Magnemania not just that, but, if I'm not mistaken (someone correct me if I'm wrong), we'd be hearing Welsh Matthewmatosis talk about English Matthewmatosis's attack on Irish Matthewmatosis. If I'm not mistaken, all we would need is a Scottish Matthewmatosis to make a response video to MauLer and we would have UK Bingo.
"Did I just listen to a man talk for 2 hours about a video by man I've never heard of talking about a review by a man I've never heard of about a game I own but have never played?" *clicks Part 3*
@@JohnDoe-kn7ex I played a couple hundred hours of Dark Souls 3, but I don't have experience with the others. I own Scholar but just never got around to it, kinda wanna see what's up someday.
This series reminds me of times in history when one scholar or clergyman would put out a tract/pamphlet and another would publish a public refutation. Very well written and in-depth. Thank you for putting in the effort, it is appreciated.
Edward Copping but it is 16 hbomberguys long!!!!! You expect him to watch it???? He has better things to do,like laugh at people without debunking their argument or using personal experience to debunk stats and facts
jo jo As a fellow who watches Sargon of Akkad on a frequent basis and also watches Harris irregularly, I find it laughable that Harris and his fans are constantly poking fun at Sargon's excuse of not watching Harris' rebuttal to him because it was "too long," and yet Harris himself can't be bothered to spare an afternoon listening to MauLer's comprehensive takedowns of his video by claiming it's "too long." Noah: Hello, Pot. My name's kettle. You are black. Meme Kid: DAT'S RAY-CIST!!
@@Adorni That happens to Harris a LOT, I watched his Sargon video and the thing that stood out to me most was that his criticism of Jon Tron as "being a person who talks about video games and has no place talking politics because of it and should go back to video games" applies completely to him. Harris is a blatant hypocrite whenever it suites him and it drives me up the wall how big he's gotten despite it.
Idigam Studios It’s the production values some of his videos have, alongside his sometimes insightful takes and funny jokes. While I don’t necessarily like throwing shade at him, as I am subscribed to his channel, Harris makes me think he’s kind of like the “Armored Skeptic” of the “other side.” Which I only use because Harris’ political points tend to fall along similar lines as people like Contrapoints, Lindsay Ellis, Folding Ideas, and so on. Which would be fine, if he didn’t act so smug and superior about having those political points all the time. Basically, Harris comes across as a guy who thinks he’s smarter than he actually is, and few people care for that kind of behavior.
It is. Harris deemed Vergil from DMC3 as the best boss because in essence he's another Dante with different variables (such as attack patterns and weapons) creating the contrast of being a rival or a better version of the player character. But the reason Vergil works and is deemed as the best boss in that game is because he's the only boss that's like that. If you make every boss of DMC3 as a base Dante with different variables then Vergil losses all his appeal, which is exaclty what happened with DS2. Since every enemy is a big armored knigh not only is there no visual contrast but the movepool between them is too similar that's why the most common critisim of DS2 boss fights is that they not only look similar but FEEL similar. I bet you that if Artorias was a DS2 boss no one would have remembered the way they do. Artorias not only is well designed but he contrasts of how different he is in a game in which each boss was designed to be unique. That's why for example Sir Alonne is not memorable to me, all I see is yet another 2.5 meter height knight with a big sword (and a broken grab) in a game in which 75% of the bosses are like that, he was supposed to be the Artorias of DS2 but the problem is most of the bosses are already Artorias wannabes
+Xfushion2 Whether you believe there's too many guys in armour or not DS2 does have a wider variety of not 'dudes in armour' bosses as well. Bosses in the original Dark souls could be quite similar to each other.
the political left tactics bleed: Divert what the other people mean into completely different thing and use incoherent rambling to solidify that it was the topic talked about and your pile of "evidence" proved it right.
It is though. There is a limited number of ways in which dude in armor can attack. They all just swing their weapons, SOMETIMES punctuated by an AoE or self-buff. They don't have weak points or interesting models/hitboxes. It's just a cylinder that you can hurt.
Dear Mauler, I resent that you described Covetous Demon as "the Magikarp of Dark Souls." Magikarp is a pretty sad excuse for a pokemon, it's true. That said, with enough time and effort, it evolves into a Gyarados, a true powerhouse of a Pokémon with extremely high attack and speed values. What does Covetous Demon turn into? Nothing. So please, don't insult Magikarp with this horrendous comparison again. It's just not right.
If anything, Covetous Demon is the exact opposite of a Magikarp, as while the Magikarp has a chance of evolving into a mighty Gyarados, the Covetous Demon is the end result of a human completely succumbing to their gluttony. Seriously some of the hardest I've ever laughed at Souls lore.
Honestly, I'm shocked the Old Dragonslayer isn't brought up more when people talk about how bad DS2's bosses can be. It's rehashed content with very little thought put into balancing. You can't take away Smough and expect the fight to be just as good as it was in the previous game. I can't wait to see how you'll tackle his statements on game reviews. It contradicts his video on Fallout 3 and all the statements he made about God Hand. While most of the points he made through his defence (I thought) were reasonable, to the point of where I was willing to replay the second game, that section is awful.
As someone who never played it, I can't really comment on how accurate it is. I noticed a few of his criticisms could apply to Skyrim as well but that's a totally different game. What do you disagree with?
SoupCann I havnt played the first two Fallouts and I don't remember Fallout 3 very well, so we are in the same boat. But my problems is with his reasoning. So he claims Fallout 3's ending is bad because it has an anti-climatic ending that ends up with a crappy two second boss fight (which I 100% agree with). As a point of comparison, the boss fight with the Master in the first game is well crafted. You can fight him but you can also have a discussion with his regarding the super mutant propogation, the right to life, the future of humanity and if you are clever, you can convince him he's made a mistake and should stop making super mutants. So it's a good ending because A) for the player, there is a moral conflict that needs to be resolved and B) the game has multiple paths for choice, role playing etc. So far so good, except Hbomber immediately pisses it away by mentioning that there is a log that you can find that demonstrates that the super mutant project is pointless because they are all sterile. If you tell the Master this he feels remorseful and commits suicide. Like, he talks about it because it shows off the depth of the game, but doesn't Hbomber realise that the existence of the log immediately undermines what he just said was a positive of the game? There is no moral conflict, as there is an objectively correct solution and there is no more gameplay options because you just hold a key item while talking to him to get the best outcome.
The funniest thing is literally while reading this comment I thought of a way it could work, either have the fight be very early, possibly the first boss. Instead it's placed way too late in the game. In like 20 seconds I thought how to objectively balance it better, however as for fun, half a boss fight will never be as fun as a full one. Being able to realise how basic balancing works isn't through my skill, it doesn't require skill to say "easy bosses are harder when the older is weaker". Instead this highlights the painfully obvious issue DS2 has with copy pasting assets with no thought for quality.
It's not even JUST the removal of Smough from the boss fight, there's also now no longer a secondary 'buff' phase to the boss. So they literally took a 2 v 1 boss encounter with a mechanic that made it to where the surviving boss would absorb the power of the dead one upon defeat and become that much harder to keep the fight interesting.. and turned it into a 1 v 1 with no buff mechanic. You could've absolutely thrown in Ornstein by himself and made it a fun fight. If they would've just given us 'buffed' Ornstein alone that would've been decent for an early game boss, but I would've liked to have seen a buffed.. 'buffed' version of him. That would've been ideal, I think the best way it could've been done was taking the buffed Ornstein and giving him a completely overhauled move set and altering his HP pool and damage output slightly. It still would've been lazy, rehashed content.. but it could've at least been decent. I know the Old Dragonslayer boss is a bit different than the original 'unbuffed' Ornstein but it's different in that the boss now has a few new, highly telegraphed moves and he can use fucking hexes.. brilliant.
"Roughly on equal footing with the player." Yes, the bosses that are always bigger than you, have a larger reach (unless maybe you're using a spear or a greatsword,) have a truckload of health and hit LIKE a truck are CLEARLY on equal footing with the player.
@@_doop8257 "How fun would it be if they were exactly the same as you?" Not that fun usually. That's why DS2's bosses (and the ones from the rest of the series) aren't on par with you either, because it would lead to a shitty boss. Hbomber was wrong, the comment you were replying was right, and you completely missed its point. It could make for a fun gimmick, or for an emotional moment like fighting a rival in some games does, but that requires a narrative build-up, like the one Solaire or Hawkwood have. Otherwise it's just plowing through another weak enemy. You can see the devs of DS2 struggling with that and settling down by giving invaders a lot of damage, poise and health, which removes the "on equal footing" part. They also have none of what makes rival fights engaging, that being 1. being different from the rest of enemies by behaving similarly to the player, and 2. having the narrative buildup i mentioned. They are honestly just a bother.
@@shadowknight743 I understood it as a reference to Hugh Mungus: A few years ago one dude was asked for his name by an activist, he joked "Hugh Mungus" and the activist freaked out because she took it as "sexist". Then she called police claiming it was sexist, offensive and harassment.
The capra and taurus demons get even more of a pass since they're reused in the Demon Ruins, which was only a step above Lost Izalith. On top of that, the boss versions literally came from the Demon Ruins so you'd expect to find more there. A much better example would have been the reskins of the Asylum Demon.
@@bradenmerriman5206 The first one you fight is trying to either rescue the one trapped below, or to stop the chosen undead from the legend. The other one was probably captured during the war against the demons since he can cast flame sorceries like the firesage, but no longer has chaos fire on his body.
3:30 that is such a shallow thing to say, and he specifically stated "all games" so monster hunter will be better if all the creative, huge, scarry, and varied monsters were replaced with enemies that are similar to the player character
That's the reason why bosses like Artorias and Gwyn leave an impression on the player. In a monster-dominated world, you encounter broken men that should have died a long time ago. It's a beautiful contrast from the rest of the game.
I was just thinking, 'Whaaat, this one is much shorter?' But I glanced at the time and it was at 56:19 in the video. What felt like 20 minutes, was nearly a whole hour. Good work... On to the next.
“I love this game so much and think that much of the criticism is wrong or overinflated so…I couldn’t be bothered to play one of the most popular fights from the game” -Harris
this is the reason I do not like the invasion system in dark souls 2, in dark souls 1 you could play the entire game as a hollow and cannot be invaded. but if you turn human you are rewarded because you can now summon phantoms to help you and the risk is you can be invaded. in dark souls 2 they made it so you can be invaded as a hollow and I did not like that idea.
@Haku infinite But Sekiro had the resurrection system, so even if you died, as long as you weren't in a boss fight, you could always run away back to the last idol because of hyper-mobility to get your resurrection power back. And yes, while it is annoying that you can lose half of your collected experience and gold on death, there are the gold bags you can buy at a 10% loss to keep your gold safe. For the experience, as long as you get a full skill point, you can't lose that. So if you're almost to a full skill point, it's easy enough to grind against some weak enemies to get a full point if you're worried about dying. (Also you do have a chance to just not lose anything, which is nice when it does happen.)
@Haku infinite alright then, I personally never had a problem with the penalty for dying, and I also never had a problem with grinding for skills, but that's probably just because I always kill everything in the area and don't skip enemies. Idk, it was just never a big deal for me. I never thought that I needed most of the skills anyways.
@Haku infinite Git good, Sekiro is the most fun and well balanced game in the series, there is no punishement in death, you're wrong. Dragonrot is easy to cure, Dragonrot dont kill the NPC's, and what quest are you talking about ? There is litteraly like 3/4 quests and some of them can be done very quickly and some are very, very useless to do unless you want to learn more about the lore or the character, but for the rest you can continue the game even if all the NPC'S have dragon rot, and you can even unlock all the endings with it. - Boss are not that hard in general, i have more struggle with mini-boss like the snake eye in the poisoned area or the Headless in general (but near the end game they are not a problem anymore) Other tips: - You can buy bags of gold to save your money - Just level up before the boss fight ? You can't loose your skill point by dying btw and why it bothers you to loose progress if for you all the skills are trash ?
@@_doop8257 What if they like seeing messages, other people's spirits and bloodstains? The critic still stands, being able to be invaded even if you are hollow is a stupid idea
An easy and FACTUAL way to support the numerous "dudes in armor" would have been to reference the in game lore. The land was tamed and rid of the most vile beasts thanks to King Vendrick's rule, so much so that he even started a war with the Giants of another faraway land over some "treasure" they possessed. This explanation would have been easy to put together and present without having to force in his preferences, because there are points in BomberGuy's video where he is just straight up gushing, no facts, no solid statements, just gushing about what he likes.
@Haku infinite Indeed, it's obvious Fromsoft writes their lore to suit there gameplay mechanics rather than the opposite. I mean they even put in a multiverse and death into the lore because of dying and multiplayer. Things they could of ignored easily if they wanted to, but because it wouldn't make sense otherwise, they put it in. They still make fantastic stories which is a showing of their skill, but the fact remains that they go in with the game in mind first. Hell I'm not even against dudes in armor as a concept. Artorias, Orn and Smough, Gwyn, and Gwyndolin were all 'Humanoids" and all fought drastically different and gave off different feels. If you made a game with generally humanoid enemies, but still made them distinct in both gameplay and visually, than that wouldn't be a problem, at least not as big as one as it was in DS2. Bloodborne was practically the opposite of DS2 with mostly just beastial enemies, however it's not a problem because you're not going to beat the blood starved beast by playing in the same way as you did against the cleric beast or dark beast paarl. The problem is you can generally with DS2, by just walking to the left you will be able to dodge almost all the bosses in that game, without a massive amount of knowledge. The problem wasn't the premise, of more humanoid bosses as I just showed, focusing on a certain kind of enemy can and does work. It's that they did it poorly.
