Dark Souls 2 (should I bother?)

[Noodle Lizard]

So I've had a copy of the Scholar of the First Sin edition lying around for a while, but its reputation precedes it and I've never opened the box.

I've platinumed Elden Ring, Bloodborne and Sekiro, and completed DS3 several times over. Demon's Souls I got bored of (mostly due to the bosses not being "proper" Souls bosses yet) and I've bounced off DS1 more times than I can count, never getting much further than the misty garden place. I just find it too sluggish and awkward, having been spoiled by the faster pace and polish of the later entries.

On paper, it sounds like DS2 might be the worst of both worlds - awkward and sluggish, but without the originality and admittedly stellar level design of DS1. On the other hand, some say it's admirable in its own right and arguably did some things better than any other entry.

Since I own it, I'm sure I'll end up giving it a whirl, but it'd be nice to get a thread going to see your thoughts, as well as tips and tricks to prevent me going hollow too soon.

[druss]

I read so much about how shit it was and then when I got to the hub area I started to wonder whether it's bad reputation was a bit exaggerated. It's definitely no where near as bad as people make out, the lore and characters are better than in 3 (plus a certain Darth Maul voice actor makes a surprise appearance as apparently he loved the first game) and the dlc is as good as any of the other games.

The world design is not as good though. You can't get out your binoculars, look into the distance and see areas you are going to visit later as you can in 1 and 3. And the dlc does highlight weaknesses in other areas of the game.

It's a little zippier than dark souls 1 but no where near as fast as 3 or Elden Ring so you might struggle (although levelling adaptability and getting your agility to 105 helps a lot).

There are 30+ plus bosses but it's best to view some of them as mini bosses as again, overall they are weaker than the bosses in the later games. There are a few standouts though ( mostly in the dlc).

I still love it despite its flaws and have platinumed both the original and the sotfs edition. I think you might struggle with the clunky controls but if you can get past that then there's a lot to enjoy, particularly if you get to the dlc.

Gun to my head, weakest in the series, but still better than most games and good enough that I wanted to platinum both the original and sotfs edition. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it, given its reputation.

[madhair60]

my opinion is it's not only the worst in the series but an actively bad, almost completely unenjoyable game that lacks any of the magic of the original. even the basic movement feels fucked up, and it has the design sensibility that people who aren't good enough for Dark Souls claim that game has. the DLC is also terrible, god knows why anyone has the slightest time for it.

credit where it's due: the build variety is the greatest in the series and one friend of mine swears by it as their favourite for this reason, but no build can make those levels fun or interesting.

[jimboslice]

So I've had a copy of the Scholar of the First Sin edition lying around for a while, but its reputation precedes it and I've never opened the box.

I've platinumed Elden Ring, Bloodborne and Sekiro, and completed DS3 several times over. Demon's Souls I got bored of (mostly due to the bosses not being "proper" Souls bosses yet) and I've bounced off DS1 more times than I can count, never getting much further than the misty garden place. I just find it too sluggish and awkward, having been spoiled by the faster pace and polish of the later entries.

I'm in a similar boat to you... currently in the endgame of ER but I know I'll need another Souls game sooner or later. I also bounced off DS1 when I first played it (a LONG time ago), and made some progress in Demon's Souls recently but just got bored of it.

Do you not fancy trying a more modern knock-off like Lies of P? I think that's going to be my next pick. Also very tempted to try NIOH2 or Wo Long in a no doubt futile attempt to play more Sekiro.

[Noodle Lizard]

Do you not fancy trying a more modern knock-off like Lies of P? I think that's going to be my next pick. Also very tempted to try NIOH2 or Wo Long in a no doubt futile attempt to play more Sekiro.

They're all on my list, although something feels "wrong" about playing them, like the fact that they're so clearly imitations would interfere psychologically.  I'm sure I'll get over it, provided they're good.

—

I started playing DS2 tonight. First impressions aren't great - ugly, weird animations, and I wasn't expecting Miyazaki's absence to be quite as immediately noticeable (in the dialogue especially). Still early days; I've barely left Majula, and spent a fair while getting through an area I'm probably not meant to be in yet until it got too ganky for comfort.

[The Crumb]

Do you not fancy trying a more modern knock-off like Lies of P? I think that's going to be my next pick. Also very tempted to try NIOH2 or Wo Long in a no doubt futile attempt to play more Sekiro.

Nioh 2 is fucking great, not really like Sekiro though. It's an odd but addictive hybrid of Ninja Gaiden, Souls and a loot grinder. The world and level design are way below From, but the combat is way better.

