Dark Souls 2 is good, actually
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Dark souls 2 praise, whoo!
if you just open your eyes, you wont get ganked
Pinning this because it's the entire point of the video lol
WOW I NEVER NEW THIS WAS A FROMSOFTWARE DUMPSTER DIVING VID!! but it had like five decent ideas but the game overall is dog shit tbh with you.
3:34 that guy is friendly and will light the place for you. Scares darkstalkers too.
8:51 Almost slipped up and admitted the truth😂
just recently started 1st playthrough, 7hrs in & i rly dont get all the hate on it, its different but its not bad, luv it so far
hate bandwagon that people dont actually know why they just mindlessly follow other people opinions
@@xslite300I think that's sometimes true
@@IkEisawesome7 what do you mean?
@@xslite300 I don't think everyone that hates DS2 is a bandwagoner. It has things to dislike, and anyone can dislike anything for any reason - but to say their hate is "mindless" is kinda mean.
I like DS2 a lot, but when someone tells me they disliked DS2 the most, I can understand why.
@@IkEisawesome7 not everyone, but a huge majority. not mean just the truth, ive seen so much of it, its also kind of a meme to hate on it as well
ds2 is the greatest souls game of all time
Minecraft is a better souls game than ds2
My only issue with No Man's Wharf is that every single time I go through it I hit weapon durability issues that I don't really run into anywhere else in DS2
On ADP - it's a lil bit of a pain to feel like you need to get it to about 20 and do so *early* on every build... But in fairness the game gives you waaaaaaaaaaaay more souls than you actually need if you aren't losing your bloodstain a ridiculous amount.
That's the thing, though, you only need to level ADP if you're playing the game like DS1. If you're more focused on a different play style, ADP becomes a little helpful at best. Shields nullify ADP completely
@solarpellets strafing is also a good alternative as opposed to dodging on many bosses, you don't need ADP that much, and sorcerers dont need it bc they're leveling attunement
Eh, I've played way too much of every souls game and honestly it's way more convenient to have an emergency midroll even on an all-in shield build. Getting to a comfortable 96 agility and thus 11 s (DS1 midroll) only takes 21 ADP even on the starting class with the least attunement (Bandit). On any other class you get that breakpoint at or before 20.
It's too much of a convenience to ignore, so it feels incredibly mandatory.
@leibnuuy I feel like that's just your playstyle and not the game design though.
@@YourAverageSpelunker I mean, you could argue that sure, but "A comfortable ability to dodge" is hard to square as being outside of the base game design of the souls series.
The best part of No Man's Wharf for me is the huge brazier that hangs from the roof and can be lit using a Pharros lockstone. I absolutely adore how it makes the level look.
I never knew anyone preferred vanilla, Scholar is easily superior
the usual advice to people who hate DS2 is to try vanilla. I've heard some pushback to that though and i have heard some folks prefer Scholar.
i prefer Scholar a little bit and recommend people start with it, but I think both are worth trying. It's hard to get folks to play DS2 even once, though.
@@DuckReconMajor that's absolutely wild to me. its just a vastly superior product for content and graphic improvements alone. I'm scouring the internet and the conversation sounds exactly like the complaints I heard when Dark Souls got replaced by the remaster and "everyone" (a vocal minority) complained
@@burn1none all of scholar content is in vanilla. A lot of enemy placement changes are plain weird and ruin the progression. Like heide's tower and iron fortress just being incredibly beefed up in difficu;ty for no reason
if gank squads are your bag, sure
@@evan12697 if you lack any kind of awareness you get ganked. I think you didn’t watch this video or couldn’t comprehend the message…
yeah DS2 is my favorite. it really rewards the attentive player. weapon durability is usually an "issue" in no mans wharf but you should hopefully already have some from leningrast or the forest of fallen giants. if not you usually have gone far enough to ring the bell or get another shortcut or you could always boneout and comeback with either a backup weapon because the game will give enough titanite for or repair powders once you are at risk.
the cool thing is you can use a pharros lockstone to light a giant brazier to trivialize the encounter with the longarmed bleed monsters and just improve visibility. not to mention lighting the sconces for more visibility and increased lock on range since its determined by light levels.
also a super cool note, you can just shoot the bell to bring in the ship. you still have to go through a good bit of the level but it shortens it if you arent interested in the items or if you missed the lever somehow
Great video !
The only problem is the low audio.
DS2 has problems yeah, but the amount of circlejerking the community does against it is absurd.
I really like Joseph Anderson's video on DS2 (and the entire series).
