(Finished main game on 3/24, abandoned beating last couple of bosses 3/25)
Had to manage beating the last 25% of this game on a Dualsense with a broken left analog stick, privy to send me forward towards an attack I meant to back up from. Rather than wait out the arrival of a new controller or return it for a fix - I just really wanted to get this game out of the way.
Off the heels of Dark Souls 1, FromSoft had managed to get a hot streak going with its 'Souls' titles. DeS and DS1 managed to entice players seeking out new, harder, wilder challenges that overlay a world brimming with deeper scars. It was a turning point in the games industry during the mid to late 7th generation and FromSoft would be right to keep that momentum going with making a follow up to solidify Souls as a series. Somehow DS2 didn't end the franchise, which is one positive I can say about the game.
I already knew going into this that it was the weird cousin of the series and I would say I'm privy to weird mechanics or janky structure, unfortunately I only came to the conclusion that I don't think there's any single aspect of this game I thought rivaling its kin in quality nor scope. While I haven't played all the games in the series I have played the game to release prior and after this: DS1 and Bloodborne, respectively. The series would go on to evolve and morph into several different forms since then, yet around the time of BB's release I remember discourse surrounding the trio regarding the difference between Dark Souls' reliance on being more patient and slower in your approach versus Bloodborne's more aggressive, tit-for-tat, combat. Where Dark Souls 2 lied in this comparison I don't remember. Hell, across the several years afterward I didn't hear much about Dark Souls 2 outside of memes about how Dark Souls 2 is the 'weirdo' one. It was the only thing I really had to base my expectations on, yet really- what isnt weird about Souls games anyway? Regardless of its notoriety (and a fairly shoddy PC port that had issues with my controller), I tried to remain somewhat bright in my outlook and understand what fans saw in SotFS.
As a starter for this Soulsborne I decided to focus a bit more into a Dex-Hex build compared to the Sorcery-Spellsword in ER and the Pyromancer in DS. I will say, if Magic is what you're looking for this is a pretty good entry, having a lot of variety in its spells. Until Elden Ring this seems to be the title with the most variety and ease of access to its spell selection. Hexes are a neat type of magic, basing its strength off the weaker of your Int/Faith, requiring you to level both simultaneously, but soft-capping early. Once you hit the DLCs this stratagem becomes a little less valuable, so I respec'd into a more DEX focus build. I don't tend to focus too hard on combat in these titles although this time around everything feels much more ‘crowded’ and I'll touch on that later but it's usually a good idea to carry some ranged options, or in some fields of magic, an AOE (thank you Dark Fog...). Most everything surrounding the combat feels about the same as DS1 feels, although certain movements/animations feel just a tad off, even for Dark Souls. Certain hitboxes not feeling right, lotta bad locking on…I dont have the chops to elaborate though so it could just be my imagination.
What I will elaborate on, however, is the enemies with which you apply your combative prowess on. Dark Souls certainly has its fair share of notorious enemies, a grand array of memorable jerks that have just that one move that reaches you, attempting to down an Estus. From the literal Dragon Asses parading in Lost Izalith, the Giant Werewolves in Yharnam, the Caelid Dinosaur Crows- the list goes on.
In Dark Souls 2 many of the enemies reflect the fallen kingdom and the surrounding areas, although coming off of Eldenring and Dark Souls 1 you can just kinda categorize certain mook types and aggressions as the game goes on. Where it starts to falter however is in 3 key details:
1) How many enemies you'll be facing
2) Where many of the enemies are placed
3) How persistent these enemies are
Oftentimes Dark Souls 2 will take an opportunity to present a sort of...scenario. One that feels like it sounded cooler in the level designer's head than in practice. Sometimes it's as simple as crossing a certain boundary and a horde of 4 or 5 enemies descending a tower in the distance to meet you, other times it feels more dubious. There's one instance late in the game where several enemies/beasts are caged up like experiments and a third party is monitoring these trapped monsters. The trope of 'the freed monsters turn on their captors' immediately comes to mind as you pull the lever to free these beasts, not realizing that games sometimes aren't that smart and you now have to contend with the third party and several new monsters aggroing onto you from mimics to ogres. I wouldn't mind, and you get some items out of it but it just feels like there were a lot of 'events' that were meant to be scripted out but just clash with the normal, actual game feel of a Soulsborne. I'll get into some of the 'world/area' event mechanics later but for enemies there's often too many in each area of a given map and often just feel too samey for much of the game.
Maybe a good chunk of that sameness across the enemy types is just how often you fight 'ambush' zombies/knights. I feel like for a good chunk of the game its just contending with these somewhat competent, agile Manikins and Alonne Soldiers and Heide Knights. They aren’t unmanageable on their own but they tend to use much more time/effort to take down than I’d like, especially when managing 2 or 4 of them (those damn Alonne Knights…).
