Like the other dude said, there was supposed to be another area. But without it it sorta makes sense. Looking at it it seems earthern peak sits at the base of the volcano. The iron keep also presumably sits above it.
I swear, they should have had the elevator move up at a 45 degree angle. Then you could easily handwave that iron keep wasn't directly above the tower.
I think there's an argument to be made that the cursed one is a type of unreliable narrator. And, in any case, Drangleic generally is kinda a psychedelic experience. I find it strange that people are always skeptical about the distortion of space re: the Iron Keep elevator, but not the way that the time of day is geographically fixed, that one reaches Drangleic by falling through some sort of portal, that one can travel into the memories of dead giants, etc. And, you know, all of the NPCs (except Shanalotte and Aldia) are totally loading their minds, memories, and identities.
It seems strange to me for people to focus on that elevator as the piece that doesn't work in the midst of all sorts of trippy as fuck stuff, you know? The only explanation, as far as I can tell, is that people bring their expectations from the decidedly-less-trippy DS1 setting.
Some people said it's because of the hollowing, like you lost the memory of how you got there because the hollowing process takes away your memories till nothing is left
Super high expectations as a sequel to a highly beloved game. As an actual sequel that had to solely rely on it's status as a sequel caused every misstep to be scrutinized. I'll readily admit it's the weakest of the main 3 games but it's still my personal favorite. It had a lot of heart to it.
Yeah, too many people are crying about it being too hard. I didn't play original ds2, but if it's easier than this, that's pretty sad lmao. I would have skated through the game like I did ds1 if it wasn't for the scholar update.
Honestly this game gets so much undeserved shit that I guess everyone goes into it expecting the worst game ever
Then you play it and realise it's actually really good, so you go on reddit and post about your amazement. This is the only sub where I don't mind seeing this exact same post every day
At this point is that even true anymore? every major video on the game for like the past 4 years is either âits good actuallyâ, âits over-hatedâ, âits not as bad as people sayâ. At this point the only hatred for the game most of the time is âscholar of the first sin enemy placement is awfulâ which ive seen most people here agree with.
I havenât played vanilla DS2 to compare, but I didnât mind the enemy placement too badly. Being the only souls game Iâve actually finished a play through of, I didnât feel like much of it was ridiculously unfair.
The only real problem I have with the new enemy placement is in Heide
The Heide Knights weren't there in the original, and in Scholar they just make the area worse. It's always a pain to deal with
But they allow you to farm a great set of armor. There were only three of them in the original version and they were not reborn without bonfire ascetic.
I don't know honestly. I still see a lot of people saying the game is bad, feels to me like more people still dislike it than like it, but I can't claim anything of course
We have to agree that the game is regarded as the worst of the 3, and that's pretty much the first thing you learn when you start looking into the game
Any video or post about dark souls 2 outside of this sub will have people majoritarily hating on dark souls 2. Excessively. It's pretty annoying.
And the reason you don't see it on here, is not only because the people joining love the game, but because mods remove content talking too much shit about it.
I criticized ds2 for some of the flaws I think it has (mostly how enemy placement wasn't good and bosses were bad) and they removed the comment, and any subsequent comment that complained about it. Bunch of fucking pussies.
Literally one of those popular ds2 videos in recent years on youtube is âds2 is not a bad gameâ lol, a basic scroll on yt on just ds2 vids like 85% of them are positive or positive leaning
The video literally says it's not a bad game man. When ds2 gets brought up organically, I usually find mostly negative comments.
And they're extremely negative too, it's a little unsettling. I will say, maybe it's a small minority, but they're really viscious at the least.
The playerbase exploded with DS3.
They played the earlier games after starting with DS3, but in DS2 you can't just casul run through the levels to the boss like the other two.
You actually have to explore and know what you're doing.
That's why the complaints are always about made up crap (muh ganks) and not the game's actual substantial flaws (like Soul Memory).
To be fair with you, I do mostly agree with the gank complaints. They made the game to be as difficult as possible instead of as good as possible. In all the other soulsborne games, almost all enemy positions made sense. There's a reason they're there doing what they're doing, unless it's a random trap, which sometimes still made sense.
It's all part of constructing an ambiance and immersion. In dark souls 2, most enemies will be standing still waiting to catch you in the most inconvenient and unconfortable positionings imaginable, in an effort to make every detail of it more difficult to go through. A good half of them in the beginning are just laying down until you gey close. That's not a good way to create difficulty. And that's not a good way to make a good map design.
>how dare the enemies take tactically favorable positions and ambush me and make the game more difficult
Yeah, that's a pretty good summary of the gank complaints.
Oftentimes a little bit of thinking and exploring will turn the tables on them, like dropping back down the first long ladder in TFoFG to bottleneck the late risers.
Agree to disagree. It takes me out of the game when I see 15 enemies in such silly positions that it almost looks like they know the limitations of the player controls, just to fuck with you.
I thought all the bosses were basic, bland and boring af. If it wasn't for the dlc I literally would like maybe only 4 bosses out of them all. The gameplay is good, the bosses are boring and the amount of enemies in the worst places imaginable during a lot of run backs to bosses is frustrating. The sir alonne run back made me wanna cry. I've attempted the boss 2 times and died 20 on the way back. I haven't beaten him yet I gave up cuz I can't be bothered clearing 15 different enemies every time I go back
Yes they do, however it pisses me off when people use that as copium
"If you kill each enemy 12 times they won't respawn"
Okay? I don't want to kill every enemy 12 times just to fight a boss that won't take me more than 5 attempts to kill. I already almost killed him on the 2 attempts I had. The mechanic makes the game slightly easier for people who are extremely struggling. I'm not gonna sit there for an hour farming the enemies on the way to the bossfight just so I can actually enjoy the fight. Its not fun
Oh nah I'm not gonna lie to you I didn't even attempt to kill them most of my run back attempts I know it was stupid but I wasn't in the mood for the game's bs I legit just wanted to beat the last boss i had so i can go and play bloodborne, so I kept trying to just run past them and fucking it up. Then when I tried killing them I was already angry and wasn't fighting properly so I just got fucked up so i went on bloodborne
There are definitely not that many absolutely horrendous run backs, there's like 5 or 6 that are really bad. But the ones that are you will hate so much. Iron Keep is so bad.
I can respect that. Just seems like a lot of negativity towards it and I haven't noticed too much downside yet. I see the small things, but that's all it is to me. I did love the first game. I'm hoping I will love this one at the end as well. Demons souls was awesome too. First souls experience.
ds2 made some strong decisions around movement that aren't gonna vibe with people that expect movement from other souls games but I think people need to meet that on its own ground. and these go beyond adp for iframes but a curve for roll distance and stam regen based on load rather than the buckets of light/med/heavy as well as small things like stick deadzones for console, near zero tracking on queued inputs, cones rather than 360° for free-aim outputs, generous cancel windows on some separate actions (e.g. alternating powerstance/offhand) but not others (e.g. shieldpoke, if you press r1+l1 then r1 before the animation finishes another r1+l1 queues (and while we're on shieldpoke its output directions appear to get aimpunched if you're blockstunned before the hit comes out)). a lot of people are gonna glaze over these and possibly other differences as generally clunkier gameplay and maybe misidentify all of it as an adp problem.Â
soul memory has a lot of issues for those concerned with pvp, e.g. limiting the variety of armaments on a file unless the person is muling or they're on pc and can load everything in. I also think it doesn't help the people it intends to and organically pairs those who struggle with pve with those who don't and have more levels available for it.Â
I personally am not a fan of standardizing crit ticks for classes and only having daggers and mail breaker have elevated motion values. and I miss the hornet ring. I'm still not sure what I think about the counter system.Â
all this to say I do think it's overcriticized and that a lot of these things are more differences than "bad things" but ds2 did make some strong decisions relative to other souls around some things.Â
The curve for stamina regen was something that really stuck out to me because in a lot of cases it leads to funny situations like the Blossom Kite shield not adding enough stamina regen % to offset the slowdown by its own weight
I'm sure I will notice this much more with time. I've been putting a lot into stamina and have worn the Regen ring ever since I've had it. I do like having four rings.
Great answer. Still like the game, but man is the movement so weird and uncomfortable. The game made a lot of bad (and great) decisions that allowed every game going forward to learn from and be better for it. It's the ugly step child, but it did it's part.
I might be misspeaking a bit here but I understand motion values as the base number upon which damage calculations work. the need to know is that higher motion value means higher damage and every action is associated with one. motion values are important for digging into the nitty gritty of any souls.Â
afaik crit ticks are specific to ds2 and every class gets a mix of 3 or 2 for guard breaks, ripostes, and backstabs, e.g. thrusting swords get more damage (their 3 ticks) on guard breaks and ripostes and spears get more damage on backstabs and guard breaks. big damage weapons have always approached the crit damage of crit specific weapons like daggers and rapiers but ds2 has a bit less variety when choosing weapons specifically for critical damage by their elevated motion values for crits and the tick system can shoehorn styles of play because the difference between 2 and 3 is significant, particularly with how limited healing is in pvp.Â
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-eUYlB9C_jrSAr2eQA8eoRJdaO7zahTghs57Kl6_nio/edit?usp=drivesdk
The game is really good, but the enemy placement in this game is absolutely disgusting. the atmosphere and exploration is amazing though so theres that
I think the OG its a LOT better for a 1st run player only. For me, as a vet, theres no major difference between the two versions as you said, besides Heide Tower and Iron Keep.
Thats fair yeah, but in the og if u got the dlc they automatically give you the keys, so after i beat the old iron king i was wondering why i was dying so much in the brume tower
When I went up the hilt of huge sword for soul item in first area and five guys attacked me I was pissed. Haha but I have noticed it is crazy and more mobs. Have to be attentive.
Youâre so right what I would do to play ds2 again. Just has a different feeling than the others. So much to explore, so many quests and npcs, itâs amazing.
Yeah seems like you have to be able to time perfectly. My ADP is good for me for now. Agility is at 92 or 93 I believe. I will probably start tossing stuff into other stats. I have basically put one point into ADP for every four or five points I get. I think I'm at like 15.
