I made a comment response video where I kill all the enemies in every level: th-cam.com/video/rR-a3zIOE2w/w-d-xo.html I made a video comparing vanilla to Scholar since vanilla is a lot better. You can watch that video with the link below. th-cam.com/video/dgJM4O8mAys/w-d-xo.html I also made a video called "In Defense of Dark Souls 2" where I tried to understand why a minority of people enjoyed Scholar. It had some issues so I made it unlisted. If you wanna watch it you can use the link below. th-cam.com/video/2A6s_Wq-6PU/w-d-xo.html
@@highlightermarca-texto3281 I did not try that. I do need video evidence of this occurring multiple times and working consistently to know for sure. Either way I still think that a boss with a boss run like that shouldn't be the hardest to create healing windows in the game.
You say that you have to fight two knights at the start of Heide, but I’ve never played a version of SotFS where that is true. Likewise you complain about infinitely respawning invaders, but they don’t respawn if you kill them like in every Souls game. People are valid to criticize your use of footage that exaggerates the problem you are discussing even if it is coincidental and unintentional - inferred hyperbole will still weaken your argument to other people. The pyromancer at the end of the ivory king doing too much damage is probably because you never leveled INT or FTH, the only stats tied to fire defense - just a guess. Also, I can’t exactly fault people for not knowing this, but the DLCs have areas designed for three player parties. This includes the run up to Alonne, a very questionable choice IMO, but each one gives you two NPC summons for offline play. I haven’t seen a single DS2 review fairly acknowledge this. You could summon to fight your way through and then unsummon before Alonne, but I can’t really defend that area too much as it is the most boring multiplayer area. NPCs can’t interact with the Iron Passage’s side paths, either, so that one is somewhat dysfunctional, too. Honestly, the gank squad is probably the best multiplayer area to do with the NPCs. All of this to say if you try to solo those areas your pride will be the death of you. 😉
@@Zapdos7471 I view using summons as playing in easy mode, and for a critique to be "legit" it should probably be done in normal mode if possible. But after beating Dark Souls 2 no summons level 1 I can say that yes, using summons is developer intended. I disagree with that design decision and prefer Dark Souls 1 being designed around solo play, but maybe for some who enjoy co op Dark Souls 2 is fun for them. And I killed an invader in the Iron Keep and then died, ran back to Smelter Demon, and was invaded again. So yes, there were multiple respawning invaders, however I think that if I killed the invaders every run eventually they would stop respawning. I didn't do this because it's stupid and I just ran to Smelter Demon, but respawning invaders are real. And I think the only real "exaggerated" gameplay of gank fests is what I showed in the lost bastille. Since the forest of the fallen giants has a ladder you can run to if you run past the enemies with another enemy coded to go down the ladder and force you to fight all 30 enemies at once, so no I don't think that gameplay was exaggerated as the game tricked me!
Please identify any member of this ostensible “B team” outside of Yui Tanimura (who has actually been co-director on other games like Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring).
my take is that the devs genuinely believed that players would replay sections over and over until the enemies disappeared, then make it to the boss and fight it face-to-face locked on.
That's honestly what I'm inclined to believe. Your weapons and armor are so extremely fragile in Dark Souls 2 compared to Demon's Souls and DS1, that fighting enemies on the way to the boss will likely cause your equipment to completely break at some point before managing to kill the boss.
@@NexusKinthis happened to me once in all of my ds2 playthroughs. Also you can just switch weapons or use repair powder or use a durability ring. I think the despawning mechanic was added as a failsafe for stuck players. I only ever used it on my first run to the Blue Smelter Demon in the dlc. Ds2 is probably the best game in the series in terms of being able to control difficulty. That’s part of it.
I'm playing DS2 and every time the game stresses me out for some objectively unfair reason, I return to this video as anger therapy Edit: Finally beat that hell with DLC's included
I've never played DS2 but seeing the Sinh fight made me laugh because I instantly thought of Elden Beast that you would have to run a fucking marathon to get to just to hit him once and for him to fly away again
@@just70hq Sihn is much worse because of DS2's high stamina consumption for running. He also breaks your weapons by reducing durability faster than usual whenever you HIT HIM. He punishes you for hitting him. Such a fun boss.
I just did that area in the Forest of Fallen Giants, you can literally walk right behind each hollow and kill them right after they get up. It's like reading a message that tells you to jump off of a cliff for treasure. If you don't learn from your mistake, is that the game's fault?
@@tokidoki9116 seeing how BHS in Elden ring makes you nearly invulnerable for as long as you can mash L2 with FP, I can see why they seethe when going back to older titles lol. DS3 and ER especially were very lenient and forgiving with both the stamina cost, speed, and frames of rolls.
I died so many times in this game because an enemy got behind me and I couldnt do the 180 swing thing you mentioned at minute 10 I almost got an aneurysm
Unpopular opinion: the ds2 dlcs are overrated. They are still ganky and annoying and every dlc has at least one absolute bullshit area (frigid outskirts, alonnes past and the area before gank squad) I played through ds2 a lot of times with all sorts of challenges but most of the time i just cant be bothered to push through the dlc areas just to get to the good bosses.
I think the interconnected level design is great, but the gank squads are still unfun. The only enemy design I liked was in the beginning city of the Sunken King, partially because moving buildings could wipe out all the enemies, but even without that there were no hidden archers since they were all within reach. The other two dlcs have worse gank squads and the Ivory King has the worst design imo of all of them.
Preach. Sunken King DLC was straight-up trash, dude, especially when you get to the ziggurats and go inside. The DLCs have their moments, but all in all they're still pretty mediocre, and not much better than the base game.
@@chicken29843 Do not tell me that DS2 is good because enemies disappear after 12 deaths. And did I complain about Ruin Sentinels? I did the 1v3 on purpose because I enjoy the challenge and like the boss. I literally put on screen text that reads, "Ruin Sentinels are cool" as I talk about outlining good things in DS2... I guess you didn't pay attention And what are you talking about, there is gameplay of me using all the loyce knights? I believe you are confused because most of your comment did not made sense.
@@chicken29843 I'm sorry but how the fuck is iron keep,the shrine of Amana, the shitty poison valley and the black gulch not inexcusable level design? Enemy spam galore and it was absolutely fucking awful to get through. Not even the lake of Rot or the liturgical town in elden ring are even close to DS2s dosghit ganky areas I've heard the DLCs have some good bosses but I genuinely can't be bothered to get through them after experiencing the main game
@@chicken29843 I hear you man, these content creators swear on their lives that what they’re saying is the end all be all for a game when in reality they just suck major balls
I’m playing through this for the first time right now and while I see the things that people take issue with, I’ve greatly enjoyed my time with it so far
I haven't beaten it yet but I really love dark souls 2 so far (I'm on the optional king vendrick boss so maybe it gets worse after) but so far even iron keep and shrine of Amana never gave me the problems that it gave others (maybe it was improved in Sotfs I'm not sure) my only issues so far are with ds2 is that the level design is either way too convoluted or too straightforward, and there is an overall lack of the routing back shortcut systems found in ds1 (my favorite in the entire series)
Its a good game. I deleted all comments i heard abt the game 6 hours in when i broke out of my noob shell. If i could offer myself any tip it would literally only be: "Rolling works like sekiro parrying, roll when the attack is inside you" All the stuff i heard abt ADP is dumb lol. I have countless hours and 2 plats - never leveled it past base and i think ds2 has as good a dodge timing as sekiro does a parry
I really never had trouble with Iron Keep.. if you don’t run the entire time, you’ll aggro 2-3 enemies at once and if you can kill them before the next group comes- it feels pretty fun
About the topic of running past all the enemies: You could say the same thing about Elden ring. There are so many enemies in the level and a lot of them are super strong, and respawn every time, and on top of that, they barely give any souls. Elden Ring is actually the game I ran past the enemies the most.
Ds2 was built around using ranged weapons to clear the archers and spellcasters, where Elden Ring was built around using op weapon arts to clear hard levels. You can beat both without these tools as I did, but I still think the level design was still built around this. I prefer Elden Ring's level design because op weapon arts are more fun for me than ranged combat, but both lack a certain level of mechanical depth compared to a more straight melee build that was at the center of Ds1 and Ds3 level design.
The power of the enemies and bosses in Elden Ring are equiparable to the amount of options and power the open world offers. In DS2 you are stuck with a slower swing time than DS1 and twice or thrice the amount of enemies, most of which have high poise and wonky hitboxes as a result of compensation for ADP. It is certainly unfair. Don't get me wrong, DS2 gets better at NG+ and I certainly think it is still a pretty good game but you'd be delusional or biased to think that it is in any way better than both its predecessors and forefathers
@@feebleking21 I would also say that while you can run past enemies in Elden Ring, the game design is balanced around your own capabilities in majority of areas. That's not the case in Dark Souls 2. Enemies are way more clustered together, have some weird ass sprint animation where they immediately run to your location, have spastic fast attacks when they start chasing you, and you have no s at the fog wall. The only area in Elden Ring that has a painful area to run through is the boss run to the optional boss in great farum but even then, that is a farcry from the run to Sir Alonne or the run to Smelter Demon for instance.
@@nazimzerrouki467 I do agree I run past enemies more in ds2 than any other game, and I also die in the levels more than any other dark souls game, whether I run past or fight back because of all the hidden archers anti-player being alive design!
After beating DS1 years ago, I had a very hard time beating DS2 leading to burn out from the series for a few months. Iron Keep is the worst area in the game and it’s not even close lol. Having an agility stat is cheap to me, but learning how about it early allows the game to feel somewhat normal. Life gems makes the game a bit easy. There’s a lot of cheapness in the game due to the fact that you can’t predict what “traps” they have for you when playing for the first time. Oddly enough, I replayed it on PS4 this week and I somehow remembered a lot about the game and it was pretty easy. My first play through was on PS3 and for some reason the enemy placement seemed harder and the game overall felt harder. It’s nowhere near close to my favorite in my opinion, but the music in mejula slaps 😅
I guess I did a challenge run of Dark Souls 2 because I finished the game locked on just like the other titles. Playing the game locked off is a workaround for the shitty enemy density, not an intended design choice. The fact it only works against early-game trash-mobs supports this. Fighting the ghosts in the Shaded Ruins locked off is fucking horrid since they are usually one-on-one pvp fights where being able to space and face the enemy at the same time is pretty important and FromSoft's amateur hour team decide to fuck it up because "game is hard lolz".
I just finished DS1 and was blown away.. so excited I bought DS2 and now I hate myself.. I feel like this game was made by the controller manufacturing company just to strum up extra business from the amount of controller smashes the players will commit
@AE personally I loved DS2, found it quite entertaining, but I do understand why some people wouldn't. It probably also helped that I took a few months after beating DS1 before buying DS2.
Lets yourself be swarmed with enemies by ignoring them one by one until they overwhelm you and then face them with the one handed broad sword. Proceeds by healing milliseconds before an incoming hit and then die. Damn, this does not represent the average player, it represents FeebleKing21 fishing for video-content. As for the broad-sword, it represents a player who doesn't know how to spend their upgrade materials. Create a new player and start over.
DS 2 is the very first souls game I've ever played and it was what got me hooked in the souls series. I agree, Shrine of Amana is so bad and it was the worst experience for me but I still had fun in the hundreds of hours I've spent playing this game. Hard, yes but still enjoyable. So when I started playing DS 3, I was shocked at how easy it was compared to DS 2. But just because it was a lot easier doesn't mean it was bad. DS 3 is the best dark souls among the three for me and the most memorable, especially the Slave Knight Gael boss fight. I understand your reasons for hating DS 2 and I know it has flaws but because it was my introduction to the souls series, it has a special place in my heart.
I can understand this perspective. Dark souls is so different from other games that your first souls game will make feel like an experience like none other. That's how I feel about Dark Souls 1 since that was my first souls game.
Same here, I had to check to make sure 3 was made by the same team cuz it was just like 'hey remember ds1? Well it's like that but made for people who never beat a souls game before'.. I was actually floored when they straight up just used Gwynn again as the final boss. Elden Ring makes me feel like they regret making hard games and want to get a more casual playerbase, which they 100% succeeded in doing.
@@chicken29843 in other words, ER is only hard if you handicap yourself. DS3 is pretty hard if you don't roll, and rolling means you had to dodge an attack meaning you didn't learn how to parry, thus making it cheesing.
What the hell is this guy saying? I think you're just bad at the game. I used lock on for every single enemy (except ghosts of course) and never had a problem. This was the easiest game for me out of all fromsoft games.
Consistently running past every enemy to group them up and die trying to kill all of them paints DS2 bad, but only amplifies your opinion. You could “use the tools” in the game like you say you did in DS1. But that wouldn’t show the flaws with the game. Just with your playstyle. You harp on gank-squads in the game, but you are the one that created them. You chose many times in the video to round up every enemy you could to illustrate your point, when there’s ways to mitigate “ganks.” Yes, there are many instances where you have to fight multiple enemies at once. But only using a broadsword with no other weapons, spells, or equipment will often times lead to failure. It’s fun to play with a limited arsenal, but there are always shortcomings to every playstyle. Also, you praise Sens Fortress floor trap, but fail to use or demonstrate using traps in DS2 when they’re present. The fire pillars in Iron Keep can wreck enemies. Another issue you have is with the lock on system. I really don’t get it. It’s not wise to lock on with multiple enemies aggro’d to you. Better to do so during one-on-one engagements. The game teaches this pretty soon, telling you to be aware and pay attention because danger lurks around every corner. I get people don’t think greatly of DS2. They played the first one and fell in love. When they released the 2nd game, they became upset or disappointed or both. “Why can’t I circle-strafe every enemy for a backstab? OMG soooo many enemies! Look at me with my shield always up!” I could go on. Every FromSoft title has its faults. But I genuinely believe most of the complaints about DS2 come from the expectations of players who loved the first game, and were angry the game didn’t exceed their expectations they set for it. Also, Bloodborne is the best FromSoft game.
Not being able to circle strafe things isn’t what pissed me off about the game. Backstabbing cheese was boring in the first game so I never did it. It’s not any one particular thing about the game I don’t like. Getting no I-frames when you enter a boss fog. Getting hit 7 feet away from the boss by an attack that’s not even an aoe. The ugly animations. Forgettable boss design, beating the game 3 times and still not knowing where you should go first every time you get to majula because world layout makes no goddamn sense. Dark souls 2 brought a lot of new changes to the series that became series features going forward. Most important being omnidirectional dodging while locked on. It’s only fair the worst iteration of these new changes exists in the first iteration of them. I wanna be clear on something. Dark souls 2 is not a bad game. Not at all. It’s actually a good game. It’s just a bad Dark Souls game. It feels like Dark Souls, if Dark Souls was made by people who didn’t understand why people loved Dark Souls. To be fair I don’t even know why I love it so much and why dark souls 2 irks me so badly. It’s all the little shit. The fact that your healing flask isn’t a burst heal but instead is just a fast over time heal. High stamina cost for nearly every action. Inconsistent dodges because of the game’s active (and therefore in-flux) calculation of i-frames due to adaptability being a fucking thing. A lot of the late game areas feel empty as fuck, as well. Just enemies. Nothing there to let the player feel like this use to be a place people lived, but instead feels like a tailor-made video game level, because that’s what it is. At least dark souls hides that fact behind clever design, making the areas feel lived-in and designing them in a way that makes it feel logical to navigate. This is strange, but why I don’t like dark souls 2 reminds me of why I didn’t like fable 2. Fable 2 is just fable but on ice. Dark souls 2 is just dark souls but drowned in molasses.
@@icankickflipok all fromsoft worlds tend to be empty remnants of what was. At least Bloodborne has the feeling of shit hitting the fan WHILE you’re there.
@@BulykrynVancho it feels more like shit hits the fan because you’re there to me. But I only just beat rom for the first time a few nights ago. Many times I’ve tried playing bloodborne and many times I’ve deleted an old save and started all over. I’ve owned the game for years and been able to play it all this time. I’ve played all the other soulsborne games except for demons souls, all of them I’ve played I’ve beaten more than twice. Except for bloodborne. I don’t know why. I really like it. Probably the frame rate. I’m just coming off of 200 hours of elden ring and before that it was dark souls 3, so the frames are hard on the eyes and really do hinder you sometimes. But yeah, all of fromsoft’s worlds feel abandoned and desolate. But that’s the thing. In order for something to feel abandoned, it has to appear as if people once lived there, a long time ago. Dark souls 2 can’t even manage that. Areas don’t feel abandoned. They can’t, because they don’t feel like they were ever actually lived in by anyone. So instead of feeling abandoned and desolate, it just feels empty. You said it yourself, remnants of what was. Except in dark souls 2, because we can’t even perceive that there ever was a “was.”
watching you rush throught the dlcs area taking agro of every mob in the level, trying to open gate/chest without clearing a zone and then calling the ennemy placement too ganky sure was agrovating. I can understand it when it comes to runbacks to bosses, but you gotta respect the content at some point
The problem is that killing each and every enemy in these areas is excessively time consuming and tedious, and sometimes you'll just die to a cheap shot anyway. Personally, I did kill every enemy the first time I ran through those areas, but on successive deaths, the patience level wears down quickly, and eventually you have to essentially speedrun the area by running past everything just so it doesn't keep wasting your time.
I don't think that I could have cleared the enemies with a melee only build in Crown of the Iron or Ivory King without spending 10 extra hours clearing enemies. You just can't expect that of anyone.
@@feebleking21 well maybe I need to replay ds2, but i really dont think it was that bad. The runback to sir allonne was awful I admit that, but for the ivory king, yes it does take patience but you re still exploring the level, for me it makes sense to take the level seriously until you proven you mastered it, and the fact that you are not invulnerable while activating doors open chest etc.. maybe irritating but it goes along with that design, which btw is for me one of the core design of the series, mastery throught repetition, bosses and level. Btw the section you've shown for the iron king is absolutly doable, especially if you use the red barril guys at your advantage.
