Fun Fact: Gutter Denizen's headgear drop has 1000 Curse Resistance, which is to say, 100% Curse Resistance. This is specially helpful against Nashandra in low level runs if you're doing her before the DLCs.
Tip for maldron the assassin. If you use a seed of the tree of giants (either as starting gift or drop from giant trees I believe) when he runs away to hide, the enemy NPCs will aggro on him and kill his dumb ass. Serves him right for his scummy tactics.
Keep in mind that this only works with his Brume Tower invasion. When he appears in Eleum Loyce, he's a human NPC wearing the White Ring, not an invading phantom, hence the mobs will ignore him completely.
@@anonecki No, but the even better tip for Maldron the Assassin in Brume Tower is to ignore him and just walk down the spiral staircase where the Ashen Idol is. He isn't programmed to respond to that, so he waits in his "ambush corner" for you - and will then run down the now completely cleared, and Ashen Idol free, tower.
One of the advantages of fighting the original pursuer, outside of the boss room, if you’re a summon or summoning, is that it doesn’t treat him like a boss, so if you’re summoning, you can then use the same summons to fight last giant, and if you are being summoned, you get the full soul reward for killing him instead of just the fractional amount summons usually get.
I just beat Scholar for the first time recently and it's crazy how much I missed! The fact that NPC inventories (especially Maulin's) update this much never occurred to me. I also never saw the dragon skeleton come alive. A friend of mine watched me and he was so surprised, since apparently in Vanilla (which he played) it just does that normally.
IIRC the mirror shield you get from the Looking Glass Knight boss soul has a massive spell parry window, so you could argue that it counts as a occult club moment for countering the spell casters in Shrine of Amana. Not that it would have worked with your build, but still interesting I think.
Your comment on summons for the Ivory King tilted me a bit. That explains why my summons would go home as soon as the boss appeared, and why I got sent home whenever I tried to help kill the boss. It made me so salty, that I ended up farming the souls offline after the boss was defeated. I wish there was some way to convey intentions between summoner and phantoms, so that people get matched with others with the same goal.
Glad I'm not the only one who thought that. Just felt *really* self centered to say go to the boss everyone dislikes, and that you're in the wrong for fighting a boss you signed up for.
I imagine people wearing mimic heads would probably be a good sign that they're here to farm? Though that would still require knowing that people are farming inside the boss room in the first place.
Thank you yes, my brain just defaults to finishing the lyric any time I say or hear part of a song and it's been liberating for me to share em with y'all
There's also the Dragon Memories! That's quite pretty. With a neat soul too. Makes a neat sword. If you wanted to append that, i think the BKGS revisit could be plastered onto just after meeting or killing Ancient Dragon.
Gosh darnit, something had to slip through. Thank you. Might also move using the Tseldora key later to coincide, since using that when we get it still involves quite a runback
this makes me want to see what Yui Tanimura could do without a rushed game development time. Though this game can be a bit miserable, seeing all the effort put into summon encounters, invaders and even small things like the torch would be so interesting so see in a fully fleshed out soulslike.
Honestly, going back to play DS 1 and DS 2, and 1 was the more unenjoyable experience to actually play through. It shows its age and its sluggishness way more than 2 imo
@@trustytrest I disagree. Even though DS1 does have some mechanics (like if you miss with certain weapons you get staggered) that make it play slower, the reaction time (like rolling after attacking) and general movement is the clunkiest in DS2
That actually exists, it's called Elden Ring, also known as Dark Souls II 2. Jokes aside though, DS2 is still a great game even with so many glaring flaws, if they had the time to work some of those out, the game would be genuinely amazing.
All he really did was piece together a Dark Souls game out of all the content and assets they had up until that halfway point in development. What I'm truly curious is what the original director (Tomohiro Shibuya) had in mind.
@@hasanhaskovic4307different strokes and all that. Personally, after playing the Remaster and SotFS back to back, I found DS2 to be more enjoyable. The lows of Dark Souls 2 may be some of the worst in the series, but for me, the first game was almost constantly infused with a lesser but present feeling of clunkiness and even some disappointment.
Man, I didn't know Drummond has a quest to give you the Drang helm :O Also a HUGH mind-blown moment when you realize you took the drang armor from his corpse in the future!
I really love bonfire ascetics. It is such a cool idea and feeds into the “time is falling apart” theme so well. I wish they got brought back at some point.
Unironically, I love that you call it "Torch" instead of "the Torch". It's something I've always done. I always call FromSoft items their direct name instead of "the Claymore" or "the Halberd". It's just Claymore and Halberd to me.
Dunno if anyone else told you, but you don't *have* to kill NPCs for Navlaan's quest. He requests you bring items of "proof"-all of which can be obtained without ever killing an NPC. The Ladder Miniature can be bought (cheaper if you buy it in Earthen Peak), Cale's Helmet is given once you complete the map, the Sunset Staff is given when you have the stat requirements, and the Aged Feather is given upon reaching Dragon Aerie. Just talking to Navlaan with the items is enough for him to believe you killed the NPCs.
@@falsnamae3511And that's exactly why ascetics were added. So you could still get NG+ rewards in NG, if you wanted/needed them for your build. It's literally an extra risk/reward decision, fighting a harder boss in exchange for a potentially useful item. And even if you don't do that, you get cool goodies on a MG+ run anyways. There's zero downsides considering how little extra assets need to be added. Most bosses are just a normal NG+ stat increase anyways, same as every other game. I can guarantee you DS2 has the most amount of players doing NG+, because they heard there's actual incentive to do so. Also helps that DS2 lets you respec your build and makes maxing out and infusing weapons MUCH less tedious than DS1. So you can very easily do NG+ and try out a completely different playstyle if it interests you, and you can always switch back if you find it's not that good in the end. Very few players beat DS1 and thought "man, I sure wish I could replay the game with the same exact build but the enemies had higher stats". Heck, DS2 even has the CoC if you want the whole game to be harder. And you can do that without needing to beat the entire game first! DS2 did everything right with its replayability. Even better than ER in that department, and I say that as someone who beat all bosses NG+7 in ER.
