Let's say my enjoyment of DS2 was genuine, while I'm forcing myself to replay 3 on ps5 after playing it on PC for the full saga platinum. Dark souls 3 has so much untapped potential it hurts.
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After completing Dark Souls 2, I’m of the opinion that it’s an unfun, tedious slog
- Thread starter pleaseinsertdisctwo
- Start date
Funny, I find the lore in 3 to be some of the more interesting in the series. Especially the DLC combination of Elfriede/Andarial/Slave Knight Gael.
Oh and the Usurpation of Fire ending is bad ass and hardly a whimper. To each their own I guess.
People mention the DLCs so much for Dark Souls 2 because for many they are absolutely one of the best if not *the* best thing to come from Dark Souls. They're just simply that good and warrant the extra praise and exceptionalism.
I am actually currently replaying it after so many years. Dark Souls 2 was my first souls game and after playing all the other ones, yes it is the weakest, but I am having a blast because lessons learned from the other games make Dark souls 2 a breeze by comparison.
OP
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It's that good looking? I knew my phone wasn't doing the videos justice lol
(P.S. are mages ACTUALLY easy mode in that game?)
Also, I only briefly played DS1 back when it released, so I don't remember much about it at all.
but I will disagree with you about DS3. The non-sewer/dungeon places look pretty awesome
I will never hesitate to talk about how mediocre the base game is but I will also never hesitate to evangelize its DLC. I've completed all 3 probably 12 times apiece. Honestly probably more. They're wonderful. It just sucks that they're attacked to dark souls 2, so the weird animations, hitboxes, parrying, etc. come with them. But they're so good that it doesn't even matter all that much to me. Except kind of in Ivory King I guess. It does bring out a bit of the bullshit.
It makes the start easier but resistances matter a lot more in Demon's Souls than the other games so you'll run into walls because many areas are just full of immensely magic-resistant enemies.
Have you played the DLC at all? That was my favorite part.
I cannot imagine scythe nun in dark souls 2. I think it would go from one of my favorite fights to my least favorite in the series.
Like you talk about how fast dark souls 3 demands you to be, but like, I felt like I could be fast enough. By far most telegraphs are perfectly fair, and that's coming from someone who has notoriously bad reaction times. Dark Souls 2 would literally put me in situations that I could not be fast enough for, and gave me way less and way slower recharging stamina to deal with it.
Like just off the top of my head, there are certain classes where, if you get to the bastille at a rate many people get to it at, which is pretty early, there's a part near the beginning coming from No Man's Wharf, where you drop down and you just have to fight those guys (it's right where lucatiel is in vanilla). You can't escape since you had to drop down a two foot ledge, even though you'd want to because fighting two guys with swords that do a lot of damage is a bad idea. You just have to drop down and fight them and probably die. If you have arrows you can kind of get around this, but this clearly was not intended, as in SOTFS they specifically put a statue enemy there instead so you HAVE to go up to him. And then once the door has been opened, all the enemies inside will be alerted. All of them being enemies that can stagger you very easily. It just sucks as an encounter. It's something that in dark souls 1, I'd probably be allowed to escape, and take my foes 1 by 1, like ds1 often does, such as in the undead church. In Dark Souls 3, my character would react enough to what I do, and I'd have enough i-frames early on, and I'd attack fast enough I could probably get through it. But in Dark Souls 2 it just says fuck you. You didn't pick the right class to handle this. You haven't leveled up enough for this. It's disproportionately, bullshitly, hard. And the game is full of that.
Recently replayed the "remastered" PS4 version and my take is that you have to approach Dark Souls 2 a little bit differently than the rest of the series. My first playthrough was the Scholar of the First Sin PS3 version (which has the old enemy placements and lacks a couple cool lighting features) and I found it to be a real pain. People kept talking about how much easier it was than the original and I just didn't understand why. The PS4/PC Scholar of the First Sin version is the best way to play it, in my opinion. Still, I find myself dying far more in DS2 than any of the other Souls games due to the sheer number of enemies in some areas, the way invincibility frames work, and some intentional design choices that catch the player off guard.