Side note, however you get raided in this game way too often. I swear you get about 2 to 3 an area but it's never consistent as to when these guys might spawn, some areas have multiple invaders in the same area, too?? I'm sure there's story significance but I don't really care because invaders have usually been hit or miss in the series, and mostly miss in this game. The amount of times 'The Forlorn' has shown up eclipses the amount of times I died to most every boss in this game, I wish I were joking. That's not a flex on my skill, this person just shows up 12 times to annoy you.
Dark Souls 1 eventually starts to reuse certain enemies but throughout much of the experience you have pretty distinct and suitable adversities up until Lost Izalith. In addition, there weren't too many places that required you to look around corners and be cautious, other than a few in Lower Undead Burg(?). Here it's just a constant swarm of enemies dropping from out of eyesight tunnels, behind corners, and from several, several feet away. I swear the archers have the most absurd range, they will just continue to fire arrows or projectiles from much farther than you'd think.
Ranged enemies aren't the only ones however as close combat enemies, once proc'd, will also be incredibly tenacious in their pursuit. There are several areas in the game in which you'll prefer to just ignore certain mooks lying throughout a segment of the map, perhaps to backtrack to a sidepath you missed earlier. Careful now, several enemies decided to join you while you weren't looking! The Huntsman Copse I swear has the worst end of this, I've had boss runs where somehow the large Hunters chase behind me, even worse if you decide to be responsible and try to tackle the Executioners that ambush you from the cliffs. There are a lot of boss runs that have this issue, hell there's a lot of just 'running' where you pick up weird stragglers. Add in the factors I mentioned above like how many enemies some sections have and it just gets absurd. At least Fume Knight has a sober bonfire...
I think the primary example of this can be seen in the first area of the game, the Forest of Fallen Giants. Quite immediately there's a few details that feel off about the location, for starters there's an ogre just like, walking around? I don't know why. He just kind of ignores you, so you encounter the first group of enemies, one hiding behind the bridge, and deal with them deftly. You climb a ladder and there's just like 8 of them lying on the ground now, and a couple of firebomb tossers on a ledge. If you go out a side path there's also a cliff side with an item but there's just like a guy there. You can proc him 50% of the time and he just drops down and will chase you up the latter and this becomes every area from here on out. Just running through half a level and not being able to catch a break. Enemies that would otherwise feel fine to face just get super tedious and drag down certain areas of the game that much more. Although the area design is generally shoddy, with or without enemy combatants.
Immediately one of the weakest parts of Dark Souls 2 is the map design- a large step down from 1's intricate world. It's only been a few years since finishing Dark Souls 1 yet it's quickly become one of my favorites in gaming. Looking up from Blighttown and seeing the sky, the cliff and the tree of Firelink Shrine means so much. In Dark Souls 2 so many of the areas you traverse just feel so...disconnected and distant. Certain areas reminded me more of Spyro than of FromSoft, there's a certain style to how varied the level theme and structure are and its just not Dark Souls, or Bloodborne for that matter.
Maybe it's how certain areas in DS1 are connected that makes it feel so much more natural. Getting to Andrei’s Shop from the Undead Parish but also that bonfire acting as a hub leading out to Darkroot Garden and also Sen's Fortress feels amazing. In Dark Souls 2 it prefers to take you through tunnels and elevators and other means of transportation to reach new areas, everything is disjointed and unconnected. This comes to a breaking point after unlocking so many areas and just seeing the list of different, separate areas that feel so far apart... even though the Shaded Woods are just a brief walk away. By the end of the game you will have lit flames atop a large stone map, indicating the defeated major bosses of sections and I just can't point out what these flames are supposed to represent.
I guess the upside is there's a lot of openness as to what direction you can go right off the bat. Usually you head into the Forest into Heide's Tower but from there it's kind of up to you as to what 'Great Souls’' you want to hunt down, it just feels a bit more like I'm stumbling upon these more than anything. From what I saw a lot of people ran straight into Sinner's Rise immediately although after seeing the Flexile Sentry, I thought the area was meant for later. I don't know whether to praise it for its flexibility or prod it for its lacking sensible direction. Certainly other games in the series run into this same problem, no doubt. Bloodborne you might accidentally run into Cainhurst, Dark Souls has most of the Tomb of Giants available after beating Pinwheel but nothing much to do until you grab the Lordvessel, Eldenring is completely open world so you can just hit whatever. Although usually the games have been much more balanced or streamlined as to keep players out through other signs or hints than enemies being harder. Going into the Catacombs is already a farcical task until you gather a way to permanently destroy Skeletons and is completely off the beaten path. Bloodborne's manner of madness along with how each area is connected makes it so it's really hard to just stumble into an area with a higher skill ceiling than others.