Joseph Anderson is one of my favorite Essayists, actually. Still waiting on that Witcher 3 video T_T
@@solarpellets Witcher 3 video and The Winds of Winter from GRRM
I’m fine with adp, you get so many souls and it encourages shields
I disagree that DS2 is the best souls game, but I definitely thought it was a better souls game than DS3. Objectively, DS3 is maybe a better game but everything is so linear, but in DS2, there are so many nooks and crannies to find things.
I also like the movement more! The rolling was so smooth
DS2 isn't my favorite, definitely not, that goes to DS1, but I also find it weird to say that any game is "objectively" better than another. Intersubjectively, sure, more "finished," or closer to the dev's intent, but certainly not objectively better
I guess when I say "objectively" I'm referring to the polish/finish and then alignment with the dev's intent. However, I enjoy DS1 and DS2 more as they offer more. DS3 was so linear and, despite some cool weapon arts, I didn't experiment much with build diversity.
Nothing came close to power stancing in DS2, the unique riposting, and of the first three I'd say it's easily the best for spellcasting. Powerstancing Blue Flames was genuinely such a fun time.
DS1 (this doesn't need to be said) has such amazing map design that playing the game never gets stale. Regardless of how unfinished the latter half of the game is, the first bit is just so fun that I never really put the game down.
But the latter two games (I mentioned) have a lot more issues with level design, or movement, or bosses - and at its core I think these are what the devs try to go for (which was then expanded on in Elden Ring and Sekiro) which makes DS3 a more complete game.
Despite that, I like DS3 the least of the three, despite my brain saying "That was the best one"
DS2 is my favorite souls game by far but while i disagree with people hating on No Mans Warf, because its fine, i do feel like Heides Tower of Flame is a bad offender(at least in scholar, didnt play vanilla). I still remember my first playthrough feeling dreadful because the enemies there are so tanky and punishing for an area you go to in the early game, it felt really bad. Would love a similar video detailing that area, maybe i'm missing something
Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 are on about the same level for me. I really love them both, but I think they're also both heavily flawed. As you said, the level design in DS2 is better and I genuinely like the structure more because it doesn't feel like a straight line until the end. DS3 feels better to play in general, and I generally like the bosses in it more but they made asinine decisions like ditching power-stancing and the updated NG+ enemies. I'm glad power-stancing came back in Elden Ring but I do miss the DS2 version that gave you a whole moveset. I like the story in both about the same, but I think DS2 is more interesting with all the stuff they reintroduced whereas DS3 felt like it was kind of playing it safe. Neither really match DS1 to me, despite all of its flaws, but I can't really say one is better than the other.
ADP would be a much bigger issue if I didn't usually end up at SL 200+ by endgame. I don't love it, but every souls game has one stat I don't like. Usually that means NOT leveling it up, but getting ADP high enough for 100 agility isn't a big deal. I'd probably would get rid of it if it were me though. But I think the completely useless version of poise in DS3 is just as bad if not worse but on the other end of the spectrum of play-style.
And oh yeah, I've played DS2 vanilla and SOTFS about the same amount and I also do not understand the people that prefer vanilla.
Best souls 2!!! Ds2 has great level design and some amazing bosses (fume, burnt ivory king, veldstat)
I really do love ds2
i don't understand the vanilla stanning either. domo3000 has a whole series on side by side changes and the vast majority of enemy placement changes makes areas and enemy ai easier to handle, and more ganks is typically the softs criticism people give.
9:50
Look I love DS2, and I think that almost all criticisms of it are ultimately just bandwagon bullshit but that's just not true. It's not just the animations - the hitboxes really ARE all over the place, and while a lot of it can be effectively nullified by levelling ADP to 25 or whatever, the fact that some hitboxes either come out before the actual weapon connects with you, or the hitbox lingers too long, or that you will literally dodge out of the way of a grab and the game will literally teleport you back a couple of meters so you can get grabbed... like, those are not just animation problems.
Now I'm not saying that the other games don't have this issue as well - Bloodborne also has some WILD hitboxes, especially some of the Chalice Dungeon bosses, and that makes sense because most of them are very unpolished, and some downright unfinished, but DS2 definitely suffers a lot in that regard.
grabs teleport you in every ds game
I would reccomend checking out Domo3000 (Another youtuber), he actually sheds light on DS2 hitboxes by showing the behind the scenes, I'm not sure what it would be called but its a dev tool that visualizes the hitboxes.
@@khiufu_666Notable examples are, Iron Golem and the Curse-Rotted Greatwood hand in phase 2.
DS2 really doesn't have worse instances of hitboxes than the other games. The grabs teleporting you is exactly what I was talking about with the animations, though, I've never seen a teleport when a grab didn't connect, ever. The lack of i-frames can also make the animations look funky, but even then, they're generally pretty good.
Ds2 would literally be my favorite game in soulsborne… but imo the hollowing mechanic makes it almost unplayable.
At least it's not Elden Ring.