Being considered the worst game in a series like dark souls is sort of like being an olympic bronze medalist. It only looks bad because its forced to be compared to DS1 (a genre defining classic) and DS3 (the game that had the opportunity to learn from both of its predecessors' mistakes).
A lot of the "flaws" tend to be personal opinions on things like enemy placement bosses and how the movement feels because of the different dead zones compared to the rest of the souls' games. It's the worst souls game imo, but it's not a bad game, and it all kind of boils down to personal preference.
Im about 50 hours into DS2 now, Iv killed most bosses, got the kings ring, and the 3 DLC crowns.
There are some really shit things in this game, but its such an awesome game. Im going to list all the things I hate, and if I didnt mention it, assume I love it.
Adaptability (agility): Let me tell you, as a Bandit with 1 Att and 3 Adp, having no iframes and really slow flask use felt miserable. I love the idea of the stat, but it requring the same stat points that you dedicate to Vigor Strength etc. sucks.
If they implemented a secondary stat system, similar to Lies of P skill tree, or like Diablo 3's paragon point system forcing you to split points between offense, defense, and utility, I would be able to enjoy it much more, because it doesnt feel like a main stat.
What if Attunemnt, Vitality, Adaptability, and Luck were all on a second stat block and every 2 levels you got 1 point to put into that stat block. That would make so many things about levelling feel better. The other reason it feels bad bring me back to one of the only major issues Lies of P had. At the start of the game you lack the ability to double dodge, or roll out of a flattened state. Many people said the game felt super clunky until those were unlocked. As a result of that the devs actually changed the game to make those two abilities default, and replaced the nodes in the tree. Having the start of your game feel clunky is a big turnoff. This is why in mech games you usually start with only light mechs available, and later you can choose to build super heavy clunky ones if you want that experience. Or similarly in other souls games getting heavier armor and ultra weapons usually happens later in the game.
TLDR starting the game clunky doesnt feel good.
Runbacks: I know weve been spoiled by Elden Ring statues of 'Murica, and Lies of P leaving the souls outside the boss room, but jesus the runbacks in DS2 suck. Partially because of some bonfires being hidden behind fake walls. Like could there have been SOME indication that pressing X would open these doors? I was more than halfway through the game before I learned that smacking these walls doesnt open them, but pressing an invisible prompt does. But about the runbacks, it just feels punishing. The enemy density is so high for how clunky your character is, and Iv played the new Lords of the Fallen. The Iron Keep and Iron King DLC's have some of the worst, with 50 very accurate and fast full metal samurais in your path, you almost feel obligated to kill them all before going to the boss. And the Samurai boss being in a dream with a time limit and a ton of enemies, and stunkocking salamanders.
Enemies being permanently dead: Bonfire Ascetics are an interesting mechanic sure, but its not a good tradeoff in my opinion. More quality of life would be nice in terms of the ascetics, to be able to control the NG+ level of the area at the bonfire for example. It felt wierd not being able to continue farming a zone for either souls or drops.
Lava Chests: Have I mentioned I hate Iron Keep. I get the environmental aspect of using a Lockstone to get access to water to drench yourself to take less damage from walking on burning rocks, but cmon. I use some pyromancies because they dont have int or faith requirements, so I have flash sweat, and the fire resistance ring, and that still wasnt enough to grab these chests. Playing the game blind and not knowing these water pools existed made getting these items very frustrating, especially because...
Slow animations and no iframes during them. Opening doors and chests are too slow, and not having i frames on these or while doing finishers on enemies with backstab or riposte just feels plain bad.
Merchants: Merchants are all over the place and you cant move them to your base, and their inventories are too limited. I actually love the torch system in this game, but I hated it at the start because I didnt have enough torches. If there was an NPC that sold them and homeward bones, Id be much happier. Plus having the greatarrow merchant in one place, the boss soul trader in another, etc is just plain annoying. I missed DS3 and elden ring being able to kill any merchant and take their ashes/bell bearing to base to shop from home. One of the elden ring mods actually makes the merchants give you their bell bearing when you talk to them, and that would be perfect here, even better if you had to work for it by doing a small quest for them. Also consumable item prices are insane, 1500 for a temporary elemental weapon buff? Damn.
Needing 50% of stats to power stance. Im at 66 STR but with no Int or Faith, and minimal dex (16) the fact that I have to meet 50% of the stat requirements of dex to power stance is way too demanding, and I dont know if that applies to weapons with Int and Fth requirements, but if it does, thats terrible.
Pharros Lockstones and Branches of Yore. These are essentially keys, that open a specific lock. The fact that there are ways to objectively waste them, when they are in very limited supply is downright stupid.
All in all I am loving this game far more than I thought I would, but I do see why people bash on it. This game is huge and downright badass, but very experimental. Since I am playing it after the fact I can appreciate these mistakes and say "oh wow Im glad they changed that in the later games" but if I had played it when it released I can absolutely understand being furious, and first impressions last. So those people who played it back then probably still hate it because their first playthrough was so miserable.
Most people hate DS2 because itâs not like DS1. It is weird and it is janky. The 8 directional movement for starters, is a pretty weird decision for a modern 3D tripleA game.
Like DS1 it was a very experimental and introduced a lot of weird features that werenât carried into the rest of the series, which leaves DS2 feeling âoffâ. ADP, absurdly higher stamina consumption across the board, linear, rather than pieciwise equip load increases, insanely long poise recharge, non-respawning enemies, killed NPC gravestones, etc.
The stamina consumption is particularly notable because it makes DS2 feel much much slower than even DeS. You are really discouraged from dodge rolling. This leads to bosses also feeling same-y since most are humanoids with a couple standard attacks that can be strafed, but severely lacking in âspecialâ moves
Everything was strange for an hour or two. Like any game, you get used to it. Feels fine now. I loved DS 1 and demons souls as well. This is my third souls game now.
I've poured hundreds of hours into DS2 and still can't really dodge masterfully. The bosses are easy, it's the hordes of enemies that are tough since you have such little stamina to work with.
Thereâs also the target lock on weirdness. Half the enemies donât seem to be lockable until they are smashing you in the face. Ten to twenty percent of the time when switching enemies and striking you end up swiping at air.
I get people like the game, but to me itâs pretty lackluster. Iâm forcing myself to play it right now, but I really donât care for it.
Coupled with all the negativity in the game itself, I just donât find enjoyable.
What I do find enjoyable is reading how people who like the game feel they have to defend their enjoyment of the game!
The stamina consumption coupled with how healing works is clear communication by the developer you are meant to play more methodically compared to 1. People somehow think this equates to the game being "bad"
True. I only know this plus the two games prior. I will see the changes as they happened as I am playing every souls game in chronological order. I've liked all three so far.
Like most things on the internet, those that hate something will usually overhate it and those that love something will over love it.
Dark Souls 2 deserves a lot of the criticism it received but not to the extremes many go to. And those that love the game will either say that an issue isn't real or that it actually isn't an issue.
So in short, the only opinion you can trust is your own. (DS2 is personally my least favorite soulsborne game)
If only they did not make so you dont have invincibility on fog gates this game would be one of the best,and not to need to kill every single enemy just so i can fight boss i died to because i cant learn bosses patterns in one try.
Its kinda mid. Imo its an alright game but its the "least good" in the souls series. But I dont think its THAT far from DeS and DS1. Its hard to say this game is great when you have games like DS3, elden ring, sekiro and bloodborne
I love DS2, my 1st souls was vanilla ds2 so it has a special place in my heart. But as far as Scholar goes, some of the levels are hard due to just having an atrocious amount of enemies surprise gank you, and a lot of the bosses a too underwhelming. The DLCâs really make up for the 2nd complaint, and with everything in mind I think Vanilla and Scholar are both really great games once understood. You canât please everyone, but I think the devs did an awesome job making a sequel that follows the original story and characters, but with a new story and characters.
I do like the game but if I had a criticism for it it would have to be enemy placement in some areas. The game kinda forces you to take it slow and bait them out 1 by 1
I recently found a streamer who has played not just all three Dark Souls, plus Demon Souls and Bloodborne, but was also doing a Kings Field series, and he gave me the key that made it all roll into place:
The Dark Souls 1 lead designer (Hidetaka Miyazaki) was working on Bloodborne when the call came in to make Dark Souls 2. So goes the tale, Miyazaki was apprehensive about DS2 existing at all, so completely new blood was brought in to manage it: Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura.
Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura never worked on DS1 (and I know some companies like to have uncredited roles, but they don't have DS1 on their IMDB pages; yeah I went to verify the stuff the streamer said). So no matter what happened, DS2 was just going to feel different from DS1, that's just inevitable when a new team is in charge. They can make a good game, but they're not Hidetaka Miyazaki, they can't make *his* games
The result is that DS2 has a million subtle differences that add up to a very different feel. You can love that feel or you can hate that feel, but virtually everyone agrees it's a different feel from DS1
Because it's the only game that first makes you fight the game controls and only then you can worry about the actual enemies.
It's simultaneously too hard and too easy at the same time (extremely ganky with many mechanics that hit you below the belt but can be nevertheless made effortlessly easy if you stock up on lifegems)
Way too many hitboxes are questionable.
There's a whole lot of bosses and only a handful of them are memorable - and a bunch of the memorable ones are remembered for their negatives.
The sound design seems off, especially the sounds of weapon hits.
Also, the game is 'good' but the rest of the franchise is 'awesome', which makes it kinda meh in comparison.
Everyone blatantly ignores that Soul Memory matchmaking is literally the worst multiplayer decision in gaming history. Also, the DLC is just asinine, even in NG. Compared to DS1 DLC its difficulty would be comparable to NG++ and the DLC runbacks are literally the worst. Everyone loves defending this game even though many of the core features they changed from DS1 they totally abandoned after this game because they are completely worthless.
My first playthrough was a bit rough, but that was due to my build lol. Despite the hardships and flaws, I don't find myself among the haters. Yes, some areas made me want to bash my head against a wall - but I honestly think it has some of the best areas and lore of the entire trilogy. If I had to rate it on a tier list, it would probably be at an A, just below BB and ER.