@@coco3584 There's a route for the sprint to Alonne without taking any damage or killing any enemies, just kiting them. *Most boss runs feature creative ways to make it to the fog wall without killing every enemy or tanking tons of damage, typically by rewarding the players spacing, positioning, creativity, etc.
@@Nightweaver1 Not to mention Soul Memory exists so killing anything is a commitment. Do you really want to go up a tier in the matchmaking? DkS2 in itself has a bunch if systems that alone would be alright, but when combined they make everything so much worse
I played through DS2 SOTFS after watching this video and your video on "The main problem with dark souls/elden ring" and honestly none of it is as bad as you make it seem. First of all, when you make the comment "are you supposed to kill the enemies or just skip them?", you kinda sound like an idiot. Of course, you're "supposed" to kill them. That's how you earn souls to level up. On that note, the iron keep boss run isn't that bad at all if you know how to dodge the enemies. And from your points in the other video, you make it seem like if you can't run through the area and skip all the enemies easily, then it's bad design. Your play style is literally engage as least as possible with the content in the game and just fight the bosses using dodge and R1. And by the way, having a bow on you doesn't constitute a build. A build is having to invest to level 50 in intelligence to use a spell, or level 50 in strength to use a colossal weapon. Carrying a bow doesn't require any investment, thus not a "build". It's literally just picking up an item...
the man literally using the fucking starting knight equipment to fight the final boss did not even try out any fashion like bro maybe try and engage with the game on its own terms a little try out twin blades at least they were a unique new edition to the series
Ds2 was actually my introduction to the souls games and is still the only one I've beaten, unless you cont elder ring. My roommate at the time is a diehard souls fan and he said it was the easiest and therefore a good introduction.
10 seconds into the vid, dark souls 2 is actually my second favorite Dark souls game, so this will hit me in the guts, but I do know that the game is terribly flawed beyond belief. Time to continue watching. 3:20 I would like to clarify why I like Ds2 a lot. And be assured, it’s absolutely NOT because of the combat and level design. The level design actually has its good moments in this game which I can really respect, but enemy placement really just counters the positives most of the time. But I love drangleic a lot. I love the fantasy feel, I love the npc’s, the unique enemy’s in every “region” and I love the sheer amount of cool stuff that can be found around the world. Also I’m 99% sure that my view in the game is very unique to most people and reminiscent on a day 1 playthrough. I played the game November of last year completely blind with my brother and our friend. (We didn’t play together but we played at the same time while talking together if that makes sense.) We all 3 got to experience the lands, enemy’s, weapons, and even crappy jank all at the same time. It was a very fun experience because if this. I feel like my friendships helped paint this game in a much more positive light even though we all knew that the game was kinda bad lol. Time to continue watching 👍 15:41 (This part here is wrong as you are playing on scholar, it’s just I never experienced backstab jank even though I did them fairly often, my bad lol)Did you not play Scholar of the First Sin?? Scholar version fixed a good amount (not all lol) if problems people had with the game, I don’t know all the differences between vanilla and scholar, but I feel like for the sake of a critique/review, playing the latest version would make the most sense. (And if this is scholar, then my bad lol.) 20:23 ahhh I was wrong! 21:05 No mans wharf is pretty weird, but using a torch actually made the area really cool because those freaky monsters wouldn’t fight back. 25:22 Yea I agree with this 100% I was a magic user for the first time so I just used soul arrow so while it was doable it was still pretty dumb. 26:42 BRO don’t get me started on forlorn. He is the hardest invader ever, but Jester Thomas has a special place in my heart ❤️ 30:28 Absolutely, the bosses sometimes feel like fighting a normal enemy with a lot of health. 33:26 Life gems are crazy op and they trivialize a lot of the difficulty of the game. But estus is just so bad that there’s no other option 34:37 earlier I said how I love the world, which is true. But you are correct, to doesn’t make any logical sense how close everything is. I think everyone knows about that one elevator taking you up to iron keep smh 30:29 this is something I’ve never noticed, but I’ll agree with you, there are parts that are very pretty in this game, then there’s that garbage lol 36:52 I actually never enjoyed the DLC I mean the bosses were great and so were the environments, but idk, maybe you will change my opinion lol. 41:28 I was originally going to kill every boss in this game but these 2 bosses made me realize that it’s not worth it, just for their boss runs alone. 41:46 from this point on to the next bonfire actually made me almost stop playing entirely. This part of the level is so poorly designed it tainted my whole experience of this dlc. Yea, I know I’m weird. 49:26 yea for this part of the game I was actually fine because my friend was a little ahead of me (in game but we were not playing together) and he talked me through most of the place lol. It’s these special 1 of a kind experiences is why I’m biased tho :) 51:25 woah I never even knew about the black knight that spawns later, I beat this dude with just 3 silver knights because I stupidly managed to walk past one of them, so they never joined my team. But yea I agree that’s pretty bull shit. Because I never experienced that, I really, and I mean REALLY loved this fight. It is just too cool. 52:23 Aldia was soo unbelievably cool. He told us so much lore about the lie that is sacrificing our lives for the first flame, and how humans are slaves for the gods and stuff like that, and then we fight him? I know he doesn’t die though because of some lore, which is kinda neat, but the fight is so lame. So anticlimactic. 54:25 A reason I like this game so much is because I watched my own father play through this game when I was little, right now I’m 17 years old, it’s really weird to say, but some of my earliest gaming memories, are from watching my dad play dark souls 1 and 2, so getting to play the games I watched when I was little is a cool experience. I distinctly remember my dad playing through blight town and fighting qualag, and I also distinctly remember seeing watching my dad beat orinstein and smogh. (But later on he got stuck on and gave up on 4 kings LOL) but he moved onto ds2 when that came out, and I remember majula, heids tower, shrine of amana, and so much more from just watching him play. So I have a very unique experience with souls games because of him, and I thank him for it very often lol. (And even though I may have seen some of these things when I was a child, I still consider my playthrough blind, cause I really knew nothing about the game lol. 55:34 I agree, it is an objectively bad game, but idk, I’m still so attached to it. Sorry for the wall of text that is this comment, but like I said, this game hits close to me, more than most games out there, so I simply have a lot to say about it. As always, thank you for this literally perfect video 👍
Dark Souls 2 definitely has a unique feel to it's world, and while I didn't talk too much about it some areas like Majula have a certain sense of sadness that really hits you. And Dark Souls 2 still definitely feels like a brutal unforgiving world like any souls game.
@@tylerherdman1755 dang, you could make your own video on Dark Souls 2 with this script lol. It really seems like the game was special to you as you grew up watching your dad play it, and sentimental value will always matter a lot when it comes to art.
Same, some time ago i heard rumors about a DS2 switch port and thought that might give new life to the game similar to how i ended up enjoying some other games in a portable format. Ended up playing it on pc again to refresh memories and stoped at the lost bastille. Instantly decided that i won't pay for it again no matter what. It's the only souls game i never bothered to beat.
Recently went through the entire trilogy and DS2 was my favorite. Some of the issues people had with DS2 are worse to me in DS3. But I liked all three games.
Agreed, Ds3 imo is the worst of the series although Elden Ring may be another contender. Ds2 is underrated extremely. People just don’t want to learn how to play it, plus it’s atmosphere and rich environments are stellar.
@@dylanschmeichel2008 Agreed. Didn't like DS3's over emphasis on action, shameless fan service references to the first game, and limited playstyles. I hear Elden Ring is DS3 but more over the top. And most of the issues people had with DS2, didn't bother me. AGL stat is still dumb though.
@@iwanttodiebutimtoobigofacoward I've heard something similar. I'm guessing this is because they initially tried to make DS2 an open worldish kind of game.
Ds2 was my first souls game so perhaps i am a bit biased. I do acknowledge its many flaws, but it was still a fun experience. I agree with the movement and hitboxes being janky, and when my attacks take 3-5 business days to land, it gets frustrating. The best way to counter that is to be more attentive to openings which forces the player to take things too slow, taking them out of the thrill of the fight. I also must agree with the backstab mechanic being utter BS for not rewarding the player with i-frames. Levers and fog gates however should not have i-frames so the player is forced into combat which fits the theme of dark souls. Afterall, your goal isnt to rush bosses, but to fight your way through a dangerous world filled with things which want to kill you for sport. Overcoming these obstacles is the reward in itself, and dying forces you to be more careful to not repeat your mistakes which got you into that situation
I actually think Iron Keep was one of the only enjoyable areas of the game, I think it’s the only place in any of the games where the enemies are faster than you and actually feel kind of skilled, rather than just having stronger attack power than you. I also loved how they added new red phantom enemies in ng+ (which is something I CANNOT believe they never did again. its almost as if they forgot about it entirely. it’s such a cool idea. bloodborne kind of did it with the insight but that’s it)
DS2 had several neat ideas that sadly never came back, seemingly due to the negative reaction. Bonfire ascetics and ng+ changing item & enemy locations in particular.
@@oloxhossono1956 I know right? Maybe from has user data that says players mostly don't bother with ng+, instead preferring to start entirely clean characters for subsequent runs, so the extra effort making ng+ feel new and exciting isn't worth it. Still, though, it's something I've always wanted to see make a come back.
16:00 Exactly, my main issue when moving to DS2 from DS1. It felt like my hit didn't land and I had to go extremely close to an enemy to be sure (which is also more dangerous because they attack you early on if you don't first and stun you), meanwhile a lot of their hits shouldn't have hit (like clearly being one meter away from a boss attack). Forgiving for the enemies, punishing for the player. Now, I got used to it, I am replaying DS2 and finding the same problems but manage to play more careful and somehow win, but a lot of unfair damage taken. Going back to DS1 I have seen the difference. Also DS1 had parries/backstab/plunge attacks that ALL worked like a charm, ALL were feeling great to do. All these exist in DS2 but nothing seems to work properly, I end up in DS2 with two handed a strong weapon and hoping to hit and not miss an enemy and kill him before he attacks, or roll back and wait for their attack for an open window, but nothing works as well as DS1 used to.
Listening to this video is like being a meeseeks listening to Jerry. "Which is it? Choke up or follow through?" Its both Jerry. Is it lock on or free aim? It's both, Jerry. Is it ranged or melee? It's both, Jerry. Is it too open or too narrow? Is both, Jerry. I love souls games but didn't play 2 because i was always told its the bad one. Except, having recently played it. It's my favorite in the souls franchise. Second in the Fromm games. It doesn't let you choose one approach to everything. You must adjust and try different things. There isn't one solution. It's all solutions. You're upset that you can't run to an enemy's back, but you aren't doing a lock-roll-unlock. It's hard, but that's how you get there. Rolls are significantly more useful in DS2 than they were in DS1. And shields are less useful. It's about using the tools you have. Saying "i decided to only use a hammer and I'm mad that screws don't go in very easily" feels a bit... self inflicted. Here's other things that don't work every time because you're supposed to use the right tool for the right job. - ranged - backstabbing - running through - thrusting - sweeping - magic
Nah man ds2 sotfs is poorly design. I hear people say it's good or really bad. After playing it for a year i haven't even beaten it yet. Don't recommend.
I have the original DS2 and I can say clearly that I have not noticed the difference in iron keep or shrine of Amana in the background gameplay aside from a few more dragon priest guys that run at you, the areas are still pretty nasty.
Really? I remember there being way less enemies in iron keep in the base game. In SOTFS they just never stop coming. Amana remains unchanged but I like that area. Iron keep was bad then and is a terrible pile of doodoo now.
I don’t really understand your argument with having to fight loads of enemies at once. Like, I understand it in the sense that there are a lot of enemies in each individual section, but I just use enemy aggro so that I don’t have to fight them all at once. For example, when you fought those 10-ish hollows in the ‘opening’ area that seems hard and I get the frustration, so I just only fought one, two or three if necessary at a time.
Yeah, he makes some good points, but when I see him fighting all the hollows at once and complaining about it despite it being very easy to aggro them 1-3 at a time, I just get the feeling that maybe he should consider that he might be part of the reason of why he had such a miserable time with the game.
To be fair there are instances where aggroing one enemy will automatically aggro the rest in the area, like in shrine of Amana for example there's a couple of groups of Archdrakes where aggroing one will aggro the rest
I love Metallica so much! I saw them live about 2 years ago, what a great day! They played all my favorite songs (Fade to Black, One, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Nothing Else Matters, Master of Puppets etc.)
I went into ds2 expecting something dismal and horrible after hearing countless people complain about it. What i got instead was a pleasant surprise and it became my favourite of the series.
@@alessandroofthemediterranean Nah, if so many people dislike something, there is something to dislike. Like you can't make the argument the game is actually good when the development was as bad as it was
I enjoyed this video, although I'm playing Dark Souls II for the first time, and I'm enjoying it. One thing you might want to know, you don't have to kill every enemy 12 times to clear every level. That's only true in the early levels. The number of iterations, I have been finding, declines as you advance through the game. I'm down to about 6 iterations to get the enemy to stop respawning.
Gonna be honest... In the beginning when you're going on about the sheer number of enemies, it seems in most clips like the player is actively aggro-ing the whole group rather than trying to pick out a couple at a time. Most enemy placements I remember from the game have a couple of active enemies and then a few that aggro if you get too close. Even when I was new to the game, it was usually only bosses that tended to give me difficulty... Except for those turtle knights... And the heide knights... Aside from that, most everything else wasn't that bad... Oh wait, those guys that are in the quarry outside of the poison windmill and wave around giant sickles, those guys can go jump off a cliff because the place you fight them is bullshit and gives you practically no room to fight them in.
I played through it once making sure to fight every boss so as to not have to replay and feel like I missed content. What a horrid experience compared to the rest of the franchise. Just thinking about the blue smelter demon boss run and Sir Alonne's boss run makes me never want to return. And the frigid blizzard area in the DLC with the reindeer too. What a garbo game with garbo bosses. The only redeeming thing from this game was Fume Knight. One and done for me though. The worst Souls game, no contest.
I feel like people who complain that DS2 has too many enemies has never played Bloodborne or DS3. The opening level of Bloodborne has a ridiculous number of enemies but oddly nobody complains.
Except ur forgetting the fact that enemies in both of those games don’t chase u to the ends of the earth and are MUCH easier to manage. The mobs in DS2 feel like they were genuinely placed there for no reason other than to fuck you over lmao
lol that beginning of bloodborne was such a massive gankfest it made me worried that all the bloodborne praise would turn out to be unwarranted wank. thankfully my worries were unfounded and it is indeed the goat, but i'll shit talk that mob of br*tish people to the end of the earth
Are we really claiming Dark Souls 2 has worse lock-on than Dark Souls 1? Despite Dark Souls 1 having only 4 rolling directions? Despite Dark Soul 2 having more movement and rolling options while locked on? First point and video already feels misinformed
I love how the background footage is you intentionally trying to aggro every single enemy in the area and then complaining about being swarmed sure there are some bad areas where you're forced to pull aggro with arrows, but in a normal play though none of this is ever going to happen.
Ok boss, but there is a house in Majula in which a cat told me I smell good, sold me a cat ring AND some cat pajamas. This is the only souls game to date in which such a thing could happen, therefore it is the best
Good job. I beat DS2 for the first time a month ago. And yes it's much better than Scholar. Mobs for some locations was deleted in Scholar and it's ridiculous. I agree with everything and will never understand fans of this game. If it's guilty pleasure okay i get it. There's some problems which was not mentioned: 1) Music is not memorable and generic. My sound produser friend playing it now and shocked by cheapest samples and lack of creativity. You can't remember any tracks in the game. Yeah "majula" and "credits song" is peak of music here. 2) Design of everything is not functional at all. You will not believe in these rooms and castles. It's just videogamey. 3) My personal problem. Best mobs in whole game is Charred Loyce Knights. For the first time this game shows a really good looking mob design. And they really aggresive reminds me of black knights. I absolutely hate boss fight there and decision making them a horde for killing you. Just imagine a Chaos location with them like Kiln of the First Flame. 10 of them for long location and it will be good experience. You can't argue with DS2. If someone had bad opinion he will be always right. And how you will protect the game? Power stance? Not enough. Pvp? Who cares? People create pvp experience, not developers. The only people who likes this game - are first comers in ds2. I really want to look in the eyes of a human being who beats DS3 and still dares to say ds2 is best. Can you really say this after Sister Friede and Gael? Who are those people? Hahaha
It's is really weird how every person who likes Dark Souls 2 over the others says the same thing. "Dark Souls 2 is great, exception for ____." And that blank is always different. "Dark Souls 2 is great, except for the lack of s, or ADP, or lock on jank, or gank squads, or bland bosses, and it goes on and on." Dark Souls 2 has so many issues I had to cut out things like enemies entering the boss arena after your fight to kill you because the script was already to big and I couldn't fit another complaint in. That's how many issues are in Dark Souls 2.
From my experience DS2 fanboys are kinda ignorant to the issues with the game, either they don’t notice these details and problems or don’t care. I’ve seen them claim that DS2 hate is just a meme and that there really isn’t any flaw with the game besides ADP 🤦♂️
I watched this video multiple times before playing dark souls 2, from the footage you showed I agreed with you. I feared the game but I still played it. Now I finished the main game and I can say you're wrong, I don't even understand how you can end up with that many enemies chasing you
You make the mistake of agro-ing too many enemies once and you never do it again. Playing SotFS a few times in the last 6 months since my first play through has taught me to learn enemy placements and not agro too many at once
@@randychristensen1028 I agree with that. After playing ds2, I completed the rest of the souls games, elden ring, ds3, sekiro, bloodborne, and demon souls. I can definitely say that knowing enemy placement is key, especially to ds2. knowing where they are is crucial to overcoming the challenge, since just running past them is not the best option (except for sir allone's run up, I just booked it everytime haha). Taking your time is the way to complete sections, and knowing the layout makes it better for traversing, even on replays.
