This review contains spoilers
(Spoilers abound) 7.5/10. Would've been at 8/10 if adaptability didn't exist. Dark Souls 2 doesn't deserve a lot of the hate it gets but it is home to some truly baffling design decisions. Despite this, I really enjoyed my playthrough of this game.
For the most part the level design is pretty decent. Lost Bastille, Dragon Aerie, the Gutter, Earthen Peak, and more are all decently designed. They're not great but they're serviceable and enjoyable. But some levels do have wild design choices. In huntsman's copse you unlock a shortcut to go back to the first bonfire.....but right next to that shortcut is the second bonfire. Why? That bonfire is completely unnecessary and this game could've done away with a few bonfires to make the levels more interesting. The dlc areas (shulva, brume tower, and eleum loyce) are home to some of the best level designs in the game. Lots of verticality in the levels, especially in shulva. But the dlc areas are also home to some of the worst level design in ds2 lol. Cave of the Dead, Iron Passage, and Frigid Outskirts are all bad. Yes, they were designed for co-op and no that does not excuse it. Cave of the Dead is very linear and has annoying petrifying statues. Iron Passage has an insane amount of enemies with annoying spells. And Frigid Outskirts is long, hard to see, and boring. You're constantly assaulted by electric reindeers while you cant see anything and then the boss at the end is difficult. And if you die you have to do that whole run again. It's the only place in the game where I think the devs should've added another bonfire.
Moving on to combat. Before you do anything to your character you have to level up adaptability to at least 20 so your agility goes up. Agility governs how many i-frames you get. If it's not high the game feels clunky as hell and it's a chore to play. Once that's done the game is pretty fun. It's not as difficult as later fromsoftware games but that's fine. I don't play these games for intense difficulty; if I wanted that I'd play Nioh. I would've however liked some more enemy variety. Many of the bosses and enemies are humanoids or big humanoids. I would've liked if there were more weird enemies like pisacas or man centipedes. Some enemies also have insane hitboxes. How is it that I'm attacking a mimic from behind its mouth and then it eats me anyway? Or when I dodge a grab from an ogre my character magically teleports to its hands.
DS2 has the most bosses in the souls series so it should've had the most variety of bosses. But again most of them are giant humanoids where you memorize their attack pattern. My favorite bosses in this game were Sinh, fume knight, darklurker, and the executioners chariot. Sinh is a very good dragon boss where you have to be careful with your positioning so you don't get toxin and then be aggressive enough to get some hits in before he takes off flying again. Fume Knight is a giant humanoid but he had an interesting attack pattern and before the fight the player needed to analyze the area and see how they can debuff him. Darklurker has a simple moveset but once you think he's easy he splits himself into two and then the player must keep both his halves in their sight. And then the executioner's chariot is a "gimmick" boss but a good one. The player has to juggle running to the end of the track, dodging the racing chariot, and fighting off skeletons and their necromancers. Once the player reaches the end of the track then they can stop the chariot from racing and then begin fighting the boss. It's fun and it breaks the monotony of memorizing movesets. These are all really good bosses imo that the game needed more of.
Some of the enemy placement in ds2 is baffling. The lost Bastille is home to gank squads where you open a door and 5 enemies (that are tough for that area) come out. Iron Keep has a million Alonne Knights that get aggroed from miles away and will chase the player to the ends of the earth. Iron Keep also has those annoying turtle enemies stuck in really tight corridors. Fighting them there is a gigantic chore where the player just has to wait for their combo to finish. That's all pretty annoying and very unfun. Other than that and some other examples the enemy placement is mostly okay.
Let's move onto NPCs. They suck. Lmfao okay they're not that bad but the NPCs here are much worse than the ones in ds1. (Spoilers for ds1) Ds1 had many NPCs. Most of them felt like you, the player, were just meeting them incidently while they were doing their own quests. Let's use Petrus and Rhea as an example. When you first meet Petrus he's a vendor but he also mentions that he's waiting for some people. After you kill some bosses the people that he's waiting for shows up. They then mention they're going down into the catacombs and next time you visit them only Petrus is back. He seems sus so the player goes to the catacombs and finds out that two of his companions went hollow and Rhea is stuck down there. After killing the hollows Rhea then goes back up to the undead church. Shenanigans happen and the player can decide to kill Petrus to save Rhea. However if the player then buys all of Rhea's miracles Rhea will then disappear to another area and go hollow. As you see these NPCs have their own stories they're going through as the player sets out on their own journey. Siegmeyer, Lautrec, Solaire, Logan all also have intriguing quests. DS2's NPCs don't have a quarter of the complexity ds1's NPCs have.