I really appreciate how easily areas blend into each other in DS1, and admittedly- the lack of fast travel for the first half of the game feels so much more refreshing. Sidetracking isn't really all that lustrous as straying too far from the main objective of reaching Anor Londo -or hell straying too far from Firelink- seems unwise, so the options aren't really there at all. Why are the New Londo Ruins so easily accessible from the start? Well, while its not intentional you are able to grab an early Estus upgrade by suicide running into the ruins, but the ethereal enemies and lack of any clear objective should clue you in otherwise. On top of that it serves as a nice connecting point between an elevator from the Valley of Drakes, another area that acts more as a highway for other areas' off ramps and the upper end of Blighttown.
Dark Souls 1 also prides itself on not having too much of one 'status' to worry about. Looking back there's a lot of areas and enemies that carry status effects of some sort, but as far as I remember there's only really 1 area for each status? Blightown, the Depths, the Catacombs, each have a focus on one status and after those areas are done you don't have to worry too much from then on. In Dark Souls 2 it feels like there's so many traps and statuses just randomly spread around the place. Several places have poison throughout the area like the Gutter and Harvest Valley, lots of enemies will proc bleed if they attack you, basilisks are just randomly everywhere. This gets incredibly annoying in the DLCs, namely the Sunken King areas where a lot of enemies carry stone status and there’s an entire subsection with statues that just hock stone loogies at you.
I don't even feel as though I hate Dark Souls 1's uncooked latter half as much as I hate the boss fight checklist here in 2. Dark Souls 1 opens on several of your late game bosses totaling the world and bringing about the age you now live in- Nito, Seath, the Witch of Izalith and King Gwyn. The hard thing to really compel with these titans is that by the end of the game these are admittedly...odd fights, bar the games finale. Nito is fine, if easier than I had hoped, but Seath is a complete nutjob being a blind dragon with this eclectic BGM and the Bed of Chaos is a complete disaster of a puzzle boss. They're chumps. They’ve fallen off. They're losers- you're coming in to clean their mess, and by the time you reach Gwyn you're probably just as hollow inside as he is. Whether intentional or not, the latter half of Dark Souls 1 feeling a lot more 'broken' does in a weird way resonate with several of your colleagues also going through their own crises- Solaire either completely turns on you or loses out on his sunlight; most of Siegmeyer’s options end in him dying or resigning that he is too weak compared to you. The two endings are either you burning at the kiln and continuing the age of Fire or breaking the cycle and issuing in the age of Dark. Obviously From Soft didn't have all the time or money to finish up much of the late game and it suffers a lot while playing through, but part of me enjoyed the final stretch being as discombobulated and somewhat more ‘open’ compared to the earlier objectives.
Dark Souls 2 on the other hand, the intro this time around involves an old woman spinning a tale about a long lost kingdom of Drangleic and much of the cast will reference this lost kingdom surely. The main objective is given to you by the leveling up maiden, the Emerald Herald: To gather the four flames from 'Great Ones' that are considered to be reincarnations of the four main baddies from the first game. As you obtain the Sacred Flames, you get interrupted by a massive being named Aldia. He gives some vague explanations and lore regarding your role in all of this, somewhat like Frampt or Kaathe. He's fine but spoiler alert you fight him and its pretty middling, kinda disappointing considering he's the titular "Scholar of the First Sin". Dark Souls 1 might have a pretty light story if you just go through it but its creation mythos feels so ingrained in every step of the process from the intro onward that its easy to discern what's going on. Dark Souls 2 has these weird gaps throughout the journey that make me stop and try and remember what the hell is going on anyway. I pretty much had the jist after all, its just not as interesting as I figured. Yes the Lost Sinner has some neat connections especially with regards to items you find in one of the DLCs no I did not see that because by the time I hit the DLCs that boss had jettisoned itself out of my memory banks.
Padding the journey to claim these sacred flames are a swath of middling boss fights. Keeping a mental note in my mind (tierlistmaker .com on one of 20 tabs on the other monitor) I recorded how I felt about each boss with regard to how fun of a fight they are and the ‘pageantry’ surrounding it. Yet there’s a major quantity over quality issue here, especially in the first half of the game. Until you hit Drangleic Castle the two strongest fights in the game are Pursuer and Smelter Demon among a morass of unremarkable, dull or easy as hell fights. It's hard to even appreciate the former because he just shows up everywhere in the following area to ambush you- funny, admittedly but really tiring.