Wo Long is more like Sekiro but also not very good. It's fine for a playthrough, but takes the bad parts of the Nioh games while also stripping out most of the depth and flexibility. The combat is still fundamentally satisfying though.

Back to Dark Souls 2, I like it. There's something about the atmosphere of it that feels unique in the series, more autumnal melancholy and less ott dark fantasy. There's some great characters and Majula is my favourite hub in the series. There's definitely a lot of questionable bits quality wise, but it's also got a lot of ambitious attempts to try new things and the location variety is certainly a lot better than 3.

Aside from some ridiculous enemy groupings in SOTFS, it's not particularly difficult and you get enough Souls to level up quickly, so it's not a huge slog to get through.

I much prefer it overall to the completely unambitious and pointless DS3.

[AliasTheCat]

I loved the original, so was very excited for this when it came out. I played it through once and have never fancied playing it again.
I do kind of understand why it made some of the choices it did, leaning into the RPG side of things (as bgmnts mentioned) so that people very familiar with the original wouldn't just be able to rinse their first playthrough by parrying and rolling their way through it.
The best thing I can say about the world design is it has a palpable, melancholy sense of desolation, but the levels themselves are largely uninspired and ugly, and the approach to combat encounters came across as needlessly frustrating and spiteful at its worst- throwing multiple mobs at you to increase difficulty when the combat system was ill-equipped for dealing with them- something Bloodborne worked out magnificently.
At its heart though, it feels to me like DS2 misses the point of what made the original so great: whereas the original was so well thought out and defined it invited exploration and a fascination with the world and its lore, the same isn't true here (at least for me) and where everything felt considered and deliberate in the original, the sequel seems to lean into cryptic descriptions and notions of difficulty. In short I just didn't find it fun to play or explore.

[oggyraiding]

I find SotFS (not including the DLC areas) to be the easiest in the series.

As others have mentioned, tremendous build variety, and lots and lots of content. I've got hundreds of hours in it, there are definitely a lot of areas I absolutely loathe (poison valley, poison windmill, lethal lava land, the dark place, the poison dark place, spider mine village). Actually when I'm listing those, that's a big chunk of the game I hate. Some of the bosses are underwhelming - many variations on "big armoured bloke".

I can see why people hate it, a classic complaint being that you reach the top of a windmill and take an elevator from there and you end up at a castle surrounded by lava. It doesn't have the organic well considered layouts of the other games. You could argue it's meant to provoke a surreal and dreamlike atmosphere, you could also argue the makers didn't give a fuck.

[chutnut]

my opinion is it's not only the worst in the series but an actively bad, almost completely unenjoyable game that lacks any of the magic of the original. even the basic movement feels fucked up, and it has the design sensibility that people who aren't good enough for Dark Souls claim that game has. the DLC is also terrible, god knows why anyone has the slightest time for it.

100% this. Had to force myself to finish it, and if I had anything else to play at the time I wouldn't have bothered. Well I say I finished it, I completed the main game and I think 2 dlcs, eventually gave up in that snow area with the invisible horses.
It was obvious from the first cut scene where that old woman is like "you're going to die and lose your souls all the time hahaahah!" that it was going to be a very different game. I'm honestly struggling to think of anything I liked about it. Fume knight was cool?

[chutnut]

Actually I just remembered that area where you have to get to the bottom of a massive room with concrete blocks everywhere, and one of the bosses is doing some creepy singing the whole time, that was cool

[fit bird]

If you can get past this glaring, enormous, ridiculous fuck up:

even the basic movement feels fucked up

and put it out of your mind that walking around feels like COMPLETE SHIT then there's a lot of cool stuff. There are so many areas in it, it's huge.

[Thursday]

you could also argue the makers didn't give a fuck.

This would be a silly thing to argue.

Doesn't mean it's good, just you know a big complex project that doesn't have infinite time and money and resources will probably have little oversights that happen... even one that does will.

[Noodle Lizard]

From what I understand of it, Miyazaki wanted Dark Souls to be a standalone game, Fromsoft and Bandai wanted a trilogy. Miyazaki wanted to work on Bloodborne, but DS2 goes ahead immediately to capitalize on the success of the first one, with Miyazaki's role greatly diminished and a limited timeframe.

It comes out, gets the reception it gets, Miyazaki gets made president of Fromsoft, takes over DS3 and writes it in a way which basically closes off the series for good, whilst ignoring more or less every new mechanic and bit of lore introduced in DS2. I don't think Miyazaki or anyone from Fromsoft has outright said "yeah, it was shit", but they're clearly aware it was a bit of a blunder.