@@falsnamae3511Fellow 100% man here, I got the Dark Soul Achievement multiple times on different PS3 accounts, on both Steam versions and on the PS4 version so I'm even skewing the statistics to make us more lonely lol. On the release PS3 version you can cheat a little because the Chancellor sells the ng++ items on ng+ if you bonfire asceticted him before going into ng++ but that was patched out haha. And technically you don't need to go into ng+ at all if you do online but... that's so much worse that just going into ng++ especially if you aren't good at pvp.
@@falsnamae3511 not sure about that, i know a couple of ppl which choose further ng+ over creating new character, and elden ring having literally nothing new in ng+ has no exuses. Also not everyone who went on ng++ did it for achievements
You just know that a historian will find this video and hear you say "I won't recount the development history of DS2 here" and proceed to die inside. Anyway you'll probably get to later games, but remember that Demon's Souls 2009 can be emulated on PC very well using RPCS3.
How the hell foes RPCS3 even work? I understand it about as well as a Christian science book understands electricity. I got it for my shitty laptop but no dice, DeS wouldn't run properly, it'd just be infinitely stuck in loading screens. Then I got a literal latest tech PC almost exactly a year ago and got RPCS3 on it, got DeS, launched it and it actually ran...! After some finagling, lots of cursing and giving up and getting a copy off of a, uh, "trusted source". Even then though it ran like shit, there was constant audio looping and often it would freeze or not display stuff properly. No amount of tutorials or setting changes fixed my issues so I just gave up on it and I just wish I knew why. A lot of videos seem to imply you basically just download the damn thing, set it up correctly and it runs with zero issues, but for me it runs like crap on both older (still newer than DeS as a whole and fairly capable at running games so long as they aren't the more demanding AAA type) and newer hardware.
@@YTDariuS-my6dg It mostly runs on your CPU instead of GPU, so a shitty laptop would actually be able to run it if it had a decent CPU but no gpu, in theory at least. As to setting it up, for me it was quite easy but with emulators in general you need to be prepared to be able to troubleshoot it. Its always different for every user which is why theyre so configurable.
DS2's many paths is what makes it so fun to replay with different builds imo. You can try a melee or sorcery or miracle build and have completely different routing for each.
Back in the day I played this game through to NG+3 and since then have had no desire to replay it. I can honestly say after watching this video I actually kind of feel like going back to it and tackling the npc quests since I missed most of them my first time around. Great video Bearer of The Curse, I especially enjoyed all the puns, music references and especially the Rat King Cole joke.
That Michael Bolton stone reference is highly underrated. Ive been missing you so long. Reminds me of my own reference I did in one of my prey lets plays from a decade ago. Love your videos. Thanks for all your effort.
DS3 is way easier, since it's a completely linear game besides Smouldering Lake and Dragon Peak. The only optimizations you have to do is commiting suicide enough tines before Abyss Watchers to get the dark seals for Yuria, and reloading the game enough times in specific zones to force NPC quests to progress. You have to go out of your way killing the old lady just to sequence break and fight Dancer and explore the castle early. That's really the only sequence break you can do, besides beating Abyss Watcher and Wolnir before doing Deacons, but the game locks you out of Irithyll anyways if you skip the one intended path.
@@trustytrest "its completely linear" is a weird way to describe a game that requires more backtracking than the first to complete many quests. if all you're doing is a boss rush, all three games are linear. the only thing that truly leaves DS3 feeling more linear is the fact you can warp and never have to walk through places you've already been. which, gameplay wise, is one of many reasons its so much better than DS1
This was an incredibly well put together video. I’ve played through DS2 the most out of all of the trilogy and I did manage to do all of the NPC questlines over that time but it was really interesting and cool to see how you can organize it in a run like this. I do have one question though, in regards to the assassin questline, is there any particular reason why you did kill them all since each NPC item for the questline can be obtained as a gift so you can get all of their gear and the assassins and still have him in the cell or set him free and choose what you want to do in that method (I personally spare everyone and kill the assassin afterwards.) Also, there are two gifts I thought I would mention that you didn’t talk about in the video, you can get a gift of a jeweled rapier from Gilligan (I think you needed to buy everything from him in regards to the ladders and possibly the trinket to achieve it though) and there is a gift of transparent armor that is a different version of armor that can be found in the Gutter (the item descriptions both talk about why they look different and what they mean) from the armor merchant in Majula if you interact with him without any souls when he’s in the third stage.
maaaate!!! finally a series I absolutely enjoy.. I personally think I'd enjoy extended versions a bit more, but this is exactly the content around these games I enjoy. No cheese glitches, no over levellling, juat playing and learning the game.
I just love that I can find something new to this game even if I think I know everything about it, like noone ever mentioned that creighton and pates quest can turn out differently
Nice man Dark souls 2 was so nice I played 1&3 and 2 last and i don't even know why but the atmosphere just hits the best from all of them in my opinion
I've played all soulsborne games , and played DS2 the longest , when this game 1st came out it was insanely crowded like seriously full of players summon signs everywhere and u get invaded aloooooot specially in iron keep its impossible not to get invaded there , i loved this game and i used to run Hex build a sneaky build where i transform into object and 1shot invader/host with Climax the most BS OP spell + dark caitha chime its very ridiculous as it ALWAYS 1shot players if it hits with at least 3k+ dmg lmao , or spam AoE pyromancy/hexes in King's gate area near bonfire cuz its a very narrow place where your AoE guaranteed to hit and ppl also invade alot there.... good old days 😆😆❤
I played DS2 on every version numerous times and probably have well over thousands of hours in it (only changed to steam version of sotfs a few years ago when it was on sale for 10 euro after already burning out twice, and still put in 600 hours into it since then purely from invading and cooping) and I have NEVER encountered that Creighton dialogue.. Always carried out their questlines, let them fought, killed Pate during the fight, got the reward from Creighton, killed him and then went for the Engraved gauntlets.. so much time, effort, circumstances and opportunities and never ran into it lmao, this video has been highly enjoyable and educational, well done c:
9:25 -> secret morning-wood easter egg Erection is important thematically (Sun and Steel). See: "Gotthard", "竜 and 立つ (tatsu)", Lorian's special attack (also, "rise, if you would"), Gael's 2nd phase (and Abyss Watcher's and Ludwig's)
Just a note: Never bother wasting anything on Maldron. Let him run to the bottom, pop a Seed of a Tree of Giants and the enemies down there will kill him for you, and make it much easier to deal with. Then, go back to the Forest of Fallen Giants and retrieve another one. You get it from the Giant near the Soldier's Rest bonfire
At least once a year, I get the guilty pleasure craving of wanting to replay DS2. I put on a DS2 critique list and play for a weekend or so. Rarely finish, but it's fun.