@@theworstcatholic7247 the other thing to mention is that the humanoids are just dudes in armor. I just beat the game this morning and I'm struggling to think of bosses that were humanoid that weren't swinging around a sword or something. Prowling Magnus is a pure mage but that's a pathetic boss. Elana is a mage who summons minions and does pyromancies and dark sorceries, but she does occasionally swing a scythe, I guess we could count her. Nashandra only hits you on accident but she does do some spells, her body explosion, the curse orbs and her laser hand. Aldia is a pure mage with what I think is one of the most boring fights in the entire game, but he is not humanoid. And that's all the bosses I can recall who use a significant amount of magic. Edited to add that one of the Skeleton Lords is a pyromancer and Mytha does occasionally shoot some soul spears from her nostrils. This means that most of the bosses will engage you the same way, with slashes and stabs even when they have magic. which only compounds the samey feel. The crystal sage is a mage boss done right. He will use his spells as much as he can and they deal far more damage than his sword, however he will swing at you to set up for his spells, the crystal soul mass in particular and try to roll catch you. Especially with the amount of spells and hexes coming into their own in ds2, this seems like a massive missed opportunity.
@@lolbuster01 That along with the fact that almost all the melee fighters can be beaten with a similar strategy. Walk to the right. It's honestly ridiculous. When they do seem to try something different you get things like Vendrick who are just a slow, hitsponge or The Ancient Dragon who may be the most difficult dragon boss in the series but that's not due to any merit. Nor is the fight in any way engaging. When you look at the super bosses of the first game like Manus or Kalameet, it paints quite a different picture. The problem isn't even truly the variety, just look at Bloodborne to see what From can do with a simple beast motif. Or hell try to fight Gwyn the same way as Artorias and you'll be getting your ass kicked. It's execution which is the issue. Honestly most of Dark Souls 2 is one big missed opportunity, which is what is so tragic about the whole thing. You've got the largest amount of content in the entire series yet it's all mediocre by the souls standards. You've got tons of spells but lack of enemy variety, you've got new options with melee, but the horrible hitboxes along with the samey enemy encounters has little to offer to get you to do anything different. It's tragic because there was truly an amazing game like the rest of the series in there somewhere, unfortunately by the time it got released to the public that game had hollowed out and lost what it truly was much like the overarching story of humanity in the series.
@@theworstcatholic7247 two of the biggest things I miss about ds2 is 1, being able to power stance and make your own weapon combos. You could do some awesome fun stuff by combining stuff like a normal short sword with the puzzle sword for some wicked combos or my personal favorite the mace of the insolent and standard mace so I can use miracles and powestance. and 2, the two handed parry for most weapons. The two handed parry gives you a second defensive option while two handing. I realise that weapon arts essentially replaced that but it was a thing I enjoyed pulling off.
@@lolbuster01 I agree entirely, in fact powerstancing was one of the things I believe Dark Souls 2 had most in the spirit of demon's and dark souls. Both games create challenges, but give the player ways to outright trivialize them if you know what you're doing. Something I believe it generally lost with two and onward. However Powerstancing is an exception, and gave the player so many options. I remember the first time I learned how it actually worked, I upped my stats and used an ascetic to kill the pursuer boss again so I could dual wield it's great swords for some absolutely sickening damage. Damn fun though. I disagree that it was more of a replacement as I think both systems could work together. Weapon Arts and Power Stancing. What replaced power stancing was the exclusive dual wielding weapons, which I think most souls fans agree was a complete downgrade.
For the record, although I'm guessing I'm not the first one to point this out: The "dudes in armor" critique is very obviously ripped from Yahtzee's review of the game. I even find it somewhat funny since that was not a large critique of the game, but most of an internal fanbase one. The full argument, which he never brings up, is that DS1, while also having it's fair share of dudes in armor, has a really wide array of stuff: dragons, wolves, massive flaming centipedes, the butterfly, etc. Even the humanoid enemies have a lot of different kinds: nito, the demons, ceaseless discharge, the golem. And the dragons rarely look like actual "stereotypical" dragons. Meanwhile, DS2 seems like a downgrade from a design standpoint. As most enemies and even bosses are in fact just dudes in armor. They might be slightly more mutated, but most of them are literally, conceptually and visually, just dudes in armor. This is used as a small criticism of the game on a CONCEPTUAL level, which is combined with other conceptual critiques to support the narrative that DS2 is simply less CREATIVE, less VARIED and less conceptually and visually INTERESTING than DS1. It has nothing to do with mechanics, it's a critique of design. I'm guessing what he worded horribly is that he likes the CONCEPT of fighting on a 1 on 1 duel with someone that in the game's LORE is supposed to be equal to you, even if he most definitely isn't in it's MECHANICS. Honestly. I think this is a fucking ridiculous standpoint. He's basically saying that a SINGLE concept repeated ad nauseaum is better than a wide array of different concepts. He answered the criticism of "they're repeating a single concept a billion times" with "yeah but it's the BEST concept" and while I can't say that having a game with a single concept is bad, because Shadow of the Colossus is fucking amazing, there's a difference between basing a game in something like that and just spamming the most boring fucking concept in fantasy games over and over when the previous game actively tried to make sure it got away from doing so. I know "boring" is a more subjective term but I think you get my point. Most enemies in most fantasy games are dudes in armor. Not humanoids, conceptually just dudes in armor. In medieval history most enemies were also dudes in armor, with the eventual hog getting a kill here and there. It's not only what you'd expect to find but also the concept that brings the least amount of things that differ from the norm with it. It's ok for the eventual fight, specially when used for specific fights that are meant to make a point of it. Like say god damn DS1 did. But if most bosses in your path are just dudes in armor with some growth hormones thrown in the mix, well, it gets really repetitive really soon. Specially when the game throws multiple bosses in a row and they're all dudes in armor, that just feels like an insult. I'd also make the point that DS2 goes even worse, since even the enemies that aren't dudes in armor conceptually, namely nashandra, well, wind up looking like a gal in a dress. They could've gone absolutely NUTS with her concept. Hypermutated magical woman? That's the BED OF CHAOS in DS1, and it might suck mechanically but you gotta admit conceptually that's amazing. DS2 just gave us a woman in a dress with a spooky scary skeleton reskin. It feels like the designer was on strike honestly.
I can understand your criticism, and you could say there was objectively creativity in enemy design in this game. But fighting dudes in armor is what you do everytime you PVP, and I've not seen people clamoring for the removal of PVP or for the adding greater variety in player body type. Dark Souls 2 just adds more of that to the PVE section. Now of course, if you think dudes in armor should stay to the PVP section, while PVE is populated by crazy weirdo monsters, then that's cool too. But I personally liked a greater focus on the 'dude' fights. Different dudes have different attack ranges, different animation speeds, etc... you still have to learn how to guard against those attacks the same whether the long range strike attack is skinned as a whip or as a tongue, whether the melee attack is a sword or a claw swipe, or the ranged attack is a spell or a vomited cloud of fire. While there is less visual creativity in providing creepy horror monsters, the gameplay ends up working out the same.
If you enjoy fighting guys in armor far more than anything else, dark souls 2 is going to be funner than dark souls 1. Should dark souls 2 be praised for that though? Probably not. The most that should be said is maybe you'll like it.
It is untrue that the gameplay ends up being the same. Mainly cause of Seath, Gaping Dragon, Quelaag, Nito's boss room, Hydras, Dragons, BoC, the son of BoC, Tarras' bridge, Capra Demon's boss room. Gargoyle area of denial (I actually don't recall anything in the base game like that, huh). Four Kings distance distorting weirdness, Iron Golem's lightning bombs. The lava room for what's his face, Butterfrees, Seath's invisible walkway, Seath's mandatory death mechanic, Sirens, and on and on. No, the visuals are varied, and the gameplay is more varied too.
I agree with everything you said, and your points were very well articulated. However, I do feel obliged to point out that it should be spelled 'especially'.
My only problem so far is that guy complaining about how much damage is done to him, while wearing zero armor and only having a shield and ultra greatsword. If you play the game naked, you can't expect to take easily managable amounts of damage.
+Zarke Armour does very little in DS2 this coming from someone who always maxes their armour every playthrough. It's unfortunately a ratio system, it might take half the damage off the weakest enemies but only 5% off the damage of the Alonne knights for example. It's rubbish in every Dark souls games except for the poise it gives.
@LeadFaun however that was present in demon's souls, dark souls 1 and bloodborne as well. defense was only switched to a percentage rather than a flat bonus in dark souls 3.
The guy was attacked IRL by a man dressed as Ornstein, so when he fought the old dragon slayer it reminded him of these times and was overall a bad experience, now that was funny
I believe that he mainly talks about NPC invasions in PvP to draw a common view for people to understand, as NPC invasions occur as long as an individual is connected to the internet whilst Human invasions and their frequency can vary. This includes the fact that real humans in PvP are varied in builds, personal skill and stats, whilst the NPC invasions have much stronger abilities to compensate for the lack of an organic intelligence, whcih also includes the fact that NPC invasions are supposed to represent Dark Souls II PvP at it's subjective 'best' but with Mauler's points provided, shows that the NPC's are unfair and incompetent. With Human players, shortly after his discussion on NPC invasions around 15:00, he discusses human invaders, who Mauler states are overall detrimental to a PvE run and can use the surrounding environment to defeat you, which as shown in footage, can feel extremely frustrating.
Mauler missed the mark on the PVP/NPC invasions and summoning. Also the clip of the guy yelling "netcode" isn't even lag, the guy just isn't very good at PVP. All of the grown men bitching about invasions when they can simply turn it to offline mode is a bit perplexing as well. Not to mention the guy who was physically unable to get to the host while the host just sat there complaining about him camping in front of him. The weakest part of this whole series if you ask me. Other than that this is a very entertaining 8 hours.
@@SSZaris >Also the clip of the guy yelling "netcode" isn't even lag, the guy just isn't very good at PVP How? I've never played any DS, but one dude is slashing the air and another is taking damage. In what universe this is fine?
I think its pretty funny that he praises these bosses, but doesn't even bother to fight the darklurker, who is probably one of the, If not THE best fight in this game. 1) it's attacks are slower, and well telegraphed, but do good damage. They also have variety, it can hit you from afar, up close, from the sides, behind, but if you are paying attention, you can tell what it will do. 2) it doesn't gank you right away. You get at a pretty pace fighting it, then it splits itself at half health, not changing it's moveset, which works very well with its slower telegraphed attacks. Overall, I really wish more of the bosses in dark souls 2 were like this. The developers really had some good ideas but they just fall flat. Like, imagine if, During the royal rat vanguard fight, if there were less rats, but there was periodically a rat that was tied to the boss (not literally mind you) that prevents the boss from taking damage as long as it is alive. Taking it out will open up the boss to damage temporarily until it chooses another rat to protect it.
and with the quality of ds1 bosses, people arent really wrong. if you go through the entire souls series backwards, dark souls 1 bosses are kind of a joke
@@ClovissenpaiDotR that’s hardly fair; once you’ve gone through “the series” of anything, the bosses will seem easy. But if any game was actually you’re first, you’ll find it’s bosses plenty challenging
There's something about Dark Souls 2 that just makes me look at it with disgust. I thoroughly enjoyed the game when I first played it, but it just felt.. different than Dark Souls. Almost as though a different studio entirely had made the game. The changes movement and combat was jarring and something that I just couldn't get behind. It's interesting that they seemed to go back to the Dark Souls 1 formula in the third game, adding to the movement and combat without changing it drastically like DkS2 did.
... Wait, why is Dark Souls 2 doing the Ultima 9 thing I saw mention of in Spoony's video? The PC is fighting a Dragonrider, who's not riding a dragon. Why-why is this? Why would you *ever* fight a Dragonrider that's not riding a dragon, unless it's a multiphase boss fight where they start off NOT the riding their dragon, then later mount their dragon and make the fight actually interesting? Tl;dr Dragonriders need to be riding dragons.
There's also the fact that there's a fucking Dragonslayer within the immediate area of another dragon in DS2:SotFS. Sure, this is the dragon that is a poor copy/paste job and has no business being here, but I thought it was funny in the same kind of way. Dragonriders who don't ride dragons and Dragonslayers who can't seem to slay a dragon in the same area as them.. gotta love how much effort went into DS2. I hate to say it, as I still do like DS2 a lot, but it's very apparent that Miyazaki wasn't involved in DS2 on the lore/story/world side of things especially. It's all very lazily done.
Seems silly to criticize a DS game for failures in logic, realism or ....semantics. If flow of the game is enjoyable it's working perfectly, that's what a Dark souls game does.
I don’t know why, but I personally really liked the Skeleton Lords. It was just a nice change of pace to kill hoards of the skeletons as a boss. But I did think that DS2 overused this idea.
"I like it because its good, and its good because I like it. Now let me hide that within a video to validate my feelings." Is how most of his videos feel like to me, in this part you show how he uses this kind of logic for the whole dudes in armor segment
@@thesnatcher3616 yes it is lol. If your attempting to defend something and use the defense that “if feels good” or “I like it” as arguments is moronic. You shouldn’t be taken seriously as a RUclipsr much less a critic
@@maximusorbis2548 Basically what I was saying. It's not bad to like something, but it is bad to say that just because you like it, it's good. That's why it's horrible to bring in feelings when you're trying to defend something. It just has no base whatsoever. "This is like this, and it just isn't fun". Man do I hate it when people say that.
