I've had a dream recently. I was driving around my neighborhood, but it was different. Vastly different. I wasn't looking at houses, I was looking at abandoned buildings. The more I explored the neighborhood, the more decrepit it became: Houses became remains of a destroyed, rotting victorian era building; establishments that were nothing but wood and the occasional gothic imagery; memories that never were, would manifest in the form of ones you would never know its full history.

Dark Souls II is exactly that dream.

Drangleic is a world that once was. You just happen to explore its end. People fight for scraps of its memories, as if there's something to salvage from what calamity has already claimed. A demented kingdom is all you will find. I fear the concept of dementia, but I'm also morbidly curious by it, much so the concept of death itself. Exploring it for the first time, I've never really realized how much these morbid curiosities are why I've enjoyed Drangleic as much as I have. I just thought it was a cool world. It's crazy how stories can be told mainly through visuals and you could totally ignore the meat of it and still get the message.

Dark Souls, as a series, explores death in different ways. Where the first one's thematic is death and how we cling on to life (perhaps a bit too much), Dark Souls 2 gives us death, and how it will eventually make us all forgotten. To me, death only comes once you're no longer remembered. In other words, you cling on to those memories, no matter how much they're degrading.

Oh, right, this is a video game. Oops.

Dark Souls 2 is also my first souls-like game. It's a game that formed me as a souls-like enjoyer. I'll always tell people to start with 2 with a win-win situation of "If you liked the others better, then at least you started with the worst and built it up. If you loved this game from the get-go, then you got a new favorite in your hands". Balance is weird in this game: it throws many bones at the player. It's much easier to get a hang of the game and breeze through it, unlike 1 and 3, and Elden Ring. But that's why it's so much fun. I get to play without stressing too much, I allow myself to get hit more often due to the existence of lifegems, and so on. It feels so much more dynamic and I got to play this game multiple times, with different play styles each time.

I've never played the Scholar of the First Sin edition, and from what I've heard, it's even more of a "gank squad central" game than before. I never had an issue with enemy placement in the original, but if it's accentuated in the new version, then I'd hate to try it out, lest it ruins my perception of this game being the best one of the series.

I'm not here to start wars about which Dark Souls is better, but I will say this: Don't trust a person who will go out of their way to tell you unprompted that Dark Souls 1 is the best one. They probably only play it for the PvP.

A wonderful sequel that not only gives us even more breathtaking sights, but also overall improved gameplay from its predecessor. If you can believe it, annihilators are balanced now.

Gracing us with themed chapters is this wad's biggest strength once more. Every level is crafted with such meticulousness that it makes me wonder how the creators didn't lose their minds making a single one of them. Doom has been around for 30 years, of course, so with that time spent, come its most dedicated fans, ready to rip you a new one. A primitive engine that dates from the 90s, and yet they crafted some of the most beautiful scenery I've seen in a while. The art direction is, simply put, spot on.

Music this time around is sublime as well! I'm happy to state that I've got some new memorable songs that can be stuck in my head whenever I want to. A team of 4 people (from what I can see in the credits) worked to make 36 original tracks and they all fucking slap.

Map design is also a big improvement! I can still name a couple of maps that soured the experience, but they've only soured it a bit. Most notably, however, and I'm gonna make this one personal: Map28 could definitely have done without those white cacos flying way too high up in the air. Not cool. However, I can give props for making properly difficult maps, like the jaw dropping map36. Holy hell, that one's just one of the best maps ever made.

This was overall a much better experience than the first Eviternity, and the first one was already really good. Highly recommend this wad for any DOOM fan, as well as for the people who are dipping their toes into more difficult experiences. Considering this was a stealth drop, of all things, I've gotta give it to the team for not leaking a single thing, they must have been bursting a vein or two, wanting to share their work to the world as soon as possible.

Played on Ultra-Violence. Timer says 14 hours, but you could probably add 1 or 2 hours in there with my save reloading. I tried to not save scum too much, with a decent degree of success.

DOOM forever.