You didn't need to kill Shanalotte :( She gives you her feather in Dragon Aerie, and that's good enough proof for Navlaan. Oh, and this goes for other target NPCs, but fuck them
I can't believe I played this game for YEARS and I never caught on to the acronym for Fragrant Branches Of Yore... I already learned something new in the first minute of this vid!
As much as I appreciate the playthrough style you've chosen, I gotta say it's your varied musical references that earned the sub Micheal Bolton x Dark Souls
"I'm not acknowledging stuff from the first release. This version came out most recently and should be considered the definitive edition of the game." YOU HAVE ANGERED THE HORDE
@@Ghorda9 nah it's not better and spamming you full with enemies is not a plus. The original is empty yes, but to make it not empty is not throw everything in.
@@Soapy-chan schollar is actually easier than the original overall and isn't anymore spammy, people are just dishonest about it for some reason like they keep parroting the same people without testing it themselves.
@@Ghorda9 Except it isn't actually easier and it IS more spammy, I literally played both games back to back in the last few weeks. OG DS2 is so empty So funny how you accuse us of being dishonest and not testing ourselves when that is actually what makes me say it.
Navlaan's quest doesn't require killing anyone, all the items he asks for proof are things the characters give you anyway (excet gilligan, you have to buy it instead).
This was the last video I watch on youtube because of the ad block harassment campaign. I really enjoyed it . They locked my player and im finna unbookmark this hoe on my bar.
I usually play dark souls 2 like this, trying to get all the extras and questlines but... your explanations are also 100x more useful than the wikis. I had no idea about the tark requirements for najka
The wikis are pretty clear and helpful imo, but you could use a written guide as well. I played SOTFS with a guide and I don't think there's a single thing in this video that I didn't already know.
The steps that I retrace The sad look on your face 1:44 A day late, a buck short I'm writing the report On losing and failing When I'm moving, I'm flailing now
I absolutely loved the video, but I’ve got a few notes on potential oversights. (Btw I love playing One Night Ultimate Werewolf so hearing you reference that out of the blue gave me whiplash) It’s possible to get a Token of Fidelity without playing online, if you drop onto a platform from the bridge leading to the Executioner’s Chariot. You might’ve still got it and just not mentioned it, but helping either Pate or Creighton in their fight gets you the Tseldora Den Key, which lets you get 10x Rusted Coins and the Engraved Gauntlets. Also I’m fairly certain you can get the Drangleic Helm by just exhausting Drummond’s dialogue, without needing to summon him.
Dark Souls 2 was great, despite its many flaws. It's probably the souls game where I have the most completed runs under my belt and still I learned many new things about it thanks to your video.
Original DS2 had a nice balance between combat and exploration, which Scholar ruined by putting enemies everywhere. Scholar’s item placement is significantly easier, like the Dull Ember and Bastille Key, which were moved from Iron Keep and after Gargoyles, respectively. Together, worse enemy and item placement, prevent Scholar from being definitive. It does a few good things, like more NPC invaders, including the repeating Forlorn, and more Pursuer fights. I can’t hate Scholar, it’s DS2 after all, which I love, but hearing the word definitive to describe it sounds like fingernails scratching on a blackboard.
Definitive means realizing the devs final officially expressed vision whether it made the game worse in your opinion or not. The enemy and item placement is not the only thing they did, they rewrote and clarified some texts in descriptions, which to me is very important from a lore perspective. Putting most Heide knights into Heide also made sense. And while they did patch him into the base game as well, you could argue that Aldia is THE addition to SOTFS, being eponymous and all, and I can't imagine the game without him.
This game and Bloodborne were only Souls game I ever completed. Dark Souls 1 feels old, slow and sluggish to me. And Dark Souls 3 even though I played it a lot I didnt have the drive in me to continue. I played quite a lot of multiplayer in DSIII while protecting the forest or what was it after that I havent touched it before and I think I got to the Abyss Watchers and after defeating them I havent play the game at all to this day. Thank you for these videos. It shows how much I have missed even this game I have completed xD
Honestly I'm surprised you think Dark souls 1 feel's sluggish especially compared to DS2. Both feel similar speeds to me. (though DS2 feel's maybe a little bit slower.)
A breath of fresh air to see someone as obsessed as I am with optimized play of the souls games. Love your knowledge of lore as well. Liked and subscribed. Hope your channel gets more recognition, my man. For the Lucatiel quest, I always kill Rotten twice with her because she dies easily in Smelter fight, and for those who have trouble with her murderous urges causing her to fall off the bridges in No Man's Wharf, just clear the area before summoning her and she'll go straight to the ship with you. For the Royal Rat Vanguard, you can use the miracle Soul Appease to clear all the rats with a cast or two. Must try it, man. Too satisfying. The miracle's supposed to damage hollows heavily, but it works on rats as well XD I was surprised you didn't use it, especially after talking to Chloanne before going down the pit. By the way, given the appearance of Craighton The Deserter in ds3, the canonical ending to his quest in ds2 is people siding with him, which is my preferred ending that I don't really see people get. Everyone just trust pate. Also, it's an indicator that pvp savvy cursed ones never go hollow and survive till the end of the f*ing world. One for the bad red team, baby :)
I would argue the correct way of going through the Doors of Pharros to the rat authority would be to join the Rat covenant, the enemies no longer become hostile that way
I just wish they didn’t throw so many enemies into the different areas in this version. DS2 was already pretty infamous for how much it liked to have enemies gank the player, and then SOTF made that problem even WORSE to the point some of the areas are legitimately unfun to navigate. God I hate the scholar version of iron keep
Gotta disagree about Scholar being the definitive edition of the game, the original release is alot better in several ways. Scholar is very new player unfriendly, and isn't great for longtime, casual returning players either. The original enemy and item placements were very well thought out, and Scholar feels like those placements were shaken up just for the sake of shaking them up. I would say it's best to think of Scholar as a fun challenge mode if it wasn't so hard to get a hold of the original these days.