@@thesnatcher3616 Exactly. I did not enjoy the Witcher 3. Doesn't mean that it is a bad game, I just didn't enjoy it. Feelings and opinions are not good defenses to anything as they are personal and not factual as a whole. It's like when people say that DS 2 has unfair and bullshit ganks. This is observable in the first area as you can get chased by like 15-20 hollows in the first area. Claims need evidence not opinions.
@Dundrael See the thing is claims do need evidence. This is not something that is debatable. If you want to critique something you need proof that you're criticisms are valid and hold up to scrutiny. For example Hb says in his video "It isn't fun to die while healing" is subjective. Some people love the tension of being close to death (In the game) and love having to pick the moment to heal. His argument was subjective of his own opinion and nothing more. And No it is very easy to see the Witcher 3 is a good game. Multiple game awards, multiple 10/10 reviews, forums with loads of love praising the game, and more. It is safe to assume the game is a great game (despite my disdain for it). The difference is I am not speaking from my own opinion nor was I stating an opinion. I know for a fact the love and attention the game has garnered from the gaming community. On top of that you can easily see that it topped sales records boasting an impressive amount of over 30 million units being sold.The game is good. this is an undeniable fact. Opinions are not viable, especially when you try to "debate" the pretty standard opinion that DS 2 Is not as good as the other entries in the franchise. And when it comes to art...yeah it is subjective Not everyone will like the same thing. However with video games fans tend to have expectations. There aren't museums we can play 10 dollars to go into and play. Games are art, but we pay to play these games, so yeah gamers do hold them to a certain standard. So to end my point, I will say my point was completely rational.
I actually liked seeing bosses appearing as mobs later on in the game, it makes me feel like I've gotten stronger to the point were bosses can now COUNT as mobs. it also fills me with a small sense of awe that while these bosses gave me so much trouble at the adventure's start, they are just the guards to the real big bad.
i'm very glad the games aren't what harris thinks they're supposed to be... sure, there's room for improvement, but i pretty much like all of them just the way they are
So Harris's makes the statement that fighting an enemy that is on equal footing with you is the best sort of boss fight. How in the hell is he a fan of the Soulborne games then? The majority of the bosses can hit harder than you, are taller than you and at times towering over you and make you look like a toothpick in comparison, shoot lines of fire, darkness, and lightning at you with spells you never obtain, and many other factors.. That is if you don't go and grind souls for hours and just bullshit your way through an area, which is what I think Harris did. After all you can farm souls so easily in Dark Souls 2 ESPECIALLY with the Giant Lord because he is a lumbering idiot that gives you over 100,000 souls and that just increases with Bonfire Aesthetics. Like I guess he likes Vendrick so much is because he hardly has any moves but hits like a truck and I guess that is what he means by equal footing. I prefer a boss fight like Nameless King because that guy not only hits like a goddamn truck, he also is quick for his size. Don't even get me started on Darkeater Midir, the big black dragon that's not only large and powerful but also incredibly fucking fast and taking his ass out felt so goddamn great. Much better than taking out the Dragonrider or even.....Nashandra. Hell the Soul of Cinder was a harder boss fight....
Oh god, the giant lord. with bonfire ascetics+equipment you can farm over 400k souls per run counting the giants that get crushed by the stone head. It was fun for trying to overlevel yourself in NG++ and beyond, but was broken in terms of general game balance.
Beating an enemy that is just like you, but a little better, is extremely satisfying in certain games. After all it's part of why Vergil from Devil May Cry 3 is so beloved, because he is visually identical to you (just with his hair streaked back and wearing blue instead of red), but he is objectively a better fighter so it's more satisfying to show in the endgame that you have finally surpassed him. It's the classic rivalry story arc of "first fight you lose definitively, second fight you show you've become his equal, third and final fight you've proven yourself his superior". It's a good way to show how the player and the main character have progressed in strength over the course of the story. The reason for this is context, because the focus of the game is the relationship between the two brothers. However that works because of the way the game's narrative is designed. The Souls series doesn't do that, ever. It almost did with the original idea that Oscar would be someone you continually encountered in the game, only with it to end with a duel because he chooses to support whichever serpent you don't thus putting you at odds. But it didn't do that and the narrative isn't built around that kind of character interaction. Also I want to note that I was typing this while watching the video, so I didn't even know he was going to bring up Vergil, it's just my personal go-to and I was like 6 sentences in by the time I heard him say it. I disagree with Azel being the best God Hand boss though, that would be Elvis in his true form.
Dark Souls 2 has so many bosses and they're mostly incredibly underwhelming and then they're re-used a bunch of times. Virtually none of the encounters feel special in this game outside a few good ones in the DLCs.
If harris really thinks the fights on even footing are the best then he would also have to think that mimic tear (elden ring) is the best boss in the entire souls-like fromsoft games catalogue and that is quite funny to me
I wouldn't even argue Dante and Vergil are on equal footing in DMC3. From a story perspective, there is a very clear power difference between the two early on, and Vergil trashes Dante in their first fight and Dante needs to become stronger to match his power (which he does when he awakens). From the gameplay perspective, Vergil can end the player quickly in all three boss fights. He does far more damage than you can ever do, and his devil trigger lasts way longer too. To call the player on "even footing" with Vergil is inherently untrue, as he has many of the same advantages over the player that other boss fights do.
I am really enjoying hearing your critic on DS2 since i barely got myself to beat it once while beating DS1 and DS3 multiple times and could really explain why. Looking back on it after watching this video i think it was mostly because i could subconsciously tell that the team in charge of this one didn't put the same love and effort into it as the teams responsible for the other ones. A lot of the boss fights also seemed to rely on a gimmick too much and most of the difficulty would dissapear after removing that (the lost sinner and the dark room, the serpent woman and the poison floor, the flexile sentry and the raising water, etc). You could literally either remove or reduce these gimmicks with a hidden area in the level and the boss fight would become way easier since it was just an artifical difficulty added by a nuisance (lock-on being removed, poison floor, water slowing movement, etc). If you compare this to say, the decons or wulfnir from DS3, you will find that the gimmicks to their fights are hard coded to the encounter and they didn't feel a need to add a way to remove them. This is how i feel at least and would love to hear other peoples opinions on this :3
31:17 Good point, but keep in mind that this is the second boss in the game. As a new player, Gaping Dragon took me about 3-5 tries. While not particularly difficult, it provides a good challenge for players and teaches them to how to read attack patterns. For example, the player needs to tell the difference between the vomit and slam attack.
The "dudes in armor" complaint likely originated from Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, who does the Zero Punctuation "review" series. Since he's more of an entertainer who puts out a first-impressions funnyman rant it's not exactly deep criticism worthy of response. But at the underlying heart of the issue is that Dark Souls (the first one) set up an expectation of a world filled with varieties in enemy types. An expectation Dark Souls 2 failed to even meet, much less improve upon, by having the majority of enemies being variously sized people with varying degrees of armor.
There were ghosts that floated through walls and didn't have to stick to surfaces... there were dragons as more than just boss monsters... there were mounds of flesh that acted as a sort of tank... there were bushes that sprung to life in ambush... mushroom people... octoroks... those weird ball things that breathed fire... ceiling worms... titanite demons... those pair of legs that stood around lava... those worm sacs growing out of people... those annoying mosquitos... very large leaches... the clams... bat wing demons... floating explodey heads... those skeletons that used to be giants but were reassembled like dogs... slimes that fell from the ceiling... ...whew, the list is pretty long already and there's more. But playing through hours and hours of Dark Souls 2 the only non humanoids (with non humanoid attacks) I've really found are the frogs that turn you into stone, the dogs, and the rats. All from Dark Souls 1. This is not counting bosses, obviously. Dark Souls 2 also added spiders. I might be missing one or two but clearly the variation in Dark Souls is limited when compared to Dark Souls 1.
8:33 The best and most memorable fights in the series. Enemies who are on equal footing and use similar powers. Brings up fucking Crestfallen Warrior post hollowing. Give me a break, holy shit.
To add on to the invasions and NPCs: the Dark Souls 2 NPC invaders just straight up cheat! I mean, they can escape stuns after one hit, roll as soon as their backstab animation ends, have way more HP than a SL813 (numbers might be off by a bit, but max soul level) character, infinite stamina (not an NPC invader, but the Drakekeepers are a big example of this) and missile class tracking (again, about every enemy in the game). Also, "New track" while showing Belfry Gargoyles. It's the same theme as DS1. Don't know why, but I always found that hilarious. Loved the shade thrown at SotFS. Hope I see some Vanilla vs SotFS in this soon. Mostly speaking as someone who absolutely loathes SotFS and likes Vanilla more.
^^ There is a lot to say about the imbalance of PVP within Dark Souls 2 but I felt as though I couldn't even reach that discussion because of how poor the net code was but I know that is not enough for many people and perhaps I should have fleshed it out a bit more. Thanks for commenting :)
I also agree that Vanilla + DLC is much better than SotFS. It's a shame this shitty, inferior romhack version of DS2 is being promoted as the "real" one. Even outside of difficulty, enemy placements in DS2 make a lot more sense within the storyline. It makes sense to have drakes above Aldia's Keep, because they're experiments made by Aldia. It makes no sense to have a drake in Heide's Tower of Flame. It's also really stupid to add a bunch more trash mobs to Iron Keep. Iron Keep is probably one of the harder areas in vanilla DS2 anyway. It hardly needed MORE trash mobs added to what is most likely the hardest room in the game (you know the one I mean.) Some of the item placements are stupid too. It used to be in vanilla that getting the bastille key required defeating an optional boss and then surviving a very difficult gank room. If you DID get it, the run up to Lost Sinner was much easier and you could make the fight easier too. But, because the key was hard to find and relatively difficult to retrieve, it was very likely you'd fight Lost Sinner the majority of the times without the bastille key. That's cool. It means you end up fighting the boss the way the devs intended, in the dark. But, because you just get the bastille key in SotFS, there's no decision now. You will ALWAYS have the key to make the run up easier, and you will ALWAYS light the torches to make the fight easier. That's what I mean about decisions that seem stupid. The vanilla game provided you a choice, and SotFS removes that choice. Dammit, it was fine before.
"Always have the key" You can actually miss it if you're short on Branches and use the Antique Key to reach the Sinner, but most people will actually fight the Sentinels on their first playthrough. Also, Heide Knights on Heide's Tower when on the Design Works it clearly shows it was meant to be different from what SotFS did. Pure, fucking, shit.
TheSamuraiGoomba SotFS made Ruin Sentinels optional. Defeating them rewards you with access to the Bastille Key. Circumventing them means you have to fight the Sinner in the dark.
I remember I bought SotFS because I thought it would be dark souls 2 plus the season pass. What I got was a completely restructured game with changes made that seemed to be designed to make me not have fun. DS2 was already my least favorite in the series, SotFS was the last nail in the coffin.
The "many dudes in armor" thing was a valid criticism when the game first game out that I know I had. Yes of course there's bosses that aren't humanoid, but the vast majority of foes in DS2 were humanoids, or dudes in armor. We're talking trash mobs and bosses and mini bosses. It just didn't have the same type of variation or at least "feel" of variation that DS1 had. You spawn at a bonfire, every trash mob around you, dude in armor, oh there some bigger enemies in that area, large dudes in armor, get past all that, boss is dude in armor. (With multiple other bonfires along the way don’t forget) Rinse repeat every area with few deviations.
Having a rewatch of this for background noise and had a stray thought that tickled my funnybone. I realized that when I was a child, I really liked the "equal footing" sort of fights in games, the humanoid fights (as Mauler correctly assesses). As I've grown older, I've come to appreciate more and more the larger than life boss fights more. The seemingly insurmountable odds. In Elden Ring, my absolute favourite boss, purely because of the visual spectacle of the fight, is Rykard. You, a small normal sized human (arguably) against this massive wriggling mess of snake, hands and skulls. I still enjoy the humanoid fights in games, but they're not my main focus, as when I was a kid. TL;DR: Harris thinks like a child.
I watched both Mathew and Harry's videos back to back, and I can't help but feel like Harry completely misunderstood Mathew's criticism with regards to the majority of enemies being "dudes in armor" (or rather, humanoids). Now, maybe it was a defence of a general/common criticism back then, but considering the amount of actual research that went into his video I kinda doubt it (and considering what follows, I'll take it that even this part is a somewhat direct response to Mathew's video). Mathew's criticism isn't so much about the bosses, but the overall enemy variety per se. He goes out of his way to outright say that even though there were plenty of different and contrasting areas in DaS2 the enemies stayed mostly the same, in comparison to DaS1 where the enemies were more diverse and the undead or 'dudes in armor' weren't as prominent. DaS 2 failed to take advantage of the fauna in order to reflect it's unique environments. And one could even say that SotFS doubled down on this mistake rather than attempt to fix it. With regards to Harry's "argument"? there isn't much to say about it when there's no argument at all, and defending copy-pasted bosses is... a headscratcher for sure. There's a general consensus that those were one of the weakest parts of DaS 1 (Lost Izalith and the 'Asylum/Stray/Firesage' demons) and I don't see how what wasn't okay there would be okay in DaS 2, even more so the latter which had the bonfire ascetic which allowed you to replay bossfights as much as you wanted without resorting to NG+ and replaying the whole game again. It's baffling and I personally don't see how anyone could look at randomly placed copy-pasted assets and unironically say that it's a sign of good game design.
I think every college student needs to watch your videos. Excellent dissection of a poorly made argument. It would be a useful tool in learning how to write persuasively.
It honestly says a lot about H that he can't be bothered to fight Dark Lurker since it only takes like an hour to reach him if you already have the effigies and know what to do. Maybe even less than an hour.