Most of the NPCs in ds2 you'll meet and they either stay in their area and sell you stuff or they move to majula and sell you stuff. Rosabeth, Chloanne, Carhillion, Magerold, and others just sit there and sell the player items. The only somewhat interesting NPCs are Pate, Creighton, Lucatiel, and Benhart. Pate and Creighton have an interesting quest where Pate had betrayed Creighton and so Creighton is hunting him. When they finally find each other they are fighting and the player can choose who to help. Lucatiel and Benhart are interesting in that they need to be summoned for bosses in order for their quest lines to complete. But at then end of their quests both characters just give you their armor and disappear. No turning into hollows or anything they just vanish lol. There's another npc, Licia, who's implied to be a liar and just wants souls. By finding an item the player can invade her world. But there's no point to that. In ds1 when you invade Lautrec it's because he killed the fire keeper and the player needs her back. It's more personal and interesting. Licia seems like the devs wanted to a Lautrec but didn't know how to make it good.
I don't want to talk too much about the lore and story because I admittedly did not read many items descriptions in this playthrough so I'll just go over some board strokes. In demons souls and ds1 the opening cutscenes introduces the player to the lore and setting of the world. Ds1 shows the player the major players who end up being major bosses in the game. Instead of doing this DS2 takes a more personal approach by stating that the player will lose their memories, humanity, get hollow, and die over and over again. It does next to nothing to set up the actual plot of the game. For that you need to read many, many items descriptions to understand what exactly is going on and hope you understand what Aldia is saying when he starts spouting stuff about the true nature of humanity. I didn't feel like doing that so I can't say if the lore and story is genuinely interesting but I can say it could've been better told to the player.
The covenants are pretty fun. A lot of them are reskinned covenants from ds1 but that's okay. Having covenants focus on PVP and co-op is a good thing. I really liked the gravelord servant covenant in ds1 but thought it was a shame that it was stuck in ng+. I think the rat king covenant is a good evolution of the gravelord servant covenant especially because you can access it in ng. I liked that they added 2 pve covenants. One of them just makes the game harder which is nice for people who want a challenge. The other one leads to players having to fight tough black phantoms and then eventually fighting one of the better bosses in the game.
I forgot to put this earlier but something I really liked in the game was how there were some giant corpses and big doors hanging around. Towards the end of the game the player is then tasked to acquire some items and go back to those areas. It rewards players for paying attention to their environment and I always love going back to areas to find new things.
So yeah, despite doing a lot of criticisms of this game I really loved it lol. It's got a lot of good things going for it. It's definitely the worst of the soul series but the worst is still pretty good. Not a game to miss if you like soulslikes. Also it has arguably the best fashion.
For the most part the level design is pretty decent. Lost Bastille, Dragon Aerie, the Gutter, Earthen Peak, and more are all decently designed. They're not great but they're serviceable and enjoyable. But some levels do have wild design choices. In huntsman's copse you unlock a shortcut to go back to the first bonfire.....but right next to that shortcut is the second bonfire. Why? That bonfire is completely unnecessary and this game could've done away with a few bonfires to make the levels more interesting. The dlc areas (shulva, brume tower, and eleum loyce) are home to some of the best level designs in the game. Lots of verticality in the levels, especially in shulva. But the dlc areas are also home to some of the worst level design in ds2 lol. Cave of the Dead, Iron Passage, and Frigid Outskirts are all bad. Yes, they were designed for co-op and no that does not excuse it. Cave of the Dead is very linear and has annoying petrifying statues. Iron Passage has an insane amount of enemies with annoying spells. And Frigid Outskirts is long, hard to see, and boring. You're constantly assaulted by electric reindeers while you cant see anything and then the boss at the end is difficult. And if you die you have to do that whole run again. It's the only place in the game where I think the devs should've added another bonfire.
Moving on to combat. Before you do anything to your character you have to level up adaptability to at least 20 so your agility goes up. Agility governs how many i-frames you get. If it's not high the game feels clunky as hell and it's a chore to play. Once that's done the game is pretty fun. It's not as difficult as later fromsoftware games but that's fine. I don't play these games for intense difficulty; if I wanted that I'd play Nioh. I would've however liked some more enemy variety. Many of the bosses and enemies are humanoids or big humanoids. I would've liked if there were more weird enemies like pisacas or man centipedes. Some enemies also have insane hitboxes. How is it that I'm attacking a mimic from behind its mouth and then it eats me anyway? Or when I dodge a grab from an ogre my character magically teleports to its hands.