I love this game and seeing other people enjoying it just lights a flame in my heart. Hope to see you do the rest of the games and maybe Bloodborne. Happy Spooktober🐱🎃👻💀 \[T]/
42:15 Jesus Fucking Christ... I remember spending THREE. WHOLE. DAYS. Farming for those souls. And I remember how I basically only ever tried to assist and buff the friendly knights while letting them do all the work... fuck. :D
Me and my two buddies played the 3rd DLC co-op, but we had to start late because one of us was so sick his response time took a hit. Because of this, we had time to discover that you could get the Loyce Knight armour by handing off souls to Alsanna, and that you could get their sword after Lud and Zallow. It took us weeks. Lots of Grinding for Souls and Attempts on Lud and Zallow, interspaced with trying to get the three of us free at the same time. But finally, we got it. Seven Knights of Eleyum Loyce strode forth to fight the King. Three gave their lives to seal away their corrupted brothers. One more fell to the King, as the four stood together. Those three Survivors... us... took the Kings Soul back to his beloved Queen. Then, we took the fight to Nashandra, three Questing Knights of Eleyum Loyce, the last three.
In the gutter some of the hollows drop torches at a very high rate, which is definitely an occult club thing considering all the torches there and the npc that only spawns if you light them all.
That's what that means, the world isn't physically connected cause you have fast travel from the beginning. In ds1 the areas are physically connected and loop back into eachother, while in ds2 everything starts from majula but it's mostly linear areas that only connect to the next one
Bonfire aesthetics are one of the things in ds2 that I genuinely love and think was a very interesting and fun mechanic. I kind of wish more souls games would have a mechanic like that, as well as making ng+ have different things or rewards to make it extra worth it. Ds2 may not be everyone's favorite of the souls series but ya gotta admit it has some incredible ideas.
45:18 While you’re unlikely to stumble on Tark’s final dialogue, if you’ve played Dark Souls 1 then it is pretty obvious “Tark” is “Tarkus” and “the Duke’s Dear Freja” is Seath. Or their souls. Or something.
Fun Fact: Gutter Denizen's headgear drop has 1000 Curse Resistance, which is to say, 100% Curse Resistance. This is specially helpful against Nashandra in low level runs if you're doing her before the DLCs.
I never knew this. Ive only played ds2 when i was a new from soft fan so a lot of my min maxing was horrible
@@BowForGlory don't feel bad, my first game was DS1, I leveled resistance to 20 early game because I thought it'd help with Blighttown
did it?@@Weldedhodag
I knew a Black person named Nashandra
Wtf ……… I wish I knew that but not for final boss she was easy.
Killing the Emerald Herold curses you in real life. You are now Hollow.
I have become John Hollow.
Tip for maldron the assassin. If you use a seed of the tree of giants (either as starting gift or drop from giant trees I believe) when he runs away to hide, the enemy NPCs will aggro on him and kill his dumb ass. Serves him right for his scummy tactics.
THANK YOU. You’ve just saved me a ton of trouble in NG+
Bro dropping sick knowledge
The day I thought of that I felt like Einstein 😂. It’s so cathartic as well
Keep in mind that this only works with his Brume Tower invasion. When he appears in Eleum Loyce, he's a human NPC wearing the White Ring, not an invading phantom, hence the mobs will ignore him completely.
@@anonecki No, but the even better tip for Maldron the Assassin in Brume Tower is to ignore him and just walk down the spiral staircase where the Ashen Idol is. He isn't programmed to respond to that, so he waits in his "ambush corner" for you - and will then run down the now completely cleared, and Ashen Idol free, tower.
I’m really impressed you could put this together back to back from DS1 so quickly. Nice work
Well I mean knowing everything in a game makes it faster and much easier so understandable.
Fine work
One of the advantages of fighting the original pursuer, outside of the boss room, if you’re a summon or summoning, is that it doesn’t treat him like a boss, so if you’re summoning, you can then use the same summons to fight last giant, and if you are being summoned, you get the full soul reward for killing him instead of just the fractional amount summons usually get.
I like it just because of the arena being wider, and faster to reach from the bonfire than the bridge. Most of my runs kill him on the rooftop.
I just beat Scholar for the first time recently and it's crazy how much I missed! The fact that NPC inventories (especially Maulin's) update this much never occurred to me. I also never saw the dragon skeleton come alive. A friend of mine watched me and he was so surprised, since apparently in Vanilla (which he played) it just does that normally.
Yeah, Vanilla does that automatically. I've never seen it in SotFS.
Yeah I missed maughlin too since I thought he sold useless armor
You can do navlans questline on your first playthrough without killing any npcs, you just have to do those npc's quests and get the item
I wanted to do both! Poor Navlaan, everyone always cheatin him 🥸
@@ji_mothyNah, screw him, my boy Felkin is the kindest wendor in the game, am not killing him.
IIRC the mirror shield you get from the Looking Glass Knight boss soul has a massive spell parry window, so you could argue that it counts as a occult club moment for countering the spell casters in Shrine of Amana. Not that it would have worked with your build, but still interesting I think.
Love that take! Also can't hit a parry for the life of me
Your comment on summons for the Ivory King tilted me a bit. That explains why my summons would go home as soon as the boss appeared, and why I got sent home whenever I tried to help kill the boss. It made me so salty, that I ended up farming the souls offline after the boss was defeated. I wish there was some way to convey intentions between summoner and phantoms, so that people get matched with others with the same goal.
Glad I'm not the only one who thought that. Just felt *really* self centered to say go to the boss everyone dislikes, and that you're in the wrong for fighting a boss you signed up for.