I know I'm years late to this but I just beat DS2. I enjoyed the game a lot and avoiding critiquing until I developed my own opinion. You've done a hell of a job with your DS2 videos man. I actually wanted to be productive today but this series is so incredibly well done I think my day is going to be a write off. Excellent and inspiring content here MauLer.
@MauLer (not sure how to contact you directly), the depth of analysis you present has inspired me to get back to my own work. I just wrapped my masters degree and have been in a slump recently as my big challenges have evaporated. Listening to you has reminded me of just how satisfying it can be to come to know something inside and out, especially in contrast to the feel-good foolishness of amateur commentators. I’ve even listened to reviews of yours for games I haven’t played, just as a part of getting my critical faculties back. Consider me a subscriber and, soon, a patreon supporter.
Regarding a statement at 48:00 - "Repetition of assets is an indication of them becoming lazy or running out of ideas" I make video games for a living as a programmer, and I wanted to add my perspective here as I feel this is a somewhat unfair statement on MauLers part towards the developers. To be clear I'm not defending any of their design choices or any of that in DS2, simply attempting to correct what I feel is an inaccuracy here that my experience can address. Sometimes, the repetition of ideas can also indicate that they were running out of time and the resources on the project were getting stretched thin. This doesn't excuse or mitigate the state of DS2, it is still the game it is, but I feel like this doesn't get mentioned often enough in analysis videos, but game developers are human too, and sometimes we fail and sometimes we have to slog on regardless. Love the series man, looking forward to finishing it as a whole!
This is supported by the fact that apparently halfway through development the game was a mess, so they scrapped it and started again using whatever assets they already had. Its why, in addition to the reused bosses and such, why the world environment makes no damn sense, as they basically copied and pasted stuff wherever they could fit it. I'd imagine that with Scholor of the First Sin they didn't have much in the way of resources and time to properly overhaul the whole game, thus more reusing of assets then happened.
I think this is the best part of mathewmatosis' videos because in many of his criticisms he does mention that time or budget constraints maybe a cause for a problem. With attacking odd people like mathew it makes me think if hbomberguy looks more than 20mins at some of the videos he critiques.
Reusing code doesn't diminish the codes second usage, so long as it provides the needed functionality. If you repeat enemy types from the very beginning of the game that's just lack of thought and it is lazy
Why was 6 afraid of 7? It's a fairly common question, mostly because when people see 6 and 7 next to each other, it doesn't really make sense. 6 is large, muscled, and trained in multiple martial arts, while 7 is fairly average, physically, and short. However, 6's fear of 7 has its roots in childhood. See, 6 and 7 grew up together, and for a few years, they were best friends. But then 6 kissed 3, and they became childhood sweethearts. 7 secretly had feelings for 3, so 7 decided he needed to destroy 6 to win 3's affection. He started subtly, undermining 6 whenever possible with passive aggressive comments and compli-sults. But over time, things got much more insidious. 7 started messing with 6's performance in school, bringing down his grades and turning teachers against him. Even worse, 7 became great friends with 6's parents and slowly turned them against their own offspring. At night, 7 would sneak into 6's bedroom, and whisper depressing and hopeless things into his ears. Every time 3 was around, 7 would pants 6 and make fun of his genitalia, or try to body shame him in other ways. However, 3 was both smart and compassionate, and saw through 7's schemes, sticking with 6, trying to counter 7's psychological tear-down with compliments and friendship. Finally, 7 decided that he would never be able to win 3, so he drugged both 6 and 3, taking them to an abandoned cobbler's hut on the edge of town. There, he proceeded to torture and maim 3, forcing 6 to watch in horror, unable to do anything to save his sweetheart. 7 didn't kill 3, but instead, put her in a semi-vegetative state. 7 cleaned the scene of his prescence, then called the cops, having 6 blamed for 3's condition. 6 was sent to prison, believing 6 was guilty, 6's parents fell into a deep depression, eventually committing suicide over what they believed 6 had done. After serving 17 years of a 30 year sentence, and getting out on good behaviour, 6, now muscled and skilled as a fighter, thought he might get revenge on 7. But when he finally tracked down 7, he found out that 7 had installed a micro-bomb into 3's body, and should he be killed, the bomb would automatically go off and kill 3 as well. And though she was still in a mostly fugue state, 6 couldn't bring himself to hurt her any further, and decided to try and move on with his life. However, being an ex-con, it was difficult for him to get a job. 6 finally found employment at a diner, which 7 then bought, and proceeded to again undermine and toy with 6 at every turn. 6 tried to find employment elsewhere, but 7 contacted any potential employer and soured them against 6. 6 finally realized that no matter what he did, 7 was going to try and ruin his life, and he resigned himself to living as a broken, lonely man, never able to stand up to the depraved, amoral 7.
I think hbomber guy simply fails to seperate his opinion from facts. Simply saying 'I like this better' instead of 'this IS better' would work better for him.
@@aaaaaahhh9537 Except he presents his opinions as fact while using very flawed and dishonest arguments to obfuscate his deception. Secondly, reviews are, by nature, not subjective. People use reviews to gauge whether or not they wish to buy a product or consume a piece of media. It is the responsibility of the reviewer to separate their subjective views on the subject from the objective quality of said product to provide as comprehensive a review as possible. This is why MauLer has chosen to respond to Hbomberguy's video. Also, just because something is subjective does not mean it is immune to criticism. Opinions can be incorrect or misinformed, and to place opinions on an untouchable pedestal is the height of hubris.
I guess Harris misses the point that Virgil isn't the best fight because he's the same size or on equal footing but because of context and his personal history with Dante
“He doesn’t often use genuine events to create his points, rather, he uses what he remembers, and this means that his script, very likely, doesn’t go beyond his first draft, while in comparison THIS IS MY FIFTH !!!!!! “ Fucking GOLD MauLer !!!!! Pure GOLD
Don’t play dark souls, probably never will because I like games that don’t make me feel toooo incompetent (not easy as I’m a pretty poor gamer but I try!) - however, listening to Mauler talk things through is so relaxing I’m more than happy to sit through hours of videos where I don’t understand any of the references.
4 year late comment, but I always felt that having the Capra Demon and Taurus Demon be an early fight (along with the Asylum Demon, I guess) but then be a 'normal' enemy later on was actually a gameplay decision more than a boss design decision. Like, they are a bit boosted in stats for the boss itself, but it feels like an intentional design decision to make it seem like your early fight were just against big fuckers that were in your way, rather than actual named bosses with a specific identity and place in the world. Like you were meant to be so weak early on, that perfectly normal enemies could be considered bosses, if that makes sense? Though I guess the presence of Black Knights does the exact same thing (as well as enemies you encounter when going the 'wrong' way) so I might just be overthinking it for a want to justify a meh decision by the Devs.
Why does Old Dragonslayer use DARK element attacks? He's a Dragon slayer. He should be using Lightning. This isn't even deep lore, Dark Souls 1 STARTS by telling and SHOWING you that the instrumental part of killing dragons is to break through their stone scales with LIGHTNING. Ornstein also specifically used lightning, dragons take more damage from lightning, and if you take Dragonslayer's boss soul and get a weapon from it, you'll get Ornstein's spear and it deals LIGHTNING damage, not Dark. So why does he use Dark!? I've tried to find out, if you look at his boss soul, which is where you normally find notable lore details, it just says this boss reminds you of Ornstein..... THAT'S IT! That's all it fucking says! The weapon doesn't mention anything about the actual boss either. There's ZERO fucking lore on this guy, just that he reminds you of Ornstein. It doesn't even confirm if he IS Ornstein, it's just member berries inside and out!!! There is literally a section in his wiki entry debating if he's Ornstein or not. It's fucking ridiculous. In other Dark Souls games, if the game establishes something, and then you find something that breaks this pattern, you normally have at least a little information available to at least get you on the ROAD to figuring out "Oh, so this knight that serves the kingdom is here, where the kingdom's enemies are, because he's one of the traitors from this event in the lore." Something like that, but there's just NOTHING with this fucker. The lore of the Souls series is hidden, and intentionally incomplete, but it's not BROKEN. If they say warriors of sunlight use lightning, then they use lightning. If one of them doesn't use it, that's probably some lore about that specific character you can dig in to. This feels like SUCH a stark change to make to such a famous Dark Souls boss, but they just didn't say ANYTHING about it. Because this isn't a boss, it's just a member berry obstacle to pretend they've actually constructed a Dark Souls game.
These notes on boss fights remind me that one of my favorite bosses in any video game is the Regent of the Mask in Ninja Gaiden 3. I don't think a lot of that game is really good, but the fights against that particular dude with a sword are far more interesting and engaging that the ones against giant robots and dinosaurs. It's something that varies a lot.
Hot Take, PvP across all the games would be significantly improved if invaders were targeted by mobs to. There's no reason an invader should have the advantage of HAVING ALL THE MOBS IN THE AREA ON THEIR SIDE!
@@koontz1154 then why make the video at all? I saw a homebrew spell for dnd. I didnt like it, called it out as weak. Did the math, it wasnt as weak as I thought, looked around, arrived to a different conclusion, and wrote that into my new comment, instead of hanging on to my previous stance. If during the research to make something, you discover things that go against the very thing you want to make, why do you keep going?
@@texteel sometimes peoples brains don't have as many wrinkles as others' and it isn't conducive to being logical. Also what does your comment even represent as a point? The previous was about him not even getting his own footage for whatever reason and that alone is pretty suspect if he "likes" the game so much to not be bothered to play it for relevant footage. All in all some people don't care they are/could be wrong, especially when they make money off said opinion.
@@koontz1154 I meant that Harris, while doing research about a topic, found evidence that round contrary to his original position, he should have reevaluated doing the video on the first place, or, at the very least, change his position, and present that in the video. He did neither, he stuck to the original idea, not caring what he uncovered, which is a very bad look
Revisiting this series after getting to level 72 in Elden Ring. Think I’ve only fought Margit as far as story bosses go. I hope you end up reviewing it. I know you’ve been enjoying it. I’d be watching your streams but I’m too busy taking care of my new born and playing the games myself. Can’t wait to go back and catch up
My favorite fights in DS1 are the Asylum Demon and his iterations, Gaping Dragon, Orinstein and Smough, Seath, and Artorious in the DLC. In Bloodborne, my favorite fights were Gascoigne, the Shadows of Yhrnahm, Gerhman, and Lady Maria in the DLC. It's about what the games are designed for. Taking on the giant and impossible foes is fun and rewarding with Dark Souls mechanics, while the vicious dance between hunters in Bloodborne is thrilling and exciting because of it's mechanics.
@@brokenlordofcinder4128 I'm from the Mi6, if you have any Information on how the queen was to be assassinated on janurary 5th, please share them with us.
@@franzchenherbert3937 I believe that they’re talking about Big Chungus, it’s a meme. Not sure if it has anything to do with the assassination of the Queen.
I literally just watched the videos that are the subject of these videos for the first time last night. I thought they were quite good. Now I'm watching these for the first time, and I'm loving them!
6 years late and agree with 99% of everything here *except* that the Heide Knight attack is poorly telegraphed. You said it yourself-they're blind. They stop and stand still, home in on you, then lunge quickly to attack. That's an attack I personally love not only because of how jarring and alarming it is at first, but also because once you learn the clear and consistent pattern, it is incredibly easy to punish reliably. (I cannot believe I just defended DS2.)
Been watching efap for a little under a year now, and have just now started watching your backlog of videos. It is surprising to me how well researched your early videos were. You got some stuff wrong here and there (closing doors quietly in outlast) but overall I am very impressed. These videos could easily be released now and still be considered great. Which I suppose is the point of extensively researched and well thought out argumentation. Great work.
Artorias is one of the best fights because of his story and design. The lore is amazing in the DS series. :D Bloodborne is the best to me tho, I prefer the faster paced setting.
“His scripts don’t go past a first draft, while in comparison……. I’m on my fifth.” - Was such a boss line holy shit, can I fight you in Froms next game?
Idk how much of a boss line it is to say you’ve been Malding over a video that the author didn’t really give a shit about hard enough to write 5 different drafts for 7 hour long videos
I think what's an interesting point to raise as well that DSII is a very different game to DSII:SotFS. I remember really enjoying my time with the former as my first foray into the Dark Souls universe, and despising some of the changes to enemy placement in particular in SotFS when I came back to it. Regardless, absolutely love your videos and the sheer level and detail in your critical analysis. Thank you!
I loved the diverse ambience and the unique environments from dark souls 2 which made it more enjoyable to explore in my experience. One time you are in a place filled with sand then another time it's a place like the stone city and then you are in a polished marble castle.
NPC invasions like Armourer Dennis made me wonder if I was fighting a real player or not. The invasions in Dark Souls 1 and 3 seemed to make sense from a lore perspective, they were actual characters like yourself trying to survive in the world to the best of their abilities. In Dark Souls 2 it seems like they are just a demo for what offline players could experience if they went online. Because how else do you explain "Armorer Dennis", the armorer with who is also seriously into sorcery? It's as nonsensical as when you encounter a real player calling themselves "Havel monster" but whom favors rolling around half naked with 2 ultra great swords. Maybe that was the intention, but I think NPC's like Kirk are a lot more memorable and believable than fucking "Armorer Dennis" (I swear to god they must have named him that by accident, he's probably supposed to be named Gandalf the fuckwit), because Kirk actually has his own story and reasons for doing what he is doing. He is a part of Lordran, Dennis is just an obstacle.