Much of the game's challenge relied more on obscure prerequisites rather than constant player engagement, or at least the 'facade' of a challenging encounter. Dark Souls 1 works excellently to at least present the "facade" aspect, even if it doesn't execute all that well. While Bed of Chaos or Pinwheel are incredibly flawed either in the complexity, or lack thereof, of the fight, or just a couple of terrible hitboxes, they still have some significance or build up that makes those fights feel justified. In Dark Souls 2, fights like the Covetous Demon, the Royal Rat fights, Demon of Song, several Dragonriders Flexile Sentry, hell some of the ‘Great Ones’ just feel like throwaway fights. They feel more like what would become the minor boss fights in the Eldenring catacombs.
Certainly there's some neat lore connecting the events following DS1 to the destruction of Drangleic thousands of years later, everything is just 'awkward'. This is the awkward middle child between the start of the end in Dark Souls 1 and what I understand to be the near total death of everything in DS3. Again, it feels like there's a neat idea on paper but in execution there's nothing really tying myself to this new foursome of foes. Like of all the guys to get Gwyn's shard its the Old Iron King? Man, what a downgrade.
That said Majula is a strong hub, it feels a bit more 'lively' as a hub than most of your other hubs in a soulsborne title. It's not my favorite but it's a pleasant place to bring people to and unlock new shopkeeps. At the very least I understand the jokes about Eldenring being more akin to Dark Souls 2-2 now.
The other thing that gets brought up regarding Dark Souls 2 was that the DLCs were a step above the vanilla base of the game, 3 flavorful scoops on top of everything else!... Well, I guess they aren't wrong, per se. I'll at least say the DLCs feel like an upward momentum from Sunken to Ivory to Old Iron. A lot of these have shades of what would next evolve into Bloorborne's geometry. In particular Eluem's long castle walls blend into courtyards and branching into lower levels/caves. I did really enjoy rolling that snowball down to make a shortcut- didn't enjoy the Frigid Outskirts so much.
I'll cop to it, there were a few bosses I didn't get around to (namely I got so tilted needing to go back through the Pilgrims of Dark area if you die to Darklurker so I just gave up playing anymore, I saw credits sue me) but hell if I was going to go check out the King's Pets in Frigid Outskirts, namely because of how bad the boss run is. Low visibility, large map, constant ambushing by these Kirin type enemies, not even a bonfire on the map so you have to take a coffin loading screen after each death and all this for what I hear is one of the hardest fights? Two of a boss I already fought earlier? Nah.
Crown of the Old Iron King feels the most consistent in its quality, and its probably the hardest which is an odd balance if I had to say. The worst part about Dark Soul II isn't that its hard, its that its obnoxious. Dark Souls I was likened upon its release as a return to retro style, no holds barred difficulty and yet most of the difficulty throughout the first game felt more like tests of patience, skill and a bit of pattern recognition/manipulation. Arriving at Old Iron King felt like a return to this mindset as you tackle bosses like Sir Alonne and Fume Knight, easily two of the games most fun fights.
I don't really pride myself on not liking video games, I think generally I buy and play games that I think I'd enjoy. Critically, I tend to hone in on aspects I enjoy and I tend to be optimistic on titles despite glaring flaws or shortcomings. Opinions are certainly given, flexible, intangible ideas and I just tend to be easier on titles in general, but sometimes its just that hard to really find the points that gave me a rush to my neurons in a game.
In my head I think about how I felt about Pokemon X/Y across the entire spectrum of the series and that's where I think about it being the 'weakest' of the set. It's still in a series I enjoy across the bar and that generation had additions that were at least tangible throughout the later games. I think initially starting Dark Souls 2 I was wondering if I'd feel a similar sensation, a faint appreciation but lacking the right 'punch'. I can appreciate a handful of fights and the generally laissez-faire structure, but otherwise this is a package too cluttered, too unfocused and too halfhearted in its attempts to recreate the magic of its predecessors.
It's sorta hard to place Dark Souls 2, not because of some conflicting feelings but because it feels a bit hypocritical to the pathos of the franchise. While I still wouldn't consider myself an authority of some sort, much of the enjoyment I've had with the franchise comes from the spectacle, the sense and the sortie of its worlds. There's a tug-of-war sensation to the world of a Soulsborne game- when you've conquered an area you mostly just breeze by it without consequence. Here, rather than allowing you to conquer an area- a lot of enemies end up just despawning after beating them after a certain number of times, instead. As if the game just gives up after so many times. The game isn't so hard, nor is it that different on the surface, yet every corner hides just a tiny bit of faux pas- enough to temper my enjoyment much earlier than I would prefer. Dark Souls' 'Stockholm Syndrome' post Anor Londo, while a blemish on the game and a prime example to game developings' tendency to lose steam in the third act, has somehow shone brightly compared to Dark Souls II's Imposter Syndrome-esque design doc.
For god's sake, they tried making another Ornstein and Smough fight, in a game that already has literally Ornstein in it.