I imagine people wearing mimic heads would probably be a good sign that they're here to farm? Though that would still require knowing that people are farming inside the boss room in the first place.
yeah really weird, why would you ever expect random summons to grind souls for you instead of fighting the boss.
@@obscure.referenceMy guy it is not about grinding souls. It's about grinding an extremely annoying item that's needed to 100% the game.
@@GallantBlade475 then find a support group dont expect randos to know that
That out of pocket Blink 182 reference caught me heavily off guard and took me a minute to even realize what just happened. Well played!
Now I see that you just do that alot but still the Blink One was great
Thank you yes, my brain just defaults to finishing the lyric any time I say or hear part of a song and it's been liberating for me to share em with y'all
@@ji_mothyya man I have weird tendencies like that as well so it’s understood . This was the first vid of yours I have seen and I liked it a lot btw!
Yooo yess
I too am cool
There's also the Dragon Memories! That's quite pretty. With a neat soul too. Makes a neat sword. If you wanted to append that, i think the BKGS revisit could be plastered onto just after meeting or killing Ancient Dragon.
Gosh darnit, something had to slip through. Thank you. Might also move using the Tseldora key later to coincide, since using that when we get it still involves quite a runback
this makes me want to see what Yui Tanimura could do without a rushed game development time. Though this game can be a bit miserable, seeing all the effort put into summon encounters, invaders and even small things like the torch would be so interesting so see in a fully fleshed out soulslike.
Honestly, going back to play DS 1 and DS 2, and 1 was the more unenjoyable experience to actually play through. It shows its age and its sluggishness way more than 2 imo
@@trustytrest I disagree. Even though DS1 does have some mechanics (like if you miss with certain weapons you get staggered) that make it play slower, the reaction time (like rolling after attacking) and general movement is the clunkiest in DS2
That actually exists, it's called Elden Ring, also known as Dark Souls II 2.
Jokes aside though, DS2 is still a great game even with so many glaring flaws, if they had the time to work some of those out, the game would be genuinely amazing.
All he really did was piece together a Dark Souls game out of all the content and assets they had up until that halfway point in development. What I'm truly curious is what the original director (Tomohiro Shibuya) had in mind.
@@hasanhaskovic4307different strokes and all that. Personally, after playing the Remaster and SotFS back to back, I found DS2 to be more enjoyable.
The lows of Dark Souls 2 may be some of the worst in the series, but for me, the first game was almost constantly infused with a lesser but present feeling of clunkiness and even some disappointment.
Man, I didn't know Drummond has a quest to give you the Drang helm :O
Also a HUGH mind-blown moment when you realize you took the drang armor from his corpse in the future!
I really love bonfire ascetics. It is such a cool idea and feeds into the “time is falling apart” theme so well. I wish they got brought back at some point.
Unironically, I love that you call it "Torch" instead of "the Torch". It's something I've always done. I always call FromSoft items their direct name instead of "the Claymore" or "the Halberd". It's just Claymore and Halberd to me.
Dunno if anyone else told you, but you don't *have* to kill NPCs for Navlaan's quest. He requests you bring items of "proof"-all of which can be obtained without ever killing an NPC. The Ladder Miniature can be bought (cheaper if you buy it in Earthen Peak), Cale's Helmet is given once you complete the map, the Sunset Staff is given when you have the stat requirements, and the Aged Feather is given upon reaching Dragon Aerie.
Just talking to Navlaan with the items is enough for him to believe you killed the NPCs.
Thank you! I was well aware, but doing Navlaan's quests felt right for a run that focuses on seeing all the content. I chose peace last time!
thats a white paw
The Bonfire Ascetics and NG+ only content in DS2 are so great, I don't know why they didn't keep doing that.
@@falsnamae3511And that's exactly why ascetics were added. So you could still get NG+ rewards in NG, if you wanted/needed them for your build. It's literally an extra risk/reward decision, fighting a harder boss in exchange for a potentially useful item. And even if you don't do that, you get cool goodies on a MG+ run anyways. There's zero downsides considering how little extra assets need to be added. Most bosses are just a normal NG+ stat increase anyways, same as every other game.
I can guarantee you DS2 has the most amount of players doing NG+, because they heard there's actual incentive to do so. Also helps that DS2 lets you respec your build and makes maxing out and infusing weapons MUCH less tedious than DS1. So you can very easily do NG+ and try out a completely different playstyle if it interests you, and you can always switch back if you find it's not that good in the end. Very few players beat DS1 and thought "man, I sure wish I could replay the game with the same exact build but the enemies had higher stats". Heck, DS2 even has the CoC if you want the whole game to be harder. And you can do that without needing to beat the entire game first!
DS2 did everything right with its replayability. Even better than ER in that department, and I say that as someone who beat all bosses NG+7 in ER.
Ascetics as a concept works perfectly in Elden Ring's open world IMO
@@falsnamae3511That's their loss.
@@falsnamae3511Fellow 100% man here, I got the Dark Soul Achievement multiple times on different PS3 accounts, on both Steam versions and on the PS4 version so I'm even skewing the statistics to make us more lonely lol. On the release PS3 version you can cheat a little because the Chancellor sells the ng++ items on ng+ if you bonfire asceticted him before going into ng++ but that was patched out haha. And technically you don't need to go into ng+ at all if you do online but... that's so much worse that just going into ng++ especially if you aren't good at pvp.
@@falsnamae3511 not sure about that, i know a couple of ppl which choose further ng+ over creating new character, and elden ring having literally nothing new in ng+ has no exuses.
Also not everyone who went on ng++ did it for achievements
You just know that a historian will find this video and hear you say "I won't recount the development history of DS2 here" and proceed to die inside. Anyway you'll probably get to later games, but remember that Demon's Souls 2009 can be emulated on PC very well using RPCS3.