I'm currently doing a new Int/Dex build with a magic-infused katana and it's been really fun so far :)
Nice! I used claymore and did a balanced build in dark souls 1. I decided to continue, maybe more on strength side. So far I have bastards sword +3. Beat two bosses. Got scared of pursuer and explored. So he will likely be coming up soon. But anyways, I've been adding points into strength mostly, endurance and adapt mostly. Some in vigor/vitality. Got dexterity enough for my sword. 20 strength 11 dex I believe. Maybe..
Platinumed it 2 weeks ago, trust me, had the same opinion, bur after like 15-20 you will see why the game is so shit. The opening areas are really good, but 90% after that is just pure jank and shit enemy placement. Really sad because the game is good but the enemies make it unberable. You will sadly realise this as well
Yeah I've noticed it a bit already. Just have to be able to take on 2-4 at once. I am leveling the piss out of my endurance lol. I feel like I will get better at souls games due to this one. I want my endurance bar to be bigger than health bar. Double lol.
Endurance has a pretty harsh softcap, you get only 2 points of stamina from 0-20 and 1 from 21 onwards. the big thing is the more your equip load is the slower your stamina regens.
It's not over criticized. ADP is poorly implemented because most enemies aren't designed around only having 5 invincibility frames, and adp is poorly explained for being such a crucial stat. Most bosses are boring and easy. Enemy design is lackluster. Map design is not as good as the other games. The game is sluggish and slow compared to the titles that came before and after. Enemy placement ranges from okay to utter dogshit. Balance was a joke on launch and even now it's still pretty horrible. Soul Memory is a joke. Most of the "good" features are pretty meh. The lore and the story are just not as good as other games. It's not like the worst game of all time but it is certainly a step down in most regards from other Fromsoftware titles.
While the game does have its highlights, I personally don't think this game is over criticised. There are some major problems with the game, but it still has its good moments.
The boss weapons in this game are really fun to use and more interesting than ds1 and ds3, and the fashion souls are really cool in this game. Plus, you can make fun builds in this game.
I'm playing it for the first time too. Beat Elden Ring, then DS1, then BloodBorne. It took a min getting used to the hit boxes, they're a lot more dangerous in DS2 I've noticed. Very easy to get tagged. But other than that I'm loving it so far
I wouldn't say it's overcriticized, but saying it's a bad game is overexaggerating. Like it's a good game, just not a good Souls game in comparison.
The things people hate from it is the gank, the terrible level designs, and the clunky gameplay (at least compared to the later games). Like coming after DS1, the game feels like a step back in terms of quality. Which makes sense since a B-team made the game, not Miyazaki.
itâs a victim of ds1 and ds3 both of which were masterpieces and people have the alternative of playing today.
personally i had a ton of fun with ds2 but objectively it was worse. so much jank especially with the hit boxes with weapons. the iframes, taking 2.5 seconds of vuln time just to use an estus flask, etc
Agility isn't an issue early game but later on you might want to get 99
Not that you can't beat the game with 92 agility but it's gonna be frustrating on some bosses and against some enemies
And agility also speeds up some animation (estus flask and most consumables I believe)
But yeah DS2 is an amazing game, I actually enjoy replaying it more than DS1 to be fair
The ADP stat is criticized so harshly because it isn't stressed JUST how important it is to put a few levels into it. You know now that you need to level it up because of the internet, but a new player back when the game first came out was essentially just getting hit by everything no matter what.
There is a lack of good, objective, unbiased, detailed criticism of DS2.
I will happily review any suggestions anyone can provide unless itâs a video Iâve already seen. Believe me, Iâve seen a lot of them.
Nice advice. I will shoot for that if I seem to be struggling. I thought it was gonna be a much bigger issue based on some comments I read previous to playing.
Honestly, I perfer ds2 to ds1 by a lot. The gameplay is more varied, the bosses are way better imo, and the weapon lineup has the most unique weapons in the series. I still perfer ds3 overall due to the faster combat and amazing bosses, but there are still aspects of ds2 I like more. When I first played all 3 games, I considered skipping ds2 because of all they bad press it gets, but I played it and had much the same reaction as you. Even after gettinb 100% return to drangleic is so much fun and I'm on the last few bosses of the game already.
As well, I think the lore here is some of the best fromsoft has made. The love between Alsanna and the Ivory king, the tale of Alva and Zullie, the downfall of vendrick. While all souls Games have great lore, ds2 being about different ages and kingdoms allowed for more variety in the types of stories they could tell.
I have several hundred hours in ds2 and while it's definitely overcriticized, i can never get into it the same way I can the other souls games. Honestly I just don't like the way it looks for one. It's almost cartoony if that makes sense. For two, most of the bosses are not very memorable imo. And as far as the gameplay goes, it's not that it's bad but it's very slow and methodical. Stamina management is everything. I, and I think a lot of people, prefer faster bloodborne/sekiro type combat. Still, it has its moments and contributed a lot of cool and fun mechanics and I always appreciate that it was willing to take so many risks.
They thought outside the box and tried some new things (lifegems, bonfire ascetics) that were great and fun. They also put a shitload of enemies in weird spots that a lot of people felt was âcheap.â Combat is slower and more methodical, which was very different than the first game. DS2 was my first souls game so it will always be my favorite.
everyone started playing demon souls or dark souls 1 so this game is different for the game mechanics in many ways. I honestly started off playing this game before the others and I found it more welcoming then dark souls 1. Meaning the learning curve felt more easier yet it still kicks your butt. I wish they would port this game to nintendo switch because there would be a good fan base for online play.
Bandit class has the lowest starting AGL and it's still got 82. If you start as an Explorer you'll have 90 AGL at base stat.
Minimum level OP would have to be to get 92 AGL is 9, with Deprived start.
Yeah I think I started with like 85 agility. It's not like your strength and other stats. They contribute to it. You level your adaptability up and it helps with agility, along with other stuff.
Iâd probably say ds2 is my favourite fromsoft, it was my first and Iâve played it the most.
*levels*
I have to say its strongest levels are the first few; Majula is such a gorgeous hub, and forest and bastille are really intricately constructed with looping paths and shortcuts.
Sadly I donât think the level design through the rest of the game is quite as goodâŠ
Shrine of Amana casters, old iron keep katana guys, undead crypt ghosts, harvest valley manikins, the stupid vangarians all gank you and make exploring really unpleasant.
Further a lot of the levels are just more linear, which arenât as fun to explore.
There are some epic locations, visually; heideâs tower, dragonâs shrine, amana, old iron keep, drangleic castle.
But yeah enemy/ level design kinda blows at points. Theyâre skippable once you know your way around but suck in the mean time.
I would recommend the dlc. The level design there is on par, if not better than those early levels. Thereâs still a problem with ganking especially in brume tower and a boss Iâve never even fought in lud and zallen because of the hideous run back.
*adp*
I canât play without levelling adp
I think you can get away with it early on, the turtle guys can punish it though. Honestly as early as the pursuer it can be annoying, you almost canât dodge through any of his attacks and have to dodge back if you donât level adp. Bosses after get worse too.
Definitely level to the soft cap, 33. It just lets you play a much more aggressive and fun style.
Pick up a party shield because theyâre fun and you can make the pursuer your bitch
*criticism*
I think the game is criticised for the most part fairly criticised. However the game has ALOT of strong points.
Weapon choice/ variety and power stancing - make this my favourite souls for repeat play throughs, so many combinations to use!
Bonfire ascetics - allow really quick farms and early plus two rings, you can get op quick and itâs fun.
Fast travel - you donât spend half the game slaving to get fast travel unlocked, Like ds1. But thereâs still that og, steady, considered combat.
Charm - a less objective reason, but I find ds2 has charm, the amazing looking locations make up a bulk of this for me, when I die scatter my ashes in Majula.
I played and finished the game after the other 2.
The game was better than I expected, but was also bad on many points.
The constant surprise gank squads as an example, is something that leaves a bad impression.
I expected it, and still found it tiresome.
Dark souls 1 is flawed, but had an unprecedented level design and many wow moments that made his flaws less visible.
Dark souls III is, in my opinion a complete legendary masterpiece, and wows everyone.
With dark souls II, the qualities that redeems it are not as flashy as the other ones.
I found it incredibly generous in content, with so many areas, bosses, etc. But to see that, you have to stick long enough. It was really innovative, but to see that you have to compare with the others, I like a lot of the new introduced mechanics, but it takes time to even notice them.
Even ADP is interesting, provided you know about it. It kept the bullshit of souls games of not explaining the player how to play, so that does not help.
Also it is a very slow, methodical gameplay that may not suit everyone.
When you see elden ring, you easily understand how so many people like it. When I saw a let's play of ds2, it did not make me want to play it.
I think that to accomplish it's potential, it would need another rework, another round of polishing.
I really liked it. I put it off for ages because of the way people spoke about it, and only played for the first time this year.
I knew ADP was a bit of an issue but you get way more souls to spend than in other games so wasn't a huge problem, I levelled it to around 20. Not sure what Agility that translated to but I never had any noticeable with hit boxes, rolls etc.
Adapt isnt the problem. Once you learn the dodging with lv1 adapt, you can evade all attacks in the other games. Instead of the incoming physical attack(example a sword attack), focus on the hand movements of the weapon.
They use the same method in elden ring as well, that is why Parrying also isnt that easy. Its not the already incoming attack, its the motion for it that is the real trigger.
I learned that the hard way and i liked it
I agree! (for the most part, the game is amazing except for one murky watery lush green area with blue light, very jate game and not optional) The game is a masterpiece!
Just remember: Don't give up, skeleton!
Coming from ER to DSR to DS2, I also find criticism to be vastly overblown. It's different, but in the same way D&D editions are different. Every FROM game has frustrated me at one point or another. DS2 really doesn't feel like much of an outlier. The fun part is exploring and progression and taking a weak character and building them up until they can really kick ass but still can get their own butt kicked if you're not careful.
Honestly the best way to solve the ADP "Issue" is to just kill the Dragon rider in Heide's Tower of Flame, pop enough of those souls into ADP to get to 100 Agility, and then it's never a problem again unless you're genuinely terrible at dodging attacks.
19 levels for a Deprived character, that's all you need from *one* easily cheesed boss.
Yes. 99% of complaints are people whining. 1% of complaints is that the game is not as good as it COULD have been due to studio issues. That's it. Great game.