[H-O-W-L]

I like DS2 a lot and I think it's the most eminently playable of the lot of them. DS1 is obviously the king but you have to sit down with the fucker for hours at a time, whereas DS2 allows burst play which I value a lot. If you're gonna get up my arse about how Dark Souls must be "savored" then don't bother. I have and i do, but when I want to replay a game I've already ran through once I don't like faff.

DS3 is utter shit and a soul-less cash grab that recycles Bloodborne content into a lazy Dark Souls sequel. As much as DS2 was incited as a cashgrab I think it's clear from the concept art and design documents that it really was not a cashgrab lazy product for those involved. Rushed, sure. Flawed, definitely. But it was not as lazy as plonking Anor Londo back in and adding Gwyndolin but gooey and having three swamps that look exactly the same back to back with Bloodborne building assets lazily pasted in.

Literally everything people spear DS2 for (laziness, ugly environments, reused enemies, weird controls and attack speeds, 'member berry content, dude in armor bosses) DS3 has threefold and yet people let it off because Miyazaki's back and OMG Anor Londo!

[Noodle Lizard]

Anor Londo's barely an area in DS3, though. You turn up there briefly to kill a boss which is a callback to DS1. I think that's alright for the final entry in a series. Good fight, too.

I'm a defender, though, spared the baggage of having played DS1 first. I maintain that DS3 has the most solid boss line-up out of any of the games except maybe Sekiro, which loses out in terms of quantity but is incredibly consistent in quality. Elden Ring and Bloodborne, great as they are, have a fair few clunkers, and the boss fights in DS1 sadly just aren't that exciting to someone who started with Elden Ring and worked their way back.

I can't speak for DS2 yet, mind you.

[druss]

The callbacks in DS3 are mostly very bad and obnoxious. Siegward, storm ruler and demon ruins being the worst that spring to mind. Definitely worse writing than DS2, I can only presume Miyazaki's name clouds some opinions on this. Didn't mind Anor Londo though which was one of the few callbacks that worked for me.

I used to prefer DS2, mostly for lore and story reasons, but I replayed them both recently and the atmosphere, bosses and gameplay of 3 have nudged it above 2 for me.

[Thursday]

whilst ignoring more or less every new mechanic and bit of lore introduced in DS2. I don't think Miyazaki or anyone from Fromsoft has outright said "yeah, it was shit", but they're clearly aware it was a bit of a blunder.

I wouldn't say that's true, there's bits of DS2 lore/mechanics/weapons in Dark Souls 3

Worth also noting, that a lot of people say that Elden Ring expands on some of the design philosophies in D2. Might be harder to get your finger on this at first, I can see ways it feels like what they were attempting with Dark Souls 2 with a much higher budget and time.


It definitely did have some production problems though - there was a change of director halfway through the project and a lot of things were changed (There's a 4 part in-depth interview with the director (Yui Tanimura) here https://peterbarnard1984.tumblr.com/post/113163062955/dark-souls-2-design-works-translation)

The DLC's are generally thought to be the best of the game, so it shows once they were building something new from scratch, knew what the game was, had the new director on board things clicked a lot better.

Literally everything people spear DS2 for (laziness, ugly environments, reused enemies, weird controls and attack speeds, 'member berry content, dude in armor bosses) DS3 has threefold and yet people let it off because Miyazaki's back and OMG Anor Londo!

The thing is with this is Dark Souls 3 has 3 credited directors, Tanimura from SOTFS and another guy called Isamu Okano. Sekiro is credited as Miyazaki and Kazuhiro Hamatani, and Tanimura is also credited as co-director on Elden Ring. Déraciné in between all this has 3 directors as well, and there was a lot of overlap between the projects. There's no way Miyazaki is balancing being president and being the main director/writer on all these projects at the same time, especially one as huge as Elden Ring, not to the extent he was on Dark Souls and Bloodborne. I'm sure he still setting the tone, approving the ideas, but so much of the design work ideas come from others at Fromsoft too.

[The Crumb]

My problems with defending DS3 on the basis if boss strength are:

1.there are still some absolute shit ones amongst the small number (the tree, the giant, big skeleton guy Wolnir)

2. None of the bosses are particularly good as a caster build. Despite it being a core build option, From aren't very good at designing bosses around it.

The lack of exploration and over profusion of bonfires in DS3 feel like From had bought too much into the hype around their boss fights and basically converted the game to a glorified boss rush. Sekiro actually does the concept well tbf.

[falafel]

It comes out, gets the reception it gets,

I thought the reception was pretty rapturous at first, notwithstanding some grumbling about the lighting model.