🗿
Real
I've also had that video recommended to me, went to watch it, then saw the comments. It seems like even vanilla enjoyers don't agree with that guy's points and he may have even fabricated some of the examples. Shame, since as someone who hasn't played vanilla I was genuinely curious.
Even more reason to make my own video, then lol
As for the discussion between Scholar and Vanilla versions: I don't really get it? I've played both multiple times, and apart from, like, 3-4 areas I find it hard to even come up with notable differences. Dragon Shrine and Heide's Tower are probably the biggest ones for me, with Dragon Shrine being much easier, and Heide's Tower being much harder in Scholar. I know Earthen Peak also has some pretty drastic enemy changes and I obviously remember the added shortcut in No Man's Wharf - probably the single best change in the entire game. Other than that, I find most enemy changes so minor and unimportant that I don't really remember them lol
>heide's tower, a desolated ruin in original, becomes one of the busiest areas for GAMEDESIGN, ignoring lore
>dragon shrine, an endgame hard area, becomes insanely easy in scholar FOR LORE, ignoring gamedesign
>shaded woods ignores lore for GAMEDESIGN and makes extremely confusing as to where each enemy type is from, whne it's pretty clear whre lion guys and shadow guys live in original
All of that when the entire fucking unique thing about Dark Souls is their level design telling a story. Scholar feels like a generic souls like that tries too hard and misses the point.
Vanilla just has so few enemies. Forest has two, literally only two, before the first bonfire, scholar has five and one of them is a miniboss. There are so many little spots that seem like they should have an item or an enemy or something that are just completely empty in vanilla. Vanilla just has nothing in so many spots, SotFS actually has stuff in those spots lol
the *heide* knights got moved to *heide's* tower of flame and don't become active until after you beat the dragonrider (with, like, two exceptions), it's not busier than the original otherwise.
Dragon Shrine was never hard
The vast vast majority of enemies are in their "spot" in the shaded woods in Scholar, I don't think it's absurd to assume that a couple of them have wandered.
@@solarpellets there's a HUGE difference in lore/perception between "fog guys" and " for some reason transparent guys that are rarely seen in the fog itself but for some reason a lot of them in place near fog"
The big appeal of DS2 is it's vibes of isolation. Having a lot of enemies at every corner instead of just some weird dead ends ruins the mood. DS1 had weird dead ends, it doesn't all supposed to be a reward for gamers, it's not a skinner box.
At least forest justifies it with most of enemies being downed. Turning samurai knights into samurai ganks is just weird.
Basically every single thing that made me raise a brow when playing scholar for the first time wasn't there when i finally tried vanilla.
Including the stupid stones statues, which in vanilla only in what, two areas? As a unique gimmick, not a game long progression block like Legend of Zelda 1 small keys.
@@solarpellets It's been a while since i've played Vanilla, but wasn't it so that the Dragon Knights attacked you in Dragon Shrine no matter what? I remember being frustrated to no end with that area in Vanilla, but found it very enjoyable in Scholar, where they made it so you have to only fight the big guys.
i played sotfs on ps3 and i think it has bits of vanilla and spfts. i liked that version
sotfs on 360/ps3 is literally just vanilla with the dlc included
@@the_steezlord i didnt realise thanks!
Ehhh DS2 will remain my least favourite Fromsoft souls game as it suffers immensely from a lack of direction, but i do keep coming bsck to it. PvP was GOATed
Sir Alonne and Darklurker being my fav bosses of DS2, Fume knight is a bit over hyped imo tho.
Bloodborne and Elden Ring being my favs.
Elden Ring > Sekiro > DS2 > Bloodborne > DS1 > Demon Souls.
''Some people think Vanilla is better than Scholar, and thats the wrong opinion'' slow down there opinion police
DS2 Replayability is MUCH BETTER than ds1 and ds3 replayability. ds1 has no teleport, ds3 is LINEAR AF.
Ds2 have the best build variety ( Mundane Poison etc ) Best PvP as well, everything that help replayability
love the Wharf, and I also prefer Scholar a bit to vanilla. this video is facts front to back.
but ignoring Lucatiel across both versions i have to give this video 1-star sorry 😭
I've never actually don't lucatiel's quest, but I really need to, for sure. NPC quests generally aren't my thing lol, but I feel like I'll love Lucatiel.
@@solarpellets I've never actually finished her quest lol. I just like listening to her talk. One of my favorite NPCs in the series.
honestly the NPCs are part of the whole vibe of the game that I wish people would be more receptive to, instead of being mad about ADP or gank fights or whatever
1v1 me bro also no man's wharf is very easy you just walk around and light torches for your first time through and every time after that you do the same thing without exploring
There are a few things I find weird about the "ambush" critique. Once you know where enemies are, and the level layout, ambushes simply cease to exist in the games entirely. The argument implies their aren't actually ambushes in the other modern Fromsoft games, but this is fundamentally false, the existence of mimics for one, but the other games are replete with similar enemy ambushes. Laughs in Capra Demon. Ambushes only ever work once, and that's assuming you don't spot an ambush before hand, which is not hard if you are paying any semblance of attention to your environment.