@@novarangerx6441no it isn’t that why they never did this shit again in future games. It’s just bad game design to constantly gank and overflow it just makes it shit
They get themselves surrounded by enemies then cry about being ganked They're to stupid to use basic tools like bows and throwing daggers to lure enemies
When it comes to ds2 videos i say the more the merrier, but your footage of being swarmed by enemies is always so disingenuous. You would only have that many enemies on you in an given area if you ran past everything. The majority of players, especially new ones, are going to try to divide and conquer best they can. I get it, the game isnt very good, but it doesnt need you to go out of its way to make it look worse yanno? Youre also making the mistake of acting like ranged options for the player dont exist, and consumables dont exist. Its just you and your broadsword, not the best for every situation.
Almost all of your points are valid and true, however, if this is your gameplay then i understand why you have problems with the game because jesus christ
When you aggro every enemy in the level and run in circles you're going to have a bad time, in any game not just DS2 lol also the amount of times you mention something being more or less fun this is like hbomber 2.0. For the last time fun is subjective.. Never even tried power stancing?? Why do you think they brought it back. DS2 definitely changed up the play style which is fair and why people who adjusted don't mind the game. Others like yourself who tried to copy paste DS1 tactics clearly didn't have a good time and try to blame the game lol
It is weird how I say I liked locked off combat against multiple opponents in the beginning of the game and then everyone is like, "THE THING YOU LIKE ABOUT DARK SOULS 2 IS YOU PLAYING IT WRONG!" Umm, okay?
@@sagacity1071 I think I was getting upset for people listening to my tone of voice rather than the words that I was saying, but I now understand that I sounded too angry in the video so everyone assumed I disliked every clip of gameplay when that wasn't true. But I am sorry that I was toxic, I guess that's what happens when I read too many comments in a day.
@@feebleking21 your title literally said "hate filled critique", I don't think anyone watching would think you would say anything positive about the game at all.
I usually do iron keep last so i have the levels necessary to take my time through the level, the levels rlly tight and you need to aggro as little enemies as possible lead them with their crazy long aggro range to an area to safely clear them and power through to smelter demon/old iron king
All you did was jump on the hate train, most of the cons you mentioned were self caused, and exaggerated. I played this game at launch, and on its re release of SoTFS. It's a good game, with a learning curb, once you get past it It's smooth sailing.
I played dark souls 2 recently and I had a lot more fun that I thought I would have. I usually do a sword and board character in souls games so this time I decided that I will go for weapon outside of my comfort zone - ultra greatswords (plus some dragontooth action from time to time). It was some of the most fun I've had with souls games for some reason. I agree, the game is flawed to the core, but it was fun as all hell. Also, 15:05 backstabs are hard to master in DS1? what are you on? xD it was literally the "cheese the entire game, no thought required" playstyle. I think that if I realised how easy it is the first time I played DS1, I would have never fell in love with the game tbh ps. I hope person who came up with the agility is fired. The first time I played DS2 I did not max the adaptability AT ALL and the game felt almost unplayable without shield as a result.
Edit: After completing both OG and scholar many times I realize now that you just didn’t adapt to the game properly. You can just agro some enemies and run away so you are not killed by the archers. As for shrine just kill each individual magic user so they don’t kill you from behind then run past the last set before the boss room. Not saying that is good game design. Just that it is possible without the need to be an archer.
I agree with you on mostly everything about dark souls 2. Dark souls 2 was my first souls game and when I played it years ago I loved it, but after playing 3 a lot (300hrs) and Elden ring (300hrs) I got dark souls 2 again with the dlc. I hate it, I couldn’t be a knight like I usually am because the swords swing way too slow, so I switched to being a mage and it’s alright it’s not too boring imo but it’s not the same, most bosses are super weak to magic so I kill them either on the first try or the second, which is kinda lame because I spent at least 10 try’s to get there. The iron keep in the dlc is just ridiculous the invaders and the knight who can see you before you even leave the bonfire. I didn’t really struggle at the shrine but I can see why it’s so annoying I hated it. So far nothing about 2 even comes close to 3 for me it dosent even feel like the same game at all.
Dude, depending on when you played DS2 the Shrine of Amana got nerfed sometime after initial release. Multiple snipers would target you nonstop with their homing magic from the entire map away and dodging one projectile would likely get you hit by others. To their credit they did tone it down after one of the patches, though it used to be outrageous.
Feeble King's latest review of dark souls two leaves me with a "meh" feeling in my heart. No major disagreements with what he says, but the issues he brought up didn't irk me when I played the game. I am of the opinion that Dark Souls 2 is a great game in a series of phenomenal games, and am able to separate that quality barrier. The structure of the essay was bog standard, and I kept expecting him to mix it up, but was disappointed on that front. The editing was normal, and it was evident through his clips he was playing in a suboptimal way, having not heard of the R1 button or kiting enemies, but that's not a sin for anyone. Halfway through the review I already knew nothing he could say would either rile me up or give me a poignant perspective shift on the game. My review: 5/10 wish it made me madder.
Agreed on every point. Even though DS2 is mechanically inferior to DS1 and DS3, I actually prefer it to DS3 because it does have much more of it's own identity, where DS3 rests on DS1 fanservice far too much, and I find that far more egregious than less directions to roll in.
Watched the whole thing, here’s my criticism of the criticism: -This guy is playing the stupidest way possible, aggro-ing every enemy, using a small weapon to take on groups of many enemies, not taking out the ranged attackers that you apparently, “can’t see...” but you can, there are no enemies that you can’t see that CAN hit you in the game. The worst part of this is that he acknowledges this and still chooses to run past all the enemies, into areas he’s aware are dead ends where enemies can and will kill you if you didn’t clear them out, see iron keep. His reason for running past is that killing he enemies is boring, but you’re just gonna die at the dead end if you don’t kill them, so that argument is flawed, because the examples he’s giving are the areas SPECIFICALLY where you DO have to kill all the enemies, again Iron keep. Had this also applied to somewhere like Forest of Giants, an area you can run past everything with little punishment, or even Drangleic castle after the basement, an area you can just B-line to Nashandra and not fight anything, this argument could’ve worked, but there’s an equal amount of areas you CAN run past enemies and an equal amount you CANNOT run past. Hell, you can run up to Velstadt without any but the last two/three enemies seeing you. The worst example I see of him doing this is in Lost Bastile, where not only is EVERY little knight in the area after him... but also not one, but TWO pyromancers and they’ve followed him into a room locked by a petrified enemy... that must be opened each time you walk up to it... I don’t even know how you get into this predicament without purposely setting it up. -Second criticism, he says there’s nothing in the rooms, yet gives an example of a unique looking room in Iron keep that has the DLC key and in the adjacent room is the guy that sells the DLC boss armor in another unique room. This argument is however, valid with areas he later addresses, such as Shulva and Eleum Loyce, they have extremely same-y interiors, but take a look at an area like No-mans Wharf and the interiors are pretty different for each building, I will admit a lot of the game has same-y interiors though. -Third, he complains about his surviving knights making Ivory King harder, they don’t, the Pyromancer is just bullshit, all the knights are programmed to close the portals when they reach a certain health, you can even guess this from just watching WHEN they go close a portal, I don’t see anything wrong with you having a teammate and the boss having one (other than yours is wounded and RNG can screw you over with a pyromancer spawning). He also complains about the enemies attacks lining up, almost like they can combo... he says he shouldn’t be punished for being good at the fight, but he’s not, the game is just evening the playing field because one portal wasn’t closed. -He finished the review by saying that people only like DS2 because it’s more Dark Souls, I disagree with that because I DONT like it because it’s more dark souls, if anything DS2 is the most disconnected dark souls game, with the only real connections being the Dragon Memory (which is impossibly missable, you may not even know what I’m talking about), the hollows/abyss and the first flame which literally doesn’t even matter in this game. An argument can be made for the four great ones being the reincarnations of DS1’s gods but that doesn’t really matter at all. I like DS2 for the game that it is, not that it’s a DS Game, the same reason I despise Halo 4 despite me loving the Halo franchise. I recognize all, and I mean ALL the flaws of DS2, but I also recognize all the booms that it brings and journey I felt in it and enjoyed experiencing. I enjoyed strategically planning how to deal with the mob of enemies in Frigid Outskirts and Iron keep and then being caught off guard and having to adapt when yet ANOTHER enemy made their way to me, in fact I’m probably one of the only idiots who actually enjoyed Iron Keep. I know the bosses can be extremely lacking but the game also gave us the boss he praises, Fume Knight, and my personal favorite, Darklurker, that I will argue is in the top 3 duo bosses in all of Souls. DS2 is a Souls game, but I didn’t enjoy it because of that, I enjoyed it because it WAS DS2 and not DS1 or DS3 and I played all those before DS2.
Just the average ds2 'reviewer' doing literally all the same willfully stupid things that every other person on youtube with a 'review' has. Honestly, it's kind of scary how so many people play DS2 like... this and never think once that it's maybe them who has the issue.
The fun thing about Scholar is the First Sin is that they added a bunch of NPC invasions to the game that weren't there before. These guys have enormous health pools and spells/weapons that aren't accessible to the player at those points in the game. You can get invaded while hollow in DaS2 too, so there's no way to avoid them, either. So imagine getting instantly killed by a boss in all but name every time you spawn in at the first Iron Keep bonfire, having run out of human effigies and fighting at half health, and you've got the real important part of Dark Souls 2. Good riddance.
Actually, invaders are pretty easy. For example, one common tactic is to use great club type of weapon against them. Smack them in the head and they end up on the floor. Just as they start getting up your stamina has recovered to repeat the move.
I'm playing the game for the first time having played most other games in the souls universe(elden, dark 1 and 3, Bloodborne, the Japanese one lol). And I think the best way I can describe this game's performance is wonky as hell. I think you really showed it in the beginning of your video with the first area having like a shit ton of dudes and then the whole thing's hitting you when they're not really hitting you. And don't get me started on the parry in this game, it's fucking terrible. It's definitely been a challenge. I also don't like how they have these sections of the games locked off with the statues that one lady selling the way to knock down that statue for like 12,000 Souls, a number I haven't even gotten close to yet. It's just .... like looking at the pure execution of the gameplay, it's just not well done. You can tell this is from another era of gaming. And I feel like saying something from another era can be a compliment too but I mean this in the worst way possible
so i played scholar and i really enjoyed it! but i am one of those weirdos who gets a rush from navigating very precarious and sticky situations, it is way more fun if you treat the main levels like you're playing a soulslike stealth game, like if assassin's creed or hitman were a souls game. my build which facilitated me having so much fun: str 50 vig 45 vit 40 end 40 int 35 there was also an abundance of souls so i got everything else to around 25 so i could use all the stuff i wanted to mess around with, faith was mostly for great heal and lightning spear because those are both genuinely useful. right hand: +10 bandit's axe HARD carried me (late game i got a +5 butcher's knife which is basically the same thing but it heals you), the 30 poise damage, plus the ability to swing like 6 times one handed with like 130 stamina, it allows you to just stunlock 99% of basic enemies to death if you're 1v1. second slot, whatever auxiliary weapon i need, usually a bleed-infused bandit's knife, or a fire infused chaos rapier. third slot, +10 longbow, +10 fire longbow, or late game, +5 lightning infused bow of want, usually poison arrows equipped. gavlan wheel, gavlan deal, many soul, many thanks the poison arrows are just so i can go full cover shooter and snipe all the ganks so I don't have to deal with them. also always have 999 wood arrows equipped for selectively aggroing enemies. left hand: buckler, big parry window, super fun to land a parry in this game and watch them fall to the ground and have a little existential crisis while they sit there and reflect on their life choices. also, you take ~1/3 damage when you're mid punish animation, so it even works in 2v1s. other slots were the black witch's staff (lets you use spells and prayers instead of needing two separate slots for a staff and a talisman) and pyro flame if i needed it, usually third slot empty, sometimes a greatshield if I'm doing an annoying thing like the frigid outskirts. so what i mean by "playing it like a soulslike stealth game", since you have warps to any previously reached bonfire from the very beginning of the game, you only really need to navigate each area once, or maybe twice. do whatever it takes to make it to the next bonfire without dying! the main way i get through a level is to use a bow or soul spear to selectively aggro enemies so that they come to me without triggering anyone else, and then either stagger chain them to death, or if they're wearing armor (golden greatshield guys in drangleic castle) or have naturally high poise (mimics, or those stupid horses in frigid outskirts), or if they're using a fast weapon and they can recover and attack me before i break their poise again (alonne knights with their katanas), then just give them a proper 1v1 fight with parrying or dodge rolls. if they're set to chain aggro, either handle them both, or retreat until their AI changes its mind, and then pick them off one at a time with a trusty axe to the face. 90% of the combat is melee, it's not a cover shooter simulator, I'm mostly doing damage with the axe, I'm just using the bow to aggro them one at a time or using poison arrows to deal with enemies that would otherwise be very inconvenient, like the greatbow guy on the bridge in iron keep. i'll admit, maybe it's not as like fast paced and adrenaline pumping as going full unga bunga mode with the great club in DS1, but for me this type of game is really fun, it's more tactical, basically "tom clancy's splinter souls" you are vastly outnumbered and if they all knew about your presence you would just immediately die, but you can get through them as long as you don't mess up your positioning and let yourself get ganked to death. it's basically the same as learning how to fight with the locked off camera, they are different slills the game is testing: situational awareness, precision, good positioning, tactical creativity and nothing beats the satisfaction of shooting a single fire arrow at one of the stupid barrel guys in brume tower and blowing up 5+ enemies, that legitimately felt better than my first time beating ornstein and smough
Me thinking about Ruin Sentinels: hey, DS2 had some good moments, maybe I'm being too harsh Remembering the 4 Ruin Sentinel room in Drangleic: ... nevermind
Only about a third of the way through the video, but it's hard to take your complaints of enemy hordes seriously when you just rush into them. You're showing footage of the run to the Smelter Demon where you're just ignoring the enemies and seem surprised when they catch up to you, even though you can fight every enemy there 1-2 at a time. You say you saw HBomberGuy's video on DS2, so you must have seen him point out that you're showing footage AFTER the mistakes were made and complaining that it's unfair. DS2 has tons of problems, but you're blaming the game for your skill issue.
As someone who has never played DS 2, enemy's no longer spawning if you kill them 12 times seems like the worst design choice ever. I hate the idea of being able to brute force an area, and I feel like for some boss runs it would be almost mandatory to kill off all the enemy's 12 times before even attempting the boss
For most of the optional DLC bosses, you're correct. Except DeerFuck Land also known as Frigid Outskirts, they spawn indefinitely until you either find the way to the boss or die trying
tbh the only time you actually run out of enemies is when you're farming them, bosses arent really hard enough to warrant having to fight them that many times unless youre actively handicapping yourself boss runs arent that bad in ds2 because you have like 12 different types of healing items and repair powders are cheap, there are terribly designed areas like the god awful frigid outskirts for sure though
@@nalidhardstyle8551 it really comes down to wether or not you kill your enemies as you come in contact to them, if you run away you'll end up with a lot of them just chasing you until you hit a dead end which is the case in most fromsoft games aswell, but the combat in ds2 wont let you get away with it because its so much slower the areas also look pretty bland and uninteresting for the most part too, and there is bullshit every now and then, so that paired with the slower gameplay can lead to boring and frustrating situations people enjoy the dlcs more because the areas are better designed, the layouts are more interesting, they look better and the enemy encounters are better designed for the slower combat for the most part so thats were the criticism for the areas and boss runs comes from imo
Honestly the truth is if it wasnt called dark souls 2 it would be a hated souls like. And i guarantee the amount of people who like it would be less. They only like it because its called dark souls.
If there’s one thing I can say positive for DS2 it’s their weapon design. I love how certain weapons have different move sets, sometimes unique or borrowed from other weapon types. Like how alonnes sword is both katana and halberd. Or the Sanctus mace being a great hammer or a lance. In DS3 if you have a straight sword, it’s gonna be nearly identical to all other straight swords. The weapons in this game were so unique and I wish more of their games had that kind of diversity
Always love when people criticize ds2 they always talk about the amount of enemies while showing video of them aggroing like 4 packs of enemies and then wondering why lol
"I will lure all of these guys and put in a video and tell them "see? it's bad!" They like being baby-ed like in other souls where if an enemy went on a set range, they will not follow you anymore like is that more realistic?
Idk maybe if the enemies didn't keep agro for a year maybe it wouldn't be so bad. I was just trying to run away and mf almost followed me to another side of the area. The game sucks
@@erieriderschillingcorner1595Well, maybe if you're a little less coward and you think a little you can fight separating them, maybe trowing a knife or arrow from the distance or idk, fight in the order that they are and not running into them and die because you trapped yourself? Don't you think that blame the game because you trapped yourself running into enemies without a plan it's kinda dumb?
Ds2 fans are so cringe man. The game is ass in a lot of areas. Lots of people (who actually have their frontal lobe intact) wouldn't really like how cheap the difficulty of the game is. Sorry I think that shoving 30 enemies into a small area only to face yet another mediocre boss afterwards is lame is very cheap.
I love how people who say it's "bad" probably played through it at least twice and played all the dlcs too. 😂 generally, people don't play something that much if it's not good.
I think the biggest mistake fromsoft made with DS2 was making Scholar of the First Sin the one that most players were gonna play. The DLC, while good, is only accessible AFTER the main skill curve which means that the main player base would get slammed into the much more difficult version of DS2 before they ever got to see the parts that separates the main game from Scholar of the First Sin. To anyone who might wanna play DS2. DO NOT GET SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN. Get the regular Dark Souls 2, play through it (and maybe do a new game plus if you feel like it.), if you like it and you wanna get faced with a bigger challenge, THEN get Scholar of the First Sin.
I played this game after ds3, elden ring, sekiro and ds1, and I think that this game is one of the few games out there that has successfully initiated a feeling of depression and misery how bad it is.
I played DS2 the last. I absolutely fell in love with the genre after DS1 but after DS3 I thought the "formula got stale". It felt like a soulless, by-the-numbers entry. Then I played DS2 and I was delighted again. I still love DS2 just a tiny bit less than DS1.