Lmao. Fr thats so frustrating when you read old journals which reference things we have lost
How the hell foes RPCS3 even work? I understand it about as well as a Christian science book understands electricity. I got it for my shitty laptop but no dice, DeS wouldn't run properly, it'd just be infinitely stuck in loading screens. Then I got a literal latest tech PC almost exactly a year ago and got RPCS3 on it, got DeS, launched it and it actually ran...! After some finagling, lots of cursing and giving up and getting a copy off of a, uh, "trusted source". Even then though it ran like shit, there was constant audio looping and often it would freeze or not display stuff properly. No amount of tutorials or setting changes fixed my issues so I just gave up on it and I just wish I knew why. A lot of videos seem to imply you basically just download the damn thing, set it up correctly and it runs with zero issues, but for me it runs like crap on both older (still newer than DeS as a whole and fairly capable at running games so long as they aren't the more demanding AAA type) and newer hardware.
@@YTDariuS-my6dg It mostly runs on your CPU instead of GPU, so a shitty laptop would actually be able to run it if it had a decent CPU but no gpu, in theory at least. As to setting it up, for me it was quite easy but with emulators in general you need to be prepared to be able to troubleshoot it. Its always different for every user which is why theyre so configurable.
Ok
I was waiting for this, ds2 has so many paths it's hard to imagine a run like this
I took 49 minutes to explain how to do Benhart and Lucatiel basically 🙃
DS2's many paths is what makes it so fun to replay with different builds imo. You can try a melee or sorcery or miracle build and have completely different routing for each.
DS2 is so underrated, and this run really shows off some of that. Great video.
fax, ds2 is my favorite of the 3 ngl
The pontiac sunbird line was really good
Back in the day I played this game through to NG+3 and since then have had no desire to replay it. I can honestly say after watching this video I actually kind of feel like going back to it and tackling the npc quests since I missed most of them my first time around. Great video Bearer of The Curse, I especially enjoyed all the puns, music references and especially the Rat King Cole joke.
That Michael Bolton stone reference is highly underrated. Ive been missing you so long. Reminds me of my own reference I did in one of my prey lets plays from a decade ago. Love your videos. Thanks for all your effort.
I have hundreds of hours in DS2 and I learned so many new things from this video.
I'm so glad you did this with ds 2. Now its time for the same thing in DS 3
PS: Great vid btw
DS3 is way easier, since it's a completely linear game besides Smouldering Lake and Dragon Peak. The only optimizations you have to do is commiting suicide enough tines before Abyss Watchers to get the dark seals for Yuria, and reloading the game enough times in specific zones to force NPC quests to progress.
You have to go out of your way killing the old lady just to sequence break and fight Dancer and explore the castle early. That's really the only sequence break you can do, besides beating Abyss Watcher and Wolnir before doing Deacons, but the game locks you out of Irithyll anyways if you skip the one intended path.
@@trustytrestBut It's still important to do. For comparison's sake, at least. And also to finish the DS trilogy. :)
@@trustytrest "its completely linear" is a weird way to describe a game that requires more backtracking than the first to complete many quests. if all you're doing is a boss rush, all three games are linear. the only thing that truly leaves DS3 feeling more linear is the fact you can warp and never have to walk through places you've already been. which, gameplay wise, is one of many reasons its so much better than DS1
This was an incredibly well put together video. I’ve played through DS2 the most out of all of the trilogy and I did manage to do all of the NPC questlines over that time but it was really interesting and cool to see how you can organize it in a run like this. I do have one question though, in regards to the assassin questline, is there any particular reason why you did kill them all since each NPC item for the questline can be obtained as a gift so you can get all of their gear and the assassins and still have him in the cell or set him free and choose what you want to do in that method (I personally spare everyone and kill the assassin afterwards.) Also, there are two gifts I thought I would mention that you didn’t talk about in the video, you can get a gift of a jeweled rapier from Gilligan (I think you needed to buy everything from him in regards to the ladders and possibly the trinket to achieve it though) and there is a gift of transparent armor that is a different version of armor that can be found in the Gutter (the item descriptions both talk about why they look different and what they mean) from the armor merchant in Majula if you interact with him without any souls when he’s in the third stage.
maaaate!!! finally a series I absolutely enjoy.. I personally think I'd enjoy extended versions a bit more, but this is exactly the content around these games I enjoy. No cheese glitches, no over levellling, juat playing and learning the game.
I just love that I can find something new to this game even if I think I know everything about it, like noone ever mentioned that creighton and pates quest can turn out differently
Nice man
Dark souls 2 was so nice
I played 1&3 and 2 last
and i don't even know why but the atmosphere just hits the best from all of them in my opinion
I've played all soulsborne games , and played DS2 the longest , when this game 1st came out it was insanely crowded like seriously full of players summon signs everywhere and u get invaded aloooooot specially in iron keep its impossible not to get invaded there , i loved this game and i used to run Hex build a sneaky build where i transform into object and 1shot invader/host with Climax the most BS OP spell + dark caitha chime its very ridiculous as it ALWAYS 1shot players if it hits with at least 3k+ dmg lmao , or spam AoE pyromancy/hexes in King's gate area near bonfire cuz its a very narrow place where your AoE guaranteed to hit and ppl also invade alot there.... good old days 😆😆❤
Miyazaki’s cousin made a hell of a game.
First video of yours for me to watch and it was great. Good job on the quality, lore, and overall video. Keep it up!
Thank you for showing love to my favourite soul game
I played DS2 on every version numerous times and probably have well over thousands of hours in it (only changed to steam version of sotfs a few years ago when it was on sale for 10 euro after already burning out twice, and still put in 600 hours into it since then purely from invading and cooping) and I have NEVER encountered that Creighton dialogue.. Always carried out their questlines, let them fought, killed Pate during the fight, got the reward from Creighton, killed him and then went for the Engraved gauntlets.. so much time, effort, circumstances and opportunities and never ran into it lmao, this video has been highly enjoyable and educational, well done c:
you truly deserve a like and subscribe, good work on the video dude loved the ds1 run ty for covering bestsouls2
I did not know you can illuminate the sinners arena. This was worth a watch just for that
Super glad the TH-cam algorithms showed me a small channel for once with high quality content. Hope you plan on a dark souls 3 one of these!
I want a remake of ds2 so badly
9:25 -> secret morning-wood easter egg
Erection is important thematically (Sun and Steel).