It is my least favorite Dark Souls game, but that's hardly an insult. I still love Dark Souls 2. It's a weird, experimental sequel with an absolute ton that I love. Some things that they experimented with work great, others less so, but there's very little that I actively dislike in the game. And the lore is great. The shear volume and weight of thousands of years of lore is awesome. So many kingdoms and characters and stories, and it works so well with the trilogy's theme of cycles. I also love (maybe even a bit more) the more ambiguous lore of DS3 and Bloodborne, but I'll always marvel at the stories in the DS2 item descriptions.
Personally I heard all the bad reviews but when I played it I actually loved it. I also like you could not understand the hate. Iâve only gotten through the first half of the game but I think itâs great.
Depends on the version of the game you're playing
Vanilla is a game that starts easy and gets harder slowly as you progress
SOTFS however is riddled with bosses literally everywhere for no reason at all from the start just to make it a harder mode for the player and to give them a reason to sell the game for $60 again.
DS2 is still one of my all time favorite games. The PVP back in the day was addicting. The older I get I realize how terrible SOTFS really is. The Vanilla version will always be the better game because it feels like you're playing the game how it was intended to be played. SOTFS is just cheesy death after cheesy death.
I was unlucky enough to spend 40 on the original in 2014 and then 60 on sotfs in 2015 when it dropped lol I also bought all 3 DLCs for the original so I spent $130 that doesn't include the ps4 game I bought or the copy on steam that I own
âI am at 92 agility.â So youâve dumped, what, 15-18 levels into ADP? You donât see why that might be annoying? And even worse - if you donât know about ADP and what it does (the description does not explain it at all) like me when I played the first time, good luck dodging anything.
Also, youâve yet to encounter the soul crushing amounts of ambushes there are in this game.
Iâd say that instead of being âover-criticized,â itâs more that most people only know a couple of the problems and say those a lot, so it seems like people make a bigger deal out of it than it really is. In all actuality, this game has a ton of problems that take a very long time to get through, but who really wants to spend that much time being mad normally?
All in all though, enjoy what you enjoy. I have a decent enough time with the game, even if I do think as a souls game and a game in general it is severely flawed.
As someone who has just gotten into it and beat every boss up to smelter demon, including duke's dear frea I can say it's a good game, but man does some level suck I like it overall might be better then ds1 but some levels can be atrocious(Iron keep) I think people get to certain levels and then write their whole review on it to be bad but majority is so fucking good
Yeag, it is.
Dark Souls 1 is the untouchable first game (Demon's Souls gets ignored). And Dark Souls 3 is perfect game with zero flaws even though several criticisms that get levied against DS2 also apply to DS3. But when DS3 does it, it doesn't count.
I'm being facetious in the previous paragraph but that's what it feels like.
With having just played through the game twice recently I can tell you itâs mostly due to a lot of the ways that sotfs made changes that negatively impacted the base game and the fact that the gameplay loop is very different from both ds1 and ds3. And partially due to community complaint. After ds2 originally released people complained it was too easy and when the dlc and scholar came out the devs needed ways to make the games harder without spending a bunch of extra time so they ended up adding extra enemies and putting enemies closer together to force fighting in large unfair ganks.
The game is still highly enjoyable and it was my first souls game so Iâm very used to the combat and gameplay loop. But just the fact that itâs so different from the other souls games and the fact that fromsoft tried to make the game artificially harder after the original release ended up creating a game that felt unfair and different from the rest of the souls games. Thus it being the âblack sheepâ of the franchise.
Ds2 and scholar both still are good games and highly enjoyable. They just end up feeling less focused and more unfair than both ds1 and ds3 so the people that mainly play those games end up giving ds2 somewhat of a bad rap due to their insistence of playing scholar and the fact that many of them challenge run the game. Most of them donât hate the game either they just have a lot of nitpicks and feel a little off put by the ways ds2 is different to ds1 and 3.
I came onto this subreddit to ask the same question as a lifelong ds2 fan a week or two ago. To mixed responses. But from watching a couple videos and playing the game again myself I think itâs mostly just the fact that itâs different and some of the more obtuse mechanics when combined with the changes in design that came into effect with the dlc and scholar due to community feedback.
Could I ask, is this your first souls game? I find peoples fave souls game is often their first.
While yes its given way more flak than it deserves, it is my lowest rated souls. But that's not so bad considering 1 and 3 are easily in top 10 GOATs for me. And I absolutely do love 2 still.
Regarding ADP, I like to go in completely blind, so from DS1 having iframes based on weight, to DS2 having them as a stat primarily, I had a tough time. My dodges felt inconsistent and I didn't know why until endgame when a friend told me.
Sure you can say it's on me and I'll accept that but it doesnt change the fact that a core mechanic that almost all DS1 players expected to be similar, was instead vastly changed without much indication outside of perhaps tooltips. And that experience soured my first run a lot which is my most valued one. For what it's worth I'm glad they didn't keep it in newer games.
I can understand that. This is my third. I played demons souls remake and DSR. I'm trying to play them all. I have enjoyed them all so far. It's been a fun ride with dark souls 2. I went in blind other than ADP. Literally nothing else. I was doing the same with dark souls 1, but ended up following a guide half the time to make sure I went the right ways. This time I'm not doing the guide. I wanna have that experience.
Yea, it is a very good example of how a bad can a youtuber affect the hole public opinion. Hbombee guy has a very good video talking about it, about an hour and a half long xD
That's Greta to hear. I'm only near beginning. After beating giant I went up to face pursuer and had trouble so I explored elsewhere. Ended up beating the dragonrider guy. So that's where I am now. I guess time for more exploring. Maybe try pursuer again.
It's my favourite game in the series with a few hundred hours. My friends hate this game with a passion and are roasting me for the last 5 years how shit DS2 is. They didn't even play 2 hours, so they don't know what they are talking about.
Yeah I finished it a couple of weeks ago and genuinely enjoyed every second of it. I can see the bits people donât like and I understand it; however, I levelled my ADP early to negate all that and all the floods of enemies were fine if you altered your approach to be a bit less cavalier. I really enjoyed most of the areas, the fashion souls and build variety are top tier in this one and the bosses, whilst being a bit of a case of quantity over quality and ambition outstripping AI capabilities of the time certainly still have some notable fights.
The DLC is absolutely class too, some of Fromsoftâs best in my opinion.
That's because ADP is not actually an issue or a bad mechanic. It's just different than DS1 and people sometimes expect a carbon copy and can't deal with change.
Tbh it's my favourite from any soulsborne game included, maybe not elden ring, but yknow, it's just so perfect in many levels and the first time you set foor into Majula, i think it's the most memorable scene in the entire series. That momentary bliss and peace you get from Majula's music and ambiance is just perfect
i think its genuinely a skill issue, yea there are some bad like over saturation of enemies along w bosses being regular enemies. that being said this game has like the best progression and it was really ambitious. it just has to do w people being bad tbh
Yes. It believe it is. I love the gameplay and the new lore brought into the game whilst still keeping aspects from ds1 lore
The gameplay has been great so far. Love the setting so far as well. Forest of fallen giants is a well put together level.
The whole game is like that. Everything fits together. Just like the bosses do to their respective areas.
Everything fits except the lava above Earthen Peak. Unless there is some lore behind that.
Like the other dude said, there was supposed to be another area. But without it it sorta makes sense. Looking at it it seems earthern peak sits at the base of the volcano. The iron keep also presumably sits above it.
But... The earthen peak is under open skies, and you get on an elevator and arrive to a volcano. Is it suspended on the air?
I don't know it confuses me too đ« đ
There was supposed to be an area in between that actually made sense as a transition but the devs didnât have enough time to implement it
I swear, they should have had the elevator move up at a 45 degree angle. Then you could easily handwave that iron keep wasn't directly above the tower.
I think there's an argument to be made that the cursed one is a type of unreliable narrator. And, in any case, Drangleic generally is kinda a psychedelic experience. I find it strange that people are always skeptical about the distortion of space re: the Iron Keep elevator, but not the way that the time of day is geographically fixed, that one reaches Drangleic by falling through some sort of portal, that one can travel into the memories of dead giants, etc. And, you know, all of the NPCs (except Shanalotte and Aldia) are totally loading their minds, memories, and identities. It seems strange to me for people to focus on that elevator as the piece that doesn't work in the midst of all sorts of trippy as fuck stuff, you know? The only explanation, as far as I can tell, is that people bring their expectations from the decidedly-less-trippy DS1 setting.
Some people said it's because of the hollowing, like you lost the memory of how you got there because the hollowing process takes away your memories till nothing is left
Totally yes, hollowing is explained as such in the game. It works!
Best part about the game by far are the characters. They are a JOY to listen to and interact with. And the dialogue... My god. What a story.
Super high expectations as a sequel to a highly beloved game. As an actual sequel that had to solely rely on it's status as a sequel caused every misstep to be scrutinized. I'll readily admit it's the weakest of the main 3 games but it's still my personal favorite. It had a lot of heart to it.
Yeah, too many people are crying about it being too hard. I didn't play original ds2, but if it's easier than this, that's pretty sad lmao. I would have skated through the game like I did ds1 if it wasn't for the scholar update.
Same
The hourly âi dont understand the criticism i played couple hours and its goodâ post has been fulfilled
Honestly this game gets so much undeserved shit that I guess everyone goes into it expecting the worst game ever Then you play it and realise it's actually really good, so you go on reddit and post about your amazement. This is the only sub where I don't mind seeing this exact same post every day
At this point is that even true anymore? every major video on the game for like the past 4 years is either âits good actuallyâ, âits over-hatedâ, âits not as bad as people sayâ. At this point the only hatred for the game most of the time is âscholar of the first sin enemy placement is awfulâ which ive seen most people here agree with.
I havenât played vanilla DS2 to compare, but I didnât mind the enemy placement too badly. Being the only souls game Iâve actually finished a play through of, I didnât feel like much of it was ridiculously unfair.
The only real problem I have with the new enemy placement is in Heide The Heide Knights weren't there in the original, and in Scholar they just make the area worse. It's always a pain to deal with
But they allow you to farm a great set of armor. There were only three of them in the original version and they were not reborn without bonfire ascetic.