Had to manage beating the last 25% of this game on a Dualsense with a broken left analog stick, privy to send me forward towards an attack I meant to back up from. Rather than wait out the arrival of a new controller or return it for a fix - I just really wanted to get this game out of the way.
Off the heels of Dark Souls 1, FromSoft had managed to get a hot streak going with its 'Souls' titles. DeS and DS1 managed to entice players seeking out new, harder, wilder challenges that overlay a world brimming with deeper scars. It was a turning point in the games industry during the mid to late 7th generation and FromSoft would be right to keep that momentum going with making a follow up to solidify Souls as a series. Somehow DS2 didn't end the franchise, which is one positive I can say about the game.
I already knew going into this that it was the weird cousin of the series and I would say I'm privy to weird mechanics or janky structure, unfortunately I only came to the conclusion that I don't think there's any single aspect of this game I thought rivaling its kin in quality nor scope. While I haven't played all the games in the series I have played the game to release prior and after this: DS1 and Bloodborne, respectively. The series would go on to evolve and morph into several different forms since then, yet around the time of BB's release I remember discourse surrounding the trio regarding the difference between Dark Souls' reliance on being more patient and slower in your approach versus Bloodborne's more aggressive, tit-for-tat, combat. Where Dark Souls 2 lied in this comparison I don't remember. Hell, across the several years afterward I didn't hear much about Dark Souls 2 outside of memes about how Dark Souls 2 is the 'weirdo' one. It was the only thing I really had to base my expectations on, yet really- what isnt weird about Souls games anyway? Regardless of its notoriety (and a fairly shoddy PC port that had issues with my controller), I tried to remain somewhat bright in my outlook and understand what fans saw in SotFS.
As a starter for this Soulsborne I decided to focus a bit more into a Dex-Hex build compared to the Sorcery-Spellsword in ER and the Pyromancer in DS. I will say, if Magic is what you're looking for this is a pretty good entry, having a lot of variety in its spells. Until Elden Ring this seems to be the title with the most variety and ease of access to its spell selection. Hexes are a neat type of magic, basing its strength off the weaker of your Int/Faith, requiring you to level both simultaneously, but soft-capping early. Once you hit the DLCs this stratagem becomes a little less valuable, so I respec'd into a more DEX focus build. I don't tend to focus too hard on combat in these titles although this time around everything feels much more ‘crowded’ and I'll touch on that later but it's usually a good idea to carry some ranged options, or in some fields of magic, an AOE (thank you Dark Fog...). Most everything surrounding the combat feels about the same as DS1 feels, although certain movements/animations feel just a tad off, even for Dark Souls. Certain hitboxes not feeling right, lotta bad locking on…I dont have the chops to elaborate though so it could just be my imagination.
What I will elaborate on, however, is the enemies with which you apply your combative prowess on. Dark Souls certainly has its fair share of notorious enemies, a grand array of memorable jerks that have just that one move that reaches you, attempting to down an Estus. From the literal Dragon Asses parading in Lost Izalith, the Giant Werewolves in Yharnam, the Caelid Dinosaur Crows- the list goes on.
In Dark Souls 2 many of the enemies reflect the fallen kingdom and the surrounding areas, although coming off of Eldenring and Dark Souls 1 you can just kinda categorize certain mook types and aggressions as the game goes on. Where it starts to falter however is in 3 key details:
1) How many enemies you'll be facing
2) Where many of the enemies are placed
3) How persistent these enemies are
Oftentimes Dark Souls 2 will take an opportunity to present a sort of...scenario. One that feels like it sounded cooler in the level designer's head than in practice. Sometimes it's as simple as crossing a certain boundary and a horde of 4 or 5 enemies descending a tower in the distance to meet you, other times it feels more dubious. There's one instance late in the game where several enemies/beasts are caged up like experiments and a third party is monitoring these trapped monsters. The trope of 'the freed monsters turn on their captors' immediately comes to mind as you pull the lever to free these beasts, not realizing that games sometimes aren't that smart and you now have to contend with the third party and several new monsters aggroing onto you from mimics to ogres. I wouldn't mind, and you get some items out of it but it just feels like there were a lot of 'events' that were meant to be scripted out but just clash with the normal, actual game feel of a Soulsborne. I'll get into some of the 'world/area' event mechanics later but for enemies there's often too many in each area of a given map and often just feel too samey for much of the game.
Maybe a good chunk of that sameness across the enemy types is just how often you fight 'ambush' zombies/knights. I feel like for a good chunk of the game its just contending with these somewhat competent, agile Manikins and Alonne Soldiers and Heide Knights. They aren’t unmanageable on their own but they tend to use much more time/effort to take down than I’d like, especially when managing 2 or 4 of them (those damn Alonne Knights…).