Never played the game. Or any of the soul series, But what I love deeply and cherish immensely is your ability to dismantle every and any argument this fool makes. It’s a complete pleasure to my brain and ears to hear you analyze, speak and viscerally destroy any of his arguments. You are the GOAT of RUclips Mauler. Drop the mic
I've played some games in the Souls franchise, but I can say the same thing you did for his videos on the other games he did critiques on. Haven't played any of them, but there's always so much context and evidence to back up his well crafted arguments. Is MauLer always right? No. Do I disagree with some stuff in the hours upon hours of footage I've watched. Sure. But he owns his mistakes, can provide quotes while his "opposition" strawmans him and he's always up for discussion or a debate as far as I can tell... and I respect that dedication and ideology!
In DS1, the Asylum, Taurus, and Capra demons had lore reasons for being in those places, hell the Capra demon even had a lore reason for why he had dogs with him.
Doesn’t make it a good fight though. Hell I liked The Last Giant more than the Asylum Demon. Taurus is fine, but Asylum and Capra I wouldn’t consider “decent” fights.
i feel like when he says "like a real person would [dodge]" he means the rolling and with real person he means how players would roll away from attack combos. he is still wrong though
Yeah, i took that the same way, not sure how MauLer got IRL rolling lol. Bomber is still wrong, as no player character rolls like he does. It's def closer to a player character fight though. I also prefer fighting enemies that are closer to my player character in terms of aesthetics and movesets, probably why i love DS2 so much, despite my many grievances with it.
i would like to add to the pvp part of the video that while straight pvp, meaning just 1v1 fighting can indeed be very bad. BUT if you play on a f*cking around level, dark souls pvp can be so insanely fun. and the game really supports that kind of playstyle with tems at your disposal. just for example the item that turns you into a random prop in the world, when the game turns into a prop hunt out of nowhere to confuse your invader it can get quite hilarious. another aspect is the generel attitude of each dark souls player when fighting. there are so many dumb but funny moments you can get out of dark souls just by interactions with other players that take place. point being there more layers in dark souls pvp than just killing each other.
It's weird seeing Harris gush about fights on equal footing with similar skills, going so far to call it "compelling" when that's essentially every Marvel and DC villain and a general mark for severe lack of creativity.
the crest fallen knight and the guy who gives you estus flasks are memorable because you got to know them and understand them prior to them hollowing, both of them were risking hollowing just by existing and next you meet them they're maddened and you must put them down like a sick animal lest they continue their assault on you everytime you walk by them, they're memorable not because what they can do in fights, but because the narrative
I am here on pilgrimage once again! Harris calling Garl Vinland the real, actual, genuine boss of the Valley of Defilement is wrong on so many levels. I get the impression he doesn't actually care about the story or setting of the Souls Series that much.
I am quite excited to hear Deep-Voiced Matthewmatosis talk about Contrarian Matthewmatosis's attack on Irish Matthewmatosis.
Is it bad that I read this in Matthewmatosis's voice?
Is Joe Boring-Matthewmatosis?
sjw matthew matosis is a better name for him
Magnemania not just that, but, if I'm not mistaken (someone correct me if I'm wrong), we'd be hearing Welsh Matthewmatosis talk about English Matthewmatosis's attack on Irish Matthewmatosis. If I'm not mistaken, all we would need is a Scottish Matthewmatosis to make a response video to MauLer and we would have UK Bingo.
*Matthewmatosis'
"Did I just listen to a man talk for 2 hours about a video by man I've never heard of talking about a review by a man I've never heard of about a game I own but have never played?"
*clicks Part 3*
dk if you played it yet but you should
@@JohnDoe-kn7ex maybe not ds2 but definitely the other games
@@JohnDoe-kn7ex I played a couple hundred hours of Dark Souls 3, but I don't have experience with the others. I own Scholar but just never got around to it, kinda wanna see what's up someday.
@@pard3sh15 DS2 is still a Dark Souls game, no reason to not play one of the best games out there
Yea, it's fun if and you can pick up how hypocritical Harris is on everyone of his videos as well.
This series reminds me of times in history when one scholar or clergyman would put out a tract/pamphlet and another would publish a public refutation. Very well written and in-depth. Thank you for putting in the effort, it is appreciated.
Edward Copping but it is 16 hbomberguys long!!!!! You expect him to watch it???? He has better things to do,like laugh at people without debunking their argument or using personal experience to debunk stats and facts
jo jo As a fellow who watches Sargon of Akkad on a frequent basis and also watches Harris irregularly, I find it laughable that Harris and his fans are constantly poking fun at Sargon's excuse of not watching Harris' rebuttal to him because it was "too long," and yet Harris himself can't be bothered to spare an afternoon listening to MauLer's comprehensive takedowns of his video by claiming it's "too long."
Noah: Hello, Pot. My name's kettle. You are black.
Meme Kid: DAT'S RAY-CIST!!
Harris should have simply read Loki instead. Then they might be on a similar wavelength, though I'm not sure if Harris had such a nice suit.
@@Adorni That happens to Harris a LOT, I watched his Sargon video and the thing that stood out to me most was that his criticism of Jon Tron as "being a person who talks about video games and has no place talking politics because of it and should go back to video games" applies completely to him. Harris is a blatant hypocrite whenever it suites him and it drives me up the wall how big he's gotten despite it.
Idigam Studios It’s the production values some of his videos have, alongside his sometimes insightful takes and funny jokes.
While I don’t necessarily like throwing shade at him, as I am subscribed to his channel, Harris makes me think he’s kind of like the “Armored Skeptic” of the “other side.” Which I only use because Harris’ political points tend to fall along similar lines as people like Contrapoints, Lindsay Ellis, Folding Ideas, and so on. Which would be fine, if he didn’t act so smug and superior about having those political points all the time.
Basically, Harris comes across as a guy who thinks he’s smarter than he actually is, and few people care for that kind of behavior.
I will be honest, I thought the pursuer was the first boss, that is how much of an impression the last giant left on me.
I think that says more about you than the game.
It could be technically, if you fight it on that platform
Tim Reynolds it’s not that hard and plays exactly the same if u save him for later
FScorpion678 it is very hard if you are less than an hour into the game and level 10
AJ D not even then.
Calling the Covetous Demon the Dark Souls version of Magicarp implies the Covetous Demon eventually becomes worth a damn.
...fair point.
Oh and it did, it became a nice laughing stock.
Shots fired
True. Perhaps a better metaphor would be: "Covetous Demon is the *Slaking* of Dark Souls: a big HP sponge that can't even move half the time."
It does. It becomes the only strength scaling scythe in the series.
Dudes in armor isn't even a combat design criticism, it's a criticism of visual design.
It is.
Harris deemed Vergil from DMC3 as the best boss because in essence he's another Dante with different variables (such as attack patterns and weapons) creating the contrast of being a rival or a better version of the player character. But the reason Vergil works and is deemed as the best boss in that game is because he's the only boss that's like that. If you make every boss of DMC3 as a base Dante with different variables then Vergil losses all his appeal, which is exaclty what happened with DS2.
Since every enemy is a big armored knigh not only is there no visual contrast but the movepool between them is too similar that's why the most common critisim of DS2 boss fights is that they not only look similar but FEEL similar.
I bet you that if Artorias was a DS2 boss no one would have remembered the way they do. Artorias not only is well designed but he contrasts of how different he is in a game in which each boss was designed to be unique.
That's why for example Sir Alonne is not memorable to me, all I see is yet another 2.5 meter height knight with a big sword (and a broken grab) in a game in which 75% of the bosses are like that, he was supposed to be the Artorias of DS2 but the problem is most of the bosses are already Artorias wannabes
+Xfushion2 Whether you believe there's too many guys in armour or not DS2 does have a wider variety of not 'dudes in armour' bosses as well. Bosses in the original Dark souls could be quite similar to each other.
the political left tactics bleed: Divert what the other people mean into completely different thing and use incoherent rambling to solidify that it was the topic talked about and your pile of "evidence" proved it right.
It is though. There is a limited number of ways in which dude in armor can attack. They all just swing their weapons, SOMETIMES punctuated by an AoE or self-buff. They don't have weak points or interesting models/hitboxes. It's just a cylinder that you can hurt.
All the top players run without armor and make fun of us for being mid-rollers anyway.
Dear Mauler, I resent that you described Covetous Demon as "the Magikarp of Dark Souls." Magikarp is a pretty sad excuse for a pokemon, it's true. That said, with enough time and effort, it evolves into a Gyarados, a true powerhouse of a Pokémon with extremely high attack and speed values. What does Covetous Demon turn into? Nothing. So please, don't insult Magikarp with this horrendous comparison again. It's just not right.
If anything, Covetous Demon is the exact opposite of a Magikarp, as while the Magikarp has a chance of evolving into a mighty Gyarados, the Covetous Demon is the end result of a human completely succumbing to their gluttony. Seriously some of the hardest I've ever laughed at Souls lore.
He said already. Free souls!
The Shuckle of Dark Souls?
Really digging this so far, and felt compelled to leave a positive comment after seeing SotC and Bayonetta footage.
I'm just that shallow.
I recently played and completed Shadow of the Colossus for the first time. I completely understand your compulsion.
Honestly, I'm shocked the Old Dragonslayer isn't brought up more when people talk about how bad DS2's bosses can be. It's rehashed content with very little thought put into balancing. You can't take away Smough and expect the fight to be just as good as it was in the previous game.
I can't wait to see how you'll tackle his statements on game reviews. It contradicts his video on Fallout 3 and all the statements he made about God Hand. While most of the points he made through his defence (I thought) were reasonable, to the point of where I was willing to replay the second game, that section is awful.
His Fallout 3 video doesn't make any sense either and although not as bad as the DS2 one, its pretty nonsensical
As someone who never played it, I can't really comment on how accurate it is. I noticed a few of his criticisms could apply to Skyrim as well but that's a totally different game. What do you disagree with?
SoupCann I havnt played the first two Fallouts and I don't remember Fallout 3 very well, so we are in the same boat. But my problems is with his reasoning.
So he claims Fallout 3's ending is bad because it has an anti-climatic ending that ends up with a crappy two second boss fight (which I 100% agree with).
As a point of comparison, the boss fight with the Master in the first game is well crafted. You can fight him but you can also have a discussion with his regarding the super mutant propogation, the right to life, the future of humanity and if you are clever, you can convince him he's made a mistake and should stop making super mutants.
So it's a good ending because A) for the player, there is a moral conflict that needs to be resolved and B) the game has multiple paths for choice, role playing etc.
So far so good, except Hbomber immediately pisses it away by mentioning that there is a log that you can find that demonstrates that the super mutant project is pointless because they are all sterile. If you tell the Master this he feels remorseful and commits suicide.
Like, he talks about it because it shows off the depth of the game, but doesn't Hbomber realise that the existence of the log immediately undermines what he just said was a positive of the game? There is no moral conflict, as there is an objectively correct solution and there is no more gameplay options because you just hold a key item while talking to him to get the best outcome.
The funniest thing is literally while reading this comment I thought of a way it could work, either have the fight be very early, possibly the first boss. Instead it's placed way too late in the game. In like 20 seconds I thought how to objectively balance it better, however as for fun, half a boss fight will never be as fun as a full one.
Being able to realise how basic balancing works isn't through my skill, it doesn't require skill to say "easy bosses are harder when the older is weaker". Instead this highlights the painfully obvious issue DS2 has with copy pasting assets with no thought for quality.
It's not even JUST the removal of Smough from the boss fight, there's also now no longer a secondary 'buff' phase to the boss. So they literally took a 2 v 1 boss encounter with a mechanic that made it to where the surviving boss would absorb the power of the dead one upon defeat and become that much harder to keep the fight interesting.. and turned it into a 1 v 1 with no buff mechanic. You could've absolutely thrown in Ornstein by himself and made it a fun fight. If they would've just given us 'buffed' Ornstein alone that would've been decent for an early game boss, but I would've liked to have seen a buffed.. 'buffed' version of him. That would've been ideal, I think the best way it could've been done was taking the buffed Ornstein and giving him a completely overhauled move set and altering his HP pool and damage output slightly.
It still would've been lazy, rehashed content.. but it could've at least been decent. I know the Old Dragonslayer boss is a bit different than the original 'unbuffed' Ornstein but it's different in that the boss now has a few new, highly telegraphed moves and he can use fucking hexes.. brilliant.
"Roughly on equal footing with the player."
Yes, the bosses that are always bigger than you, have a larger reach (unless maybe you're using a spear or a greatsword,) have a truckload of health and hit LIKE a truck are CLEARLY on equal footing with the player.
How fun would it be if they were exactly the same as you? Dying in 4 hits and all of that stuff? Have you not seen any boss in any game, ever?
@@_doop8257 "How fun would it be if they were exactly the same as you?"
Not that fun usually. That's why DS2's bosses (and the ones from the rest of the series) aren't on par with you either, because it would lead to a shitty boss. Hbomber was wrong, the comment you were replying was right, and you completely missed its point.
It could make for a fun gimmick, or for an emotional moment like fighting a rival in some games does, but that requires a narrative build-up, like the one Solaire or Hawkwood have. Otherwise it's just plowing through another weak enemy. You can see the devs of DS2 struggling with that and settling down by giving invaders a lot of damage, poise and health, which removes the "on equal footing" part.
They also have none of what makes rival fights engaging, that being 1. being different from the rest of enemies by behaving similarly to the player, and 2. having the narrative buildup i mentioned. They are honestly just a bother.
Now I want a mod of Artorias or Calameet being 18 wheelers with their moveset it would be awesome.
@@_doop8257 To be fair some game did bosses on equal footing like Hotline Miami for example
I mean ... as long as they dont fly or levitate they are ~technically~ on the same footing ...