@@MrPatrickbuitYeah, agreed. I guess a lot of people value how smooth and jank-free is the DS3 movement and combat compared to DS1/DS2, which to me seems p. shallow but whatever. Otherwise yeah, there's nothing DS3 does better gameplay-wise or systems-wise than the predecessors.
I couldn’t agree more. I adore the souls series, 1 and 3 are some of my favourite games ever. Elden Ring is even better, but DS2 just feels so much clunkier and the combat is awful.
It seems really apparent to me that the Lords of the Fallen Devs thought some of these Dark Souls 2 areas were pinnacle Souls gameplay and decided to make an entire game around that premise
This is Dark Souls 2 : Scholar of the first sin. You should add it to your title. I like Dark Souls 2 a lot, but I hated scholar edition. Edit: Video is well made otherwise
I suppose the title and intro were already too long for me to fit more information, so I'll leave a pinned comment saying the version of the game I'm playing.
@@feebleking21 That is good enough. The biggest difference is increased number of enemies in some levels of DS2 Scholar edition compared to original DS2. You mentioned too many enemies as a bad thing and I agree, but in DS2 zou would not probably feel that way. Rest of your critique though, very much present in both versions of the game. Watched your Elden Ring review, it is good. I have watched so many From soft games related videos, but still keep watching new ones, so I m glad there is another creator of these. Good luck. I subbed.
I used lock-on throughout the game with the Rapier. The lock-on system was bad enough to make me whiff on enemies I had already locked on to but it would've been worse without it. I dealt with multiple enemies by trying to isolate them or only attacking multiple enemies when they were standing single-file or in recovery.
Yes, thank you for articulating this so well. I have played every From game since the original Demon's Souls, and I have replayed all of them except DS2 (and Sekiro, still working my way through that one). And that is because DS2 is not a fun or memorable game. I'm happy for people who enjoy the game, but personally I dislike this game passionately for the same reasons you do which sucked so much back in the day because I was played endless hours of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls before this game came out, only to be severely disappointed.
Honestly, DS2 is probably the most fun title to replay. I play a LOT of From games and replay constantly, and while I’d be hesitant to say DS2 is my favourite, it could be second to DS3. It’s deeply flawed and probably the weakest title on the 1st playthrough, but it’s honestly hard to describe - but the replayability is seriously good.
@@callumholland8932 absolutely agree. Artorias is up there too (his cut lines give me chills too) but every time aldia speaks I’m turning up the volume
I used to avoid souls games, then I tried Bloodborne in 2020 during lockdown and loved it. Then, I went on a marathon of souls-like games. DS3, Sekiro, The Surge 1 & 2, Codevein, Mortal Shells, enjoying all of them until I got to DS2. DS2 was the only game I got really frustrated with. Partly maybe because of the exhaustion from the marathon but a huge reason was because there's too many bullshit deaths that it felt unfair. The terrible hitboxes and the gank enemies were the biggest negatives for me. note: Haven't played Demon's Souls because I don't have a PS5/PS3, and haven't played DS1 because watching a youtuber (Outside Xtra) play through DS1 was what inspired me to try Bloodborne and not DS1 since I already spoiled myself from watching her playthrough of it.
@@TeChNoWC7 Man, that's really weird. I am of the same opinion on DS2, it's probably the one I've replayed most. But I can really easily say that my least favourite From game is DS3. (Or maybe Elden Ring if I'm feeling puckish).
I 100% prefer DS2 over 1, but that's mostly because I enjoy the slower gameplay and the fuckload of builds you can do, but I'll be damned to say this game doesn't have problems, I enjoy these reviews because I mostly agree with them, but still manage to love this mess of a game as one of my favorite of all time and favorite on the DS series.
Maybe I am a masochist, but its not the gameplay that killed ds2 for me. its the writing. you can tell from te lack of story, ds 1 taught us to read our enviroments to figure out the story. there is no story in ds2. ds2 in one word would be described as: contrived. Its more frustrating then the last jedi simply bc im forced to ''act". DS3 gets blamed for fan service. But ds2 is only playable bc its a dark souls game. And its only a dark souls game bc of fan service, minus the basic gameplay systems. Every enemy attacks randomly with long range weapons. Never stagger consitently. Why is vendrick so big if hes a human? Why does nobody understand the curse what so ever??? Its basically unplayable for me. "nobody even knows what estus really is" sums up ds2 for me. the more i come to love dark souls the harder it is for me to play ds2. its like moving from the north east to california and everyone swears to you that little ceasars is good pizza, and when you say that it shouldnt even be considered anything but cardboard, let alone pizza, your considered a hipster by the most culturally vapid people in existence.
I adore this video for hitting the nail on the head about why I and many others dislike DS2. It wasn’t a fun experience at all. Nothing in DS2 ever came close to the excitement of overcoming O&S, Artorias, Manus, or other phenomenal boss fights in DS1. When you said others call DS2 a “good game but a bad souls game,” I felt called out because that’s verbatim what I thought about the game. I’ll never be able to wrap my head around how fans defend DS2 and say it rivals other Souls games. Thank you for articulating your thoughts in an engaging video. Definitely subscribing to your channel for future Souls videos.
Probably because it has the best build variety by far, with only DS1 coming close. The video actually encapsulates all of this perfectly when he mentions "Oh I'm sure that power stancing, ranged combat, and magic might be good, but I refuse to use them." The game had the best selection of spells, hexes, and miracles, all while they were powerful as hell. Poise still existed so you could be a super tank. You could level ADP/Attune to insane levels and have by far the most i-frames of any DS game. Power stancing allowed you to combine any two weapons you wanted into unique attacking patterns. I must have played it like 15-20 times and it felt wildly different every time. Comparing to DS3, that game is just "pick your weapon and then roll roll roll." It's not a bad game, but my god did every run feel exactly the same and burn me out so fast.
@@talkingtoaschizophrenic1171 Elden Ring completly shits on DS2 when it comes to build variety. So now its not even the best Frm game in that aspect. Its just a mid game. Bad mechanics, bad bosses, bad combat and mid level design...
@@clover7726 What's your point? I never said "dude DS2 is so much better than Elden Ring!" I was replying to a comment which states that there's nothing of value in DS2 and the person can't figure out how anyone could say something nice about the game.
@@clover7726 and even if elden ring did it better, so what? Just because something else did it better, the original doesnt become shit. You just don't like the game. And thats fine. But don't try to make it look like every aspect of the game sucks.
If you really think this debunks the validity of the game, then you either have never played the game and are a hate bandwagoneer, or just lack critical thinking. I love DS2 and it's my favorite in the series, but I understand it's by far the worst designed and balanced. This video's critique of DS2, however, is complete bollux.
I will admit I'm pretty new to the dark souls games..... I currently have classic dark souls 2 and scholar of the first sin and I've almost beaten dark souls 2 within a month of having it but I've barely made it 26% in 2 scholar of the first sin
This reminds me of one time I tried making a bullshit hard super Mario maker level.. I made the level without any care for good design or for what’s fun.. after I finished I realized I accidentally made something I think is actually pretty fun.. Then I made a new level with that idea but now also focusing on good level design and I ended up making my favorite level I’ve ever made.. great ideas can come out when you ignore all the constraints, but it isn’t perfected until you utilize it in a meaningful way.. that’s what I think happened with dark souls 2, they forget to make the game and focused to hard on making whatever they felt like ignoring any game design principles
There are some obvious, fundamental mechanical issues with DS2 that really no one can deny are detrimental to the game, if not just annoying at the very least. Dodge roll mechanics, boring bosses, boss runs, agility stat, hit boxes, for ex. But I hate to break it to you: sooo many of your problems with the game aren't because the level design is bad, or there's too many enemies, or backstab/ mechanics, it's because you're fucking bad at the game and it's so obvious from the footage that I'm baffled more people haven't pointed it out. I'm not even saying this as a git gud meme or whatever it's just crazy to me to see you complain about problems that are 100% your fault, yet you blame the game instead. I dont know if you intentionally made it look like it was a 5 year old's first time playing this game while holding the controller upside down to prove your point more effectively, but there are so so SO many beginner mistakes made in even the first 5 minutes of this video that I wondered if this was satire. Use better weapons and better armour, time your dodges and backstabs better, don't rush through everything then cry wondering why you get ganked, use open environments to your advantage, use lock on when you can for ranged weapons, i could go on. This game is rarely challenging, and not nearly as challenging as you make it out to be, if you know what you're doing and play smarter. It's not an outstanding game by any means unlike pretty much all From's other games, but it most definitely and most importantly gives you every single tool you need to succeed and even excel. However, that success is up to you. So I'm calling skill issue on this one. Disagree with almost everything you said. Well made vid. Subbed.
This just came up in my feed while finishing Dark Souls II platinum for PS3. The game is amazing, so fun to play, I love the areas, the music... it's just a great game.
I actually like Dark Souls 2, discovering the areas of the extremely diverse world while trying out different weapons. I just feel like it shouldn't be a Dark Souls game. 3 is a much better followup to 1 in worldbuilding, style, mood and art direction while 2 feels like the oddoneout. Even enemy desing... while 1 and 3 has the basic types like "zombie" , "skeleton" and similar humanoid creatures, it also has loads of monstrosities that while not designed to be directly scary as a horror game, still have something uncanny and somewhat horrifying about them. The chained prisoner is the perfect example of that from DS1. No one actually knows what that is, and that mystery, the fact that there's only one of them in the game and its placement in an abandoned room that looks like a scrapped boss arena is just adds together so well to the atmosphere. Dark Souls 3 also had these encounters. The sewer centipedes are true horror... you can't help but start askin questions. Why do they resemble dead bodies? Did they evolve this way to trick humans, or they were actually humans once, distorted by some weird and sick experiment... There are many more cases of this in both games (undead dragons, the painted world, the monstrosity of sin) but I think you get the point. In the meantime, Dark Souls 2 lacks severely in this department. The entire game just feels so... positive. Which is actually a great change, and it is perfect for any action-adventure game... just not Dark Souls, at least for me. Even the enemies... most of your time you'll be fighting armored knights or hollowed humans throughout the entire game. Enemies feel plain and simple, most being humanoid and pretty basic in design. The only time I felt some of that "uncanny unknown" that I did from DS1 and 3 was when I went down the well to the gutter, and Aldia's keep (which was extremely short, yet I still consider it one of the best areas ingame). And the bigger enemies feel extremely random... I feel like the creators started to feel the game getting stale with all the humanoid mobs, so they just randomly thew in... armored mammoths?... armored turtles? ... big hippo ogres?... whatever are those, they just doesn't feel threatening (rather goofy looking actually), not authentic and not Dark Souls for me. I can play the game anytime and have a good time, but the mood is just not the same. It's good, but in a different way DS1 and 3 are.
I get most of your criticism, except for the stuff about BIK. I'm pretty sure if you kill enough chared loyce knights, all the portals will be sealed before the BIK arrives and the pyro your complaining about wouldnt be a problem. The 4th white knight is really just backup for the boss as well. It should be a 2v1 then. I also dont like the ending. Its' not just enjoyed because people dont know any better. It's enjoyed because different people enjoy different things. The "deaths are your fault" aspect of ds1 drops off in the 2nd half, some examples being: the anor londo archers, the small arena of the centepede demon, those fucking dogs in the tomb of the giants, seath's fist encounter, as well as the entirety of the duke's archives. I feel almost the same way about the duke's archives that you do about iron keep. Also lower burg and capra demon exist. In the end, enjoyment and what one perceves as "bullshit" is subjective and this is only my opinion.
Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 3 are competing for my title of the best game I've ever played. Dark Souls 2... isn't For me the biggest flaw of DS2 are the controls and animations. Its insulting how bad they are. The knockback animation that takes 10 seconds, rolling attack always go in the direction of your roll, jump button that works only when you're in running motion (so basically they added additional button to perform the same action as in DS1). What's more I'm mouse&keyboard player and this game for some reason always changes settings to default upon reopening the game. And they treat double mouse button press as another action than a single button press = if you want to make 2 quick R1s the game will treat your intention as double click and your character will do nothing. Man I'm raging just from writing this and I haven't played the game for a year.
Thank you for making this. DS2 has been getting more and more positive feedback over the years and it's about time someone reminded people why it's still pretty shit.
I learned to play without locking, then learned to lock, then learned to lock and unlock depending on what I wanted to do. One must master a hybrid way of fighting. Also, for the most part, you need to section your encounters to the least possible amout of enemies per fight, not just run and pass by enemies and increase your combatants that way, some areas feel like you can fight one enemy at a time if only you pace yourself properly, like the first areas you showed by the tree, all you have to do is kill one by one instead of waking them up all at once. One must also take advantage of slashing attacks when fighting three enemies at once, to kill at least two at the same time one must know well his slash attacks. And to reach the boss, either master clearing out the area every time, or just master the run, usually after you master clearing out an area you also learn how to master how to run through it unscathed. And these are in my opinion elemental behaviors of playstyle, followed by the not mentioned more advanced styles of perfect timings and superior combat methods, meaning those people that can just parry everything, and fight any boss any day without taking a single hit regardless of their stats and situation - not everyone can achieve these, but everyone can achieve the basics I believe.
I made a comment response video where I kill all the enemies in every level: th-cam.com/video/rR-a3zIOE2w/w-d-xo.html
I made a video comparing vanilla to Scholar since vanilla is a lot better. You can watch that video with the link below.
th-cam.com/video/dgJM4O8mAys/w-d-xo.html
I also made a video called "In Defense of Dark Souls 2" where I tried to understand why a minority of people enjoyed Scholar. It had some issues so I made it unlisted. If you wanna watch it you can use the link below.
th-cam.com/video/2A6s_Wq-6PU/w-d-xo.html
Good for you.
@@highlightermarca-texto3281 I did not try that. I do need video evidence of this occurring multiple times and working consistently to know for sure. Either way I still think that a boss with a boss run like that shouldn't be the hardest to create healing windows in the game.
sotfs is a "hardkore" version and infirier at that vanilla is wery different a specialy the iron fortres
You say that you have to fight two knights at the start of Heide, but I’ve never played a version of SotFS where that is true. Likewise you complain about infinitely respawning invaders, but they don’t respawn if you kill them like in every Souls game. People are valid to criticize your use of footage that exaggerates the problem you are discussing even if it is coincidental and unintentional - inferred hyperbole will still weaken your argument to other people.
The pyromancer at the end of the ivory king doing too much damage is probably because you never leveled INT or FTH, the only stats tied to fire defense - just a guess.
Also, I can’t exactly fault people for not knowing this, but the DLCs have areas designed for three player parties. This includes the run up to Alonne, a very questionable choice IMO, but each one gives you two NPC summons for offline play. I haven’t seen a single DS2 review fairly acknowledge this. You could summon to fight your way through and then unsummon before Alonne, but I can’t really defend that area too much as it is the most boring multiplayer area.
NPCs can’t interact with the Iron Passage’s side paths, either, so that one is somewhat dysfunctional, too. Honestly, the gank squad is probably the best multiplayer area to do with the NPCs. All of this to say if you try to solo those areas your pride will be the death of you. 😉
@@Zapdos7471 I view using summons as playing in easy mode, and for a critique to be "legit" it should probably be done in normal mode if possible. But after beating Dark Souls 2 no summons level 1 I can say that yes, using summons is developer intended. I disagree with that design decision and prefer Dark Souls 1 being designed around solo play, but maybe for some who enjoy co op Dark Souls 2 is fun for them.
And I killed an invader in the Iron Keep and then died, ran back to Smelter Demon, and was invaded again. So yes, there were multiple respawning invaders, however I think that if I killed the invaders every run eventually they would stop respawning. I didn't do this because it's stupid and I just ran to Smelter Demon, but respawning invaders are real.
And I think the only real "exaggerated" gameplay of gank fests is what I showed in the lost bastille. Since the forest of the fallen giants has a ladder you can run to if you run past the enemies with another enemy coded to go down the ladder and force you to fight all 30 enemies at once, so no I don't think that gameplay was exaggerated as the game tricked me!
Hey look at the bright side, if the B team hadn't handled DS2, we wouldn't have had Bloodborne
Please identify any member of this ostensible “B team” outside of Yui Tanimura (who has actually been co-director on other games like Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring).
@@heyguysinternet the lack of miyazaki is b team worthy on its own
Worst game ever made
idc about bloodborne because i cant play it
no wonder this game is so terrible the b team made it lol that explains alot
my take is that the devs genuinely believed that players would replay sections over and over until the enemies disappeared, then make it to the boss and fight it face-to-face locked on.
Honestly tho if they wanted that why would the enemies respawn 12 times. It would make a lot more sense for anything less than 7 times
That's honestly what I'm inclined to believe. Your weapons and armor are so extremely fragile in Dark Souls 2 compared to Demon's Souls and DS1, that fighting enemies on the way to the boss will likely cause your equipment to completely break at some point before managing to kill the boss.
@@NexusKinthis happened to me once in all of my ds2 playthroughs. Also you can just switch weapons or use repair powder or use a durability ring.
I think the despawning mechanic was added as a failsafe for stuck players. I only ever used it on my first run to the Blue Smelter Demon in the dlc. Ds2 is probably the best game in the series in terms of being able to control difficulty. That’s part of it.
@@NexusKin2 weapons are more than enough plus u can repair it for cheap
Tbh thats exactly what i did the whole game lol
I'm playing DS2 and every time the game stresses me out for some objectively unfair reason, I return to this video as anger therapy
Edit: Finally beat that hell with DLC's included
Reading this gave me a good laugh
@@feebleking21 how've you been, just watched your latest vid a few days ago
@@opgroundzero2.0 I'm alright, new video soon
that's why I'm here too
What is an objectively unfair reason?
I've never played DS2 but seeing the Sinh fight made me laugh because I instantly thought of Elden Beast that you would have to run a fucking marathon to get to just to hit him once and for him to fly away again
Sinh is a much better boss than Elden Beast and is actually fun. Sinh feels much more fair too.