Side note, however you get raided in this game way too often. I swear you get about 2 to 3 an area but it's never consistent as to when these guys might spawn, some areas have multiple invaders in the same area, too?? I'm sure there's story significance but I don't really care because invaders have usually been hit or miss in the series, and mostly miss in this game. The amount of times 'The Forlorn' has shown up eclipses the amount of times I died to most every boss in this game, I wish I were joking. That's not a flex on my skill, this person just shows up 12 times to annoy you.
Dark Souls 1 eventually starts to reuse certain enemies but throughout much of the experience you have pretty distinct and suitable adversities up until Lost Izalith. In addition, there weren't too many places that required you to look around corners and be cautious, other than a few in Lower Undead Burg(?). Here it's just a constant swarm of enemies dropping from out of eyesight tunnels, behind corners, and from several, several feet away. I swear the archers have the most absurd range, they will just continue to fire arrows or projectiles from much farther than you'd think.
Ranged enemies aren't the only ones however as close combat enemies, once proc'd, will also be incredibly tenacious in their pursuit. There are several areas in the game in which you'll prefer to just ignore certain mooks lying throughout a segment of the map, perhaps to backtrack to a sidepath you missed earlier. Careful now, several enemies decided to join you while you weren't looking! The Huntsman Copse I swear has the worst end of this, I've had boss runs where somehow the large Hunters chase behind me, even worse if you decide to be responsible and try to tackle the Executioners that ambush you from the cliffs. There are a lot of boss runs that have this issue, hell there's a lot of just 'running' where you pick up weird stragglers. Add in the factors I mentioned above like how many enemies some sections have and it just gets absurd. At least Fume Knight has a sober bonfire...
I think the primary example of this can be seen in the first area of the game, the Forest of Fallen Giants. Quite immediately there's a few details that feel off about the location, for starters there's an ogre just like, walking around? I don't know why. He just kind of ignores you, so you encounter the first group of enemies, one hiding behind the bridge, and deal with them deftly. You climb a ladder and there's just like 8 of them lying on the ground now, and a couple of firebomb tossers on a ledge. If you go out a side path there's also a cliff side with an item but there's just like a guy there. You can proc him 50% of the time and he just drops down and will chase you up the latter and this becomes every area from here on out. Just running through half a level and not being able to catch a break. Enemies that would otherwise feel fine to face just get super tedious and drag down certain areas of the game that much more. Although the area design is generally shoddy, with or without enemy combatants.
Immediately one of the weakest parts of Dark Souls 2 is the map design- a large step down from 1's intricate world. It's only been a few years since finishing Dark Souls 1 yet it's quickly become one of my favorites in gaming. Looking up from Blighttown and seeing the sky, the cliff and the tree of Firelink Shrine means so much. In Dark Souls 2 so many of the areas you traverse just feel so...disconnected and distant. Certain areas reminded me more of Spyro than of FromSoft, there's a certain style to how varied the level theme and structure are and its just not Dark Souls, or Bloodborne for that matter.
Maybe it's how certain areas in DS1 are connected that makes it feel so much more natural. Getting to Andrei’s Shop from the Undead Parish but also that bonfire acting as a hub leading out to Darkroot Garden and also Sen's Fortress feels amazing. In Dark Souls 2 it prefers to take you through tunnels and elevators and other means of transportation to reach new areas, everything is disjointed and unconnected. This comes to a breaking point after unlocking so many areas and just seeing the list of different, separate areas that feel so far apart... even though the Shaded Woods are just a brief walk away. By the end of the game you will have lit flames atop a large stone map, indicating the defeated major bosses of sections and I just can't point out what these flames are supposed to represent.
I guess the upside is there's a lot of openness as to what direction you can go right off the bat. Usually you head into the Forest into Heide's Tower but from there it's kind of up to you as to what 'Great Souls’' you want to hunt down, it just feels a bit more like I'm stumbling upon these more than anything. From what I saw a lot of people ran straight into Sinner's Rise immediately although after seeing the Flexile Sentry, I thought the area was meant for later. I don't know whether to praise it for its flexibility or prod it for its lacking sensible direction. Certainly other games in the series run into this same problem, no doubt. Bloodborne you might accidentally run into Cainhurst, Dark Souls has most of the Tomb of Giants available after beating Pinwheel but nothing much to do until you grab the Lordvessel, Eldenring is completely open world so you can just hit whatever. Although usually the games have been much more balanced or streamlined as to keep players out through other signs or hints than enemies being harder. Going into the Catacombs is already a farcical task until you gather a way to permanently destroy Skeletons and is completely off the beaten path. Bloodborne's manner of madness along with how each area is connected makes it so it's really hard to just stumble into an area with a higher skill ceiling than others.