Finally started to really enjoy the game when I let go of my anxiety about dying a lot. Due to the abundance of bonfires, you never lose much progress, so there's really no point worrying about it at all. You just kind of have to throw yourself at situations, learn a little bit more each time, and try to optimize your route through each area. Granted, it's not really reasonable for a game to require multiple playthroughs for it to seem like a good game, but persistence paid off in this case, I think.
Never had much issue with the lock on, myself (at least not anything I didn't take issue with in the other Souls games). I do wonder, though, if playing as a magic user would change my opinion much. I have done dex builds and strength builds, the latter of which definitely felt like the path of least resistance. If I had to rely on the lock on for magic, that could definitely change my opinion.
Still, if you want to like the game, my advice would be to just put it down for a bit when you get too frustrated. If you've beaten it, maybe give it a few months (or more) and then come back to it and see if your opinion is changed. Out of all the games in the series, 2 is the one I'm much more willing to come back to now because there's tons of stuff I still haven't done or seen, it has some truly great detail in certain areas. Basically, the quality of DS2 is very consistent compared to the other two games, which both have much higher peaks, but also much lower valleys.
Finally started to really enjoy the game when I let go of my anxiety about dying a lot. Due to the abundance of bonfires, you never lose much progress, so there's really no point worrying about it at all. You just kind of have to throw yourself at situations, learn a little bit more each time, and try to optimize your route through each area. Granted, it's not really reasonable for a game to require multiple playthroughs for it to seem like a good game, but persistence paid off in this case, I think.
Never had much issue with the lock on, myself (at least not anything I didn't take issue with in the other Souls games). I do wonder, though, if playing as a magic user would change my opinion much. I have done dex builds and strength builds, the latter of which definitely felt like the path of least resistance. If I had to rely on the lock on for magic, that could definitely change my opinion.
Still, if you want to like the game, my advice would be to just put it down for a bit when you get too frustrated. If you've beaten it, maybe give it a few months (or more) and then come back to it and see if your opinion is changed. Out of all the games in the series, 2 is the one I'm much more willing to come back to now because there's tons of stuff I still haven't done or seen, it has some truly great detail in certain areas. Basically, the quality of DS2 is very consistent compared to the other two games, which both have much higher peaks, but also much lower valleys.
I hope I enjoy it, because I just bought DS2 + DS3 + Sekiro on a Xbox sale. And I just beat the final boss in DS1 in like 30s on my 4th try.
Rofl I just remembered a couple things that I found bananas in DS2. Setting a steel windwill on fire to drain poison in the boss room. Lighting oil trenches on fire that are locked behind doors to light up the Lost Sinner boss room (who is able to spin like a top, for some reason). The bonfire near Lost Sinner that has enemies surrounding it who attack you once they reload (this was patched out). Having to fight a pallette swapped boss with the Twin Dragonriders. Freija being like "LOL I HAVE A BEAM".
The removal of the original lighting engine made the torch pointless, so there was never any reason to have it equipped to find the windmill and Lost Sinner torches. I really want them to redo the game fully with Miyazaki at the helm. It has a cool world, but it just doesn't make sense.
Ds2 has, indeed, a few of those "fuck this" moments, but DS3 isn't free of those. You have irithyll jailers, who...yeah. Then you have the dragon archpeak, as a whole, as a bs place where enemies clip through walls, rush you to death, and present you with a PoS like the ancient wyrm.
I've always maintained that stuff like that that just takes you out of the experience really accentuates how annoying something is.
Because then the mentality becomes, rather than "I must get through this difficult place", instead "I must overcome this challenge the developers threw at me with no imagination with seemingly no rhyme or reason." And I don't think it's a conscious thing. I think it's a natural consequence of how we face problems. That's probably why so many people are harsher on Dark Souls 2, because like...yeah, it gets really stupid sometimes.