Then there is the multiple enemy issue people have. I'm sorry, what? Since when was Fromsoft making a 1v1 fighter game? Did these people genuinely never climb their own way up out of the Tomb of Giants pre-lordvessel? I have to assume they remember the bonewheel room at least. The wide variety of enemy clusters from all over their games. Fighting multiple enemies at once is a regular, to be expected occurrence in these games, and actually almost serves as the default as opposed to 1v1 fights.
Furthermore, these complains are like.. out of touch. Traps, ambushes, managing enemy swarms, that's like, some grade A pure dungeon exploration mechanics. It's kinda the point of the games. Imagine what kind of games Fromsoft would make if they listened to these critiques.
I for one one MORE poison swamps. I want more swarms of enemies. More trapped chests. More chests with teeth. More things that have teeth but shouldn't. More ambushes. More enemy patrol routes to disrupt my memory of enemy location, even level layouts that change and disrupt my memory of the level. I want less checkpoints to make each one more valuable, and I want them to lock fast travel until the mid-late game, forcing me to crawl my own way up out of a bone infested nightmare pit. With Sekiro and Elden Ring mixing jumping into the mechanics, I want complex platforming integrated into the level design more than ever before, and the Great Hollow has never seemed so teeming with potential. What you want? Many deal, many thanks. Ah hahaha.
I disagree on some of the ambush bit, Capra is an ambush whether you know it's coming or not, and DS3 is full of forced ambushes, even in the high wall, but the most offensive example is the room before the cathedral with the dogs and archers lol. Otherwise, I totally agree
Dark Souls 2 is my least favorite game of all time, but to say Dead Man's Wharf is a bad area is a bit silly when I think its one of the best areas in the game. ADP is a terrible design choice and has no place in the game. Iframes being tied to a stat and not a weight undermines the fine balence set forth in the prior entries of Block, Roll, and Parry. Block being the lowest risk, but coming at the expense of less oppertunity to retaliate and potential chip. Dodge being medium risk and good manuvarability. And Parry being the highest risk and highest reward of the three options, as a missed parry opens you up for an attack. Its not possible to balance a game around a variable s. This in turn forced less interesting boss fights and designs. Not only that, it makes leveling up early within the game on every playthrough very samey, with everyone dumping as many points until a breakpoint into ADP. New players who have no clue that Iframes are tied to a stat, that changes your roll in no meaningful, visual way, have no way of knowing that even leveling the stat does for them.
You bring up the point of game feel, and that is what I matter most as a player, how good a game feels to actually opperate. Playing DS2 just feels so gross to play, especially after playing DeS and DS1. The game feel sluggish, and very unejoyable to play. It feels like playing a clunkier DS1 at 50% speed to me.
I understand why people enjoy DS2, I just hate everything the game does at its core, and I truly believe the only reason people who enjoy this game is because it has Dark Souls in the name. If not for that, this game would have forgotten. I think there are great ideas within DS2, just none of them ever fully flushed out. Bonfire aestetics are a great idea, but there is not a single area in the game that I ever feel the need to replay again, let alone want to. War stance is a very cool idea, just not implimented to its full potential. I think the changing of directors hurt the game, and the lack of Miyazaki's direction shows. With Bloodborne coming out, this game was clearly on a crunch as it would be really hard to sell and push this game with Bloodborne coming out after, as well as being released at the end of a consoles lifecycle.
No man's wharf is a bad wharf
Nuh uh, no man’s wharf is a good wharf
Me when I try to use logic to convince someone that their opinion is wrong
I'm not saying that you should like the game, in fact I said the exact opposite multiple times, I'm just saying that there are things to like about the game and it's not objectively bad or whatever.
Everybody says ds2 is easy then dies constantly lol, its just testing different skills but they see having to plan ahead and strategise as cheesing (ie using throwables or projectiles) then whenever they die due to lack of planning they blame the game
Definitly not, i just played trough half the game and i’m not even sure i died once to something else than parcour/suicide runs in lava.
The difficulty in dks 2 is just about slowing you down and preeing on you getting impatient.
Now i come back to elden ring because i realised all my saves are modded and i want to play dlc on a normal save and the game feels unplayable for the first hour because enemies are actualy challenging.