No, you can't fight Priscilla. You should cherish the fluffy tail.
cherish it after you cut it off
@@duroorud527 Cherish it by going into New game+ and burying in her heart
F e e t
@@duroorud527 no
@@Christian-gr3gu yes
"My friend Chungus. It's not a racist name; he's just Welsh" made me snort soda through my nose. It burns a lot.
How is Chungus a racist word?
@@shadowknight743 I would like to know that as well
@@shadowknight743 today is everything racist
@@shadowknight743 I understood it as a reference to Hugh Mungus: A few years ago one dude was asked for his name by an activist, he joked "Hugh Mungus" and the activist freaked out because she took it as "sexist". Then she called police claiming it was sexist, offensive and harassment.
Big chungus
I love the delivery of the
"What about gwendolyn, is she, he... too fluid?"
Domo3000 is showing how wrong is Mauler about DS2, and he is doing an amazing job.
@@AtreyusNinja It doesn't matter how many times you spam this. It's still nonsense.
"Did the zombie horse have to get the 4 great souls to reach this area as well?".... XD
Domo3000 is showing how wrong is Mauler about DS2, and he is doing an amazing job.
@@AtreyusNinja can you stop spamming this bs everywhere?
The capra and taurus demons get even more of a pass since they're reused in the Demon Ruins, which was only a step above Lost Izalith. On top of that, the boss versions literally came from the Demon Ruins so you'd expect to find more there.
A much better example would have been the reskins of the Asylum Demon.
Even then weren't the asylum demons basically just guards for the asylum
@@bradenmerriman5206 The first one you fight is trying to either rescue the one trapped below, or to stop the chosen undead from the legend. The other one was probably captured during the war against the demons since he can cast flame sorceries like the firesage, but no longer has chaos fire on his body.
@@StephanuSneed thank you
3:30 that is such a shallow thing to say, and he specifically stated "all games" so monster hunter will be better if all the creative, huge, scarry, and varied monsters were replaced with enemies that are similar to the player character
Imagine the edgy dialouge
"The real monster... Is Man"
That's the reason why bosses like Artorias and Gwyn leave an impression on the player. In a monster-dominated world, you encounter broken men that should have died a long time ago. It's a beautiful contrast from the rest of the game.
I was just thinking, 'Whaaat, this one is much shorter?' But I glanced at the time and it was at 56:19 in the video. What felt like 20 minutes, was nearly a whole hour.
Good work... On to the next.
Probably because Mauler is able to say a LOT in a short amount of time.
@@thesnatcher3616 This is his forté, I wish he'd make more videos like these again.
2:52 that is the biggest gripe I've with DkS2. The damned hitboxes are broken. Especially grab attack hitboxes, usually you get teleported into them.
Walamonga 1313 they’re not broken : they’re just bigger than the weapon shows that it is.
@@Dravianpn02 so they aren't functioning properly?
And the warping enemies, farming the falconers they pivot 450 degrees while sliding to gitme
@@Dravianpn02 that just sounds like saying it's broken with extra words.
@@dodojesus4529 correct lol. Idk why I thought defending it was a good idea at the time. Even then I knew it didnt work properly.
Highlight of part 2: Wiki image of Darklurker because he couldn't be bothered battling it
Can't wait for part 3
“I love this game so much and think that much of the criticism is wrong or overinflated so…I couldn’t be bothered to play one of the most popular fights from the game” -Harris
this is the reason I do not like the invasion system in dark souls 2, in dark souls 1 you could play the entire game as a hollow and cannot be invaded. but if you turn human you are rewarded because you can now summon phantoms to help you and the risk is you can be invaded. in dark souls 2 they made it so you can be invaded as a hollow and I did not like that idea.
@Haku infinite But Sekiro had the resurrection system, so even if you died, as long as you weren't in a boss fight, you could always run away back to the last idol because of hyper-mobility to get your resurrection power back. And yes, while it is annoying that you can lose half of your collected experience and gold on death, there are the gold bags you can buy at a 10% loss to keep your gold safe. For the experience, as long as you get a full skill point, you can't lose that. So if you're almost to a full skill point, it's easy enough to grind against some weak enemies to get a full point if you're worried about dying. (Also you do have a chance to just not lose anything, which is nice when it does happen.)
@Haku infinite alright then, I personally never had a problem with the penalty for dying, and I also never had a problem with grinding for skills, but that's probably just because I always kill everything in the area and don't skip enemies. Idk, it was just never a big deal for me. I never thought that I needed most of the skills anyways.
@Haku infinite Git good, Sekiro is the most fun and well balanced game in the series, there is no punishement in death, you're wrong. Dragonrot is easy to cure, Dragonrot dont kill the NPC's, and what quest are you talking about ? There is litteraly like 3/4 quests and some of them can be done very quickly and some are very, very useless to do unless you want to learn more about the lore or the character, but for the rest you can continue the game even if all the NPC'S have dragon rot, and you can even unlock all the endings with it. - Boss are not that hard in general, i have more struggle with mini-boss like the snake eye in the poisoned area or the Headless in general (but near the end game they are not a problem anymore)
Other tips:
- You can buy bags of gold to save your money
- Just level up before the boss fight ? You can't loose your skill point by dying btw and why it bothers you to loose progress if for you all the skills are trash ?
Go offline. Is it really that hard?
@@_doop8257 What if they like seeing messages, other people's spirits and bloodstains? The critic still stands, being able to be invaded even if you are hollow is a stupid idea
An easy and FACTUAL way to support the numerous "dudes in armor" would have been to reference the in game lore. The land was tamed and rid of the most vile beasts thanks to King Vendrick's rule, so much so that he even started a war with the Giants of another faraway land over some "treasure" they possessed. This explanation would have been easy to put together and present without having to force in his preferences, because there are points in BomberGuy's video where he is just straight up gushing, no facts, no solid statements, just gushing about what he likes.
@Haku infinite Indeed, it's obvious Fromsoft writes their lore to suit there gameplay mechanics rather than the opposite. I mean they even put in a multiverse and death into the lore because of dying and multiplayer. Things they could of ignored easily if they wanted to, but because it wouldn't make sense otherwise, they put it in.
They still make fantastic stories which is a showing of their skill, but the fact remains that they go in with the game in mind first. Hell I'm not even against dudes in armor as a concept. Artorias, Orn and Smough, Gwyn, and Gwyndolin were all 'Humanoids" and all fought drastically different and gave off different feels. If you made a game with generally humanoid enemies, but still made them distinct in both gameplay and visually, than that wouldn't be a problem, at least not as big as one as it was in DS2. Bloodborne was practically the opposite of DS2 with mostly just beastial enemies, however it's not a problem because you're not going to beat the blood starved beast by playing in the same way as you did against the cleric beast or dark beast paarl.
The problem is you can generally with DS2, by just walking to the left you will be able to dodge almost all the bosses in that game, without a massive amount of knowledge. The problem wasn't the premise, of more humanoid bosses as I just showed, focusing on a certain kind of enemy can and does work. It's that they did it poorly.
@@theworstcatholic7247 the other thing to mention is that the humanoids are just dudes in armor. I just beat the game this morning and I'm struggling to think of bosses that were humanoid that weren't swinging around a sword or something. Prowling Magnus is a pure mage but that's a pathetic boss. Elana is a mage who summons minions and does pyromancies and dark sorceries, but she does occasionally swing a scythe, I guess we could count her. Nashandra only hits you on accident but she does do some spells, her body explosion, the curse orbs and her laser hand. Aldia is a pure mage with what I think is one of the most boring fights in the entire game, but he is not humanoid. And that's all the bosses I can recall who use a significant amount of magic. Edited to add that one of the Skeleton Lords is a pyromancer and Mytha does occasionally shoot some soul spears from her nostrils.
This means that most of the bosses will engage you the same way, with slashes and stabs even when they have magic. which only compounds the samey feel. The crystal sage is a mage boss done right.
He will use his spells as much as he can and they deal far more damage than his sword, however he will swing at you to set up for his spells, the crystal soul mass in particular and try to roll catch you.
Especially with the amount of spells and hexes coming into their own in ds2, this seems like a massive missed opportunity.
@@lolbuster01 That along with the fact that almost all the melee fighters can be beaten with a similar strategy. Walk to the right. It's honestly ridiculous. When they do seem to try something different you get things like Vendrick who are just a slow, hitsponge or The Ancient Dragon who may be the most difficult dragon boss in the series but that's not due to any merit. Nor is the fight in any way engaging. When you look at the super bosses of the first game like Manus or Kalameet, it paints quite a different picture.
The problem isn't even truly the variety, just look at Bloodborne to see what From can do with a simple beast motif. Or hell try to fight Gwyn the same way as Artorias and you'll be getting your ass kicked. It's execution which is the issue.
Honestly most of Dark Souls 2 is one big missed opportunity, which is what is so tragic about the whole thing. You've got the largest amount of content in the entire series yet it's all mediocre by the souls standards. You've got tons of spells but lack of enemy variety, you've got new options with melee, but the horrible hitboxes along with the samey enemy encounters has little to offer to get you to do anything different. It's tragic because there was truly an amazing game like the rest of the series in there somewhere, unfortunately by the time it got released to the public that game had hollowed out and lost what it truly was much like the overarching story of humanity in the series.
@@theworstcatholic7247 two of the biggest things I miss about ds2 is 1, being able to power stance and make your own weapon combos. You could do some awesome fun stuff by combining stuff like a normal short sword with the puzzle sword for some wicked combos or my personal favorite the mace of the insolent and standard mace so I can use miracles and powestance. and 2, the two handed parry for most weapons. The two handed parry gives you a second defensive option while two handing. I realise that weapon arts essentially replaced that but it was a thing I enjoyed pulling off.
@@lolbuster01 I agree entirely, in fact powerstancing was one of the things I believe Dark Souls 2 had most in the spirit of demon's and dark souls. Both games create challenges, but give the player ways to outright trivialize them if you know what you're doing. Something I believe it generally lost with two and onward.
However Powerstancing is an exception, and gave the player so many options. I remember the first time I learned how it actually worked, I upped my stats and used an ascetic to kill the pursuer boss again so I could dual wield it's great swords for some absolutely sickening damage. Damn fun though.
I disagree that it was more of a replacement as I think both systems could work together. Weapon Arts and Power Stancing. What replaced power stancing was the exclusive dual wielding weapons, which I think most souls fans agree was a complete downgrade.
For the record, although I'm guessing I'm not the first one to point this out: The "dudes in armor" critique is very obviously ripped from Yahtzee's review of the game. I even find it somewhat funny since that was not a large critique of the game, but most of an internal fanbase one.
The full argument, which he never brings up, is that DS1, while also having it's fair share of dudes in armor, has a really wide array of stuff: dragons, wolves, massive flaming centipedes, the butterfly, etc. Even the humanoid enemies have a lot of different kinds: nito, the demons, ceaseless discharge, the golem. And the dragons rarely look like actual "stereotypical" dragons. Meanwhile, DS2 seems like a downgrade from a design standpoint. As most enemies and even bosses are in fact just dudes in armor. They might be slightly more mutated, but most of them are literally, conceptually and visually, just dudes in armor.
This is used as a small criticism of the game on a CONCEPTUAL level, which is combined with other conceptual critiques to support the narrative that DS2 is simply less CREATIVE, less VARIED and less conceptually and visually INTERESTING than DS1. It has nothing to do with mechanics, it's a critique of design.
I'm guessing what he worded horribly is that he likes the CONCEPT of fighting on a 1 on 1 duel with someone that in the game's LORE is supposed to be equal to you, even if he most definitely isn't in it's MECHANICS. Honestly. I think this is a fucking ridiculous standpoint. He's basically saying that a SINGLE concept repeated ad nauseaum is better than a wide array of different concepts. He answered the criticism of "they're repeating a single concept a billion times" with "yeah but it's the BEST concept" and while I can't say that having a game with a single concept is bad, because Shadow of the Colossus is fucking amazing, there's a difference between basing a game in something like that and just spamming the most boring fucking concept in fantasy games over and over when the previous game actively tried to make sure it got away from doing so.
I know "boring" is a more subjective term but I think you get my point. Most enemies in most fantasy games are dudes in armor. Not humanoids, conceptually just dudes in armor. In medieval history most enemies were also dudes in armor, with the eventual hog getting a kill here and there. It's not only what you'd expect to find but also the concept that brings the least amount of things that differ from the norm with it. It's ok for the eventual fight, specially when used for specific fights that are meant to make a point of it. Like say god damn DS1 did. But if most bosses in your path are just dudes in armor with some growth hormones thrown in the mix, well, it gets really repetitive really soon. Specially when the game throws multiple bosses in a row and they're all dudes in armor, that just feels like an insult.
I'd also make the point that DS2 goes even worse, since even the enemies that aren't dudes in armor conceptually, namely nashandra, well, wind up looking like a gal in a dress. They could've gone absolutely NUTS with her concept. Hypermutated magical woman? That's the BED OF CHAOS in DS1, and it might suck mechanically but you gotta admit conceptually that's amazing. DS2 just gave us a woman in a dress with a spooky scary skeleton reskin. It feels like the designer was on strike honestly.
What? You're not intimidated by a skeleton in a ballroom gown? Well what if she's wielding a scythe? Doesn't get edgier than that.
I can understand your criticism, and you could say there was objectively creativity in enemy design in this game. But fighting dudes in armor is what you do everytime you PVP, and I've not seen people clamoring for the removal of PVP or for the adding greater variety in player body type. Dark Souls 2 just adds more of that to the PVE section.
