from. Both this a demon princes make me wonder why people look back to the shit show of a fight that is Onstein and Smough as an example of a good duo fight when ds3 has much better (and actually good examples). The final phase is a fight that dose long combos well without being boring. There are lots of possible moves all of which are punishable. Love the fight it’s a masterpiece.
 
Dlc 2 is a longer dlc that dosent quite reach the same highs. Dreg keep is a cool use of verticality and the ringed city revel looks awesome rivalling anor londo. The ring city itself is quite challenging and long. The boss in this dlc the gets into my top 5 is demon princes. It’s an easier fight but it’s an example of a duo fight done really well. The cycling agro is really cool and you can learn to types of play to speed up the fight. (Targeting the aggressive one and targeting the passive one) then you can keep damage on the same prince the whole fight. Then the second phase is a impressive fight and the switching moves based on kill order is a cool mechanic. 
The other main bosses in this dlc are midir and gael. I’ll start with midir. He’s a large dragon which when you learn the fight is awesome to play against. There can be a lot of trial and error to learn the fight though. This is fine for a boss and can be fun. However he is placed weirdly at the end of a long boss run which is not good for a trail and error fight. Also it’s clear both him and gael are fights designed with max healing (or close to) in mind. This my skew my opinion on them as my fights were on a much lower amount of healing. Gael phase 1 is amazing and then each of his next to phase look cooler than the last. Unfortunately they also get more and more boring each phase. Phase 2 can be okay if you play very aggressive but your almost guaranteed to take chip damage doing this and this took away from my limited healing. Phase 3 is just baiting out the same 3 combos over and over and waiting for the small punish window. Overall for me it was like an 8-9 min fight playing aggressively and I could only take 8-9 hits which meant a minute of flawless play for each hit taken. The fight was clearly not designed for this and so aswell as being boring In the later phases it took quite a few attempts before I could do them flawlessly aswell. Despite the sour note they are still both nice challenges and a decent finale to the trilogy. Though I do think doing friede last would be better.

The levels is where I can start to pick up on some problems with the game. After ds2 these levels were very easy to go through. Which isn’t a good or bad thing just different. Most of the levels in this game are well designed with there paths and interconnectivity. But most of them felt unoriginal. They felt like some of the better levels in the earlier games just without providing anything new. The exceptions being irrethyll dungeons which was a new setting but not to interesting level design wise. And the cathedral. The cathedral is the hardest level in the base game. It’s very long and loops back to the same bonfire like 4/5 times. The enemy’s are challenging and the setting is unique. Unfortunately this area is capped with the worst boss in the game. I would have loved to see more varied levels but what is here is pretty good gameplay and looks amazing. Just more originality would have been better.

Importantly however there is nothing offensively bad here which is more than can be said for any of the other games I’ve played.

First of the base game is of a higher standard then any of the other games I’ve played so far (ds1,ds2,bb,er). There are some amazing fights in here. Gundyr is a interesting opening boss compared to the other games which are usually quite simple. And Vordt is really unique as a fight and a lot of fun. Abyss watchers is very cool and a nice early spike in difficulty. Pontiff at the time was one of my fav fights in the series. He is very well designed with a truly unique concept for phase 2. Took a while to learn the timings but very satisfying when I did. The rematch against gundyr is in my top 5 bosses still. I love the aggression in the fight and it constantly feels active either in punishes or dodges. Princes is again a difficult but awesome fight with a really cool teleport concept.  The nameless king is one of the coolest boss arenas ever. The first phase is easy whilst unique and the second is a fun duel. Another great boss.

The final boss is by far the best finale in the series. Soul is a really cool fight and quite challenging. Most of these games either have a disappointing finale or in the case of ds2 a neutral one. 

Even the worse boss in this game are still better than the average boss in ds1,ds2 and bb. The gimmick fights are less good but still not bad or annoying.
 
I’ve heard this boss quality continues in sekiro and I know from playing it that Elden ring matches it in some fights. I find it hard to believe that from will ever top this level of consistent good boss design. 
 
When I was playing the later fights I was doing so with about 1/3 the amount of total healing you can have. This provided a good level of difficulty for me. With full healing I would say these fights would be on the easier side and so would recommend to anyone who enjoys the challenge to play with less than max healing.
 

Just finished this game with a playtime of 22 hours. Loved it. It’s my favourite of the series. The boss quality in this game in amazing and is consistently of the quality that the others only occasionally reach. The level design is generally good and never frustrating. Highly recommended.

If your referring to the bomb dropped in oryx fight. You still have running around in circles.

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.

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. 

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.

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.
 
 
 

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. 
 

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

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.

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.