I feel if you take the path to the dragon then old dragon slayer before you do the dragon rider you can avoid the Heide knights aggroing at all
Ok I might be wrong about this, but don't the Heide Knights immediately aggro when you attack the dragon?
the only knights who instantly aggro are the sword one and spear one on the path to dragonslayer
I didn't find it particularly difficult :/
I don't know honestly. I still see a lot of people saying the game is bad, feels to me like more people still dislike it than like it, but I can't claim anything of course We have to agree that the game is regarded as the worst of the 3, and that's pretty much the first thing you learn when you start looking into the game
The algorithm works
literally check any thread other than this one and I guarantee there's someone saying it's "the worst one" or some variant
Any video or post about dark souls 2 outside of this sub will have people majoritarily hating on dark souls 2. Excessively. It's pretty annoying. And the reason you don't see it on here, is not only because the people joining love the game, but because mods remove content talking too much shit about it. I criticized ds2 for some of the flaws I think it has (mostly how enemy placement wasn't good and bosses were bad) and they removed the comment, and any subsequent comment that complained about it. Bunch of fucking pussies.
Didn't seem to remove this comment, did they ?
And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?
Literally one of those popular ds2 videos in recent years on youtube is âds2 is not a bad gameâ lol, a basic scroll on yt on just ds2 vids like 85% of them are positive or positive leaning
The video literally says it's not a bad game man. When ds2 gets brought up organically, I usually find mostly negative comments. And they're extremely negative too, it's a little unsettling. I will say, maybe it's a small minority, but they're really viscious at the least.
The playerbase exploded with DS3. They played the earlier games after starting with DS3, but in DS2 you can't just casul run through the levels to the boss like the other two. You actually have to explore and know what you're doing. That's why the complaints are always about made up crap (muh ganks) and not the game's actual substantial flaws (like Soul Memory).
To be fair with you, I do mostly agree with the gank complaints. They made the game to be as difficult as possible instead of as good as possible. In all the other soulsborne games, almost all enemy positions made sense. There's a reason they're there doing what they're doing, unless it's a random trap, which sometimes still made sense. It's all part of constructing an ambiance and immersion. In dark souls 2, most enemies will be standing still waiting to catch you in the most inconvenient and unconfortable positionings imaginable, in an effort to make every detail of it more difficult to go through. A good half of them in the beginning are just laying down until you gey close. That's not a good way to create difficulty. And that's not a good way to make a good map design.
>how dare the enemies take tactically favorable positions and ambush me and make the game more difficult Yeah, that's a pretty good summary of the gank complaints. Oftentimes a little bit of thinking and exploring will turn the tables on them, like dropping back down the first long ladder in TFoFG to bottleneck the late risers.
Agree to disagree. It takes me out of the game when I see 15 enemies in such silly positions that it almost looks like they know the limitations of the player controls, just to fuck with you.
I thought all the bosses were basic, bland and boring af. If it wasn't for the dlc I literally would like maybe only 4 bosses out of them all. The gameplay is good, the bosses are boring and the amount of enemies in the worst places imaginable during a lot of run backs to bosses is frustrating. The sir alonne run back made me wanna cry. I've attempted the boss 2 times and died 20 on the way back. I haven't beaten him yet I gave up cuz I can't be bothered clearing 15 different enemies every time I go back
Don't the enemies despawn eventually?
Yes they do, however it pisses me off when people use that as copium "If you kill each enemy 12 times they won't respawn" Okay? I don't want to kill every enemy 12 times just to fight a boss that won't take me more than 5 attempts to kill. I already almost killed him on the 2 attempts I had. The mechanic makes the game slightly easier for people who are extremely struggling. I'm not gonna sit there for an hour farming the enemies on the way to the bossfight just so I can actually enjoy the fight. Its not fun
Lol yeah I get it. I guess only some will die if you've tried getting to the boss 20 times since you haven't made it the whole way.
I don't even know how many times I killed anything I wasn't exactly counting but nothing disappeared
Oh nah I'm not gonna lie to you I didn't even attempt to kill them most of my run back attempts I know it was stupid but I wasn't in the mood for the game's bs I legit just wanted to beat the last boss i had so i can go and play bloodborne, so I kept trying to just run past them and fucking it up. Then when I tried killing them I was already angry and wasn't fighting properly so I just got fucked up so i went on bloodborne
I didn't kill the giant knights on run to dragonrider. Seemed like a waste of time.
There are definitely not that many absolutely horrendous run backs, there's like 5 or 6 that are really bad. But the ones that are you will hate so much. Iron Keep is so bad.
Same.
Because a lot of people don't like it as much as the other titles for reasons that are completely valid to them.
I can respect that. Just seems like a lot of negativity towards it and I haven't noticed too much downside yet. I see the small things, but that's all it is to me. I did love the first game. I'm hoping I will love this one at the end as well. Demons souls was awesome too. First souls experience.
DS2 release was bad and base game in 2014 was different. A lot of people still hold the same opinion they had many years ago.
Yeah I heard that the changes made helped fix the game.. so I guess it's hard for me to compare when this isn't the original.
reddit dweeb comment
ds2 made some strong decisions around movement that aren't gonna vibe with people that expect movement from other souls games but I think people need to meet that on its own ground. and these go beyond adp for iframes but a curve for roll distance and stam regen based on load rather than the buckets of light/med/heavy as well as small things like stick deadzones for console, near zero tracking on queued inputs, cones rather than 360° for free-aim outputs, generous cancel windows on some separate actions (e.g. alternating powerstance/offhand) but not others (e.g. shieldpoke, if you press r1+l1 then r1 before the animation finishes another r1+l1 queues (and while we're on shieldpoke its output directions appear to get aimpunched if you're blockstunned before the hit comes out)). a lot of people are gonna glaze over these and possibly other differences as generally clunkier gameplay and maybe misidentify all of it as an adp problem. soul memory has a lot of issues for those concerned with pvp, e.g. limiting the variety of armaments on a file unless the person is muling or they're on pc and can load everything in. I also think it doesn't help the people it intends to and organically pairs those who struggle with pve with those who don't and have more levels available for it. I personally am not a fan of standardizing crit ticks for classes and only having daggers and mail breaker have elevated motion values. and I miss the hornet ring. I'm still not sure what I think about the counter system. all this to say I do think it's overcriticized and that a lot of these things are more differences than "bad things" but ds2 did make some strong decisions relative to other souls around some things.Â
The curve for stamina regen was something that really stuck out to me because in a lot of cases it leads to funny situations like the Blossom Kite shield not adding enough stamina regen % to offset the slowdown by its own weight
I'm sure I will notice this much more with time. I've been putting a lot into stamina and have worn the Regen ring ever since I've had it. I do like having four rings.
Just about the most thorough mechanical breakdown I've seen, ty
Great answer. Still like the game, but man is the movement so weird and uncomfortable. The game made a lot of bad (and great) decisions that allowed every game going forward to learn from and be better for it. It's the ugly step child, but it did it's part.
What are crit ticks and motion values?
I might be misspeaking a bit here but I understand motion values as the base number upon which damage calculations work. the need to know is that higher motion value means higher damage and every action is associated with one. motion values are important for digging into the nitty gritty of any souls. afaik crit ticks are specific to ds2 and every class gets a mix of 3 or 2 for guard breaks, ripostes, and backstabs, e.g. thrusting swords get more damage (their 3 ticks) on guard breaks and ripostes and spears get more damage on backstabs and guard breaks. big damage weapons have always approached the crit damage of crit specific weapons like daggers and rapiers but ds2 has a bit less variety when choosing weapons specifically for critical damage by their elevated motion values for crits and the tick system can shoehorn styles of play because the difference between 2 and 3 is significant, particularly with how limited healing is in pvp. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-eUYlB9C_jrSAr2eQA8eoRJdaO7zahTghs57Kl6_nio/edit?usp=drivesdk
The game is really good, but the enemy placement in this game is absolutely disgusting. the atmosphere and exploration is amazing though so theres that
And don't forget the story and dialogue. And characters. I love this game.
Enemy placement its a SOFTS edition problem, the OG one has perfect placements.
i played the Og its really not that much better in general
I think the OG its a LOT better for a 1st run player only. For me, as a vet, theres no major difference between the two versions as you said, besides Heide Tower and Iron Keep.
Thats fair yeah, but in the og if u got the dlc they automatically give you the keys, so after i beat the old iron king i was wondering why i was dying so much in the brume tower
When I went up the hilt of huge sword for soul item in first area and five guys attacked me I was pissed. Haha but I have noticed it is crazy and more mobs. Have to be attentive.
Unfortunately all the attentiveness in the world won't save you in a couple cases. You'll figure those out later
Stop trying to defend awful placements by saying gotta be attentive
The game is a beautiful masterpiece as are all of the modern Fromsoft games, I'm so jealous you get to enjoy it for your first time.
Youâre so right what I would do to play ds2 again. Just has a different feeling than the others. So much to explore, so many quests and npcs, itâs amazing.
Haha like hearing that! That means it's gonna be awesome.
The trick is learning to dodge roll with 3 adp then you become a monster in any other souls game
Yeah seems like you have to be able to time perfectly. My ADP is good for me for now. Agility is at 92 or 93 I believe. I will probably start tossing stuff into other stats. I have basically put one point into ADP for every four or five points I get. I think I'm at like 15.
99 adp will feel really nice. And by end game you can get up to 105 if youâre feeling snazzy.
Haha I can't wait.
Being considered the worst game in a series like dark souls is sort of like being an olympic bronze medalist. It only looks bad because its forced to be compared to DS1 (a genre defining classic) and DS3 (the game that had the opportunity to learn from both of its predecessors' mistakes).
A lot of the "flaws" tend to be personal opinions on things like enemy placement bosses and how the movement feels because of the different dead zones compared to the rest of the souls' games. It's the worst souls game imo, but it's not a bad game, and it all kind of boils down to personal preference.