Nah bruv, i did elden beast in 3 tries. Yaall are just fkng bad, and it was actually pretty damn easy
@@theultimatep1e40 stfu kid he took me 2 tries I just said it’s a bad boss
@@theultimatep1e40 it's not hard dumbass it's not fun there's a difference
@@just70hq Sihn is much worse because of DS2's high stamina consumption for running. He also breaks your weapons by reducing durability faster than usual whenever you HIT HIM. He punishes you for hitting him. Such a fun boss.
I just did that area in the Forest of Fallen Giants, you can literally walk right behind each hollow and kill them right after they get up. It's like reading a message that tells you to jump off of a cliff for treasure. If you don't learn from your mistake, is that the game's fault?
He's upset that he can't roll spam in Dark Souls 2.
@@tokidoki9116 try to roll spam in any other fromsoft game and see how far you can get lol
@@tokidoki9116 seeing how BHS in Elden ring makes you nearly invulnerable for as long as you can mash L2 with FP, I can see why they seethe when going back to older titles lol. DS3 and ER especially were very lenient and forgiving with both the stamina cost, speed, and frames of rolls.
@@RobertEdwinHouse9 Literally better than DS1 but keep deluding yourself.
He blames everything on the game just seems like he can't stay alive because he's making everything agro at him all at one time
I died so many times in this game because an enemy got behind me and I couldnt do the 180 swing thing you mentioned at minute 10 I almost got an aneurysm
Unpopular opinion: the ds2 dlcs are overrated. They are still ganky and annoying and every dlc has at least one absolute bullshit area (frigid outskirts, alonnes past and the area before gank squad)
I played through ds2 a lot of times with all sorts of challenges but most of the time i just cant be bothered to push through the dlc areas just to get to the good bosses.
I think the interconnected level design is great, but the gank squads are still unfun. The only enemy design I liked was in the beginning city of the Sunken King, partially because moving buildings could wipe out all the enemies, but even without that there were no hidden archers since they were all within reach.
The other two dlcs have worse gank squads and the Ivory King has the worst design imo of all of them.
Preach. Sunken King DLC was straight-up trash, dude, especially when you get to the ziggurats and go inside. The DLCs have their moments, but all in all they're still pretty mediocre, and not much better than the base game.
@@chicken29843 Do not tell me that DS2 is good because enemies disappear after 12 deaths. And did I complain about Ruin Sentinels? I did the 1v3 on purpose because I enjoy the challenge and like the boss. I literally put on screen text that reads, "Ruin Sentinels are cool" as I talk about outlining good things in DS2... I guess you didn't pay attention
And what are you talking about, there is gameplay of me using all the loyce knights? I believe you are confused because most of your comment did not made sense.
@@chicken29843 I'm sorry but how the fuck is iron keep,the shrine of Amana, the shitty poison valley and the black gulch not inexcusable level design? Enemy spam galore and it was absolutely fucking awful to get through. Not even the lake of Rot or the liturgical town in elden ring are even close to DS2s dosghit ganky areas
I've heard the DLCs have some good bosses but I genuinely can't be bothered to get through them after experiencing the main game
@@chicken29843 I hear you man, these content creators swear on their lives that what they’re saying is the end all be all for a game when in reality they just suck major balls
I’m playing through this for the first time right now and while I see the things that people take issue with, I’ve greatly enjoyed my time with it so far
Good joke
@@ricky.t.1658 cry about it
@@ricky.t.1658 cope
I haven't beaten it yet but I really love dark souls 2 so far (I'm on the optional king vendrick boss so maybe it gets worse after) but so far even iron keep and shrine of Amana never gave me the problems that it gave others (maybe it was improved in Sotfs I'm not sure) my only issues so far are with ds2 is that the level design is either way too convoluted or too straightforward, and there is an overall lack of the routing back shortcut systems found in ds1 (my favorite in the entire series)
Its a good game.
I deleted all comments i heard abt the game 6 hours in when i broke out of my noob shell.
If i could offer myself any tip it would literally only be:
"Rolling works like sekiro parrying, roll when the attack is inside you"
All the stuff i heard abt ADP is dumb lol.
I have countless hours and 2 plats - never leveled it past base and i think ds2 has as good a dodge timing as sekiro does a parry
I really never had trouble with Iron Keep.. if you don’t run the entire time, you’ll aggro 2-3 enemies at once and if you can kill them before the next group comes- it feels pretty fun
THIS IS WHAT IVE BEEN LOOKING FOR DS2 IS NOT THAT HARD
@@cubemanishere7294 exactly, also rolling behind enemy on the weapon side makes most of the enemies much easier.
Once you learn the enemy placement and develop a system to clear them out 1 at a time iron keep just becomes free souls essentially
yeah like my guy pulls the entire castle, gets overwhelmed and complains ab how hard the game is
@@Litthoess yeah this feels like a troll video honestly.
About the topic of running past all the enemies: You could say the same thing about Elden ring. There are so many enemies in the level and a lot of them are super strong, and respawn every time, and on top of that, they barely give any souls.
Elden Ring is actually the game I ran past the enemies the most.
Ds2 was built around using ranged weapons to clear the archers and spellcasters, where Elden Ring was built around using op weapon arts to clear hard levels. You can beat both without these tools as I did, but I still think the level design was still built around this.
I prefer Elden Ring's level design because op weapon arts are more fun for me than ranged combat, but both lack a certain level of mechanical depth compared to a more straight melee build that was at the center of Ds1 and Ds3 level design.
@@feebleking21 also, elden ring not being clunky as shit like ds2 really helped
The power of the enemies and bosses in Elden Ring are equiparable to the amount of options and power the open world offers. In DS2 you are stuck with a slower swing time than DS1 and twice or thrice the amount of enemies, most of which have high poise and wonky hitboxes as a result of compensation for ADP. It is certainly unfair. Don't get me wrong, DS2 gets better at NG+ and I certainly think it is still a pretty good game but you'd be delusional or biased to think that it is in any way better than both its predecessors and forefathers
@@feebleking21 I would also say that while you can run past enemies in Elden Ring, the game design is balanced around your own capabilities in majority of areas. That's not the case in Dark Souls 2. Enemies are way more clustered together, have some weird ass sprint animation where they immediately run to your location, have spastic fast attacks when they start chasing you, and you have no s at the fog wall.
The only area in Elden Ring that has a painful area to run through is the boss run to the optional boss in great farum but even then, that is a farcry from the run to Sir Alonne or the run to Smelter Demon for instance.
@@nazimzerrouki467 I do agree I run past enemies more in ds2 than any other game, and I also die in the levels more than any other dark souls game, whether I run past or fight back because of all the hidden archers anti-player being alive design!
After beating DS1 years ago, I had a very hard time beating DS2 leading to burn out from the series for a few months. Iron Keep is the worst area in the game and it’s not even close lol. Having an agility stat is cheap to me, but learning how about it early allows the game to feel somewhat normal. Life gems makes the game a bit easy. There’s a lot of cheapness in the game due to the fact that you can’t predict what “traps” they have for you when playing for the first time. Oddly enough, I replayed it on PS4 this week and I somehow remembered a lot about the game and it was pretty easy. My first play through was on PS3 and for some reason the enemy placement seemed harder and the game overall felt harder. It’s nowhere near close to my favorite in my opinion, but the music in mejula slaps 😅
I guess I did a challenge run of Dark Souls 2 because I finished the game locked on just like the other titles. Playing the game locked off is a workaround for the shitty enemy density, not an intended design choice. The fact it only works against early-game trash-mobs supports this. Fighting the ghosts in the Shaded Ruins locked off is fucking horrid since they are usually one-on-one pvp fights where being able to space and face the enemy at the same time is pretty important and FromSoft's amateur hour team decide to fuck it up because "game is hard lolz".
I beat it at SL1 and it was pain. That said, I killed every boss EXCEPT Lud n Zallen. I swore never to step into the Frozen Outskirts ever again
@@Walamonga1313 I will drink for that
You can't lock on the ghosts in the forest and they get staggered easily
Oh you loved DS1 lockon system then, right?
Right?
I just started playing DS2 after nearly finishing my first DS1 playthrough, love that game. First impressions of DS2 = ambushes, ambushes everywhere
Yes, if you play the original version, there are far less ambushes. SOTFS has a lot of them.
Literally can you not handle more than one enemy at a time? Damn all you ds1 fanboys are so shit at these games it’s a wonder you play them XD
I just finished DS1 and was blown away.. so excited I bought DS2 and now I hate myself.. I feel like this game was made by the controller manufacturing company just to strum up extra business from the amount of controller smashes the players will commit
@@pg9193 Yeah it was made by the from software B team so It does not have the same feel as the original dark souls. Still a great game.
@AE personally I loved DS2, found it quite entertaining, but I do understand why some people wouldn't. It probably also helped that I took a few months after beating DS1 before buying DS2.
Lets yourself be swarmed with enemies by ignoring them one by one until they overwhelm you and then face them with the one handed broad sword. Proceeds by healing milliseconds before an incoming hit and then die. Damn, this does not represent the average player, it represents FeebleKing21 fishing for video-content. As for the broad-sword, it represents a player who doesn't know how to spend their upgrade materials. Create a new player and start over.
Yeah I don't feel like they gave the game a fair shake at all.
I love how the weakest soulsborne titles (DS2 and Demon's Souls) are still better than most games out there. I had a lot of fun with them.
Ain't no way you put Demon's Souls in the same box as DS2. Also yes, DS2 is still a great game
@@c.b.5104 Yes I did, and I totally stand by it. Demon's Souls is mostly a game of nostalgia for me. And I like DS2 more than the most so yeah.
@@juwe7143 I can respect that
@@c.b.5104 most respectful Fromsoftware fan
Demons souls? Weakest? );
DS 2 is the very first souls game I've ever played and it was what got me hooked in the souls series. I agree, Shrine of Amana is so bad and it was the worst experience for me but I still had fun in the hundreds of hours I've spent playing this game. Hard, yes but still enjoyable. So when I started playing DS 3, I was shocked at how easy it was compared to DS 2. But just because it was a lot easier doesn't mean it was bad. DS 3 is the best dark souls among the three for me and the most memorable, especially the Slave Knight Gael boss fight.
I understand your reasons for hating DS 2 and I know it has flaws but because it was my introduction to the souls series, it has a special place in my heart.
I can understand this perspective. Dark souls is so different from other games that your first souls game will make feel like an experience like none other. That's how I feel about Dark Souls 1 since that was my first souls game.
Same here, I had to check to make sure 3 was made by the same team cuz it was just like 'hey remember ds1? Well it's like that but made for people who never beat a souls game before'.. I was actually floored when they straight up just used Gwynn again as the final boss. Elden Ring makes me feel like they regret making hard games and want to get a more casual playerbase, which they 100% succeeded in doing.
@@chicken29843 in other words, ER is only hard if you handicap yourself. DS3 is pretty hard if you don't roll, and rolling means you had to dodge an attack meaning you didn't learn how to parry, thus making it cheesing.
@@chicken29843 so, you mean to tell me you've never learned how to parry and think you can have an opinion on souls games?
@@stinkfinga4918 I'm doing a solo strength run and it's harder than the others maleketh alone took me 6 hours
covetous demon is peak of all the bosses in ds2 because he is soo cute
What the hell is this guy saying? I think you're just bad at the game. I used lock on for every single enemy (except ghosts of course) and never had a problem. This was the easiest game for me out of all fromsoft games.
Consistently running past every enemy to group them up and die trying to kill all of them paints DS2 bad, but only amplifies your opinion. You could “use the tools” in the game like you say you did in DS1. But that wouldn’t show the flaws with the game. Just with your playstyle.
You harp on gank-squads in the game, but you are the one that created them. You chose many times in the video to round up every enemy you could to illustrate your point, when there’s ways to mitigate “ganks.” Yes, there are many instances where you have to fight multiple enemies at once. But only using a broadsword with no other weapons, spells, or equipment will often times lead to failure. It’s fun to play with a limited arsenal, but there are always shortcomings to every playstyle. Also, you praise Sens Fortress floor trap, but fail to use or demonstrate using traps in DS2 when they’re present. The fire pillars in Iron Keep can wreck enemies.
Another issue you have is with the lock on system. I really don’t get it. It’s not wise to lock on with multiple enemies aggro’d to you. Better to do so during one-on-one engagements. The game teaches this pretty soon, telling you to be aware and pay attention because danger lurks around every corner.
I get people don’t think greatly of DS2. They played the first one and fell in love. When they released the 2nd game, they became upset or disappointed or both. “Why can’t I circle-strafe every enemy for a backstab? OMG soooo many enemies! Look at me with my shield always up!” I could go on. Every FromSoft title has its faults. But I genuinely believe most of the complaints about DS2 come from the expectations of players who loved the first game, and were angry the game didn’t exceed their expectations they set for it.
Also, Bloodborne is the best FromSoft game.
Not being able to circle strafe things isn’t what pissed me off about the game. Backstabbing cheese was boring in the first game so I never did it. It’s not any one particular thing about the game I don’t like. Getting no I-frames when you enter a boss fog. Getting hit 7 feet away from the boss by an attack that’s not even an aoe. The ugly animations. Forgettable boss design, beating the game 3 times and still not knowing where you should go first every time you get to majula because world layout makes no goddamn sense. Dark souls 2 brought a lot of new changes to the series that became series features going forward. Most important being omnidirectional dodging while locked on. It’s only fair the worst iteration of these new changes exists in the first iteration of them. I wanna be clear on something. Dark souls 2 is not a bad game. Not at all. It’s actually a good game. It’s just a bad Dark Souls game. It feels like Dark Souls, if Dark Souls was made by people who didn’t understand why people loved Dark Souls. To be fair I don’t even know why I love it so much and why dark souls 2 irks me so badly. It’s all the little shit. The fact that your healing flask isn’t a burst heal but instead is just a fast over time heal. High stamina cost for nearly every action. Inconsistent dodges because of the game’s active (and therefore in-flux) calculation of i-frames due to adaptability being a fucking thing. A lot of the late game areas feel empty as fuck, as well. Just enemies. Nothing there to let the player feel like this use to be a place people lived, but instead feels like a tailor-made video game level, because that’s what it is. At least dark souls hides that fact behind clever design, making the areas feel lived-in and designing them in a way that makes it feel logical to navigate. This is strange, but why I don’t like dark souls 2 reminds me of why I didn’t like fable 2. Fable 2 is just fable but on ice. Dark souls 2 is just dark souls but drowned in molasses.
@@icankickflipok all fromsoft worlds tend to be empty remnants of what was. At least Bloodborne has the feeling of shit hitting the fan WHILE you’re there.
@@BulykrynVancho it feels more like shit hits the fan because you’re there to me. But I only just beat rom for the first time a few nights ago. Many times I’ve tried playing bloodborne and many times I’ve deleted an old save and started all over. I’ve owned the game for years and been able to play it all this time. I’ve played all the other soulsborne games except for demons souls, all of them I’ve played I’ve beaten more than twice. Except for bloodborne. I don’t know why. I really like it. Probably the frame rate. I’m just coming off of 200 hours of elden ring and before that it was dark souls 3, so the frames are hard on the eyes and really do hinder you sometimes. But yeah, all of fromsoft’s worlds feel abandoned and desolate. But that’s the thing. In order for something to feel abandoned, it has to appear as if people once lived there, a long time ago. Dark souls 2 can’t even manage that. Areas don’t feel abandoned. They can’t, because they don’t feel like they were ever actually lived in by anyone. So instead of feeling abandoned and desolate, it just feels empty. You said it yourself, remnants of what was. Except in dark souls 2, because we can’t even perceive that there ever was a “was.”
watching you rush throught the dlcs area taking agro of every mob in the level, trying to open gate/chest without clearing a zone and then calling the ennemy placement too ganky sure was agrovating. I can understand it when it comes to runbacks to bosses, but you gotta respect the content at some point
The problem is that killing each and every enemy in these areas is excessively time consuming and tedious, and sometimes you'll just die to a cheap shot anyway. Personally, I did kill every enemy the first time I ran through those areas, but on successive deaths, the patience level wears down quickly, and eventually you have to essentially speedrun the area by running past everything just so it doesn't keep wasting your time.
I don't think that I could have cleared the enemies with a melee only build in Crown of the Iron or Ivory King without spending 10 extra hours clearing enemies. You just can't expect that of anyone.
@@feebleking21 well maybe I need to replay ds2, but i really dont think it was that bad. The runback to sir allonne was awful I admit that, but for the ivory king, yes it does take patience but you re still exploring the level, for me it makes sense to take the level seriously until you proven you mastered it, and the fact that you are not invulnerable while activating doors open chest etc.. maybe irritating but it goes along with that design, which btw is for me one of the core design of the series, mastery throught repetition, bosses and level. Btw the section you've shown for the iron king is absolutly doable, especially if you use the red barril guys at your advantage.
@@coco3584 There's a route for the sprint to Alonne without taking any damage or killing any enemies, just kiting them.
*Most boss runs feature creative ways to make it to the fog wall without killing every enemy or tanking tons of damage, typically by rewarding the players spacing, positioning, creativity, etc.
@@Nightweaver1 Not to mention Soul Memory exists so killing anything is a commitment. Do you really want to go up a tier in the matchmaking? DkS2 in itself has a bunch if systems that alone would be alright, but when combined they make everything so much worse
I played through DS2 SOTFS after watching this video and your video on "The main problem with dark souls/elden ring" and honestly none of it is as bad as you make it seem. First of all, when you make the comment "are you supposed to kill the enemies or just skip them?", you kinda sound like an idiot. Of course, you're "supposed" to kill them. That's how you earn souls to level up. On that note, the iron keep boss run isn't that bad at all if you know how to dodge the enemies. And from your points in the other video, you make it seem like if you can't run through the area and skip all the enemies easily, then it's bad design. Your play style is literally engage as least as possible with the content in the game and just fight the bosses using dodge and R1. And by the way, having a bow on you doesn't constitute a build. A build is having to invest to level 50 in intelligence to use a spell, or level 50 in strength to use a colossal weapon. Carrying a bow doesn't require any investment, thus not a "build". It's literally just picking up an item...
the man literally using the fucking starting knight equipment to fight the final boss did not even try out any fashion like bro maybe try and engage with the game on its own terms a little try out twin blades at least they were a unique new edition to the series
Ds2 apologists man...