I really appreciate how easily areas blend into each other in DS1, and admittedly- the lack of fast travel for the first half of the game feels so much more refreshing. Sidetracking isn't really all that lustrous as straying too far from the main objective of reaching Anor Londo -or hell straying too far from Firelink- seems unwise, so the options aren't really there at all. Why are the New Londo Ruins so easily accessible from the start? Well, while its not intentional you are able to grab an early Estus upgrade by suicide running into the ruins, but the ethereal enemies and lack of any clear objective should clue you in otherwise. On top of that it serves as a nice connecting point between an elevator from the Valley of Drakes, another area that acts more as a highway for other areas' off ramps and the upper end of Blighttown.
Dark Souls 1 also prides itself on not having too much of one 'status' to worry about. Looking back there's a lot of areas and enemies that carry status effects of some sort, but as far as I remember there's only really 1 area for each status? Blightown, the Depths, the Catacombs, each have a focus on one status and after those areas are done you don't have to worry too much from then on. In Dark Souls 2 it feels like there's so many traps and statuses just randomly spread around the place. Several places have poison throughout the area like the Gutter and Harvest Valley, lots of enemies will proc bleed if they attack you, basilisks are just randomly everywhere. This gets incredibly annoying in the DLCs, namely the Sunken King areas where a lot of enemies carry stone status and there’s an entire subsection with statues that just hock stone loogies at you.
I don't even feel as though I hate Dark Souls 1's uncooked latter half as much as I hate the boss fight checklist here in 2. Dark Souls 1 opens on several of your late game bosses totaling the world and bringing about the age you now live in- Nito, Seath, the Witch of Izalith and King Gwyn. The hard thing to really compel with these titans is that by the end of the game these are admittedly...odd fights, bar the games finale. Nito is fine, if easier than I had hoped, but Seath is a complete nutjob being a blind dragon with this eclectic BGM and the Bed of Chaos is a complete disaster of a puzzle boss. They're chumps. They’ve fallen off. They're losers- you're coming in to clean their mess, and by the time you reach Gwyn you're probably just as hollow inside as he is. Whether intentional or not, the latter half of Dark Souls 1 feeling a lot more 'broken' does in a weird way resonate with several of your colleagues also going through their own crises- Solaire either completely turns on you or loses out on his sunlight; most of Siegmeyer’s options end in him dying or resigning that he is too weak compared to you. The two endings are either you burning at the kiln and continuing the age of Fire or breaking the cycle and issuing in the age of Dark. Obviously From Soft didn't have all the time or money to finish up much of the late game and it suffers a lot while playing through, but part of me enjoyed the final stretch being as discombobulated and somewhat more ‘open’ compared to the earlier objectives.
Dark Souls 2 on the other hand, the intro this time around involves an old woman spinning a tale about a long lost kingdom of Drangleic and much of the cast will reference this lost kingdom surely. The main objective is given to you by the leveling up maiden, the Emerald Herald: To gather the four flames from 'Great Ones' that are considered to be reincarnations of the four main baddies from the first game. As you obtain the Sacred Flames, you get interrupted by a massive being named Aldia. He gives some vague explanations and lore regarding your role in all of this, somewhat like Frampt or Kaathe. He's fine but spoiler alert you fight him and its pretty middling, kinda disappointing considering he's the titular "Scholar of the First Sin". Dark Souls 1 might have a pretty light story if you just go through it but its creation mythos feels so ingrained in every step of the process from the intro onward that its easy to discern what's going on. Dark Souls 2 has these weird gaps throughout the journey that make me stop and try and remember what the hell is going on anyway. I pretty much had the jist after all, its just not as interesting as I figured. Yes the Lost Sinner has some neat connections especially with regards to items you find in one of the DLCs no I did not see that because by the time I hit the DLCs that boss had jettisoned itself out of my memory banks.
Padding the journey to claim these sacred flames are a swath of middling boss fights. Keeping a mental note in my mind (tierlistmaker .com on one of 20 tabs on the other monitor) I recorded how I felt about each boss with regard to how fun of a fight they are and the ‘pageantry’ surrounding it. Yet there’s a major quantity over quality issue here, especially in the first half of the game. Until you hit Drangleic Castle the two strongest fights in the game are Pursuer and Smelter Demon among a morass of unremarkable, dull or easy as hell fights. It's hard to even appreciate the former because he just shows up everywhere in the following area to ambush you- funny, admittedly but really tiring.