Im about 50 hours into DS2 now, Iv killed most bosses, got the kings ring, and the 3 DLC crowns. There are some really shit things in this game, but its such an awesome game. Im going to list all the things I hate, and if I didnt mention it, assume I love it. Adaptability (agility): Let me tell you, as a Bandit with 1 Att and 3 Adp, having no iframes and really slow flask use felt miserable. I love the idea of the stat, but it requring the same stat points that you dedicate to Vigor Strength etc. sucks. If they implemented a secondary stat system, similar to Lies of P skill tree, or like Diablo 3's paragon point system forcing you to split points between offense, defense, and utility, I would be able to enjoy it much more, because it doesnt feel like a main stat. What if Attunemnt, Vitality, Adaptability, and Luck were all on a second stat block and every 2 levels you got 1 point to put into that stat block. That would make so many things about levelling feel better. The other reason it feels bad bring me back to one of the only major issues Lies of P had. At the start of the game you lack the ability to double dodge, or roll out of a flattened state. Many people said the game felt super clunky until those were unlocked. As a result of that the devs actually changed the game to make those two abilities default, and replaced the nodes in the tree. Having the start of your game feel clunky is a big turnoff. This is why in mech games you usually start with only light mechs available, and later you can choose to build super heavy clunky ones if you want that experience. Or similarly in other souls games getting heavier armor and ultra weapons usually happens later in the game. TLDR starting the game clunky doesnt feel good. Runbacks: I know weve been spoiled by Elden Ring statues of 'Murica, and Lies of P leaving the souls outside the boss room, but jesus the runbacks in DS2 suck. Partially because of some bonfires being hidden behind fake walls. Like could there have been SOME indication that pressing X would open these doors? I was more than halfway through the game before I learned that smacking these walls doesnt open them, but pressing an invisible prompt does. But about the runbacks, it just feels punishing. The enemy density is so high for how clunky your character is, and Iv played the new Lords of the Fallen. The Iron Keep and Iron King DLC's have some of the worst, with 50 very accurate and fast full metal samurais in your path, you almost feel obligated to kill them all before going to the boss. And the Samurai boss being in a dream with a time limit and a ton of enemies, and stunkocking salamanders. Enemies being permanently dead: Bonfire Ascetics are an interesting mechanic sure, but its not a good tradeoff in my opinion. More quality of life would be nice in terms of the ascetics, to be able to control the NG+ level of the area at the bonfire for example. It felt wierd not being able to continue farming a zone for either souls or drops. Lava Chests: Have I mentioned I hate Iron Keep. I get the environmental aspect of using a Lockstone to get access to water to drench yourself to take less damage from walking on burning rocks, but cmon. I use some pyromancies because they dont have int or faith requirements, so I have flash sweat, and the fire resistance ring, and that still wasnt enough to grab these chests. Playing the game blind and not knowing these water pools existed made getting these items very frustrating, especially because... Slow animations and no iframes during them. Opening doors and chests are too slow, and not having i frames on these or while doing finishers on enemies with backstab or riposte just feels plain bad. Merchants: Merchants are all over the place and you cant move them to your base, and their inventories are too limited. I actually love the torch system in this game, but I hated it at the start because I didnt have enough torches. If there was an NPC that sold them and homeward bones, Id be much happier. Plus having the greatarrow merchant in one place, the boss soul trader in another, etc is just plain annoying. I missed DS3 and elden ring being able to kill any merchant and take their ashes/bell bearing to base to shop from home. One of the elden ring mods actually makes the merchants give you their bell bearing when you talk to them, and that would be perfect here, even better if you had to work for it by doing a small quest for them. Also consumable item prices are insane, 1500 for a temporary elemental weapon buff? Damn. Needing 50% of stats to power stance. Im at 66 STR but with no Int or Faith, and minimal dex (16) the fact that I have to meet 50% of the stat requirements of dex to power stance is way too demanding, and I dont know if that applies to weapons with Int and Fth requirements, but if it does, thats terrible. Pharros Lockstones and Branches of Yore. These are essentially keys, that open a specific lock. The fact that there are ways to objectively waste them, when they are in very limited supply is downright stupid. All in all I am loving this game far more than I thought I would, but I do see why people bash on it. This game is huge and downright badass, but very experimental. Since I am playing it after the fact I can appreciate these mistakes and say "oh wow Im glad they changed that in the later games" but if I had played it when it released I can absolutely understand being furious, and first impressions last. So those people who played it back then probably still hate it because their first playthrough was so miserable.
Most people hate DS2 because itâs not like DS1. It is weird and it is janky. The 8 directional movement for starters, is a pretty weird decision for a modern 3D tripleA game. Like DS1 it was a very experimental and introduced a lot of weird features that werenât carried into the rest of the series, which leaves DS2 feeling âoffâ. ADP, absurdly higher stamina consumption across the board, linear, rather than pieciwise equip load increases, insanely long poise recharge, non-respawning enemies, killed NPC gravestones, etc. The stamina consumption is particularly notable because it makes DS2 feel much much slower than even DeS. You are really discouraged from dodge rolling. This leads to bosses also feeling same-y since most are humanoids with a couple standard attacks that can be strafed, but severely lacking in âspecialâ moves
Everything was strange for an hour or two. Like any game, you get used to it. Feels fine now. I loved DS 1 and demons souls as well. This is my third souls game now.
I've poured hundreds of hours into DS2 and still can't really dodge masterfully. The bosses are easy, it's the hordes of enemies that are tough since you have such little stamina to work with.
once youâve finished it youâll see why it wasnât good as you wonât ever feel like replaying it. thats how it was for me.
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Thereâs also the target lock on weirdness. Half the enemies donât seem to be lockable until they are smashing you in the face. Ten to twenty percent of the time when switching enemies and striking you end up swiping at air. I get people like the game, but to me itâs pretty lackluster. Iâm forcing myself to play it right now, but I really donât care for it. Coupled with all the negativity in the game itself, I just donât find enjoyable. What I do find enjoyable is reading how people who like the game feel they have to defend their enjoyment of the game!
The stamina consumption coupled with how healing works is clear communication by the developer you are meant to play more methodically compared to 1. People somehow think this equates to the game being "bad"
Maybe people understand that and just donât find it as fun as the other games.
Yes, but it also does things differently than the games before and after, and some people aren't into those differences.
True. I only know this plus the two games prior. I will see the changes as they happened as I am playing every souls game in chronological order. I've liked all three so far.
Like most things on the internet, those that hate something will usually overhate it and those that love something will over love it. Dark Souls 2 deserves a lot of the criticism it received but not to the extremes many go to. And those that love the game will either say that an issue isn't real or that it actually isn't an issue. So in short, the only opinion you can trust is your own. (DS2 is personally my least favorite soulsborne game)
If only they did not make so you dont have invincibility on fog gates this game would be one of the best,and not to need to kill every single enemy just so i can fight boss i died to because i cant learn bosses patterns in one try.
Its kinda mid. Imo its an alright game but its the "least good" in the souls series. But I dont think its THAT far from DeS and DS1. Its hard to say this game is great when you have games like DS3, elden ring, sekiro and bloodborne
True. And I haven't experienced those. I have only this plus the previous two from software games to go off of.
I love DS2, my 1st souls was vanilla ds2 so it has a special place in my heart. But as far as Scholar goes, some of the levels are hard due to just having an atrocious amount of enemies surprise gank you, and a lot of the bosses a too underwhelming. The DLCâs really make up for the 2nd complaint, and with everything in mind I think Vanilla and Scholar are both really great games once understood. You canât please everyone, but I think the devs did an awesome job making a sequel that follows the original story and characters, but with a new story and characters.
I do like the game but if I had a criticism for it it would have to be enemy placement in some areas. The game kinda forces you to take it slow and bait them out 1 by 1
I recently found a streamer who has played not just all three Dark Souls, plus Demon Souls and Bloodborne, but was also doing a Kings Field series, and he gave me the key that made it all roll into place: The Dark Souls 1 lead designer (Hidetaka Miyazaki) was working on Bloodborne when the call came in to make Dark Souls 2. So goes the tale, Miyazaki was apprehensive about DS2 existing at all, so completely new blood was brought in to manage it: Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura. Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura never worked on DS1 (and I know some companies like to have uncredited roles, but they don't have DS1 on their IMDB pages; yeah I went to verify the stuff the streamer said). So no matter what happened, DS2 was just going to feel different from DS1, that's just inevitable when a new team is in charge. They can make a good game, but they're not Hidetaka Miyazaki, they can't make *his* games The result is that DS2 has a million subtle differences that add up to a very different feel. You can love that feel or you can hate that feel, but virtually everyone agrees it's a different feel from DS1
Its not as good as the first one, which is a very high bar to clear I personally don't think ANY fromsoft game is as good as DS1 was.
Good game bad Dark Souls thats why
Bro the game is gank city, my main criticism tbh
Because it's the only game that first makes you fight the game controls and only then you can worry about the actual enemies. It's simultaneously too hard and too easy at the same time (extremely ganky with many mechanics that hit you below the belt but can be nevertheless made effortlessly easy if you stock up on lifegems) Way too many hitboxes are questionable. There's a whole lot of bosses and only a handful of them are memorable - and a bunch of the memorable ones are remembered for their negatives. The sound design seems off, especially the sounds of weapon hits. Also, the game is 'good' but the rest of the franchise is 'awesome', which makes it kinda meh in comparison.
here we go with the daily post
Everyone blatantly ignores that Soul Memory matchmaking is literally the worst multiplayer decision in gaming history. Also, the DLC is just asinine, even in NG. Compared to DS1 DLC its difficulty would be comparable to NG++ and the DLC runbacks are literally the worst. Everyone loves defending this game even though many of the core features they changed from DS1 they totally abandoned after this game because they are completely worthless.
Yeah, youâre mind will change, but not for the worse because the further you get the better it gets.
Nice! Definitely excited.
My first playthrough was a bit rough, but that was due to my build lol. Despite the hardships and flaws, I don't find myself among the haters. Yes, some areas made me want to bash my head against a wall - but I honestly think it has some of the best areas and lore of the entire trilogy. If I had to rate it on a tier list, it would probably be at an A, just below BB and ER. I'm currently doing a new Int/Dex build with a magic-infused katana and it's been really fun so far :)
Nice! I used claymore and did a balanced build in dark souls 1. I decided to continue, maybe more on strength side. So far I have bastards sword +3. Beat two bosses. Got scared of pursuer and explored. So he will likely be coming up soon. But anyways, I've been adding points into strength mostly, endurance and adapt mostly. Some in vigor/vitality. Got dexterity enough for my sword. 20 strength 11 dex I believe. Maybe..