Ds2 was actually my introduction to the souls games and is still the only one I've beaten, unless you cont elder ring. My roommate at the time is a diehard souls fan and he said it was the easiest and therefore a good introduction.
cant believe he told you to play 2 as an introduction
Your friend doesn’t like you.
You got trolled...
Dark souls 3 is the easiest except its dlc has some of the hardest bosses in all the souls games.
@@jprec5174 Ds2 is easier than 3 and 1
10 seconds into the vid, dark souls 2 is actually my second favorite Dark souls game, so this will hit me in the guts, but I do know that the game is terribly flawed beyond belief.
Time to continue watching.
3:20 I would like to clarify why I like Ds2 a lot. And be assured, it’s absolutely NOT because of the combat and level design. The level design actually has its good moments in this game which I can really respect, but enemy placement really just counters the positives most of the time.
But I love drangleic a lot. I love the fantasy feel, I love the npc’s, the unique enemy’s in every “region” and I love the sheer amount of cool stuff that can be found around the world.
Also I’m 99% sure that my view in the game is very unique to most people and reminiscent on a day 1 playthrough. I played the game November of last year completely blind with my brother and our friend. (We didn’t play together but we played at the same time while talking together if that makes sense.) We all 3 got to experience the lands, enemy’s, weapons, and even crappy jank all at the same time. It was a very fun experience because if this. I feel like my friendships helped paint this game in a much more positive light even though we all knew that the game was kinda bad lol. Time to continue watching 👍
15:41 (This part here is wrong as you are playing on scholar, it’s just I never experienced backstab jank even though I did them fairly often, my bad lol)Did you not play Scholar of the First Sin?? Scholar version fixed a good amount (not all lol) if problems people had with the game, I don’t know all the differences between vanilla and scholar, but I feel like for the sake of a critique/review, playing the latest version would make the most sense. (And if this is scholar, then my bad lol.)
20:23 ahhh I was wrong!
21:05 No mans wharf is pretty weird, but using a torch actually made the area really cool because those freaky monsters wouldn’t fight back.
25:22 Yea I agree with this 100% I was a magic user for the first time so I just used soul arrow so while it was doable it was still pretty dumb.
26:42 BRO don’t get me started on forlorn. He is the hardest invader ever, but Jester Thomas has a special place in my heart ❤️
30:28 Absolutely, the bosses sometimes feel like fighting a normal enemy with a lot of health.
33:26 Life gems are crazy op and they trivialize a lot of the difficulty of the game. But estus is just so bad that there’s no other option
34:37 earlier I said how I love the world, which is true. But you are correct, to doesn’t make any logical sense how close everything is. I think everyone knows about that one elevator taking you up to iron keep smh
30:29 this is something I’ve never noticed, but I’ll agree with you, there are parts that are very pretty in this game, then there’s that garbage lol
36:52 I actually never enjoyed the DLC I mean the bosses were great and so were the environments, but idk, maybe you will change my opinion lol.
41:28 I was originally going to kill every boss in this game but these 2 bosses made me realize that it’s not worth it, just for their boss runs alone.
41:46 from this point on to the next bonfire actually made me almost stop playing entirely. This part of the level is so poorly designed it tainted my whole experience of this dlc. Yea, I know I’m weird.
49:26 yea for this part of the game I was actually fine because my friend was a little ahead of me (in game but we were not playing together) and he talked me through most of the place lol. It’s these special 1 of a kind experiences is why I’m biased tho :)
51:25 woah I never even knew about the black knight that spawns later, I beat this dude with just 3 silver knights because I stupidly managed to walk past one of them, so they never joined my team. But yea I agree that’s pretty bull shit. Because I never experienced that, I really, and I mean REALLY loved this fight. It is just too cool.
52:23 Aldia was soo unbelievably cool. He told us so much lore about the lie that is sacrificing our lives for the first flame, and how humans are slaves for the gods and stuff like that, and then we fight him? I know he doesn’t die though because of some lore, which is kinda neat, but the fight is so lame. So anticlimactic.
54:25 A reason I like this game so much is because I watched my own father play through this game when I was little, right now I’m 17 years old, it’s really weird to say, but some of my earliest gaming memories, are from watching my dad play dark souls 1 and 2, so getting to play the games I watched when I was little is a cool experience. I distinctly remember my dad playing through blight town and fighting qualag, and I also distinctly remember seeing watching my dad beat orinstein and smogh. (But later on he got stuck on and gave up on 4 kings LOL) but he moved onto ds2 when that came out, and I remember majula, heids tower, shrine of amana, and so much more from just watching him play. So I have a very unique experience with souls games because of him, and I thank him for it very often lol. (And even though I may have seen some of these things when I was a child, I still consider my playthrough blind, cause I really knew nothing about the game lol.
55:34 I agree, it is an objectively bad game, but idk, I’m still so attached to it.
Sorry for the wall of text that is this comment, but like I said, this game hits close to me, more than most games out there, so I simply have a lot to say about it.
As always, thank you for this literally perfect video 👍
Dark Souls 2 definitely has a unique feel to it's world, and while I didn't talk too much about it some areas like Majula have a certain sense of sadness that really hits you.
And Dark Souls 2 still definitely feels like a brutal unforgiving world like any souls game.
@@feebleking21 sorry for the absolute wall of text my comment became, you don’t need to read it all if you don’t want too 😂
@@tylerherdman1755 dang, you could make your own video on Dark Souls 2 with this script lol. It really seems like the game was special to you as you grew up watching your dad play it, and sentimental value will always matter a lot when it comes to art.
It's an objectively flawed game, not necessarily a bad one.
@@derek96720 it's a great game. People forget that it only has major detractions compared to other fromsoft masterpieces.
99% sure this is how game journalists view the other souls games lol
I completely agree with everything in this video, sometimes I replay ds2 because I want to like it but I end up hating it more and more.
Same, some time ago i heard rumors about a DS2 switch port and thought that might give new life to the game similar to how i ended up enjoying some other games in a portable format. Ended up playing it on pc again to refresh memories and stoped at the lost bastille. Instantly decided that i won't pay for it again no matter what. It's the only souls game i never bothered to beat.
I love Dark Souls 2 and can't understand why you hate it.
@@ivanasukjadic1423 I think this video does a good job explaining why we dont like it
@@ivanasukjadic1423 idk. We're not mentaly ill
"too many enemies" as you sprint through the level. Seems like a skill issue
@@scandalouspanda7489 You must have forgotten Bloodborne. Hell, there are even chalice dungeons.
Recently went through the entire trilogy and DS2 was my favorite. Some of the issues people had with DS2 are worse to me in DS3. But I liked all three games.
Agreed, Ds3 imo is the worst of the series although Elden Ring may be another contender. Ds2 is underrated extremely. People just don’t want to learn how to play it, plus it’s atmosphere and rich environments are stellar.
@@dylanschmeichel2008 bruhh what the gale fight just makes ds2 obsolete i barely remember any bosses from ds2 😖
@@dylanschmeichel2008 Agreed. Didn't like DS3's over emphasis on action, shameless fan service references to the first game, and limited playstyles. I hear Elden Ring is DS3 but more over the top. And most of the issues people had with DS2, didn't bother me. AGL stat is still dumb though.
@@Obbie40 funny, I hear tons of people saying elden ring is so much like ds2
@@iwanttodiebutimtoobigofacoward I've heard something similar. I'm guessing this is because they initially tried to make DS2 an open worldish kind of game.
Ds2 was my first souls game so perhaps i am a bit biased. I do acknowledge its many flaws, but it was still a fun experience. I agree with the movement and hitboxes being janky, and when my attacks take 3-5 business days to land, it gets frustrating. The best way to counter that is to be more attentive to openings which forces the player to take things too slow, taking them out of the thrill of the fight. I also must agree with the backstab mechanic being utter BS for not rewarding the player with i-frames. Levers and fog gates however should not have i-frames so the player is forced into combat which fits the theme of dark souls. Afterall, your goal isnt to rush bosses, but to fight your way through a dangerous world filled with things which want to kill you for sport. Overcoming these obstacles is the reward in itself, and dying forces you to be more careful to not repeat your mistakes which got you into that situation
I actually think Iron Keep was one of the only enjoyable areas of the game, I think it’s the only place in any of the games where the enemies are faster than you and actually feel kind of skilled, rather than just having stronger attack power than you.
I also loved how they added new red phantom enemies in ng+
(which is something I CANNOT believe they never did again. its almost as if they forgot about it entirely. it’s such a cool idea. bloodborne kind of did it with the insight but that’s it)
DS2 had several neat ideas that sadly never came back, seemingly due to the negative reaction. Bonfire ascetics and ng+ changing item & enemy locations in particular.
@@Malisteen enemy location changes in ng+ is such a simple, brilliant idea that keeps you on edge when you replay the game
@@oloxhossono1956 I know right? Maybe from has user data that says players mostly don't bother with ng+, instead preferring to start entirely clean characters for subsequent runs, so the extra effort making ng+ feel new and exciting isn't worth it. Still, though, it's something I've always wanted to see make a come back.
16:00 Exactly, my main issue when moving to DS2 from DS1. It felt like my hit didn't land and I had to go extremely close to an enemy to be sure (which is also more dangerous because they attack you early on if you don't first and stun you), meanwhile a lot of their hits shouldn't have hit (like clearly being one meter away from a boss attack). Forgiving for the enemies, punishing for the player. Now, I got used to it, I am replaying DS2 and finding the same problems but manage to play more careful and somehow win, but a lot of unfair damage taken. Going back to DS1 I have seen the difference. Also DS1 had parries/backstab/plunge attacks that ALL worked like a charm, ALL were feeling great to do. All these exist in DS2 but nothing seems to work properly, I end up in DS2 with two handed a strong weapon and hoping to hit and not miss an enemy and kill him before he attacks, or roll back and wait for their attack for an open window, but nothing works as well as DS1 used to.
Listening to this video is like being a meeseeks listening to Jerry. "Which is it? Choke up or follow through?" Its both Jerry.
Is it lock on or free aim? It's both, Jerry.
Is it ranged or melee? It's both, Jerry.
Is it too open or too narrow? Is both, Jerry.
I love souls games but didn't play 2 because i was always told its the bad one. Except, having recently played it. It's my favorite in the souls franchise. Second in the Fromm games. It doesn't let you choose one approach to everything. You must adjust and try different things. There isn't one solution. It's all solutions.
You're upset that you can't run to an enemy's back, but you aren't doing a lock-roll-unlock. It's hard, but that's how you get there. Rolls are significantly more useful in DS2 than they were in DS1. And shields are less useful. It's about using the tools you have. Saying "i decided to only use a hammer and I'm mad that screws don't go in very easily" feels a bit... self inflicted.
Here's other things that don't work every time because you're supposed to use the right tool for the right job.
- ranged
- backstabbing
- running through
- thrusting
- sweeping
- magic
Nah man ds2 sotfs is poorly design. I hear people say it's good or really bad. After playing it for a year i haven't even beaten it yet. Don't recommend.
I have the original DS2 and I can say clearly that I have not noticed the difference in iron keep or shrine of Amana in the background gameplay aside from a few more dragon priest guys that run at you, the areas are still pretty nasty.
Really? I remember there being way less enemies in iron keep in the base game. In SOTFS they just never stop coming. Amana remains unchanged but I like that area. Iron keep was bad then and is a terrible pile of doodoo now.
I don’t really understand your argument with having to fight loads of enemies at once. Like, I understand it in the sense that there are a lot of enemies in each individual section, but I just use enemy aggro so that I don’t have to fight them all at once. For example, when you fought those 10-ish hollows in the ‘opening’ area that seems hard and I get the frustration, so I just only fought one, two or three if necessary at a time.
Yeah, he makes some good points, but when I see him fighting all the hollows at once and complaining about it despite it being very easy to aggro them 1-3 at a time, I just get the feeling that maybe he should consider that he might be part of the reason of why he had such a miserable time with the game.
To be fair there are instances where aggroing one enemy will automatically aggro the rest in the area, like in shrine of Amana for example there's a couple of groups of Archdrakes where aggroing one will aggro the rest
@@PsychoKrueger Not in the Forest of Fallen Giants encounter at least
Homie needed to watch a TH-cam video to learn not to play with the lock on…. I think that says enough about him.
Metallica’s live performance of one at Seattle 89. The best concert ever 🤩
I love Metallica so much! I saw them live about 2 years ago, what a great day! They played all my favorite songs (Fade to Black, One, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Nothing Else Matters, Master of Puppets etc.)
I think ds2 is my favorite dark souls game. I like demons souls on ps3 over all of them.
This guy's playstyle: run headfirst into everything and aggro everything and then bitch how the game ain't fair when he dies
frustrated speedrunner
I went into ds2 expecting something dismal and horrible after hearing countless people complain about it. What i got instead was a pleasant surprise and it became my favourite of the series.
People hate DS2 because it's the popular thing to do
@@alessandroofthemediterranean Nah, if so many people dislike something, there is something to dislike. Like you can't make the argument the game is actually good when the development was as bad as it was
I enjoyed this video, although I'm playing Dark Souls II for the first time, and I'm enjoying it. One thing you might want to know, you don't have to kill every enemy 12 times to clear every level. That's only true in the early levels. The number of iterations, I have been finding, declines as you advance through the game. I'm down to about 6 iterations to get the enemy to stop respawning.
Not sure if that’s true dude. Always 12 for me no matter the area and I played this game a tonne.
Which enemies in particular only need six kills?
Did you try running past...?
Gonna be honest... In the beginning when you're going on about the sheer number of enemies, it seems in most clips like the player is actively aggro-ing the whole group rather than trying to pick out a couple at a time. Most enemy placements I remember from the game have a couple of active enemies and then a few that aggro if you get too close.
Even when I was new to the game, it was usually only bosses that tended to give me difficulty... Except for those turtle knights... And the heide knights... Aside from that, most everything else wasn't that bad... Oh wait, those guys that are in the quarry outside of the poison windmill and wave around giant sickles, those guys can go jump off a cliff because the place you fight them is bullshit and gives you practically no room to fight them in.
This guy is absolute trash at DS it’s pretty straight forward.
@@samueldavis5895 DS2 is just absolute trash my dude. Just awful design.
I played through it once making sure to fight every boss so as to not have to replay and feel like I missed content. What a horrid experience compared to the rest of the franchise. Just thinking about the blue smelter demon boss run and Sir Alonne's boss run makes me never want to return. And the frigid blizzard area in the DLC with the reindeer too. What a garbo game with garbo bosses. The only redeeming thing from this game was Fume Knight. One and done for me though. The worst Souls game, no contest.
While playing through the game for the first time I had all these thoughts and thought about making a video. Thank you for doing it for me king 🙏
Just played with a hex build and it was probably one of my favorite games I'm just now playing ds3 and it's way better but ds2 was fuckin awesome
I feel like people who complain that DS2 has too many enemies has never played Bloodborne or DS3. The opening level of Bloodborne has a ridiculous number of enemies but oddly nobody complains.
Or the one boss runback to the reborn in bloodborne god is it awful
Except ur forgetting the fact that enemies in both of those games don’t chase u to the ends of the earth and are MUCH easier to manage. The mobs in DS2 feel like they were genuinely placed there for no reason other than to fuck you over lmao
lol that beginning of bloodborne was such a massive gankfest it made me worried that all the bloodborne praise would turn out to be unwarranted wank. thankfully my worries were unfounded and it is indeed the goat, but i'll shit talk that mob of br*tish people to the end of the earth
Ds2 players are truly the most oppressed
Are we really claiming Dark Souls 2 has worse lock-on than Dark Souls 1? Despite Dark Souls 1 having only 4 rolling directions? Despite Dark Soul 2 having more movement and rolling options while locked on?
First point and video already feels misinformed
DS2 have so much more unique stuff other than any of souls stuff it has it's own world and feeling
I love how the background footage is you intentionally trying to aggro every single enemy in the area and then complaining about being swarmed sure there are some bad areas where you're forced to pull aggro with arrows, but in a normal play though none of this is ever going to happen.
Ok boss, but there is a house in Majula in which a cat told me I smell good, sold me a cat ring AND some cat pajamas.
This is the only souls game to date in which such a thing could happen, therefore it is the best
Good job. I beat DS2 for the first time a month ago. And yes it's much better than Scholar. Mobs for some locations was deleted in Scholar and it's ridiculous. I agree with everything and will never understand fans of this game. If it's guilty pleasure okay i get it. There's some problems which was not mentioned:
1) Music is not memorable and generic. My sound produser friend playing it now and shocked by cheapest samples and lack of creativity. You can't remember any tracks in the game. Yeah "majula" and "credits song" is peak of music here.
2) Design of everything is not functional at all. You will not believe in these rooms and castles. It's just videogamey.
3) My personal problem. Best mobs in whole game is Charred Loyce Knights. For the first time this game shows a really good looking mob design. And they really aggresive reminds me of black knights. I absolutely hate boss fight there and decision making them a horde for killing you. Just imagine a Chaos location with them like Kiln of the First Flame. 10 of them for long location and it will be good experience.
You can't argue with DS2. If someone had bad opinion he will be always right. And how you will protect the game? Power stance? Not enough. Pvp? Who cares? People create pvp experience, not developers. The only people who likes this game - are first comers in ds2.
I really want to look in the eyes of a human being who beats DS3 and still dares to say ds2 is best. Can you really say this after Sister Friede and Gael? Who are those people? Hahaha
It's is really weird how every person who likes Dark Souls 2 over the others says the same thing. "Dark Souls 2 is great, exception for ____." And that blank is always different. "Dark Souls 2 is great, except for the lack of s, or ADP, or lock on jank, or gank squads, or bland bosses, and it goes on and on."