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Omg irithyll jailers make me want to hurl the game off a cliff lol
I guess I don't know what you mean about the jailers. They're hard, but they have a pretty obvious cone of vision. If you stop and watch them, you can get through it unscathed. It just asks you to watch. That's not a fuck you moment. That's exactly the kind of challenge souls games are generally about. Being smart to avoid something almost impossible if you get caught. Fuck you moments are moments where even when you can see the bullshit, you're not allowed to be smart enough to overcome them. The game just says fuck you, you HAVE to put yourself in the stupid situation. So the equivalent would be that there is no path that the jailers take that you could escape through and you HAVE to face their grab attack. That would be a fuck you. That's the kind of thing that Dark Souls 2 does a lot. But this is really a case of the exact opposite. Just be careful. Observe. They're dangerous enemies you don't want to fuck with (or maybe you've made a build where you can fuck them up, which is an exciting alternative you can also take, but you don't have to. Different builds will have different best ways of approaching this). The jail was probably one of my favorite parts because of that excitement. I felt like I was in control, but I had to be very careful about making a mistake. That's fine. As long as I'm in control of what happens, and as long as it's my fault that I got caught and fucked up, that's fine. I want to be rewarded for thinking and observing and playing well.
I'll give you clipping through walls, although I'll point out every single souls game has that problem. It is a bit more common in archdragon peak I guess...? Maybe?
OP literally just completed DS2 and is venting about his issues with the game, why even start another "DS2 bad vs DS3 bad" thread.
They may have been speaking from a place of experiencing the base game. Launch DS2 is a very different experience with respect to balancing, than the version available today.
For what it's worth Ancient Dragon can be cheesed. Just shove your face between his big and second toes and slash until he starts to raise his foot, then run to the opposite foot and do the same. He gets locked into a cycle of stomping each one if you time it right.
So it goes from an unfair fight to just... tedious and boring because of his huge health pool. Fun times!
So it goes from an unfair fight to just... tedious and boring because of his huge health pool. Fun times!
Oh come the fuck on. I've played this game for hundreds and hundreds of hours. I have 100%ed it six times. I've completed the DLC bosses everyone thinks are bullshit solo like blue smelter on NG++. I can fucking roll on time. I know what I'm talking about. I still think it's bullshit and badly designed.
Dark Orb can still be spec'd around in a build that is so OP you can cheese your way through the game.
Lightning based builds are probably the ones that got fucked the most so much that you can't really based a build around them any more. I mean you can. But not if we're talking easy, OP builds that you can get pretty early on.
Ironically that last bit is also true for me. Dark Souls 3's linearity is a definite con.
Rolling has hardly anything to do with it. The adaptability stat is what controls i-frames, which is never explained in the game.
So have I. The only bosses I've ever had hit box problems with are Ancient Dragon and Executioners Chariot. I never have problems with tracking.
I agree that i frames shouldn't have been tied with a stat, but I just dump 20 points into it at the start and forget about it. The levels in DS2 are bloated to the point that it's not a big problem.
But how would you know to dump 20 points into ADP unless you read a guide, or someone told you? That's poor design. The stat description says it increases resistances and agility, but there's no definition of agility given. So if you're an average player, you might think "I'm not going to waste points in resistance until I feel like I need it", which is basically not until Earthen Peak, midway through the game. So by that time, you've already established your playstyle and stat build path. It's a stat no one ever invests in, unless they know they're supposed to.
You have my axe OP. I don't care for dark souls 2 at all. Bad environments, no world cohesion, instant access to teleporting from anywhere ruins the need for exploration, adaptability, bad bosses.
It's just simply the weakest of the Souls games.
It's just simply the weakest of the Souls games.
Yes, that's why I said it shouldn't have been tied to a stat.
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I remember reading "ADP is useless" numerous times
This is what I hate about the obnoxious obscurity of the Souls games. Everyone says something different and patches change things up and etc. etc.