DKS 2 is more of a rpg. It’s slow, stat checky and offers a lot of ways to outscale the game difficulty. It pushed you into getting stronger and preparing consummables over getting better.
dark souls 2 is the last soulsborne game i got around to playing and frankly i like it more than 1 or 3, and WAY more than i expected to after hearing everyone complain about it lol
There was a time where it rivaled DS1 as my favorite, but the autism is too strong lol. Seriously, though, I love DS2, it gets way too much hate, and I definitely prefer it to 3.
Dark Souls 2 is alright. There´s some really great boss fights. The DLC mostly turned out great. Some of the music is really fantastic. A lot of the lore is exciting, if you dive deeper. New game plus was well done. Powerstancing is really cool. I enjoyed fashion souls a lot in this game. A bunch of the covenants are really interesting (at least initially). Dragon peak (or whatever its called) still visually blows me to this day. Dark magic was awesome (soo powerful). The design of the giants is really really cool. The torch is a great idea (I wish the game did more with it though)
The world design is inexcusably bad. Tons of enemies have braindead AI. It has some of the worst bosses in gaming. It has some of the worst boss runs known to man. Stupid shit like the flammable windmill for the poison snake lady boss or soul memory to stop twinks are terribly implemented. It´s downright ugly in some places. Life gems completely break the game in terms of health economy/balancing. Dragon Riders, the ogres that grab you from like three screens away, causing instant death. Shrine of Amana (at release)
It´s not the best game and it definitely isn´t the worst. I loved my first playthrough and I really liked the green and the red DLC, the blue one kinda sucked.
Thanks for reading my blog post. My favorite souls game is Dark Souls (1) with Demon Souls as a close second, all the other games are way too difficult for my liking (I can still beat them, but the FUN has taken a nosedive). Bloodborne was okay thanks to the amazing rally mechanic
I´m really looking forward to the Elden Ring DLC
What's wrong with the world design? I honestly love it, especially the random stuff like the dragon shrine being hidden until the end of the game, the earthen peak elevator going up into nothing, the confusing branching paths, I love it. The AI is no worse than DS1 or 3, I feel like it's unfair to dog on DS2 for that, especially when it serves the lore and gameplay. I genuinely can't think of any particularly egregious boss runs, I know people hate smelter, but it's genuinely not that bad, it's incredibly easy to run past nearly everything. The random gimmicks like the windmill and the torches outside the sinner boss room are really unique and fun, if hard to find, sure. Soul Memory is... well, I understand that criticism lol. I highly disagree that it's ugly anywhere, it's the best looking in the series, to me. The healing isn't "broken," it's just different, and the game is balanced around that. Sure, you can play without lifegems, but I don't think that's as fun of an experience just because the game is built around them. The ogres have a pretty solid grab hitbox, if a little too big, but your positioning should allow you to get away quickly enough regardless. I don't know what you dislike about the dragonriders, though. Shrine of Amana is really hard and oppressive, but I still think it's pretty fun.
@@solarpellets-For world design, another example besides the elevator to Iron Keep, you have No Man's Wharf (Of course thats in the video xD), You travel down below the ocean in Heide's Tower and somehow still end up on water level for a ship to travel on.
@@solarpellets
Thanks for responding! I don´t know if you´ll read this and seriously respond again, since it´s a lot of text but regardless, I enjoyed engaging
Just because other games do it, doesn´t make it less bad in Dark Souls 2. Critizising flaws is not unfair, it´s just an objective (as much as I can, I do get a little too into it maybe) assessment. I want to preface that I don´t think the game is bad and I don´t hate it, even if I come off as overly negative. I do think it´s the worst souls game that FromSoft has made, but overall I would still give it a solid 65/100 or so (a really bad game would be around 30 or lower for me. Dark souls 1 would be around 90, Demon Souls and Bloodborne maybe an 85, Sekiro and Elden Ring are closer to a 75 or so (they are just too obnoxiously difficult), Dark souls 3 maybe a 70? It is actually the one I played the least)
Regarding the world design: Check out a 3d map of the game, the world design is complete nonsense. You have different areas intersecting one another, making it physically impossible and simply very immersion-breaking.
I purposefully tried not to draw any direct comparisons to other games in my listing of positives and negatives, because I think you should judge these games on their own merits, rather than comparing them to the other souls games, but if I were to do so: just look at the 3d map of Dark Souls 1 in comparison. It´s intricate and beautiful and most of all, it makes logical sense. Locations you can see from afar are actually there, you aren´t seeing something differently than where it would actually be in the game. I think Dark Souls 2 is just incredibly lazy in that regard. (You ride a huge elevator from earthen peak and suddenly you´re in a castle surrounded by a giant molten wasteland?) ((the few knocked over stones barring your way to the drangleic castle? it´s just no good))
Some people argue that the randomness of where you end up next is exciting and different, but I just find it poorly made. There is a profound lack of realism that grounds you in the world, which makes the entire experience a lot less interesting to me. It lacks weight and sense.