Dark Souls 2 has so many issues I had to cut out things like enemies entering the boss arena after your fight to kill you because the script was already to big and I couldn't fit another complaint in. That's how many issues are in Dark Souls 2.
From my experience DS2 fanboys are kinda ignorant to the issues with the game, either they don’t notice these details and problems or don’t care. I’ve seen them claim that DS2 hate is just a meme and that there really isn’t any flaw with the game besides ADP 🤦♂️
I watched this video multiple times before playing dark souls 2, from the footage you showed I agreed with you. I feared the game but I still played it. Now I finished the main game and I can say you're wrong, I don't even understand how you can end up with that many enemies chasing you
Sotfs?
You make the mistake of agro-ing too many enemies once and you never do it again. Playing SotFS a few times in the last 6 months since my first play through has taught me to learn enemy placements and not agro too many at once
@@randychristensen1028 I agree with that. After playing ds2, I completed the rest of the souls games, elden ring, ds3, sekiro, bloodborne, and demon souls. I can definitely say that knowing enemy placement is key, especially to ds2. knowing where they are is crucial to overcoming the challenge, since just running past them is not the best option (except for sir allone's run up, I just booked it everytime haha). Taking your time is the way to complete sections, and knowing the layout makes it better for traversing, even on replays.
@@novarangerx6441no it isn’t that why they never did this shit again in future games. It’s just bad game design to constantly gank and overflow it just makes it shit
I love the fact that every video of people hating on ds2 comes with footage of the speaker completely fucking up and being bad at the game
They get themselves surrounded by enemies then cry about being ganked
They're to stupid to use basic tools like bows and throwing daggers to lure enemies
It's kind of scary how every single person with a video talking about how bad the game is plays in the exact same way.
When it comes to ds2 videos i say the more the merrier, but your footage of being swarmed by enemies is always so disingenuous. You would only have that many enemies on you in an given area if you ran past everything. The majority of players, especially new ones, are going to try to divide and conquer best they can.
I get it, the game isnt very good, but it doesnt need you to go out of its way to make it look worse yanno? Youre also making the mistake of acting like ranged options for the player dont exist, and consumables dont exist. Its just you and your broadsword, not the best for every situation.
Don't forget this is the guy who sings high praises for Dark Souls 3 and its 'roll and R1 mechanics'.
Almost all of your points are valid and true, however, if this is your gameplay then i understand why you have problems with the game because jesus christ
lmao
Jesus "R1s are faster" Christ
Finished dark souls 2 a few days ago, can safely say some of these dislikes are a you problem.
When you aggro every enemy in the level and run in circles you're going to have a bad time, in any game not just DS2 lol also the amount of times you mention something being more or less fun this is like hbomber 2.0. For the last time fun is subjective.. Never even tried power stancing?? Why do you think they brought it back. DS2 definitely changed up the play style which is fair and why people who adjusted don't mind the game. Others like yourself who tried to copy paste DS1 tactics clearly didn't have a good time and try to blame the game lol
It is weird how I say I liked locked off combat against multiple opponents in the beginning of the game and then everyone is like, "THE THING YOU LIKE ABOUT DARK SOULS 2 IS YOU PLAYING IT WRONG!" Umm, okay?
Do you also have a smug defense for games hit boxes? How about the ADP stat? How about the the over abundance of healing items?
@@sagacity1071 I think I was getting upset for people listening to my tone of voice rather than the words that I was saying, but I now understand that I sounded too angry in the video so everyone assumed I disliked every clip of gameplay when that wasn't true. But I am sorry that I was toxic, I guess that's what happens when I read too many comments in a day.
@@feebleking21 your title literally said "hate filled critique", I don't think anyone watching would think you would say anything positive about the game at all.
@@セータン well this is a guy whining about difficulty in a game everyone said was too easy.
I usually do iron keep last so i have the levels necessary to take my time through the level, the levels rlly tight and you need to aggro as little enemies as possible lead them with their crazy long aggro range to an area to safely clear them and power through to smelter demon/old iron king
All you did was jump on the hate train, most of the cons you mentioned were self caused, and exaggerated. I played this game at launch, and on its re release of SoTFS.
It's a good game, with a learning curb, once you get past it It's smooth sailing.
Dark.... Dark Souls 2 is my favorite. And I would say dark souls 3 is much harder.
I played dark souls 2 recently and I had a lot more fun that I thought I would have. I usually do a sword and board character in souls games so this time I decided that I will go for weapon outside of my comfort zone - ultra greatswords (plus some dragontooth action from time to time). It was some of the most fun I've had with souls games for some reason. I agree, the game is flawed to the core, but it was fun as all hell. Also, 15:05 backstabs are hard to master in DS1? what are you on? xD it was literally the "cheese the entire game, no thought required" playstyle. I think that if I realised how easy it is the first time I played DS1, I would have never fell in love with the game tbh
ps. I hope person who came up with the agility is fired. The first time I played DS2 I did not max the adaptability AT ALL and the game felt almost unplayable without shield as a result.
that's because this is one beast of a game
Edit: After completing both OG and scholar many times I realize now that you just didn’t adapt to the game properly. You can just agro some enemies and run away so you are not killed by the archers. As for shrine just kill each individual magic user so they don’t kill you from behind then run past the last set before the boss room. Not saying that is good game design. Just that it is possible without the need to be an archer.
I agree with you on mostly everything about dark souls 2. Dark souls 2 was my first souls game and when I played it years ago I loved it, but after playing 3 a lot (300hrs) and Elden ring (300hrs) I got dark souls 2 again with the dlc. I hate it, I couldn’t be a knight like I usually am because the swords swing way too slow, so I switched to being a mage and it’s alright it’s not too boring imo but it’s not the same, most bosses are super weak to magic so I kill them either on the first try or the second, which is kinda lame because I spent at least 10 try’s to get there. The iron keep in the dlc is just ridiculous the invaders and the knight who can see you before you even leave the bonfire. I didn’t really struggle at the shrine but I can see why it’s so annoying I hated it. So far nothing about 2 even comes close to 3 for me it dosent even feel like the same game at all.
Enemy variety is a bit bland too. Like why is every enemy a big dude in big armor?
you killing a boss in one try despite dying 10 times to get to the boss is beyond relatable.
Dude, depending on when you played DS2 the Shrine of Amana got nerfed sometime after initial release. Multiple snipers would target you nonstop with their homing magic from the entire map away and dodging one projectile would likely get you hit by others. To their credit they did tone it down after one of the patches, though it used to be outrageous.
Feeble King's latest review of dark souls two leaves me with a "meh" feeling in my heart. No major disagreements with what he says, but the issues he brought up didn't irk me when I played the game. I am of the opinion that Dark Souls 2 is a great game in a series of phenomenal games, and am able to separate that quality barrier. The structure of the essay was bog standard, and I kept expecting him to mix it up, but was disappointed on that front. The editing was normal, and it was evident through his clips he was playing in a suboptimal way, having not heard of the R1 button or kiting enemies, but that's not a sin for anyone. Halfway through the review I already knew nothing he could say would either rile me up or give me a poignant perspective shift on the game.
My review: 5/10 wish it made me madder.
Alternatively, he is such a great reviewer that he has managed to convey his "meh" sentiment for the game to you whit his video.
@@SystemBD So mehta
Agreed on every point. Even though DS2 is mechanically inferior to DS1 and DS3, I actually prefer it to DS3 because it does have much more of it's own identity, where DS3 rests on DS1 fanservice far too much, and I find that far more egregious than less directions to roll in.
@@lapelcelery42 God forbid we got an actual sequel for the series finale
@@alejandromolina2802 Your mileage may vary. I want new characters, quests and areas from my sequels, not the same ones done worse.
Discouraging lock-on the majority of the time is crazy.
Watched the whole thing, here’s my criticism of the criticism:
-This guy is playing the stupidest way possible, aggro-ing every enemy, using a small weapon to take on groups of many enemies, not taking out the ranged attackers that you apparently, “can’t see...” but you can, there are no enemies that you can’t see that CAN hit you in the game. The worst part of this is that he acknowledges this and still chooses to run past all the enemies, into areas he’s aware are dead ends where enemies can and will kill you if you didn’t clear them out, see iron keep. His reason for running past is that killing he enemies is boring, but you’re just gonna die at the dead end if you don’t kill them, so that argument is flawed, because the examples he’s giving are the areas SPECIFICALLY where you DO have to kill all the enemies, again Iron keep. Had this also applied to somewhere like Forest of Giants, an area you can run past everything with little punishment, or even Drangleic castle after the basement, an area you can just B-line to Nashandra and not fight anything, this argument could’ve worked, but there’s an equal amount of areas you CAN run past enemies and an equal amount you CANNOT run past.
Hell, you can run up to Velstadt without any but the last two/three enemies seeing you.
The worst example I see of him doing this is in Lost Bastile, where not only is EVERY little knight in the area after him... but also not one, but TWO pyromancers and they’ve followed him into a room locked by a petrified enemy... that must be opened each time you walk up to it... I don’t even know how you get into this predicament without purposely setting it up.
-Second criticism, he says there’s nothing in the rooms, yet gives an example of a unique looking room in Iron keep that has the DLC key and in the adjacent room is the guy that sells the DLC boss armor in another unique room. This argument is however, valid with areas he later addresses, such as Shulva and Eleum Loyce, they have extremely same-y interiors, but take a look at an area like No-mans Wharf and the interiors are pretty different for each building, I will admit a lot of the game has same-y interiors though.
-Third, he complains about his surviving knights making Ivory King harder, they don’t, the Pyromancer is just bullshit, all the knights are programmed to close the portals when they reach a certain health, you can even guess this from just watching WHEN they go close a portal, I don’t see anything wrong with you having a teammate and the boss having one (other than yours is wounded and RNG can screw you over with a pyromancer spawning). He also complains about the enemies attacks lining up, almost like they can combo... he says he shouldn’t be punished for being good at the fight, but he’s not, the game is just evening the playing field because one portal wasn’t closed.
-He finished the review by saying that people only like DS2 because it’s more Dark Souls, I disagree with that because I DONT like it because it’s more dark souls, if anything DS2 is the most disconnected dark souls game, with the only real connections being the Dragon Memory (which is impossibly missable, you may not even know what I’m talking about), the hollows/abyss and the first flame which literally doesn’t even matter in this game. An argument can be made for the four great ones being the reincarnations of DS1’s gods but that doesn’t really matter at all. I like DS2 for the game that it is, not that it’s a DS Game, the same reason I despise Halo 4 despite me loving the Halo franchise.
I recognize all, and I mean ALL the flaws of DS2, but I also recognize all the booms that it brings and journey I felt in it and enjoyed experiencing. I enjoyed strategically planning how to deal with the mob of enemies in Frigid Outskirts and Iron keep and then being caught off guard and having to adapt when yet ANOTHER enemy made their way to me, in fact I’m probably one of the only idiots who actually enjoyed Iron Keep. I know the bosses can be extremely lacking but the game also gave us the boss he praises, Fume Knight, and my personal favorite, Darklurker, that I will argue is in the top 3 duo bosses in all of Souls. DS2 is a Souls game, but I didn’t enjoy it because of that, I enjoyed it because it WAS DS2 and not DS1 or DS3 and I played all those before DS2.
I was literally writing an extremely similar comment until I seen this
Just the average ds2 'reviewer' doing literally all the same willfully stupid things that every other person on youtube with a 'review' has. Honestly, it's kind of scary how so many people play DS2 like... this and never think once that it's maybe them who has the issue.
@@emeraldguy10 it’s scary how they don’t learn to stop doing a stupid strategy
The fun thing about Scholar is the First Sin is that they added a bunch of NPC invasions to the game that weren't there before. These guys have enormous health pools and spells/weapons that aren't accessible to the player at those points in the game. You can get invaded while hollow in DaS2 too, so there's no way to avoid them, either. So imagine getting instantly killed by a boss in all but name every time you spawn in at the first Iron Keep bonfire, having run out of human effigies and fighting at half health, and you've got the real important part of Dark Souls 2. Good riddance.
Actually, invaders are pretty easy. For example, one common tactic is to use great club type of weapon against them. Smack them in the head and they end up on the floor. Just as they start getting up your stamina has recovered to repeat the move.
If you died to those invaders often, I’m sorry but you’re just bad lmao
I'm playing the game for the first time having played most other games in the souls universe(elden, dark 1 and 3, Bloodborne, the Japanese one lol).
And I think the best way I can describe this game's performance is wonky as hell.
I think you really showed it in the beginning of your video with the first area having like a shit ton of dudes and then the whole thing's hitting you when they're not really hitting you. And don't get me started on the parry in this game, it's fucking terrible.
It's definitely been a challenge. I also don't like how they have these sections of the games locked off with the statues that one lady selling the way to knock down that statue for like 12,000 Souls, a number I haven't even gotten close to yet. It's just .... like looking at the pure execution of the gameplay, it's just not well done. You can tell this is from another era of gaming. And I feel like saying something from another era can be a compliment too but I mean this in the worst way possible
so i played scholar and i really enjoyed it! but i am one of those weirdos who gets a rush from navigating very precarious and sticky situations, it is way more fun if you treat the main levels like you're playing a soulslike stealth game, like if assassin's creed or hitman were a souls game.
my build which facilitated me having so much fun:
str 50
vig 45
vit 40
end 40
int 35
there was also an abundance of souls so i got everything else to around 25 so i could use all the stuff i wanted to mess around with, faith was mostly for great heal and lightning spear because those are both genuinely useful.
right hand:
+10 bandit's axe HARD carried me (late game i got a +5 butcher's knife which is basically the same thing but it heals you), the 30 poise damage, plus the ability to swing like 6 times one handed with like 130 stamina, it allows you to just stunlock 99% of basic enemies to death if you're 1v1.
second slot, whatever auxiliary weapon i need, usually a bleed-infused bandit's knife, or a fire infused chaos rapier.
third slot, +10 longbow, +10 fire longbow, or late game, +5 lightning infused bow of want, usually poison arrows equipped. gavlan wheel, gavlan deal, many soul, many thanks
the poison arrows are just so i can go full cover shooter and snipe all the ganks so I don't have to deal with them. also always have 999 wood arrows equipped for selectively aggroing enemies.
left hand: buckler, big parry window, super fun to land a parry in this game and watch them fall to the ground and have a little existential crisis while they sit there and reflect on their life choices. also, you take ~1/3 damage when you're mid punish animation, so it even works in 2v1s.
other slots were the black witch's staff (lets you use spells and prayers instead of needing two separate slots for a staff and a talisman) and pyro flame if i needed it, usually third slot empty, sometimes a greatshield if I'm doing an annoying thing like the frigid outskirts.
so what i mean by "playing it like a soulslike stealth game", since you have warps to any previously reached bonfire from the very beginning of the game, you only really need to navigate each area once, or maybe twice.
do whatever it takes to make it to the next bonfire without dying!
the main way i get through a level is to use a bow or soul spear to selectively aggro enemies so that they come to me without triggering anyone else, and then either stagger chain them to death, or if they're wearing armor (golden greatshield guys in drangleic castle) or have naturally high poise (mimics, or those stupid horses in frigid outskirts), or if they're using a fast weapon and they can recover and attack me before i break their poise again (alonne knights with their katanas), then just give them a proper 1v1 fight with parrying or dodge rolls.
if they're set to chain aggro, either handle them both, or retreat until their AI changes its mind, and then pick them off one at a time with a trusty axe to the face.
90% of the combat is melee, it's not a cover shooter simulator, I'm mostly doing damage with the axe, I'm just using the bow to aggro them one at a time or using poison arrows to deal with enemies that would otherwise be very inconvenient, like the greatbow guy on the bridge in iron keep.
i'll admit, maybe it's not as like fast paced and adrenaline pumping as going full unga bunga mode with the great club in DS1, but for me this type of game is really fun, it's more tactical, basically "tom clancy's splinter souls"
you are vastly outnumbered and if they all knew about your presence you would just immediately die, but you can get through them as long as you don't mess up your positioning and let yourself get ganked to death.
it's basically the same as learning how to fight with the locked off camera, they are different slills the game is testing: situational awareness, precision, good positioning, tactical creativity
and nothing beats the satisfaction of shooting a single fire arrow at one of the stupid barrel guys in brume tower and blowing up 5+ enemies, that legitimately felt better than my first time beating ornstein and smough
Me thinking about Ruin Sentinels: hey, DS2 had some good moments, maybe I'm being too harsh
Remembering the 4 Ruin Sentinel room in Drangleic: ... nevermind
6 actually
Only about a third of the way through the video, but it's hard to take your complaints of enemy hordes seriously when you just rush into them. You're showing footage of the run to the Smelter Demon where you're just ignoring the enemies and seem surprised when they catch up to you, even though you can fight every enemy there 1-2 at a time. You say you saw HBomberGuy's video on DS2, so you must have seen him point out that you're showing footage AFTER the mistakes were made and complaining that it's unfair.
DS2 has tons of problems, but you're blaming the game for your skill issue.