Much of the game's challenge relied more on obscure prerequisites rather than constant player engagement, or at least the 'facade' of a challenging encounter. Dark Souls 1 works excellently to at least present the "facade" aspect, even if it doesn't execute all that well. While Bed of Chaos or Pinwheel are incredibly flawed either in the complexity, or lack thereof, of the fight, or just a couple of terrible hitboxes, they still have some significance or build up that makes those fights feel justified. In Dark Souls 2, fights like the Covetous Demon, the Royal Rat fights, Demon of Song, several Dragonriders Flexile Sentry, hell some of the ‘Great Ones’ just feel like throwaway fights. They feel more like what would become the minor boss fights in the Eldenring catacombs.
Certainly there's some neat lore connecting the events following DS1 to the destruction of Drangleic thousands of years later, everything is just 'awkward'. This is the awkward middle child between the start of the end in Dark Souls 1 and what I understand to be the near total death of everything in DS3. Again, it feels like there's a neat idea on paper but in execution there's nothing really tying myself to this new foursome of foes. Like of all the guys to get Gwyn's shard its the Old Iron King? Man, what a downgrade.
That said Majula is a strong hub, it feels a bit more 'lively' as a hub than most of your other hubs in a soulsborne title. It's not my favorite but it's a pleasant place to bring people to and unlock new shopkeeps. At the very least I understand the jokes about Eldenring being more akin to Dark Souls 2-2 now.
The other thing that gets brought up regarding Dark Souls 2 was that the DLCs were a step above the vanilla base of the game, 3 flavorful scoops on top of everything else!... Well, I guess they aren't wrong, per se. I'll at least say the DLCs feel like an upward momentum from Sunken to Ivory to Old Iron. A lot of these have shades of what would next evolve into Bloorborne's geometry. In particular Eluem's long castle walls blend into courtyards and branching into lower levels/caves. I did really enjoy rolling that snowball down to make a shortcut- didn't enjoy the Frigid Outskirts so much.
I'll cop to it, there were a few bosses I didn't get around to (namely I got so tilted needing to go back through the Pilgrims of Dark area if you die to Darklurker so I just gave up playing anymore, I saw credits sue me) but hell if I was going to go check out the King's Pets in Frigid Outskirts, namely because of how bad the boss run is. Low visibility, large map, constant ambushing by these Kirin type enemies, not even a bonfire on the map so you have to take a coffin loading screen after each death and all this for what I hear is one of the hardest fights? Two of a boss I already fought earlier? Nah.
Crown of the Old Iron King feels the most consistent in its quality, and its probably the hardest which is an odd balance if I had to say. The worst part about Dark Soul II isn't that its hard, its that its obnoxious. Dark Souls I was likened upon its release as a return to retro style, no holds barred difficulty and yet most of the difficulty throughout the first game felt more like tests of patience, skill and a bit of pattern recognition/manipulation. Arriving at Old Iron King felt like a return to this mindset as you tackle bosses like Sir Alonne and Fume Knight, easily two of the games most fun fights.
I don't really pride myself on not liking video games, I think generally I buy and play games that I think I'd enjoy. Critically, I tend to hone in on aspects I enjoy and I tend to be optimistic on titles despite glaring flaws or shortcomings. Opinions are certainly given, flexible, intangible ideas and I just tend to be easier on titles in general, but sometimes its just that hard to really find the points that gave me a rush to my neurons in a game.
In my head I think about how I felt about Pokemon X/Y across the entire spectrum of the series and that's where I think about it being the 'weakest' of the set. It's still in a series I enjoy across the bar and that generation had additions that were at least tangible throughout the later games. I think initially starting Dark Souls 2 I was wondering if I'd feel a similar sensation, a faint appreciation but lacking the right 'punch'. I can appreciate a handful of fights and the generally laissez-faire structure, but otherwise this is a package too cluttered, too unfocused and too halfhearted in its attempts to recreate the magic of its predecessors.
It's sorta hard to place Dark Souls 2, not because of some conflicting feelings but because it feels a bit hypocritical to the pathos of the franchise. While I still wouldn't consider myself an authority of some sort, much of the enjoyment I've had with the franchise comes from the spectacle, the sense and the sortie of its worlds. There's a tug-of-war sensation to the world of a Soulsborne game- when you've conquered an area you mostly just breeze by it without consequence. Here, rather than allowing you to conquer an area- a lot of enemies end up just despawning after beating them after a certain number of times, instead. As if the game just gives up after so many times. The game isn't so hard, nor is it that different on the surface, yet every corner hides just a tiny bit of faux pas- enough to temper my enjoyment much earlier than I would prefer. Dark Souls' 'Stockholm Syndrome' post Anor Londo, while a blemish on the game and a prime example to game developings' tendency to lose steam in the third act, has somehow shone brightly compared to Dark Souls II's Imposter Syndrome-esque design doc.
For god's sake, they tried making another Ornstein and Smough fight, in a game that already has literally Ornstein in it.