DS2 has the most bosses in the souls series so it should've had the most variety of bosses. But again most of them are giant humanoids where you memorize their attack pattern. My favorite bosses in this game were Sinh, fume knight, darklurker, and the executioners chariot. Sinh is a very good dragon boss where you have to be careful with your positioning so you don't get toxin and then be aggressive enough to get some hits in before he takes off flying again. Fume Knight is a giant humanoid but he had an interesting attack pattern and before the fight the player needed to analyze the area and see how they can debuff him. Darklurker has a simple moveset but once you think he's easy he splits himself into two and then the player must keep both his halves in their sight. And then the executioner's chariot is a "gimmick" boss but a good one. The player has to juggle running to the end of the track, dodging the racing chariot, and fighting off skeletons and their necromancers. Once the player reaches the end of the track then they can stop the chariot from racing and then begin fighting the boss. It's fun and it breaks the monotony of memorizing movesets. These are all really good bosses imo that the game needed more of.
Some of the enemy placement in ds2 is baffling. The lost Bastille is home to gank squads where you open a door and 5 enemies (that are tough for that area) come out. Iron Keep has a million Alonne Knights that get aggroed from miles away and will chase the player to the ends of the earth. Iron Keep also has those annoying turtle enemies stuck in really tight corridors. Fighting them there is a gigantic chore where the player just has to wait for their combo to finish. That's all pretty annoying and very unfun. Other than that and some other examples the enemy placement is mostly okay.
Let's move onto NPCs. They suck. Lmfao okay they're not that bad but the NPCs here are much worse than the ones in ds1. (Spoilers for ds1) Ds1 had many NPCs. Most of them felt like you, the player, were just meeting them incidently while they were doing their own quests. Let's use Petrus and Rhea as an example. When you first meet Petrus he's a vendor but he also mentions that he's waiting for some people. After you kill some bosses the people that he's waiting for shows up. They then mention they're going down into the catacombs and next time you visit them only Petrus is back. He seems sus so the player goes to the catacombs and finds out that two of his companions went hollow and Rhea is stuck down there. After killing the hollows Rhea then goes back up to the undead church. Shenanigans happen and the player can decide to kill Petrus to save Rhea. However if the player then buys all of Rhea's miracles Rhea will then disappear to another area and go hollow. As you see these NPCs have their own stories they're going through as the player sets out on their own journey. Siegmeyer, Lautrec, Solaire, Logan all also have intriguing quests. DS2's NPCs don't have a quarter of the complexity ds1's NPCs have.
Most of the NPCs in ds2 you'll meet and they either stay in their area and sell you stuff or they move to majula and sell you stuff. Rosabeth, Chloanne, Carhillion, Magerold, and others just sit there and sell the player items. The only somewhat interesting NPCs are Pate, Creighton, Lucatiel, and Benhart. Pate and Creighton have an interesting quest where Pate had betrayed Creighton and so Creighton is hunting him. When they finally find each other they are fighting and the player can choose who to help. Lucatiel and Benhart are interesting in that they need to be summoned for bosses in order for their quest lines to complete. But at then end of their quests both characters just give you their armor and disappear. No turning into hollows or anything they just vanish lol. There's another npc, Licia, who's implied to be a liar and just wants souls. By finding an item the player can invade her world. But there's no point to that. In ds1 when you invade Lautrec it's because he killed the fire keeper and the player needs her back. It's more personal and interesting. Licia seems like the devs wanted to a Lautrec but didn't know how to make it good.
I don't want to talk too much about the lore and story because I admittedly did not read many items descriptions in this playthrough so I'll just go over some board strokes. In demons souls and ds1 the opening cutscenes introduces the player to the lore and setting of the world. Ds1 shows the player the major players who end up being major bosses in the game. Instead of doing this DS2 takes a more personal approach by stating that the player will lose their memories, humanity, get hollow, and die over and over again. It does next to nothing to set up the actual plot of the game. For that you need to read many, many items descriptions to understand what exactly is going on and hope you understand what Aldia is saying when he starts spouting stuff about the true nature of humanity. I didn't feel like doing that so I can't say if the lore and story is genuinely interesting but I can say it could've been better told to the player.
The covenants are pretty fun. A lot of them are reskinned covenants from ds1 but that's okay. Having covenants focus on PVP and co-op is a good thing. I really liked the gravelord servant covenant in ds1 but thought it was a shame that it was stuck in ng+. I think the rat king covenant is a good evolution of the gravelord servant covenant especially because you can access it in ng. I liked that they added 2 pve covenants. One of them just makes the game harder which is nice for people who want a challenge. The other one leads to players having to fight tough black phantoms and then eventually fighting one of the better bosses in the game.
I forgot to put this earlier but something I really liked in the game was how there were some giant corpses and big doors hanging around. Towards the end of the game the player is then tasked to acquire some items and go back to those areas. It rewards players for paying attention to their environment and I always love going back to areas to find new things.
So yeah, despite doing a lot of criticisms of this game I really loved it lol. It's got a lot of good things going for it. It's definitely the worst of the soul series but the worst is still pretty good. Not a game to miss if you like soulslikes. Also it has arguably the best fashion.