As someone who has never played DS 2, enemy's no longer spawning if you kill them 12 times seems like the worst design choice ever. I hate the idea of being able to brute force an area, and I feel like for some boss runs it would be almost mandatory to kill off all the enemy's 12 times before even attempting the boss
For most of the optional DLC bosses, you're correct. Except DeerFuck Land also known as Frigid Outskirts, they spawn indefinitely until you either find the way to the boss or die trying
tbh the only time you actually run out of enemies is when you're farming them, bosses arent really hard enough to warrant having to fight them that many times unless youre actively handicapping yourself
boss runs arent that bad in ds2 because you have like 12 different types of healing items and repair powders are cheap, there are terribly designed areas like the god awful frigid outskirts for sure though
@@AlynRapi but why do people criticise them so often if they aren't a big deal? That proves my point, that it's not something worth complaining about
@@nalidhardstyle8551 it really comes down to wether or not you kill your enemies as you come in contact to them, if you run away you'll end up with a lot of them just chasing you until you hit a dead end
which is the case in most fromsoft games aswell, but the combat in ds2 wont let you get away with it because its so much slower
the areas also look pretty bland and uninteresting for the most part too, and there is bullshit every now and then, so that paired with the slower gameplay can lead to boring and frustrating situations
people enjoy the dlcs more because the areas are better designed, the layouts are more interesting, they look better and the enemy encounters are better designed for the slower combat for the most part
so thats were the criticism for the areas and boss runs comes from imo
You can just accept the one covenent at Majula (forget the name) but it Lets enemys respawn over and over again
Honestly the truth is if it wasnt called dark souls 2 it would be a hated souls like. And i guarantee the amount of people who like it would be less. They only like it because its called dark souls.
If there’s one thing I can say positive for DS2 it’s their weapon design. I love how certain weapons have different move sets, sometimes unique or borrowed from other weapon types. Like how alonnes sword is both katana and halberd. Or the Sanctus mace being a great hammer or a lance. In DS3 if you have a straight sword, it’s gonna be nearly identical to all other straight swords. The weapons in this game were so unique and I wish more of their games had that kind of diversity
Always love when people criticize ds2 they always talk about the amount of enemies while showing video of them aggroing like 4 packs of enemies and then wondering why lol
"I will lure all of these guys and put in a video and tell them "see? it's bad!" They like being baby-ed like in other souls where if an enemy went on a set range, they will not follow you anymore like is that more realistic?
Idk maybe if the enemies didn't keep agro for a year maybe it wouldn't be so bad. I was just trying to run away and mf almost followed me to another side of the area. The game sucks
@@erieriderschillingcorner1595Well, maybe if you're a little less coward and you think a little you can fight separating them, maybe trowing a knife or arrow from the distance or idk, fight in the order that they are and not running into them and die because you trapped yourself?
Don't you think that blame the game because you trapped yourself running into enemies without a plan it's kinda dumb?
Ds2 fans are so cringe man. The game is ass in a lot of areas. Lots of people (who actually have their frontal lobe intact) wouldn't really like how cheap the difficulty of the game is. Sorry I think that shoving 30 enemies into a small area only to face yet another mediocre boss afterwards is lame is very cheap.
I love how people who say it's "bad" probably played through it at least twice and played all the dlcs too. 😂 generally, people don't play something that much if it's not good.
all these comments make me realize i only enjoyed it because I took my time and tried to take the combat seriously, every encounter I took seriously
seriously the best 1 if you just try to appreciate it and take the encounters seriously
I think the biggest mistake fromsoft made with DS2 was making Scholar of the First Sin the one that most players were gonna play. The DLC, while good, is only accessible AFTER the main skill curve which means that the main player base would get slammed into the much more difficult version of DS2 before they ever got to see the parts that separates the main game from Scholar of the First Sin.
To anyone who might wanna play DS2. DO NOT GET SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN. Get the regular Dark Souls 2, play through it (and maybe do a new game plus if you feel like it.), if you like it and you wanna get faced with a bigger challenge, THEN get Scholar of the First Sin.
I recently just played through this game and tbh I didnt notice most of these problems
I started my Soulsborne experience with DS2. I eeally enjoyed it.
I played this game after ds3, elden ring, sekiro and ds1, and I think that this game is one of the few games out there that has successfully initiated a feeling of depression and misery how bad it is.
I played DS2 the last. I absolutely fell in love with the genre after DS1 but after DS3 I thought the "formula got stale". It felt like a soulless, by-the-numbers entry. Then I played DS2 and I was delighted again. I still love DS2 just a tiny bit less than DS1.
@@MrPatrickbuitYeah, agreed. I guess a lot of people value how smooth and jank-free is the DS3 movement and combat compared to DS1/DS2, which to me seems p. shallow but whatever. Otherwise yeah, there's nothing DS3 does better gameplay-wise or systems-wise than the predecessors.
Ds3 isn’t even a souls game
@@skithnesshuh
@@skithnessRetard level take.
I couldn’t agree more. I adore the souls series, 1 and 3 are some of my favourite games ever. Elden Ring is even better, but DS2 just feels so much clunkier and the combat is awful.
It seems really apparent to me that the Lords of the Fallen Devs thought some of these Dark Souls 2 areas were pinnacle Souls gameplay and decided to make an entire game around that premise
This is Dark Souls 2 : Scholar of the first sin. You should add it to your title. I like Dark Souls 2 a lot, but I hated scholar edition.
Edit: Video is well made otherwise
I suppose the title and intro were already too long for me to fit more information, so I'll leave a pinned comment saying the version of the game I'm playing.
@@feebleking21 That is good enough. The biggest difference is increased number of enemies in some levels of DS2 Scholar edition compared to original DS2. You mentioned too many enemies as a bad thing and I agree, but in DS2 zou would not probably feel that way. Rest of your critique though, very much present in both versions of the game.
Watched your Elden Ring review, it is good. I have watched so many From soft games related videos, but still keep watching new ones, so I m glad there is another creator of these. Good luck. I subbed.
But I’m pretty sure scholar is the better version overall, they fixed a bunch of bs and added s to stuff
The hill I will never stop dying on is if DS2 had 1 or 3 physics it would've been the best game in the trilogy
wow what a shitty hill to call home.
I used lock-on throughout the game with the Rapier. The lock-on system was bad enough to make me whiff on enemies I had already locked on to but it would've been worse without it. I dealt with multiple enemies by trying to isolate them or only attacking multiple enemies when they were standing single-file or in recovery.
Yes, thank you for articulating this so well. I have played every From game since the original Demon's Souls, and I have replayed all of them except DS2 (and Sekiro, still working my way through that one). And that is because DS2 is not a fun or memorable game. I'm happy for people who enjoy the game, but personally I dislike this game passionately for the same reasons you do which sucked so much back in the day because I was played endless hours of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls before this game came out, only to be severely disappointed.
Honestly, DS2 is probably the most fun title to replay. I play a LOT of From games and replay constantly, and while I’d be hesitant to say DS2 is my favourite, it could be second to DS3. It’s deeply flawed and probably the weakest title on the 1st playthrough, but it’s honestly hard to describe - but the replayability is seriously good.
@@TeChNoWC7 100% aldias lines still gives me chills still fav npc even with elden xD
@@callumholland8932 absolutely agree. Artorias is up there too (his cut lines give me chills too) but every time aldia speaks I’m turning up the volume
I used to avoid souls games, then I tried Bloodborne in 2020 during lockdown and loved it. Then, I went on a marathon of souls-like games. DS3, Sekiro, The Surge 1 & 2, Codevein, Mortal Shells, enjoying all of them until I got to DS2. DS2 was the only game I got really frustrated with. Partly maybe because of the exhaustion from the marathon but a huge reason was because there's too many bullshit deaths that it felt unfair. The terrible hitboxes and the gank enemies were the biggest negatives for me.
note: Haven't played Demon's Souls because I don't have a PS5/PS3, and haven't played DS1 because watching a youtuber (Outside Xtra) play through DS1 was what inspired me to try Bloodborne and not DS1 since I already spoiled myself from watching her playthrough of it.
@@TeChNoWC7 Man, that's really weird. I am of the same opinion on DS2, it's probably the one I've replayed most. But I can really easily say that my least favourite From game is DS3. (Or maybe Elden Ring if I'm feeling puckish).
I 100% prefer DS2 over 1, but that's mostly because I enjoy the slower gameplay and the fuckload of builds you can do, but I'll be damned to say this game doesn't have problems, I enjoy these reviews because I mostly agree with them, but still manage to love this mess of a game as one of my favorite of all time and favorite on the DS series.
I love this game too.
Yeah it has its issues but I dont care.
The crapload of builds and variety of areas to explore is what I like in games.
Did you just compare playing a guitar to playing dark souls? 😂😂😂
Maybe I am a masochist, but its not the gameplay that killed ds2 for me. its the writing. you can tell from te lack of story, ds 1 taught us to read our enviroments to figure out the story. there is no story in ds2. ds2 in one word would be described as: contrived. Its more frustrating then the last jedi simply bc im forced to ''act". DS3 gets blamed for fan service. But ds2 is only playable bc its a dark souls game. And its only a dark souls game bc of fan service, minus the basic gameplay systems. Every enemy attacks randomly with long range weapons. Never stagger consitently. Why is vendrick so big if hes a human? Why does nobody understand the curse what so ever??? Its basically unplayable for me. "nobody even knows what estus really is" sums up ds2 for me. the more i come to love dark souls the harder it is for me to play ds2. its like moving from the north east to california and everyone swears to you that little ceasars is good pizza, and when you say that it shouldnt even be considered anything but cardboard, let alone pizza, your considered a hipster by the most culturally vapid people in existence.
I adore this video for hitting the nail on the head about why I and many others dislike DS2. It wasn’t a fun experience at all. Nothing in DS2 ever came close to the excitement of overcoming O&S, Artorias, Manus, or other phenomenal boss fights in DS1. When you said others call DS2 a “good game but a bad souls game,” I felt called out because that’s verbatim what I thought about the game. I’ll never be able to wrap my head around how fans defend DS2 and say it rivals other Souls games. Thank you for articulating your thoughts in an engaging video. Definitely subscribing to your channel for future Souls videos.
Probably because it has the best build variety by far, with only DS1 coming close. The video actually encapsulates all of this perfectly when he mentions "Oh I'm sure that power stancing, ranged combat, and magic might be good, but I refuse to use them." The game had the best selection of spells, hexes, and miracles, all while they were powerful as hell. Poise still existed so you could be a super tank. You could level ADP/Attune to insane levels and have by far the most i-frames of any DS game. Power stancing allowed you to combine any two weapons you wanted into unique attacking patterns. I must have played it like 15-20 times and it felt wildly different every time.
Comparing to DS3, that game is just "pick your weapon and then roll roll roll." It's not a bad game, but my god did every run feel exactly the same and burn me out so fast.
@@talkingtoaschizophrenic1171 Elden Ring completly shits on DS2 when it comes to build variety. So now its not even the best Frm game in that aspect. Its just a mid game. Bad mechanics, bad bosses, bad combat and mid level design...
@@clover7726 What's your point? I never said "dude DS2 is so much better than Elden Ring!" I was replying to a comment which states that there's nothing of value in DS2 and the person can't figure out how anyone could say something nice about the game.
@@clover7726 and even if elden ring did it better, so what? Just because something else did it better, the original doesnt become shit. You just don't like the game. And thats fine. But don't try to make it look like every aspect of the game sucks.
If you really think this debunks the validity of the game, then you either have never played the game and are a hate bandwagoneer, or just lack critical thinking.
I love DS2 and it's my favorite in the series, but I understand it's by far the worst designed and balanced. This video's critique of DS2, however, is complete bollux.
I will admit I'm pretty new to the dark souls games..... I currently have classic dark souls 2 and scholar of the first sin and I've almost beaten dark souls 2 within a month of having it but I've barely made it 26% in 2 scholar of the first sin
This reminds me of one time I tried making a bullshit hard super Mario maker level.. I made the level without any care for good design or for what’s fun.. after I finished I realized I accidentally made something I think is actually pretty fun.. Then I made a new level with that idea but now also focusing on good level design and I ended up making my favorite level I’ve ever made.. great ideas can come out when you ignore all the constraints, but it isn’t perfected until you utilize it in a meaningful way.. that’s what I think happened with dark souls 2, they forget to make the game and focused to hard on making whatever they felt like ignoring any game design principles
but exactly the same thing happen with the previous 2 souls games
There are some obvious, fundamental mechanical issues with DS2 that really no one can deny are detrimental to the game, if not just annoying at the very least. Dodge roll mechanics, boring bosses, boss runs, agility stat, hit boxes, for ex. But I hate to break it to you: sooo many of your problems with the game aren't because the level design is bad, or there's too many enemies, or backstab/ mechanics, it's because you're fucking bad at the game and it's so obvious from the footage that I'm baffled more people haven't pointed it out. I'm not even saying this as a git gud meme or whatever it's just crazy to me to see you complain about problems that are 100% your fault, yet you blame the game instead. I dont know if you intentionally made it look like it was a 5 year old's first time playing this game while holding the controller upside down to prove your point more effectively, but there are so so SO many beginner mistakes made in even the first 5 minutes of this video that I wondered if this was satire. Use better weapons and better armour, time your dodges and backstabs better, don't rush through everything then cry wondering why you get ganked, use open environments to your advantage, use lock on when you can for ranged weapons, i could go on. This game is rarely challenging, and not nearly as challenging as you make it out to be, if you know what you're doing and play smarter. It's not an outstanding game by any means unlike pretty much all From's other games, but it most definitely and most importantly gives you every single tool you need to succeed and even excel. However, that success is up to you. So I'm calling skill issue on this one. Disagree with almost everything you said. Well made vid. Subbed.
This just came up in my feed while finishing Dark Souls II platinum for PS3.
The game is amazing, so fun to play, I love the areas, the music... it's just a great game.
Oh wow I got ds2 a week ago and I'm Lovin it! A blast. Just beat the smelter demon :)
@@LadyOfTheEdits Nice, great fun isn't it!
@@southstaronline most definitely! :D
Glad somebody loves this waste of plastic
I actually like Dark Souls 2, discovering the areas of the extremely diverse world while trying out different weapons. I just feel like it shouldn't be a Dark Souls game. 3 is a much better followup to 1 in worldbuilding, style, mood and art direction while 2 feels like the oddoneout. Even enemy desing... while 1 and 3 has the basic types like "zombie" , "skeleton" and similar humanoid creatures, it also has loads of monstrosities that while not designed to be directly scary as a horror game, still have something uncanny and somewhat horrifying about them. The chained prisoner is the perfect example of that from DS1. No one actually knows what that is, and that mystery, the fact that there's only one of them in the game and its placement in an abandoned room that looks like a scrapped boss arena is just adds together so well to the atmosphere.
Dark Souls 3 also had these encounters. The sewer centipedes are true horror... you can't help but start askin questions. Why do they resemble dead bodies? Did they evolve this way to trick humans, or they were actually humans once, distorted by some weird and sick experiment... There are many more cases of this in both games (undead dragons, the painted world, the monstrosity of sin) but I think you get the point.
In the meantime, Dark Souls 2 lacks severely in this department. The entire game just feels so... positive. Which is actually a great change, and it is perfect for any action-adventure game... just not Dark Souls, at least for me. Even the enemies... most of your time you'll be fighting armored knights or hollowed humans throughout the entire game. Enemies feel plain and simple, most being humanoid and pretty basic in design. The only time I felt some of that "uncanny unknown" that I did from DS1 and 3 was when I went down the well to the gutter, and Aldia's keep (which was extremely short, yet I still consider it one of the best areas ingame). And the bigger enemies feel extremely random... I feel like the creators started to feel the game getting stale with all the humanoid mobs, so they just randomly thew in... armored mammoths?... armored turtles? ... big hippo ogres?... whatever are those, they just doesn't feel threatening (rather goofy looking actually), not authentic and not Dark Souls for me. I can play the game anytime and have a good time, but the mood is just not the same. It's good, but in a different way DS1 and 3 are.
I get most of your criticism, except for the stuff about BIK. I'm pretty sure if you kill enough chared loyce knights, all the portals will be sealed before the BIK arrives and the pyro your complaining about wouldnt be a problem. The 4th white knight is really just backup for the boss as well. It should be a 2v1 then.
I also dont like the ending. Its' not just enjoyed because people dont know any better. It's enjoyed because different people enjoy different things.
The "deaths are your fault" aspect of ds1 drops off in the 2nd half, some examples being: the anor londo archers, the small arena of the centepede demon, those fucking dogs in the tomb of the giants, seath's fist encounter, as well as the entirety of the duke's archives. I feel almost the same way about the duke's archives that you do about iron keep. Also lower burg and capra demon exist.
In the end, enjoyment and what one perceves as "bullshit" is subjective and this is only my opinion.
the typo at the very end of a whole letter😭 just like ds2 guys
I loved DS2. Was my first souls game, used no internet, and absolutely loved it.
same experience my friend. still have a soft spot for it, and think majula is still the best hub world.
Might be just me but DS2 is my favourite in the whole series
Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 3 are competing for my title of the best game I've ever played. Dark Souls 2... isn't
For me the biggest flaw of DS2 are the controls and animations. Its insulting how bad they are. The knockback animation that takes 10 seconds, rolling attack always go in the direction of your roll, jump button that works only when you're in running motion (so basically they added additional button to perform the same action as in DS1). What's more I'm mouse&keyboard player and this game for some reason always changes settings to default upon reopening the game. And they treat double mouse button press as another action than a single button press = if you want to make 2 quick R1s the game will treat your intention as double click and your character will do nothing. Man I'm raging just from writing this and I haven't played the game for a year.
Thank you for making this. DS2 has been getting more and more positive feedback over the years and it's about time someone reminded people why it's still pretty shit.
I learned to play without locking, then learned to lock, then learned to lock and unlock depending on what I wanted to do. One must master a hybrid way of fighting.
Also, for the most part, you need to section your encounters to the least possible amout of enemies per fight, not just run and pass by enemies and increase your combatants that way, some areas feel like you can fight one enemy at a time if only you pace yourself properly, like the first areas you showed by the tree, all you have to do is kill one by one instead of waking them up all at once.
One must also take advantage of slashing attacks when fighting three enemies at once, to kill at least two at the same time one must know well his slash attacks.
And to reach the boss, either master clearing out the area every time, or just master the run, usually after you master clearing out an area you also learn how to master how to run through it unscathed.
And these are in my opinion elemental behaviors of playstyle, followed by the not mentioned more advanced styles of perfect timings and superior combat methods, meaning those people that can just parry everything, and fight any boss any day without taking a single hit regardless of their stats and situation - not everyone can achieve these, but everyone can achieve the basics I believe.