There´s many enemies with poor AI, just running off of cliffs or constantly just turning with you, while you try to get behind them: the steel turtle dudes you find early in the game, the giant knights at the Heide tower, the awful giant knights at Dragons Peak with their insane 1000 hit combo attacks. A bunch of the NPC invaders are ridiculously overtuned.
Some objectively bad boss runs: the one to the ancient dragon, the one to Velstadt, the one to the undead chariot, the boss run to the cat duo in the ice dlc (arguably the worst I`ve ever seen, it´s like a solid 5 minutes of running, while you get pelted by strong enemies), the one to the floating angel boss in the abyss area, the one to the samurai dude in the DLC
Some awful bosses, in case you couldn´t think of any: the ancient dragon, the gank squad in the green DLC, recolored smelter (not necessarily bad, but very lazy, considering it is paid DLC content. I think the smelter fight is generally one of the better ones), the large cats in the blue DLC, Vendrick, the giant slug (i can sort of accept this, since it´s just a goofy gimmick fight), the Dragon Rider duo (they are a joke, that´s the problem. also, where are their dragons?), the random ass copy of Ornstein in some cathedral (i´m not sure if this was intended to be a tribute, but considering how weak the boss is, it´s just bad), the giant rat dog (another gank squad that will likely murder you a million times). My favorite bosses would probably be the ruin sentinels (i think this is probably one of the only souls bosses with more than one enemy that I actually enjoy, very cool music also), fume knight and looking glass knight (PVP gimmick bosses are cool and the design + arena here is amazing)
The flammable windmill is just poor design, that 99% of players would miss without any guidance. It´s completely inane to expect a player to think a metallic black looking object would burn, let alone that it would get rid of poison in the boss room for some reason. The immersion is broken because it makes no sense.
Soul memory basically ruined cosplay PvP, you would constantly have to make new characters to keep invading in the same area. The intention was good but I don´t think it was worth it
I´m not really gonna argue further about the game being ugly in parts, since that is very, very subjective. Some of the distant views are just really ugly to me. (the early areas before the last giant for instance, some of it looks so bad) I also think a lot of the game looks just very drab and visually boring in a lot of places. Some other areas are stunning, so it is very hit and miss. Shrine of amana is beautiful for instance
Life gems fundamentally break the carefully crafted balance, that Dark Souls 1 accomplished. You basically have infinite healing, reducing every single encounter to a war of attrition. The stakes are lowered dramatically, the tension to find the next bonfire removed and it´s just boring now. I don´t think it´s balanced around these items either. If you lean heavily into life gems, the game loses all kinds of challenge. My favorite souls game moments are those, where you´re desperately looking for a bonfire with little to no health left, no estus, and you´re in an unfamiliar area. I think life gems just reduce the opportunity to experience that
Again thanks for reading my blog post
@@ay9lx I suppose it's true that other games doing it doesn't make it better, but I think my point in bringing that up is that Dark Souls 1 is considered one of the best games of all time, and DS1 also does that lol. If we're talking ratings, I'd give all the games barring DS3 and ER at least 90/100, they're all incredible games. DS1 is easily 100/100, maybe 99.9 because Seath lol. DS2 I'd probably give 98, DeS a 95, BB a 92, though that's heavily subjective, I just adore everything the games do. DS3 and ER have some things I don't like nearly as much especially the level design, but that deserves its own video, I think.
The nonsense in the world design is exactly what makes it so incredible. It's not lazily thrown together (though it might be behind the scenes), it's a fantasy world that is breaking down on itself because of the stagnation of the world. Honestly, the actual reason it's like that literally doesn't matter to me, I still think it's cool and fun.
I've spent minutes trying to get single enemies to run off of cliffs, it's hard to do so, and even when you do, it takes a lot of luck. The old ironclad are some of my favorite enemies in the game, they attack incredibly slowly, but actually attack in intervals that make sense, plus they can slam down on you if you try to get behind them. You're not "supposed" to fish for backstabs ever, and increasing enemy turn speed is a good way to combat that, I hardly ever do it in DS2 despite doing it all the time in DS1 and 3.
No art is objectively bad, it simply can't be by the very nature of what art is. Case in point: the run to the ancient dragon is one of my favorite runs in the series, it's a combat gauntlet facilitated by super cool looking warriors, it's great. Velstadt's is a non-issue, it's genuinely excessively easy to run past the dragon rider there. The executioner's chariot is also a good run, you just need to not try to sprint past enemies. I hate the frigid outskirts, it's one of the worst areas in all of souls-borne imo, but it's certainly not objectively bad. Intersubjectively maybe. I also hate Alonne's but Alonne is one of the most praised bosses in the series, so that clearly isn't universal, especially since you're expected to summon for it.