Also some of the guides online are annoying, like they leave out useful information or just are horrible at explaining things
And this is also why I hated being a mage:
1. You need to level up ADP so that doing literally anything in the game doesn't suck
2. You need to level up VGR if you don't want to die in 2 hits
3. You need to level up ATTN if you want to increase your SLOW ASS casting speed and have more slots so that you can maybe make it to the bonfire without running out of spells
4. You need to level up INT if you want your spells to actually do decent damage
5. But wait!!! You can't just level up INT, you need to also level up FAITH, because damage scales!
It's fucking annoying and leveling up never felt rewarding unless I leveled up 10 times at once
I haven't played any Souls games barring Bloodborne, I started playing Scholar Of The First Sin and while I agree there have been a frustrations I'm not finding it to be anywhere near bad as people say it is. The response I tend to get for that is that once I play the other games I'll understand why DS2 is regarded so poorly, so we'll see. That said, if I don't think Dark Souls 2 is a poor game while having Bloodborne for context I don't see why the other Souls games would change my opinion. At the end of the day it'll what'll influence me will probably be how many more multi-archer areas or chonky armored knights that stand in the critical path that I came across. Aside from that a lot of my issues are more franchise level rather than DS2 specific.
Yea everyone thought it was useless because of that lack of agility explanation, and never needing a stat in Demon's or Dark Souls to affect your roll. Weird that they'd buck a trend without explaining the different requirements.
As a guide maker myself, I always make sure to say "as of this publication" whenever I'm talking about something like that haha.
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Someone post the gif of the Pursuer managing to hit the player from 4 miles away.
I know others had problems with hit boxes, what I'm saying is from personal experience. The hit box problems in DS2 seems way overblown in my opinion.
I recently beat it too and I think it surpasses 1 in some ways. Plenty of QoL improvements, it's meatier (albeit much too easy), and the DLC fucking slaps. It beats the DS1 DLC for me and Ashes of Ariandel in 3 (haven't played Ringed City yet). Idk what your build was OP but I found it odd that you never felt overpowered. I exclusively felt overpowered at all times. Especially because you get access to unlimited lightning resin very early in the game and that destroys every enemy.
lol
Person who didn't like DS3 didn't like DS3 DLC? I am shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
Just finished the main arc including Vendrick and Aldia. Started into Shulva, but after beating the main story around soul level 150 I've been scooping up NG+/bonfire boss drops I've wanted and grinding bones and twinkles to get me "build" right for the DLC. When I finally got ready to jump on Shulva I'm about SL 200 and can just carelessly smash.
I went all strength build BTW. Spend soul levels 120-150~160 building towards a strength hexer, but by the time I got to 20/20 int/faith I didn't like the payoff. I hadn't invested in upgrading the Crypt Blacksword or Chime Hammer yet, so I noped out around 180-190 into a all strength/vigor/endurance build with enough dex to roll with the dragonrider bow.
Kind of bums me out because I also spent the time grinding up sun medals for the sun sword (second tier) and the dragon remnants armor tiers. I'm pretty solid in PVP though (solid 1:1 win% or better even with hackers) so it wasn't too bad on the dragon part.
I liked the ideas they had about widening the stat tree to allow for faster leveling and more customization, but having i-frames and to a lesser degree roll distance being tied to a stat is a bad direction. And despite their attempts to have plateaus at around 20/40 or 50 its still best off to pick a handful of stats to soak into.
Overall I enjoyed it. Much more complex character building than Dark Souls but I miss the more Metroidvania style world structure. Some good, some bad. Better than most games but still guilty, often to a greater extent, of all the same flaws of Dark Souls (and Demons). Poor hit boxes, cheap enemy toolsets, bit trollish encounter designs sometimes, etc..