See: "Gotthard", "竜 and 立つ (tatsu)", Lorian's special attack (also, "rise, if you would"), Gael's 2nd phase (and Abyss Watcher's and Ludwig's)
Just a note: Never bother wasting anything on Maldron. Let him run to the bottom, pop a Seed of a Tree of Giants and the enemies down there will kill him for you, and make it much easier to deal with. Then, go back to the Forest of Fallen Giants and retrieve another one. You get it from the Giant near the Soldier's Rest bonfire
Finally something that may motivate me to play the sequal, thanks man. Loved your DS1 guide!
At least once a year, I get the guilty pleasure craving of wanting to replay DS2. I put on a DS2 critique list and play for a weekend or so. Rarely finish, but it's fun.
You didn't need to kill Shanalotte :( She gives you her feather in Dragon Aerie, and that's good enough proof for Navlaan. Oh, and this goes for other target NPCs, but fuck them
I really appreciate this video, Dark Souls 2 is super underrated, so it's nice to see this.
I can't believe I played this game for YEARS and I never caught on to the acronym for Fragrant Branches Of Yore... I already learned something new in the first minute of this vid!
I’m excited to watch this! Dark Souls 2 is my fave 😊
As much as I appreciate the playthrough style you've chosen, I gotta say it's your varied musical references that earned the sub
Micheal Bolton x Dark Souls
Rat King Cole joke had me actually exclaim profanities out loud. These videos are incredible and your humour is actually unparalleled
"I'm not acknowledging stuff from the first release. This version came out most recently and should be considered the definitive edition of the game."
YOU HAVE ANGERED THE HORDE
Muh Resident Evil 3
i do think it's better than the original, the original played it too safe for encounters.
@@Ghorda9 nah it's not better and spamming you full with enemies is not a plus. The original is empty yes, but to make it not empty is not throw everything in.
@@Soapy-chan schollar is actually easier than the original overall and isn't anymore spammy, people are just dishonest about it for some reason like they keep parroting the same people without testing it themselves.
@@Ghorda9 Except it isn't actually easier and it IS more spammy, I literally played both games back to back in the last few weeks. OG DS2 is so empty
So funny how you accuse us of being dishonest and not testing ourselves when that is actually what makes me say it.
Really happy to hear new facts about aldia i never noticed especially ones that are lore accurate 👍
i followed your dks 1 video, so this is poggers
Navlaan's quest doesn't require killing anyone, all the items he asks for proof are things the characters give you anyway (excet gilligan, you have to buy it instead).
The little songs remind me of regular car reviews. Fun content my friend. Thanks for sharing.
Entertaining video, came here after the DS1 video, not even 2 mins in, Blink 182 reference, justs gets better and better.
my favorite souls game - huuugely underrated, best climate in whole series
This was the last video I watch on youtube because of the ad block harassment campaign. I really enjoyed it . They locked my player and im finna unbookmark this hoe on my bar.
K bye.
🫡
I usually play dark souls 2 like this, trying to get all the extras and questlines but... your explanations are also 100x more useful than the wikis. I had no idea about the tark requirements for najka
The wikis are pretty clear and helpful imo, but you could use a written guide as well. I played SOTFS with a guide and I don't think there's a single thing in this video that I didn't already know.
DS2 HAS THE BEST LORE IN ALL SOULS SERIES AND I AM DYING DEFENDING THIS HILL
watching this video was so much better than actually playing DS2 again, thanks for that
The steps that I retrace
The sad look on your face
1:44
A day late, a buck short
I'm writing the report
On losing and failing
When I'm moving, I'm flailing now
the occult club is also doubly genius as it can be reverted to divine, giving you a good tool for slapping skeletons if its all you got
an recommended 50 min video about dark souls?? YES!!!!
I absolutely loved the video, but I’ve got a few notes on potential oversights. (Btw I love playing One Night Ultimate Werewolf so hearing you reference that out of the blue gave me whiplash)
It’s possible to get a Token of Fidelity without playing online, if you drop onto a platform from the bridge leading to the Executioner’s Chariot.
You might’ve still got it and just not mentioned it, but helping either Pate or Creighton in their fight gets you the Tseldora Den Key, which lets you get 10x Rusted Coins and the Engraved Gauntlets.
Also I’m fairly certain you can get the Drangleic Helm by just exhausting Drummond’s dialogue, without needing to summon him.
What an absolutely insane game
Dark Souls 2 was great, despite its many flaws. It's probably the souls game where I have the most completed runs under my belt and still I learned many new things about it thanks to your video.
Original DS2 had a nice balance between combat and exploration, which Scholar ruined by putting enemies everywhere. Scholar’s item placement is significantly easier, like the Dull Ember and Bastille Key, which were moved from Iron Keep and after Gargoyles, respectively. Together, worse enemy and item placement, prevent Scholar from being definitive. It does a few good things, like more NPC invaders, including the repeating Forlorn, and more Pursuer fights. I can’t hate Scholar, it’s DS2 after all, which I love, but hearing the word definitive to describe it sounds like fingernails scratching on a blackboard.
I play both versions, and find way more anoyance in the original gank squads than in SOFTS
Definitive means realizing the devs final officially expressed vision whether it made the game worse in your opinion or not. The enemy and item placement is not the only thing they did, they rewrote and clarified some texts in descriptions, which to me is very important from a lore perspective. Putting most Heide knights into Heide also made sense. And while they did patch him into the base game as well, you could argue that Aldia is THE addition to SOTFS, being eponymous and all, and I can't imagine the game without him.
This game and Bloodborne were only Souls game I ever completed. Dark Souls 1 feels old, slow and sluggish to me. And Dark Souls 3 even though I played it a lot I didnt have the drive in me to continue. I played quite a lot of multiplayer in DSIII while protecting the forest or what was it after that I havent touched it before and I think I got to the Abyss Watchers and after defeating them I havent play the game at all to this day. Thank you for these videos. It shows how much I have missed even this game I have completed xD
Honestly I'm surprised you think Dark souls 1 feel's sluggish especially compared to DS2. Both feel similar speeds to me. (though DS2 feel's maybe a little bit slower.)