Ancient Dragon is boring, but not what I'd call bad. Gank squad is pretty fun to strategize around and is expected to be summoned for, as is blue kool-aid, Aava is another loved boss, Vendrick is a really good lore fight, gimmick fights are generally really fun, take all of Demon's Souls as an example, and I like the gimmick covetous has, RRA is one of the funnier bosses in the game and is too easy for me to call bad, and the Dragonslayer armor is one of my favorites in the game because difficult != good. Ruin Sentinels is easily my favorite boss in the game, but a lot of people really don't like them for various reasons. Fume is way too easy and boring, but looking glass is cool.
It doesn't have to make sense that you can burn a metal windmill, it's completely optional, and the enemy guarding it clearly draws some suspicion.
I dislike PvP in souls so that's not a negative for me :3
DS2 didn't want to keep the same balance. It's different but it's certainly not necessarily worse.
@@solarpellets I appreciate your unbound positivity regarding these games a lot, though I can´t say I feel the same.
I do have to wonder: what would you actually consider bad? (design wise or whatever else you can actually point to)
I think boss runs are absolutely terrible, period. Anything that punishes me for failing by wasting my time with content I´ve already beaten is just no good (I realize that this sort of applies to the entirety of the souls gameplay loop, but I find it much, much harder to justify when that death is caused by a boss, who just wiped his ass why my character). I don´t have the willpower, nor do I want to spend the time. Just put a bonfire in front of the boss door and nothing of value was lost.
On that note, Stakes of Marika from Elden Ring are one the best things that game brought to the genre, aside from verticality through jumping. I have no idea why they didn´t manage to put one in front of every boss door
No idea how you could call the ancient dragon anything but trash. Being "boring" is one of the most egregious things a boss fight of all things could be. It may be one of the worst dragon fights in video games, as far as I am concerned. There are little to no actual mechanics to the fight, the boss does way too much damage and the inflated health pool means this awful boss makes sure to overstay its welcome. To give an example of a good dragon fight, Grigori from Dragon´s Dogma 1 is a lot of fun (not perfect by any means, but it´s a lot more engaging). Even the gimmicky dragon "fight" in Dark Souls 3, where you just stab his head and oneshot him is better, in my opinion (now that is a boss run I can actually get behind. That is, the boss run is the actual challenge, not some difficult fight after)
Vendrick may be neat lore-wise, but the actual fight is still remarkably bad. There exist actually good gimmick boss fights, that rely entirely on their lore and atmosphere to carry them (Maiden Astraea for instance), I would not put Vendrick anywhere near that category. Though, it might not be so bad if the fight wasn´t dragged out by an inflated health pool and the potential one-shots the boss can hit you with.
I also can´t wrap my head around how you find the gank squad boss "fun", in any sense. I want to preface this by saying I love the concept of invasions. I love kicking someone down a cliff and ruining their day. It´s incredible to me. I don´t think I´ve had more fun playing an online game than back when the Prepare To Die Edition launched on PC and everyone and their mother were playing, completely oblivious to the hell I was gonna unleash on them.
On the other hand, I hate the "honorable dueling" PVP in these games. It´s the worst thing, it´s so unsatisfying to hit at someone who just rolls away with millions of iFrames or some giant dad blasting you with a million damage backstab.
The gank squad boss is the curation of the single worst part the Souls games have on offer. Combat against multiple NPC/human-like enemies. If you look into a dictionary, this boss fight will be listed as an example for the opposite of "fun". It´s terrible and whoever designed it knew exactly what they were inflicting upon us.
You said the "ancient dragon" is boring, but the fume knight is "too easy and boring". Does that mean you consider the fume knight a worse fight?
I don´t find the fume knight easy at all, so good on you for being so good at these games (I mean it, i SUCK at souls games and it feels bad to play them, that is also why anything past Dark Souls 1 is no good, it´s just too hard to be really enjoyable anymore)
Regarding your comment about the metal windmill: "It doesn´t have to make sense". Why not? Can you somehow justify this comment a little more in-depth? Game mechanics that don´t make sense just tell me that the game designer didn´t give a shit, so why should I? I feel they had no idea how to implement the poison drainage, so they just coasted and let the intern have go or something. It´s ridiculous to me.
I think you are FAR too generous with these games. While I don´t think that´s necessarily a bad thing, it doesn´t hurt to be a little more critical of the things you like
Dark Souls 2 "defenders" (from what exactly I'll never know) are a strangely hiveminded and obsessed group of people. I tried dark souls 2, gave it multiple honest attempts. Never liked it.
