DasAntihero
Log Status
Completed
Playing
Backlog
Wishlist
Rating
Time Played
--
Days in Journal
2 days
Last played
February 18, 2024
First played
December 30, 2023
Platforms Played
Sequels are hard to nail. Super Mario 64 was followed up by Sunshine, Dark Souls was followed by Dark Souls 2. In the opening hours of my trek through Drangleic, I was definitely starting to see why people disliked the game. Coming hot off completing the first one and conquering all its bosses, 2 was chock full of growing pains. What do you mean the enemies follow me around like I stole their last slice of pizza? Adaptability adds iFrames? Wait a sec, I'm losing health each time I die?!
At first, 2 is incredibly frustrating. It asks you to use all the tools in your kit while 1 asked you to stick to what you liked. You didn't need to use a bow if you didn't want to, you could stick to using a sword and shield the whole game. In 2, you can certainly try. But FromSoft wants you to do a lot more with your kit. This is 2's first strong point: Diversity. You don't have to be a mage the whole game like DS1 would want you to be, no. You can be a knight, a Cleric, even a Hexer or Pyromancer. Anything your little heart desires, you can build into it without anything getting screwed up.
Dark Souls 2 has some solid improvements. Find the process of going to a bonfire after popping a humanity to restore it tedious? So does FromSoft. Wanna see a weapon's moveset despite lacking its requirements? Give it a shot, bud. Oh no, your weapon's close to breaking! Sitting at a bonfire fixes this. Multiple consumables, simplified upgrading/enhancements, boss souls turning into weapons without needing to upgrade one weapon, seeing how much equip load you have, and Bonfire Ascetics. This is a shorthand list of the steps FromSoft takes forward, but they equally step back.
Bosses take a drastic hit. While decent, there's evidently a lot more stinkers. Those Bell Gargoyles were a fine fight, right? A challenging hurdle between ringing the first Bell of Awakening at the top of Undead Parish. How about five of them in an area that's a complete nothingburger simply to have a boss fight? For better or worse, Dark Souls 2 has a lot of boss fights. A whopping 41 bosses counting the DLC! Some are great, like the Lost Sinner, others are three skeletons in a trenchcoat with adds that's disguised as a boss fight.
Bosses aren't the worst thing, far from it. DS2's weakest aspects are things that have been talked about til the cows come home, even in this review. Adaptability exists solely since FromSoft noticed people would ignore Resistance in the first game, so why not make an entire stat devoted specifically to upping how many iFrames your dodge roll has? Enemy placement also comes up, slightly alleviated by picking up a bow and using arrows or even throwing knives. My major gripe relating to bosses is the runbacks to some of them. Hope you don't mind killing the same enemies 12 times to stop them from spawning, because boy howdy is it necessary for some of these. Level design is less fluid, sometimes it's too easy, other times it's agonizing and suffers from the enemy placement far more.
Dark Souls 2 is tough for me to rate. It teeters between a 3.5 and a 4, whereas its predecessor was between 4 and a 4.5. Has its rough edges and punishes those coming into it with the Dark Souls 1 mindset, being a slower and more methodical game on the combat front. Being able to build a character into however combined with making consumables and other weapon types far more useful than they were in the first make me adore Dark Souls 2 far more than I should. It's a B-Team sequel that happily wears its crown, as scuffed as it can be. Dark Souls 3 intrigues me, hearing it does do away with some of the QoL improvements from here that I liked, but I'm looking forward to giving it a fair shake. After conquering the DLCs and defeating all 41 bosses, I need a well earned break.
At first, 2 is incredibly frustrating. It asks you to use all the tools in your kit while 1 asked you to stick to what you liked. You didn't need to use a bow if you didn't want to, you could stick to using a sword and shield the whole game. In 2, you can certainly try. But FromSoft wants you to do a lot more with your kit. This is 2's first strong point: Diversity. You don't have to be a mage the whole game like DS1 would want you to be, no. You can be a knight, a Cleric, even a Hexer or Pyromancer. Anything your little heart desires, you can build into it without anything getting screwed up.
Dark Souls 2 has some solid improvements. Find the process of going to a bonfire after popping a humanity to restore it tedious? So does FromSoft. Wanna see a weapon's moveset despite lacking its requirements? Give it a shot, bud. Oh no, your weapon's close to breaking! Sitting at a bonfire fixes this. Multiple consumables, simplified upgrading/enhancements, boss souls turning into weapons without needing to upgrade one weapon, seeing how much equip load you have, and Bonfire Ascetics. This is a shorthand list of the steps FromSoft takes forward, but they equally step back.
Bosses take a drastic hit. While decent, there's evidently a lot more stinkers. Those Bell Gargoyles were a fine fight, right? A challenging hurdle between ringing the first Bell of Awakening at the top of Undead Parish. How about five of them in an area that's a complete nothingburger simply to have a boss fight? For better or worse, Dark Souls 2 has a lot of boss fights. A whopping 41 bosses counting the DLC! Some are great, like the Lost Sinner, others are three skeletons in a trenchcoat with adds that's disguised as a boss fight.
Bosses aren't the worst thing, far from it. DS2's weakest aspects are things that have been talked about til the cows come home, even in this review. Adaptability exists solely since FromSoft noticed people would ignore Resistance in the first game, so why not make an entire stat devoted specifically to upping how many iFrames your dodge roll has? Enemy placement also comes up, slightly alleviated by picking up a bow and using arrows or even throwing knives. My major gripe relating to bosses is the runbacks to some of them. Hope you don't mind killing the same enemies 12 times to stop them from spawning, because boy howdy is it necessary for some of these. Level design is less fluid, sometimes it's too easy, other times it's agonizing and suffers from the enemy placement far more.
Dark Souls 2 is tough for me to rate. It teeters between a 3.5 and a 4, whereas its predecessor was between 4 and a 4.5. Has its rough edges and punishes those coming into it with the Dark Souls 1 mindset, being a slower and more methodical game on the combat front. Being able to build a character into however combined with making consumables and other weapon types far more useful than they were in the first make me adore Dark Souls 2 far more than I should. It's a B-Team sequel that happily wears its crown, as scuffed as it can be. Dark Souls 3 intrigues me, hearing it does do away with some of the QoL improvements from here that I liked, but I'm looking forward to giving it a fair shake. After conquering the DLCs and defeating all 41 bosses, I need a well earned break.