I went all strength build BTW. Spend soul levels 120-150~160 building towards a strength hexer, but by the time I got to 20/20 int/faith I didn't like the payoff. I hadn't invested in upgrading the Crypt Blacksword or Chime Hammer yet, so I noped out around 180-190 into a all strength/vigor/endurance build with enough dex to roll with the dragonrider bow.
Kind of bums me out because I also spent the time grinding up sun medals for the sun sword (second tier) and the dragon remnants armor tiers. I'm pretty solid in PVP though (solid 1:1 win% or better even with hackers) so it wasn't too bad on the dragon part.
I liked the ideas they had about widening the stat tree to allow for faster leveling and more customization, but having i-frames and to a lesser degree roll distance being tied to a stat is a bad direction. And despite their attempts to have plateaus at around 20/40 or 50 its still best off to pick a handful of stats to soak into.
Overall I enjoyed it. Much more complex character building than Dark Souls but I miss the more Metroidvania style world structure. Some good, some bad. Better than most games but still guilty, often to a greater extent, of all the same flaws of Dark Souls (and Demons). Poor hit boxes, cheap enemy toolsets, bit trollish encounter designs sometimes, etc..
I enjoyed it when it first came out, but always thought it was a disappointment. I agree that it's an ugly, ugly game. The areas don't just look bad, they are boring to play too. They almost all feel very much like video game levels rather than places with character and personality.
It's problem is quantity over quality. DS2 feels like a much bigger game than any of the Souls games, with more of everything at the expense of polish. More difficulty, more areas, more bosses, more armour, more weapons... I can understand why some people love it for that because there is a lot of Souls content here. I just think a very big portion of it is poor quality by From standards.
It's problem is quantity over quality. DS2 feels like a much bigger game than any of the Souls games, with more of everything at the expense of polish. More difficulty, more areas, more bosses, more armour, more weapons... I can understand why some people love it for that because there is a lot of Souls content here. I just think a very big portion of it is poor quality by From standards.
Ask and you shall receive
To be fair, this was patched and got way better within a few weeks of release. But launch night, ohhhh boy was I enraged.
There is nothing about "having problems." I am stating a fact. They cheaply track you. It's so cheap it's comical. Just try playing the ruin sentinels, and run around them in a circle. And again, I have a big problem with being hit for full damage when barely a piece of cloth on my armor got clipped because the game has a binary "you got hit or you didn't" system. It's bullshit. It has nothing to do with whether I can get around it. It's having to when it's so cheap and unrefined that bugs me. The reply of "time your rolls better" is a completely bullshit reply to that. The game is shitty about how it handles hit boxes and how it tries to respond to how easily exploitable it would otherwise be.
Ask and you shall receive
To be fair, this was patched and got way better within a few weeks of release. But launch night, ohhhh boy was I enraged.
Inb4 the ridiculous "SEE IT TECHNICALLY GRAZED HIS FOOT."
Yeah no shit sherlock. And that sucks and is stupid. Being sucked into a grab attack is stupid, full stop. And it's even more stupid because you can level out of it. That's dumb as hell. Fuck that. It isn't fun.
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Personally speaking the hit box isn't as bad as shown in that gif but I played it last year and definitely remember being near the thrust, not actually getting hit by it, but it still being registered as an actual hitAsk and you shall receive
To be fair, this was patched and got way better within a few weeks of release. But launch night, ohhhh boy was I enraged.
In fact I'd say the hit boxes in DS2 are so bad that during the Giant Lord fight in the Memory of Whatever area I was actually shocked that the hitboxes were properly working. Like wow I'm only a foot away and it didn't register as me getting hit (by fucking debris I guess)?
I just didn't make too much of a fuss about it in my OP because while the hitboxes are bad I had more fundamental issues with the game
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People fight the Sentinels without summoning? LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I'm really glad I could summon for a majority of bosses because for shit like the Sentinels I wouldn't have had the patience
I'd argue a lot of it was a step back.
The AI/enemy animation was trash compared to every other soulsborne game.
360° spinning autolocking AI is BAD.
Not even going to get into the hitboxes...