I did not hate the game, however, until I made the mistake of looking up what people were saying about it online. The people who like this game will utter the most absurd and incomprehensible statements conceivable, like "adp is good akshually" or "skill issue, just look around you lol" or my favourite, the crown jewel: "fast travel at the start is actually a good thing."
I'm not counting on recieving anything but hostility and close-minded vitriol for voicing what I have, and I fully expect the comment to be hidden by the channel owner herself.
Another promising small youtube channel goes to waste.
I just like DS2, I don't know why that would make my entire channel bad lol. People mindlessly attack the game a lot, HBomberguy has a whole video essay on that, then someone made a several hour response, then someone responded to that response lmao. There's a lot of vitriol toward the game. It's fine to dislike it, it's not fine to say it's objectively bad.
I'm not gonna give you hostility for disliking a game that I like, but I will happily say that your opinion is wrong. Not that disliking the game is wrong, not that thinking ADP is wrong, not that you should like having to pay attention a lot, but instead that those are somehow objectively bad things. I love ADP, I love what it does for the game's build variety, I love how it changes playstyles between playthroughs, you're allowed to not like it, that's fine, but saying it's "bad" somehow is absurd. The game tests different things from DS1 and 3, it's fine if you don't like that, but don't pretend like that's somehow the only correct opinion.
Fast travel at the start is a negative, though, it changed the world design for the worse, but I don't think it makes it bad enough that the game as a whole is significantly worse or whatever, and a lot of people do genuinely prefer it.
@@solarpelletsfunny enough Mauler who made the several hour ds2 is bad rant (some good points tbh, though Zerolenny articulates it more precising efficiently) fucking hates Elden Ring saying it's one of the worst games, loves DS3 tho
But he's also a pedantic pizza face turbo virgin half the time on EFAP anyways.
girl.... what is this?
>DS2 is good
>Scholar of the First Sin
Yeah, okay buddy...
Did you watch the video? At all?
@@solarpellets Nope. :^)
Personally I just can’t get pass the foundational mechanics of the game, the fucked up movement, but more so the way the game looks and feels weightless and wrong. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I cannot play this game, I’ve tried and tried, believe me.
🤓
not sure if this is like worth saying on this video but i really think ds3 is fine and that's the best i can say about it
i've never played ds2, bloodborne, or elden ring (i played like 2 hours of elden ring but i really don't think that counts)
i have played ds1 but never did the dlc
i played most of ds3 but after beating the dancer i just felt tired of it
ds1 has great world building, story, themes, the combat is fun and stiff but in ways that i can enjoy it. i think ds1 is really really well done even lost izalith feels like it had some care into it (i personally hate tomb of the giant and i can't imagine that was play tested very well) overall i think ds1 is a great great game.
ds3 feels like the worst feeling bloodborne, the story is great and the art is lovely but the level design doesn't have the care in it that it did in ds1, the combat feels more responsive but almost like nothing is meshing well with it, parrying is very rough and fights feels so fast and just like you have to get in there and do it perfectly rather then wait out or plan your attacks. the most fun i had in ds3 was pontiff sulyvahn and that's only bc he actually gave me something to fight against and made me feel like my planning was what won the fight. it's just a big mess that feels like the testing ground from bloodborne to elden ring and it doesn't feel like dark souls bc of that.
idk i haven't seen this ass a common opinion so i'm guessing it's just a me thing to not like ds3 as much
I very much dislike DS3 compared to the other games. Like, I enjoy it, I think it's a good game, I have 200 hours in it, but DS1 and 2 are just so much better, imo.
@@solarpellets agreed, from everything i've heard ds2 seems different from ds1 mechanically but still very much dark souls
butt osuls 2
DS2 is my first souls game and its in a very special place in my heart. its not a good souls game at all tho imo. if u compare this shit to ds1 ds3 sekiro and elden ring then this game is shit but i take away the name of it and its good to me. ds2 doesnt teach shit tho lol thi game throws u shit for no reason. level design on this game sucks ass. but i still love it cause its my first souls
I don't understand how you can comment that you like being punished for no reason on a dark souls 3 video then immediately comment on a dark souls 2 video that they throw stuff at you for no reason and that's bad lmao. Either way, the game does very much teach you if you're willing to listen. Literally just look around and you won't get ambushed.
This does not change my mind that ds2 is bad
Cuz u r bad at ds2
@@AtreyusNinja YOURE bad at ds2
@@whiteflame7771 no u
DS2 is the best souls game and im tired of pretending its not
Is this a parody?
Why would it be? DS2 is in my top ten favorite games ever and is my second favorite of the fromsoft souls-likes, only behind DS1
garbage game
Cuz u suck at the game
You don't have to mention this when someone enjoys the game yk... Talk about negative