Speaking of forbidden suns. There is a way to glitch 30 or so of them with spell swap from soul arrow :D
Really can't wait to finish my first DS3 run and come back to whenever you upload "Playing DS3 as intended!"
That rat king cole pun was awful... atrocious... i love it. Subbed.
A breath of fresh air to see someone as obsessed as I am with optimized play of the souls games. Love your knowledge of lore as well. Liked and subscribed. Hope your channel gets more recognition, my man.
For the Lucatiel quest, I always kill Rotten twice with her because she dies easily in Smelter fight, and for those who have trouble with her murderous urges causing her to fall off the bridges in No Man's Wharf, just clear the area before summoning her and she'll go straight to the ship with you.
For the Royal Rat Vanguard, you can use the miracle Soul Appease to clear all the rats with a cast or two. Must try it, man. Too satisfying. The miracle's supposed to damage hollows heavily, but it works on rats as well XD I was surprised you didn't use it, especially after talking to Chloanne before going down the pit.
By the way, given the appearance of Craighton The Deserter in ds3, the canonical ending to his quest in ds2 is people siding with him, which is my preferred ending that I don't really see people get. Everyone just trust pate. Also, it's an indicator that pvp savvy cursed ones never go hollow and survive till the end of the f*ing world. One for the bad red team, baby :)
I would argue the correct way of going through the Doors of Pharros to the rat authority would be to join the Rat covenant, the enemies no longer become hostile that way
Rat King Cole killed me, awesome video bro!
"girlies who get it get it" ily
Scholar is the definitive edition. Anyone saying otherwise has no clue what they're talking about.
I just wish they didn’t throw so many enemies into the different areas in this version. DS2 was already pretty infamous for how much it liked to have enemies gank the player, and then SOTF made that problem even WORSE to the point some of the areas are legitimately unfun to navigate.
God I hate the scholar version of iron keep
Gotta disagree about Scholar being the definitive edition of the game, the original release is alot better in several ways. Scholar is very new player unfriendly, and isn't great for longtime, casual returning players either. The original enemy and item placements were very well thought out, and Scholar feels like those placements were shaken up just for the sake of shaking them up.
I would say it's best to think of Scholar as a fun challenge mode if it wasn't so hard to get a hold of the original these days.
27:03 lmfao I think of the shrine every time I do a load of laundry
I enjoyed this one more than the Dark Souls 1 video, which is also surprising since this has always been my least favorite Dark Souls. Great video!
I enjoyed your Doug Judy reference, great video!
I love this game and seeing other people enjoying it just lights a flame in my heart. Hope to see you do the rest of the games and maybe Bloodborne. Happy Spooktober🐱🎃👻💀
\[T]/
Any additional levels we gain by going here first are going to smooth out our coming [CYBERPUNK MUSIC]
"girls that get it, get it" 😭
42:15 Jesus Fucking Christ...
I remember spending THREE. WHOLE. DAYS. Farming for those souls.
And I remember how I basically only ever tried to assist and buff the friendly knights while letting them do all the work... fuck. :D
This was such a well made video it kept my drunken attention during my entire session of bg3
Was not expecting that Dojacat reference and it gave me a chuckle xD
Rat King Cole might be the best joke I've ever heard
Me and my two buddies played the 3rd DLC co-op, but we had to start late because one of us was so sick his response time took a hit. Because of this, we had time to discover that you could get the Loyce Knight armour by handing off souls to Alsanna, and that you could get their sword after Lud and Zallow.
It took us weeks. Lots of Grinding for Souls and Attempts on Lud and Zallow, interspaced with trying to get the three of us free at the same time. But finally, we got it.
Seven Knights of Eleyum Loyce strode forth to fight the King. Three gave their lives to seal away their corrupted brothers. One more fell to the King, as the four stood together. Those three Survivors... us... took the Kings Soul back to his beloved Queen.
Then, we took the fight to Nashandra, three Questing Knights of Eleyum Loyce, the last three.
Great video!! Would love a written guide for this one too! Really want to make a full effort to complete this game start to finish
Oooh no. I didn’t like hearing that “bearer, seek, seek, lest”
That almost gave me ptsd flashbacks from my 1000+ hours wasted in ds2
In the gutter some of the hollows drop torches at a very high rate, which is definitely an occult club thing considering all the torches there and the npc that only spawns if you light them all.
subscribed the moment i saw the branch pic and heard the voice
I feel like you'd never see some of these unless you were choosing your next move at random, Its amazing how interconnected this game can be.
Think about dark souls 1 dlc enter...
bro i learned sooo much. and the final boss is scholars of the first sins???? i never knew!
I wish they'd brought back the concept of changes between new game cycles. IMO that was the best aspect of DS2.
"the world is way less connected
1 second later
"you have fast travel from the beginning"
😆🤣😂😅🤣😅😂🤣😆
That's what that means, the world isn't physically connected cause you have fast travel from the beginning. In ds1 the areas are physically connected and loop back into eachother, while in ds2 everything starts from majula but it's mostly linear areas that only connect to the next one
Bonfire aesthetics are one of the things in ds2 that I genuinely love and think was a very interesting and fun mechanic. I kind of wish more souls games would have a mechanic like that, as well as making ng+ have different things or rewards to make it extra worth it. Ds2 may not be everyone's favorite of the souls series but ya gotta admit it has some incredible ideas.
21:12 You Could Of Done The Special Interaction Of Damaging The Executioner's Chariot For It To Grab To The Ledge At Low HP
Bro out here acting like the forlorn isnt the literal goated drip fromsoft has ever put out
45:18 While you’re unlikely to stumble on Tark’s final dialogue, if you’ve played Dark Souls 1 then it is pretty obvious “Tark” is “Tarkus” and “the Duke’s Dear Freja” is Seath. Or their souls. Or something.
I didn’t expect a Ferngully reference from my darkest nightmares, but I welcome it.
I was expecting no hit 1v1 Sir Alonne to get his sepukku death animation. 9.9999999/10
Hahaha that would require being good