[Barry Admin]

I absolutely love the second one. Still haven't finished the third (or Elden Ring, actually), but the second one is a banger.  I don't usually play through stuff a second time, and tbh I'll usually lose interest right towards the end of a long, single-player game like this.  But DS2 kept me incredibly engaged and I still have nothing but fond memories of it.

When it came out, the rat bro stuff was fucking incredible.

Some years later I bought the Scholar edition for a fiver in Asda, and I spent weeks and weeks rinsing the fuck out of it, and did actually finish it, and all the DLC. 

[bgmnts]

I want to try DS2 because DS1 is just so interminable. I assumed they just made it a bit better; not as tediously difficult, and a bit more fun to play.

[druss]

I want to try DS2 because DS1 is just so interminable. I assumed they just made it a bit better; not as tediously difficult, and a bit more fun to play.

Less fun to play, more obnoxiously difficult, but a (mostly) fun world to explore and great build variety.

[Noodle Lizard]

Less fun to play, more obnoxiously difficult, but a (mostly) fun world to explore and great build variety.

The build variety is often mentioned as a highlight. I imagine it's more flexible than DS1, but does it have advantages over the later games?

[druss]

The build variety is often mentioned as a highlight. I imagine it's more flexible than DS1, but does it have advantages over the later games?

Bloodborne and DS3 are a joke comparatively, Elden Ring has the best of the lot.

Edit: Not even counting Sekiro's "build variety".

[Noodle Lizard]

Bloodborne and DS3 are a joke comparatively, Elden Ring has the best of the lot.

Edit: Not even counting Sekiro's "build variety".

Yeah, I just meant the Souls games, although I count ER among them. I would've guessed ER had the most going on, but I wonder if this (along with the spirit ashes) is responsible for some of the weird tuning you get with some of the late-game bosses, all having massive AoE attacks to stop people from just Comet Azuring them into hasty oblivion.

[oggyraiding]

Looking back at the series, was vanilla Dark Souls 2 the only entry to have DLC weapon early unlocks?

https://www.polygon.com/2014/2/12/5404872/dark-souls-2-black-armor-weapons-pack-pre-order

None of them look particularly like I'd use them, I feel DS2's marketing was very much of its time. DLC weapons and an "epic" advert.

[druss]

Just remembered a Dark Souls 2 USP: npc invaders, particularly in the DLC. By far the best and most creative, weirdly abandoned after this game as none of their future games have had anyone as good as Maldren the assassin (and others, but he is the star).

[Pink Gregory]

Looking back at the series, was vanilla Dark Souls 2 the only entry to have DLC weapon early unlocks?

https://www.polygon.com/2014/2/12/5404872/dark-souls-2-black-armor-weapons-pack-pre-order

None of them look particularly like I'd use them, I feel DS2's marketing was very much of its time. DLC weapons and an "epic" advert.

I'm v.happy that they use the original Locomotive Breath and not some husky voiced slowed down version or some lame metalled up version.

[Rush Goalie]

It's mechanically clunky compared to Demon's or Dark, most weapons feel like they're made of polystyrene, and the gank squad enemy placing is bloody annoying. On the other hand, it's got atmosphere, variety and personality on a scale none of the other contemporary FROM games have managed.

It feels like Dark Souls Gaiden, taking the spirit of the original and displacing it to a dreamlike alternative timeline. The patchwork structure and lack of backtracking makes it feel much less familiar. Where I can run through the entire sequence of Dark Souls in my mind, this feels like flickering fragmented memories of a journey. This ties beautifully to the disparate themes of dementia and affirming one's own narrative.

It's frustrating and unfair, but beautiful and Odyssean in a way that FROM have never equalled.

[Noodle Lizard]

I haven't had much of a chance to play yet (at least not the 8 hour sessions I would like, never become married/employed/a parent), but I've cleared the Forest of Fallen Giants and got myself a decently upgraded Fire Longsword.

It's fun enough, but the overabundance of ganks and ambushes is already a bit annoying. Ambushes in the other games teach you to lock on or look around carefully when entering new areas or approaching an item, but here they just appear as if spawned from thin air and it happens constantly.

The losing max HP upon death is a bad mechanic which doesn't inspire much risk-taking or exploration, and having to dump levels into Adaptability sucks. I like that this is offset by some attributes improving multiple stats to varying degrees (strength increases HP a bit etc.), but I still prefer the more streamlined systems in DS3 and ER.

The combat is bad compared to the other games, including its predecessors, but it's somewhat charming I suppose. I'm not hating it anyway, despite those obvious flaws.