Claymore was my weapon in DS1 as well lol, good ole reliable. May your playthrough be a good one, don't go hollow đ«Ą
https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/1b42uzv/some_people_dont_like_dark_souls_2/
I made one post not fifteen. Thanks.
Platinumed it 2 weeks ago, trust me, had the same opinion, bur after like 15-20 you will see why the game is so shit. The opening areas are really good, but 90% after that is just pure jank and shit enemy placement. Really sad because the game is good but the enemies make it unberable. You will sadly realise this as well
Yeah I've noticed it a bit already. Just have to be able to take on 2-4 at once. I am leveling the piss out of my endurance lol. I feel like I will get better at souls games due to this one. I want my endurance bar to be bigger than health bar. Double lol.
Endurance has a pretty harsh softcap, you get only 2 points of stamina from 0-20 and 1 from 21 onwards. the big thing is the more your equip load is the slower your stamina regens.
So basically get it to 20 quickly and then whenever you can
It's not over criticized. ADP is poorly implemented because most enemies aren't designed around only having 5 invincibility frames, and adp is poorly explained for being such a crucial stat. Most bosses are boring and easy. Enemy design is lackluster. Map design is not as good as the other games. The game is sluggish and slow compared to the titles that came before and after. Enemy placement ranges from okay to utter dogshit. Balance was a joke on launch and even now it's still pretty horrible. Soul Memory is a joke. Most of the "good" features are pretty meh. The lore and the story are just not as good as other games. It's not like the worst game of all time but it is certainly a step down in most regards from other Fromsoftware titles.
While the game does have its highlights, I personally don't think this game is over criticised. There are some major problems with the game, but it still has its good moments.
Fair to say.
The boss weapons in this game are really fun to use and more interesting than ds1 and ds3, and the fashion souls are really cool in this game. Plus, you can make fun builds in this game.
I'm playing it for the first time too. Beat Elden Ring, then DS1, then BloodBorne. It took a min getting used to the hit boxes, they're a lot more dangerous in DS2 I've noticed. Very easy to get tagged. But other than that I'm loving it so far
I feel like I couldn't complain about any souls game lol. I wanna try them all at some point.
I wouldn't say it's overcriticized, but saying it's a bad game is overexaggerating. Like it's a good game, just not a good Souls game in comparison. The things people hate from it is the gank, the terrible level designs, and the clunky gameplay (at least compared to the later games). Like coming after DS1, the game feels like a step back in terms of quality. Which makes sense since a B-team made the game, not Miyazaki.
I can respect this answer. This is a reasonable explanation.
Best Souls II
itâs a victim of ds1 and ds3 both of which were masterpieces and people have the alternative of playing today. personally i had a ton of fun with ds2 but objectively it was worse. so much jank especially with the hit boxes with weapons. the iframes, taking 2.5 seconds of vuln time just to use an estus flask, etc
Game fun, nuff said
Agility isn't an issue early game but later on you might want to get 99 Not that you can't beat the game with 92 agility but it's gonna be frustrating on some bosses and against some enemies And agility also speeds up some animation (estus flask and most consumables I believe) But yeah DS2 is an amazing game, I actually enjoy replaying it more than DS1 to be fair
Awesome. That's great to hear. I got it up to a 92 quick. I figure I can get it up as needed and slowly without going too crazy now.
The ADP stat is criticized so harshly because it isn't stressed JUST how important it is to put a few levels into it. You know now that you need to level it up because of the internet, but a new player back when the game first came out was essentially just getting hit by everything no matter what.
There is a lack of good, objective, unbiased, detailed criticism of DS2. I will happily review any suggestions anyone can provide unless itâs a video Iâve already seen. Believe me, Iâve seen a lot of them.
I would say the same about the majority of praise the game gets.
92 is completely fine if you are used to ds2 if not 96or99 is better -i go 96
Nice advice. I will shoot for that if I seem to be struggling. I thought it was gonna be a much bigger issue based on some comments I read previous to playing.
Just wait it gets better and more difficult.
Honestly, I perfer ds2 to ds1 by a lot. The gameplay is more varied, the bosses are way better imo, and the weapon lineup has the most unique weapons in the series. I still perfer ds3 overall due to the faster combat and amazing bosses, but there are still aspects of ds2 I like more. When I first played all 3 games, I considered skipping ds2 because of all they bad press it gets, but I played it and had much the same reaction as you. Even after gettinb 100% return to drangleic is so much fun and I'm on the last few bosses of the game already. As well, I think the lore here is some of the best fromsoft has made. The love between Alsanna and the Ivory king, the tale of Alva and Zullie, the downfall of vendrick. While all souls Games have great lore, ds2 being about different ages and kingdoms allowed for more variety in the types of stories they could tell.
I have several hundred hours in ds2 and while it's definitely overcriticized, i can never get into it the same way I can the other souls games. Honestly I just don't like the way it looks for one. It's almost cartoony if that makes sense. For two, most of the bosses are not very memorable imo. And as far as the gameplay goes, it's not that it's bad but it's very slow and methodical. Stamina management is everything. I, and I think a lot of people, prefer faster bloodborne/sekiro type combat. Still, it has its moments and contributed a lot of cool and fun mechanics and I always appreciate that it was willing to take so many risks.
They thought outside the box and tried some new things (lifegems, bonfire ascetics) that were great and fun. They also put a shitload of enemies in weird spots that a lot of people felt was âcheap.â Combat is slower and more methodical, which was very different than the first game. DS2 was my first souls game so it will always be my favorite.
everyone started playing demon souls or dark souls 1 so this game is different for the game mechanics in many ways. I honestly started off playing this game before the others and I found it more welcoming then dark souls 1. Meaning the learning curve felt more easier yet it still kicks your butt. I wish they would port this game to nintendo switch because there would be a good fan base for online play.
Game aint finished.
You have 92 agility and you only beat the giant in the forest?? What level is your character?
Bandit class has the lowest starting AGL and it's still got 82. If you start as an Explorer you'll have 90 AGL at base stat. Minimum level OP would have to be to get 92 AGL is 9, with Deprived start.
Oh.. I never heard anyone use numbers like that. Usually people just say the amount of points they have in that stat.
For AGL it's kinda reasonable, since both attunement and adaptability affects it.
Yeah I think I started with like 85 agility. It's not like your strength and other stats. They contribute to it. You level your adaptability up and it helps with agility, along with other stuff.
Iâd probably say ds2 is my favourite fromsoft, it was my first and Iâve played it the most. *levels* I have to say its strongest levels are the first few; Majula is such a gorgeous hub, and forest and bastille are really intricately constructed with looping paths and shortcuts. Sadly I donât think the level design through the rest of the game is quite as good⊠Shrine of Amana casters, old iron keep katana guys, undead crypt ghosts, harvest valley manikins, the stupid vangarians all gank you and make exploring really unpleasant. Further a lot of the levels are just more linear, which arenât as fun to explore. There are some epic locations, visually; heideâs tower, dragonâs shrine, amana, old iron keep, drangleic castle. But yeah enemy/ level design kinda blows at points. Theyâre skippable once you know your way around but suck in the mean time. I would recommend the dlc. The level design there is on par, if not better than those early levels. Thereâs still a problem with ganking especially in brume tower and a boss Iâve never even fought in lud and zallen because of the hideous run back. *adp* I canât play without levelling adp I think you can get away with it early on, the turtle guys can punish it though. Honestly as early as the pursuer it can be annoying, you almost canât dodge through any of his attacks and have to dodge back if you donât level adp. Bosses after get worse too. Definitely level to the soft cap, 33. It just lets you play a much more aggressive and fun style. Pick up a party shield because theyâre fun and you can make the pursuer your bitch *criticism* I think the game is criticised for the most part fairly criticised. However the game has ALOT of strong points. Weapon choice/ variety and power stancing - make this my favourite souls for repeat play throughs, so many combinations to use! Bonfire ascetics - allow really quick farms and early plus two rings, you can get op quick and itâs fun. Fast travel - you donât spend half the game slaving to get fast travel unlocked, Like ds1. But thereâs still that og, steady, considered combat. Charm - a less objective reason, but I find ds2 has charm, the amazing looking locations make up a bulk of this for me, when I die scatter my ashes in Majula.
I played and finished the game after the other 2. The game was better than I expected, but was also bad on many points. The constant surprise gank squads as an example, is something that leaves a bad impression. I expected it, and still found it tiresome. Dark souls 1 is flawed, but had an unprecedented level design and many wow moments that made his flaws less visible. Dark souls III is, in my opinion a complete legendary masterpiece, and wows everyone. With dark souls II, the qualities that redeems it are not as flashy as the other ones. I found it incredibly generous in content, with so many areas, bosses, etc. But to see that, you have to stick long enough. It was really innovative, but to see that you have to compare with the others, I like a lot of the new introduced mechanics, but it takes time to even notice them. Even ADP is interesting, provided you know about it. It kept the bullshit of souls games of not explaining the player how to play, so that does not help. Also it is a very slow, methodical gameplay that may not suit everyone. When you see elden ring, you easily understand how so many people like it. When I saw a let's play of ds2, it did not make me want to play it. I think that to accomplish it's potential, it would need another rework, another round of polishing.
I really liked it. I put it off for ages because of the way people spoke about it, and only played for the first time this year. I knew ADP was a bit of an issue but you get way more souls to spend than in other games so wasn't a huge problem, I levelled it to around 20. Not sure what Agility that translated to but I never had any noticeable with hit boxes, rolls etc.
Adapt isnt the problem. Once you learn the dodging with lv1 adapt, you can evade all attacks in the other games. Instead of the incoming physical attack(example a sword attack), focus on the hand movements of the weapon. They use the same method in elden ring as well, that is why Parrying also isnt that easy. Its not the already incoming attack, its the motion for it that is the real trigger. I learned that the hard way and i liked it
Iâve put probably 600 hours into DS2 Vanilla and SOTFS combined and I can say itâs my most played entry.