Now of course, if you think dudes in armor should stay to the PVP section, while PVE is populated by crazy weirdo monsters, then that's cool too. But I personally liked a greater focus on the 'dude' fights. Different dudes have different attack ranges, different animation speeds, etc... you still have to learn how to guard against those attacks the same whether the long range strike attack is skinned as a whip or as a tongue, whether the melee attack is a sword or a claw swipe, or the ranged attack is a spell or a vomited cloud of fire. While there is less visual creativity in providing creepy horror monsters, the gameplay ends up working out the same.
If you enjoy fighting guys in armor far more than anything else, dark souls 2 is going to be funner than dark souls 1.
Should dark souls 2 be praised for that though? Probably not. The most that should be said is maybe you'll like it.
It is untrue that the gameplay ends up being the same. Mainly cause of Seath, Gaping Dragon, Quelaag, Nito's boss room, Hydras, Dragons, BoC, the son of BoC, Tarras' bridge, Capra Demon's boss room. Gargoyle area of denial (I actually don't recall anything in the base game like that, huh). Four Kings distance distorting weirdness, Iron Golem's lightning bombs. The lava room for what's his face, Butterfrees, Seath's invisible walkway, Seath's mandatory death mechanic, Sirens, and on and on.
No, the visuals are varied, and the gameplay is more varied too.
I agree with everything you said, and your points were very well articulated. However, I do feel obliged to point out that it should be spelled 'especially'.
I'm glad you're not afraid to make long videos. I'm the kind of person who prefers long form content while drawing or playing video games so thanks.
My only problem so far is that guy complaining about how much damage is done to him, while wearing zero armor and only having a shield and ultra greatsword. If you play the game naked, you can't expect to take easily managable amounts of damage.
wearing armor doesn't do that much of a differents except with havel armor
You're thinking DS3, DS2 still has upgradeable armor which itself was pretty bullshit.
chaosslayer27 then you are saying that Demon’s Souls and Dark Soul are bull shit to. I am not saying that it is not true but just pointing it out.
+Zarke Armour does very little in DS2 this coming from someone who always maxes their armour every playthrough. It's unfortunately a ratio system, it might take half the damage off the weakest enemies but only 5% off the damage of the Alonne knights for example. It's rubbish in every Dark souls games except for the poise it gives.
@LeadFaun however that was present in demon's souls, dark souls 1 and bloodborne as well. defense was only switched to a percentage rather than a flat bonus in dark souls 3.
The way you call him Harris is so passive agressive, I love it
I would one hundred percent listen to a thirty plus hour break down of dark souls from you MauLer.
The guy was attacked IRL by a man dressed as Ornstein, so when he fought the old dragon slayer it reminded him of these times and was overall a bad experience, now that was funny
> PvP
> talks about NPC invaders
... what? Did I skip something here?
Other than that though, good vid!
I believe that he mainly talks about NPC invasions in PvP to draw a common view for people to understand, as NPC invasions occur as long as an individual is connected to the internet whilst Human invasions and their frequency can vary.
This includes the fact that real humans in PvP are varied in builds, personal skill and stats, whilst the NPC invasions have much stronger abilities to compensate for the lack of an organic intelligence, whcih also includes the fact that NPC invasions are supposed to represent Dark Souls II PvP at it's subjective 'best' but with Mauler's points provided, shows that the NPC's are unfair and incompetent.
With Human players, shortly after his discussion on NPC invasions around 15:00, he discusses human invaders, who Mauler states are overall detrimental to a PvE run and can use the surrounding environment to defeat you, which as shown in footage, can feel extremely frustrating.
npc invaders are like the tutorials for pvp
It was probably just so you have something repetable
Mauler missed the mark on the PVP/NPC invasions and summoning. Also the clip of the guy yelling "netcode" isn't even lag, the guy just isn't very good at PVP. All of the grown men bitching about invasions when they can simply turn it to offline mode is a bit perplexing as well. Not to mention the guy who was physically unable to get to the host while the host just sat there complaining about him camping in front of him. The weakest part of this whole series if you ask me. Other than that this is a very entertaining 8 hours.
@@SSZaris >Also the clip of the guy yelling "netcode" isn't even lag, the guy just isn't very good at PVP
How? I've never played any DS, but one dude is slashing the air and another is taking damage. In what universe this is fine?
I think its pretty funny that he praises these bosses, but doesn't even bother to fight the darklurker, who is probably one of the, If not THE best fight in this game.
1) it's attacks are slower, and well telegraphed, but do good damage. They also have variety, it can hit you from afar, up close, from the sides, behind, but if you are paying attention, you can tell what it will do.
2) it doesn't gank you right away. You get at a pretty pace fighting it, then it splits itself at half health, not changing it's moveset, which works very well with its slower telegraphed attacks.
Overall, I really wish more of the bosses in dark souls 2 were like this. The developers really had some good ideas but they just fall flat.
Like, imagine if, During the royal rat vanguard fight, if there were less rats, but there was periodically a rat that was tied to the boss (not literally mind you) that prevents the boss from taking damage as long as it is alive. Taking it out will open up the boss to damage temporarily until it chooses another rat to protect it.
Richard Welch love darklurker but after sl1 runs...never again unless I make my comically overpowered char
I now have the mental image of the Royal Rat Vanguard lassoing another rat and using it as a living shield.
@@SorowFame That would be cool too. Better than just a bunch of rats
39:20 did anyone else notice mauler become a speed rapper?
“Artorias is the best” roughly translates to “he can’t backstab you, and you can’t backstab him, so it’s like PVP but better”
With DS1 PVP, it's not exactly an incorrect Statement
@@rhysofsneezingdragon1758 Thank you for reminding me about this series; it's been years since I've watched through them all
@@ArchetypeGotoh no prob
and with the quality of ds1 bosses, people arent really wrong. if you go through the entire souls series backwards, dark souls 1 bosses are kind of a joke
@@ClovissenpaiDotR that’s hardly fair; once you’ve gone through “the series” of anything, the bosses will seem easy. But if any game was actually you’re first, you’ll find it’s bosses plenty challenging
There's something about Dark Souls 2 that just makes me look at it with disgust. I thoroughly enjoyed the game when I first played it, but it just felt.. different than Dark Souls. Almost as though a different studio entirely had made the game. The changes movement and combat was jarring and something that I just couldn't get behind. It's interesting that they seemed to go back to the Dark Souls 1 formula in the third game, adding to the movement and combat without changing it drastically like DkS2 did.
... Wait, why is Dark Souls 2 doing the Ultima 9 thing I saw mention of in Spoony's video? The PC is fighting a Dragonrider, who's not riding a dragon. Why-why is this? Why would you *ever* fight a Dragonrider that's not riding a dragon, unless it's a multiphase boss fight where they start off NOT the riding their dragon, then later mount their dragon and make the fight actually interesting?
Tl;dr Dragonriders need to be riding dragons.
There's also the fact that there's a fucking Dragonslayer within the immediate area of another dragon in DS2:SotFS. Sure, this is the dragon that is a poor copy/paste job and has no business being here, but I thought it was funny in the same kind of way.
Dragonriders who don't ride dragons and Dragonslayers who can't seem to slay a dragon in the same area as them.. gotta love how much effort went into DS2. I hate to say it, as I still do like DS2 a lot, but it's very apparent that Miyazaki wasn't involved in DS2 on the lore/story/world side of things especially. It's all very lazily done.
Seems silly to criticize a DS game for failures in logic, realism or ....semantics. If flow of the game is enjoyable it's working perfectly, that's what a Dark souls game does.
+HeavyArtillery6 Objectively how? You didn't think you'd just say that and it would mean anything did you?
Haha that's a very Spoony point.
Dude, you kinda forgot your dragon..
I don’t know why, but I personally really liked the Skeleton Lords. It was just a nice change of pace to kill hoards of the skeletons as a boss. But I did think that DS2 overused this idea.
The Skeleton Lords have an idea there, being essentially a Dance Macabre recreation, so I forgive their inclusion in concept execution aside
"I like it because its good, and its good because I like it. Now let me hide that within a video to validate my feelings." Is how most of his videos feel like to me, in this part you show how he uses this kind of logic for the whole dudes in armor segment
I mean that's not a bad thought to have. It just makes for a poor "defense" video in the objective sense of things.
@@thesnatcher3616 yes it is lol. If your attempting to defend something and use the defense that “if feels good” or “I like it” as arguments is moronic. You shouldn’t be taken seriously as a RUclipsr much less a critic
@@maximusorbis2548 Basically what I was saying. It's not bad to like something, but it is bad to say that just because you like it, it's good. That's why it's horrible to bring in feelings when you're trying to defend something. It just has no base whatsoever.
"This is like this, and it just isn't fun".
Man do I hate it when people say that.
@@thesnatcher3616 Exactly. I did not enjoy the Witcher 3. Doesn't mean that it is a bad game, I just didn't enjoy it. Feelings and opinions are not good defenses to anything as they are personal and not factual as a whole. It's like when people say that DS 2 has unfair and bullshit ganks. This is observable in the first area as you can get chased by like 15-20 hollows in the first area. Claims need evidence not opinions.
@Dundrael See the thing is claims do need evidence. This is not something that is debatable. If you want to critique something you need proof that you're criticisms are valid and hold up to scrutiny. For example Hb says in his video "It isn't fun to die while healing" is subjective. Some people love the tension of being close to death (In the game) and love having to pick the moment to heal. His argument was subjective of his own opinion and nothing more. And No it is very easy to see the Witcher 3 is a good game. Multiple game awards, multiple 10/10 reviews, forums with loads of love praising the game, and more. It is safe to assume the game is a great game (despite my disdain for it). The difference is I am not speaking from my own opinion nor was I stating an opinion. I know for a fact the love and attention the game has garnered from the gaming community. On top of that you can easily see that it topped sales records boasting an impressive amount of over 30 million units being sold.The game is good. this is an undeniable fact. Opinions are not viable, especially when you try to "debate" the pretty standard opinion that DS 2 Is not as good as the other entries in the franchise. And when it comes to art...yeah it is subjective Not everyone will like the same thing. However with video games fans tend to have expectations. There aren't museums we can play 10 dollars to go into and play. Games are art, but we pay to play these games, so yeah gamers do hold them to a certain standard. So to end my point, I will say my point was completely rational.
I actually liked seeing bosses appearing as mobs later on in the game, it makes me feel like I've gotten stronger to the point were bosses can now COUNT as mobs. it also fills me with a small sense of awe that while these bosses gave me so much trouble at the adventure's start, they are just the guards to the real big bad.
i'm very glad the games aren't what harris thinks they're supposed to be... sure, there's room for improvement, but i pretty much like all of them just the way they are
So Harris's makes the statement that fighting an enemy that is on equal footing with you is the best sort of boss fight.
How in the hell is he a fan of the Soulborne games then? The majority of the bosses can hit harder than you, are taller than you and at times towering over you and make you look like a toothpick in comparison, shoot lines of fire, darkness, and lightning at you with spells you never obtain, and many other factors.. That is if you don't go and grind souls for hours and just bullshit your way through an area, which is what I think Harris did. After all you can farm souls so easily in Dark Souls 2 ESPECIALLY with the Giant Lord because he is a lumbering idiot that gives you over 100,000 souls and that just increases with Bonfire Aesthetics.
Like I guess he likes Vendrick so much is because he hardly has any moves but hits like a truck and I guess that is what he means by equal footing. I prefer a boss fight like Nameless King because that guy not only hits like a goddamn truck, he also is quick for his size. Don't even get me started on Darkeater Midir, the big black dragon that's not only large and powerful but also incredibly fucking fast and taking his ass out felt so goddamn great. Much better than taking out the Dragonrider or even.....Nashandra. Hell the Soul of Cinder was a harder boss fight....
Oh god, the giant lord. with bonfire ascetics+equipment you can farm over 400k souls per run counting the giants that get crushed by the stone head. It was fun for trying to overlevel yourself in NG++ and beyond, but was broken in terms of general game balance.
Have you even watced his video?
He is watching a series that literally deconstructs his video.
He in affect has watched the video.
Yea, honestly, isn't it truly the opposite? Beating a foe that is far superior just feels significantly better than beating an equal or inferior foe.
Beating an enemy that is just like you, but a little better, is extremely satisfying in certain games. After all it's part of why Vergil from Devil May Cry 3 is so beloved, because he is visually identical to you (just with his hair streaked back and wearing blue instead of red), but he is objectively a better fighter so it's more satisfying to show in the endgame that you have finally surpassed him. It's the classic rivalry story arc of "first fight you lose definitively, second fight you show you've become his equal, third and final fight you've proven yourself his superior". It's a good way to show how the player and the main character have progressed in strength over the course of the story. The reason for this is context, because the focus of the game is the relationship between the two brothers. However that works because of the way the game's narrative is designed. The Souls series doesn't do that, ever. It almost did with the original idea that Oscar would be someone you continually encountered in the game, only with it to end with a duel because he chooses to support whichever serpent you don't thus putting you at odds. But it didn't do that and the narrative isn't built around that kind of character interaction.
Also I want to note that I was typing this while watching the video, so I didn't even know he was going to bring up Vergil, it's just my personal go-to and I was like 6 sentences in by the time I heard him say it. I disagree with Azel being the best God Hand boss though, that would be Elvis in his true form.
Dark Souls 2 has so many bosses and they're mostly incredibly underwhelming and then they're re-used a bunch of times. Virtually none of the encounters feel special in this game outside a few good ones in the DLCs.