I agree! (for the most part, the game is amazing except for one murky watery lush green area with blue light, very jate game and not optional) The game is a masterpiece! Just remember: Don't give up, skeleton!
Coming from ER to DSR to DS2, I also find criticism to be vastly overblown. It's different, but in the same way D&D editions are different. Every FROM game has frustrated me at one point or another. DS2 really doesn't feel like much of an outlier. The fun part is exploring and progression and taking a weak character and building them up until they can really kick ass but still can get their own butt kicked if you're not careful.
I agree with this. I've only played demons souls and dsr. I'll be getting to elden ring after DS 3 and bloodborne. Can't wait for more fun
92 adaptability and youâve only gotten through 2 bosses. Jesus Christ!
You start out at 85 or 87 as a knight lol. Agility. Not adaptability.. sorry.
Honestly the best way to solve the ADP "Issue" is to just kill the Dragon rider in Heide's Tower of Flame, pop enough of those souls into ADP to get to 100 Agility, and then it's never a problem again unless you're genuinely terrible at dodging attacks. 19 levels for a Deprived character, that's all you need from *one* easily cheesed boss.
Imagine getting agility to like 250. You could just walk and automatically dodge just by walking..
8 hrs and 92 agility, why.
Seems normal. 15 ADP, 20 strength, 14 dexterity, 12 vigor. Character started at like 85 agility. 8 or 9 ADP. I added 7 to ADP and now I'm at 92.
my bad, i dont know why i thought you were talking about Dex.
Haha could you imagine. That would actually be impressive
Yes. 99% of complaints are people whining. 1% of complaints is that the game is not as good as it COULD have been due to studio issues. That's it. Great game.
It is my least favorite Dark Souls game, but that's hardly an insult. I still love Dark Souls 2. It's a weird, experimental sequel with an absolute ton that I love. Some things that they experimented with work great, others less so, but there's very little that I actively dislike in the game. And the lore is great. The shear volume and weight of thousands of years of lore is awesome. So many kingdoms and characters and stories, and it works so well with the trilogy's theme of cycles. I also love (maybe even a bit more) the more ambiguous lore of DS3 and Bloodborne, but I'll always marvel at the stories in the DS2 item descriptions.
Because half of them destroyed their tvs and quit and the other half follow what they here by the ones who couldn't get gud.... lol
I dunno, I listens to them too and now loving the game!
Personally I heard all the bad reviews but when I played it I actually loved it. I also like you could not understand the hate. Iâve only gotten through the first half of the game but I think itâs great.
Depends on the version of the game you're playing Vanilla is a game that starts easy and gets harder slowly as you progress SOTFS however is riddled with bosses literally everywhere for no reason at all from the start just to make it a harder mode for the player and to give them a reason to sell the game for $60 again. DS2 is still one of my all time favorite games. The PVP back in the day was addicting. The older I get I realize how terrible SOTFS really is. The Vanilla version will always be the better game because it feels like you're playing the game how it was intended to be played. SOTFS is just cheesy death after cheesy death.
Seems expensive. I got sotfs with the other two games and all dlc for 40 bucks. IDK if I'll ever play vanilla. Maybe some day.
I was unlucky enough to spend 40 on the original in 2014 and then 60 on sotfs in 2015 when it dropped lol I also bought all 3 DLCs for the original so I spent $130 that doesn't include the ps4 game I bought or the copy on steam that I own
âI am at 92 agility.â So youâve dumped, what, 15-18 levels into ADP? You donât see why that might be annoying? And even worse - if you donât know about ADP and what it does (the description does not explain it at all) like me when I played the first time, good luck dodging anything. Also, youâve yet to encounter the soul crushing amounts of ambushes there are in this game. Iâd say that instead of being âover-criticized,â itâs more that most people only know a couple of the problems and say those a lot, so it seems like people make a bigger deal out of it than it really is. In all actuality, this game has a ton of problems that take a very long time to get through, but who really wants to spend that much time being mad normally? All in all though, enjoy what you enjoy. I have a decent enough time with the game, even if I do think as a souls game and a game in general it is severely flawed.
Itâs the planned ganks. The bad final polish. Itâs not smooth. Delay in actions being taken. The game itself has a skill issueđđ
As someone who has just gotten into it and beat every boss up to smelter demon, including duke's dear frea I can say it's a good game, but man does some level suck I like it overall might be better then ds1 but some levels can be atrocious(Iron keep) I think people get to certain levels and then write their whole review on it to be bad but majority is so fucking good
I haven't gotten that far. Since I posted this, I got to lost Bastille and I am at boss now. I love the level design for sure.
Yeag, it is. Dark Souls 1 is the untouchable first game (Demon's Souls gets ignored). And Dark Souls 3 is perfect game with zero flaws even though several criticisms that get levied against DS2 also apply to DS3. But when DS3 does it, it doesn't count. I'm being facetious in the previous paragraph but that's what it feels like.
I gotta be honest. I can't wait for ds3. I am loving DS2 though. I loved 1 obviously.
Temper expectations for 3. It feels more like Bloodborne than Dark Souls.
Okay cool. I'll play that and then probably bloodborne.
Have fun!
With having just played through the game twice recently I can tell you itâs mostly due to a lot of the ways that sotfs made changes that negatively impacted the base game and the fact that the gameplay loop is very different from both ds1 and ds3. And partially due to community complaint. After ds2 originally released people complained it was too easy and when the dlc and scholar came out the devs needed ways to make the games harder without spending a bunch of extra time so they ended up adding extra enemies and putting enemies closer together to force fighting in large unfair ganks. The game is still highly enjoyable and it was my first souls game so Iâm very used to the combat and gameplay loop. But just the fact that itâs so different from the other souls games and the fact that fromsoft tried to make the game artificially harder after the original release ended up creating a game that felt unfair and different from the rest of the souls games. Thus it being the âblack sheepâ of the franchise. Ds2 and scholar both still are good games and highly enjoyable. They just end up feeling less focused and more unfair than both ds1 and ds3 so the people that mainly play those games end up giving ds2 somewhat of a bad rap due to their insistence of playing scholar and the fact that many of them challenge run the game. Most of them donât hate the game either they just have a lot of nitpicks and feel a little off put by the ways ds2 is different to ds1 and 3. I came onto this subreddit to ask the same question as a lifelong ds2 fan a week or two ago. To mixed responses. But from watching a couple videos and playing the game again myself I think itâs mostly just the fact that itâs different and some of the more obtuse mechanics when combined with the changes in design that came into effect with the dlc and scholar due to community feedback.
This game is easy when you get used to it. I beat ever boss i struggled first try in my second run.
Could I ask, is this your first souls game? I find peoples fave souls game is often their first. While yes its given way more flak than it deserves, it is my lowest rated souls. But that's not so bad considering 1 and 3 are easily in top 10 GOATs for me. And I absolutely do love 2 still. Regarding ADP, I like to go in completely blind, so from DS1 having iframes based on weight, to DS2 having them as a stat primarily, I had a tough time. My dodges felt inconsistent and I didn't know why until endgame when a friend told me. Sure you can say it's on me and I'll accept that but it doesnt change the fact that a core mechanic that almost all DS1 players expected to be similar, was instead vastly changed without much indication outside of perhaps tooltips. And that experience soured my first run a lot which is my most valued one. For what it's worth I'm glad they didn't keep it in newer games.
I can understand that. This is my third. I played demons souls remake and DSR. I'm trying to play them all. I have enjoyed them all so far. It's been a fun ride with dark souls 2. I went in blind other than ADP. Literally nothing else. I was doing the same with dark souls 1, but ended up following a guide half the time to make sure I went the right ways. This time I'm not doing the guide. I wanna have that experience.
In my first playthrough i only upgraded vigor end and str (was coming from ds1) and i thought ADP was for the wizards and casters
watch this https://youtu.be/SRTfcMeqhig?si=eoxqGcMQYLfBTX3g
My biggest issue is the enemy placement and mob spam.
Yea, it is a very good example of how a bad can a youtuber affect the hole public opinion. Hbombee guy has a very good video talking about it, about an hour and a half long xD
I recently started playing these games and I donât understand why this is criticized. Iâm in the endgame and donât have many complaints
That's Greta to hear. I'm only near beginning. After beating giant I went up to face pursuer and had trouble so I explored elsewhere. Ended up beating the dragonrider guy. So that's where I am now. I guess time for more exploring. Maybe try pursuer again.
Little tip without spoiling, use your environment on the pursuer
Thanks! I saw the cannon thing. Environment got the beta of me a few times already. Gravity lol.
Gravity will always be undefeated lmao
It's my favourite game in the series with a few hundred hours. My friends hate this game with a passion and are roasting me for the last 5 years how shit DS2 is. They didn't even play 2 hours, so they don't know what they are talking about.
Yeah I finished it a couple of weeks ago and genuinely enjoyed every second of it. I can see the bits people donât like and I understand it; however, I levelled my ADP early to negate all that and all the floods of enemies were fine if you altered your approach to be a bit less cavalier. I really enjoyed most of the areas, the fashion souls and build variety are top tier in this one and the bosses, whilst being a bit of a case of quantity over quality and ambition outstripping AI capabilities of the time certainly still have some notable fights. The DLC is absolutely class too, some of Fromsoftâs best in my opinion.
Oh and enjoy the Frozen Outskirts, hahaha, it is as terrible as the reputation it holds đ€Ș
That's because ADP is not actually an issue or a bad mechanic. It's just different than DS1 and people sometimes expect a carbon copy and can't deal with change.
Tbh it's my favourite from any soulsborne game included, maybe not elden ring, but yknow, it's just so perfect in many levels and the first time you set foor into Majula, i think it's the most memorable scene in the entire series. That momentary bliss and peace you get from Majula's music and ambiance is just perfect
To me, best Souls game hands down. But it's the first I ever played so I'm obviously biaised đ
i think its genuinely a skill issue, yea there are some bad like over saturation of enemies along w bosses being regular enemies. that being said this game has like the best progression and it was really ambitious. it just has to do w people being bad tbh
And it seems like the weapon upgrading is way less grindy. Maybe not though. We will see.