I have watched this series so many times and only now just realized you asked Harris if Gwyndolin was "too fluid". That made my day
If harris really thinks the fights on even footing are the best then he would also have to think that mimic tear (elden ring) is the best boss in the entire souls-like fromsoft games catalogue and that is quite funny to me
to be fair that was a cool fight
@@CErra310 lol
@@CErra310I liked it too
It can be a cool fight with the right set up.
And if you are still challenged by the AI I guess@@WokeandProud
I wouldn't even argue Dante and Vergil are on equal footing in DMC3. From a story perspective, there is a very clear power difference between the two early on, and Vergil trashes Dante in their first fight and Dante needs to become stronger to match his power (which he does when he awakens). From the gameplay perspective, Vergil can end the player quickly in all three boss fights. He does far more damage than you can ever do, and his devil trigger lasts way longer too. To call the player on "even footing" with Vergil is inherently untrue, as he has many of the same advantages over the player that other boss fights do.
39:18 MauLer goes Rap God for 2 seconds.
32:37 did you see that? In harris' game play he heals in a bossfight using estus, something he said he never does because the game disincentivizes it
literally why i never listen harris ever again, pyro and civvie11 is my go to
I am really enjoying hearing your critic on DS2 since i barely got myself to beat it once while beating DS1 and DS3 multiple times and could really explain why. Looking back on it after watching this video i think it was mostly because i could subconsciously tell that the team in charge of this one didn't put the same love and effort into it as the teams responsible for the other ones. A lot of the boss fights also seemed to rely on a gimmick too much and most of the difficulty would dissapear after removing that (the lost sinner and the dark room, the serpent woman and the poison floor, the flexile sentry and the raising water, etc). You could literally either remove or reduce these gimmicks with a hidden area in the level and the boss fight would become way easier since it was just an artifical difficulty added by a nuisance (lock-on being removed, poison floor, water slowing movement, etc). If you compare this to say, the decons or wulfnir from DS3, you will find that the gimmicks to their fights are hard coded to the encounter and they didn't feel a need to add a way to remove them. This is how i feel at least and would love to hear other peoples opinions on this :3
31:17 Good point, but keep in mind that this is the second boss in the game.
As a new player, Gaping Dragon took me about 3-5 tries. While not particularly difficult, it provides a good challenge for players and teaches them to how to read attack patterns.
For example, the player needs to tell the difference between the vomit and slam attack.
The "dudes in armor" complaint likely originated from Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, who does the Zero Punctuation "review" series. Since he's more of an entertainer who puts out a first-impressions funnyman rant it's not exactly deep criticism worthy of response.
But at the underlying heart of the issue is that Dark Souls (the first one) set up an expectation of a world filled with varieties in enemy types. An expectation Dark Souls 2 failed to even meet, much less improve upon, by having the majority of enemies being variously sized people with varying degrees of armor.
There were ghosts that floated through walls and didn't have to stick to surfaces... there were dragons as more than just boss monsters... there were mounds of flesh that acted as a sort of tank... there were bushes that sprung to life in ambush... mushroom people... octoroks... those weird ball things that breathed fire... ceiling worms... titanite demons... those pair of legs that stood around lava... those worm sacs growing out of people... those annoying mosquitos... very large leaches... the clams... bat wing demons... floating explodey heads... those skeletons that used to be giants but were reassembled like dogs... slimes that fell from the ceiling...
...whew, the list is pretty long already and there's more. But playing through hours and hours of Dark Souls 2 the only non humanoids (with non humanoid attacks) I've really found are the frogs that turn you into stone, the dogs, and the rats. All from Dark Souls 1. This is not counting bosses, obviously. Dark Souls 2 also added spiders. I might be missing one or two but clearly the variation in Dark Souls is limited when compared to Dark Souls 1.
8:33 The best and most memorable fights in the series. Enemies who are on equal footing and use similar powers. Brings up fucking Crestfallen Warrior post hollowing. Give me a break, holy shit.
the character you might talk to once and then never again, i didn't even know he COULD hollow for the longest time
To add on to the invasions and NPCs: the Dark Souls 2 NPC invaders just straight up cheat!
I mean, they can escape stuns after one hit, roll as soon as their backstab animation ends, have way more HP than a SL813 (numbers might be off by a bit, but max soul level) character, infinite stamina (not an NPC invader, but the Drakekeepers are a big example of this) and missile class tracking (again, about every enemy in the game).
Also, "New track" while showing Belfry Gargoyles. It's the same theme as DS1. Don't know why, but I always found that hilarious.
Loved the shade thrown at SotFS. Hope I see some Vanilla vs SotFS in this soon. Mostly speaking as someone who absolutely loathes SotFS and likes Vanilla more.
^^ There is a lot to say about the imbalance of PVP within Dark Souls 2 but I felt as though I couldn't even reach that discussion because of how poor the net code was but I know that is not enough for many people and perhaps I should have fleshed it out a bit more.
Thanks for commenting :)
I also agree that Vanilla + DLC is much better than SotFS. It's a shame this shitty, inferior romhack version of DS2 is being promoted as the "real" one. Even outside of difficulty, enemy placements in DS2 make a lot more sense within the storyline. It makes sense to have drakes above Aldia's Keep, because they're experiments made by Aldia. It makes no sense to have a drake in Heide's Tower of Flame.
It's also really stupid to add a bunch more trash mobs to Iron Keep. Iron Keep is probably one of the harder areas in vanilla DS2 anyway. It hardly needed MORE trash mobs added to what is most likely the hardest room in the game (you know the one I mean.)
Some of the item placements are stupid too. It used to be in vanilla that getting the bastille key required defeating an optional boss and then surviving a very difficult gank room. If you DID get it, the run up to Lost Sinner was much easier and you could make the fight easier too. But, because the key was hard to find and relatively difficult to retrieve, it was very likely you'd fight Lost Sinner the majority of the times without the bastille key. That's cool. It means you end up fighting the boss the way the devs intended, in the dark. But, because you just get the bastille key in SotFS, there's no decision now. You will ALWAYS have the key to make the run up easier, and you will ALWAYS light the torches to make the fight easier. That's what I mean about decisions that seem stupid. The vanilla game provided you a choice, and SotFS removes that choice. Dammit, it was fine before.
"Always have the key"
You can actually miss it if you're short on Branches and use the Antique Key to reach the Sinner, but most people will actually fight the Sentinels on their first playthrough.
Also, Heide Knights on Heide's Tower when on the Design Works it clearly shows it was meant to be different from what SotFS did. Pure, fucking, shit.
TheSamuraiGoomba SotFS made Ruin Sentinels optional. Defeating them rewards you with access to the Bastille Key. Circumventing them means you have to fight the Sinner in the dark.
I remember I bought SotFS because I thought it would be dark souls 2 plus the season pass. What I got was a completely restructured game with changes made that seemed to be designed to make me not have fun. DS2 was already my least favorite in the series, SotFS was the last nail in the coffin.
The "many dudes in armor" thing was a valid criticism when the game first game out that I know I had. Yes of course there's bosses that aren't humanoid, but the vast majority of foes in DS2 were humanoids, or dudes in armor. We're talking trash mobs and bosses and mini bosses. It just didn't have the same type of variation or at least "feel" of variation that DS1 had. You spawn at a bonfire, every trash mob around you, dude in armor, oh there some bigger enemies in that area, large dudes in armor, get past all that, boss is dude in armor. (With multiple other bonfires along the way don’t forget) Rinse repeat every area with few deviations.
Having a rewatch of this for background noise and had a stray thought that tickled my funnybone. I realized that when I was a child, I really liked the "equal footing" sort of fights in games, the humanoid fights (as Mauler correctly assesses). As I've grown older, I've come to appreciate more and more the larger than life boss fights more. The seemingly insurmountable odds. In Elden Ring, my absolute favourite boss, purely because of the visual spectacle of the fight, is Rykard. You, a small normal sized human (arguably) against this massive wriggling mess of snake, hands and skulls. I still enjoy the humanoid fights in games, but they're not my main focus, as when I was a kid.
TL;DR: Harris thinks like a child.
51:10 the movement that makes when he says "hes the magickarp of DS" kills me bruh
Thanks for putting the script of hbomber's review on the screen when he was talking so I could mute the video for those sections.
I watched both Mathew and Harry's videos back to back, and I can't help but feel like Harry completely misunderstood Mathew's criticism with regards to the majority of enemies being "dudes in armor" (or rather, humanoids). Now, maybe it was a defence of a general/common criticism back then, but considering the amount of actual research that went into his video I kinda doubt it (and considering what follows, I'll take it that even this part is a somewhat direct response to Mathew's video).
Mathew's criticism isn't so much about the bosses, but the overall enemy variety per se. He goes out of his way to outright say that even though there were plenty of different and contrasting areas in DaS2 the enemies stayed mostly the same, in comparison to DaS1 where the enemies were more diverse and the undead or 'dudes in armor' weren't as prominent. DaS 2 failed to take advantage of the fauna in order to reflect it's unique environments. And one could even say that SotFS doubled down on this mistake rather than attempt to fix it.
With regards to Harry's "argument"? there isn't much to say about it when there's no argument at all, and defending copy-pasted bosses is... a headscratcher for sure. There's a general consensus that those were one of the weakest parts of DaS 1 (Lost Izalith and the 'Asylum/Stray/Firesage' demons) and I don't see how what wasn't okay there would be okay in DaS 2, even more so the latter which had the bonfire ascetic which allowed you to replay bossfights as much as you wanted without resorting to NG+ and replaying the whole game again. It's baffling and I personally don't see how anyone could look at randomly placed copy-pasted assets and unironically say that it's a sign of good game design.
23:37 There's a beautiful sort of irony in everyone googling the term "platonic ideal" and then applying their own understanding to what it means
I think every college student needs to watch your videos. Excellent dissection of a poorly made argument. It would be a useful tool in learning how to write persuasively.
It honestly says a lot about H that he can't be bothered to fight Dark Lurker since it only takes like an hour to reach him if you already have the effigies and know what to do. Maybe even less than an hour.
I know I'm years late to this but I just beat DS2. I enjoyed the game a lot and avoiding critiquing until I developed my own opinion. You've done a hell of a job with your DS2 videos man. I actually wanted to be productive today but this series is so incredibly well done I think my day is going to be a write off. Excellent and inspiring content here MauLer.
@MauLer (not sure how to contact you directly), the depth of analysis you present has inspired me to get back to my own work. I just wrapped my masters degree and have been in a slump recently as my big challenges have evaporated. Listening to you has reminded me of just how satisfying it can be to come to know something inside and out, especially in contrast to the feel-good foolishness of amateur commentators. I’ve even listened to reviews of yours for games I haven’t played, just as a part of getting my critical faculties back. Consider me a subscriber and, soon, a patreon supporter.
Regarding a statement at 48:00 -
"Repetition of assets is an indication of them becoming lazy or running out of ideas"
I make video games for a living as a programmer, and I wanted to add my perspective here as I feel this is a somewhat unfair statement on MauLers part towards the developers. To be clear I'm not defending any of their design choices or any of that in DS2, simply attempting to correct what I feel is an inaccuracy here that my experience can address.
Sometimes, the repetition of ideas can also indicate that they were running out of time and the resources on the project were getting stretched thin.
This doesn't excuse or mitigate the state of DS2, it is still the game it is, but I feel like this doesn't get mentioned often enough in analysis videos, but game developers are human too, and sometimes we fail and sometimes we have to slog on regardless.
Love the series man, looking forward to finishing it as a whole!
This is supported by the fact that apparently halfway through development the game was a mess, so they scrapped it and started again using whatever assets they already had. Its why, in addition to the reused bosses and such, why the world environment makes no damn sense, as they basically copied and pasted stuff wherever they could fit it.
I'd imagine that with Scholor of the First Sin they didn't have much in the way of resources and time to properly overhaul the whole game, thus more reusing of assets then happened.
I think this is the best part of mathewmatosis' videos because in many of his criticisms he does mention that time or budget constraints maybe a cause for a problem. With attacking odd people like mathew it makes me think if hbomberguy looks more than 20mins at some of the videos he critiques.
Reusing code doesn't diminish the codes second usage, so long as it provides the needed functionality. If you repeat enemy types from the very beginning of the game that's just lack of thought and it is lazy
Why was 6 afraid of 7? It's a fairly common question, mostly because when people see 6 and 7 next to each other, it doesn't really make sense. 6 is large, muscled, and trained in multiple martial arts, while 7 is fairly average, physically, and short. However, 6's fear of 7 has its roots in childhood. See, 6 and 7 grew up together, and for a few years, they were best friends. But then 6 kissed 3, and they became childhood sweethearts. 7 secretly had feelings for 3, so 7 decided he needed to destroy 6 to win 3's affection. He started subtly, undermining 6 whenever possible with passive aggressive comments and compli-sults. But over time, things got much more insidious. 7 started messing with 6's performance in school, bringing down his grades and turning teachers against him. Even worse, 7 became great friends with 6's parents and slowly turned them against their own offspring. At night, 7 would sneak into 6's bedroom, and whisper depressing and hopeless things into his ears. Every time 3 was around, 7 would pants 6 and make fun of his genitalia, or try to body shame him in other ways. However, 3 was both smart and compassionate, and saw through 7's schemes, sticking with 6, trying to counter 7's psychological tear-down with compliments and friendship. Finally, 7 decided that he would never be able to win 3, so he drugged both 6 and 3, taking them to an abandoned cobbler's hut on the edge of town. There, he proceeded to torture and maim 3, forcing 6 to watch in horror, unable to do anything to save his sweetheart. 7 didn't kill 3, but instead, put her in a semi-vegetative state. 7 cleaned the scene of his prescence, then called the cops, having 6 blamed for 3's condition. 6 was sent to prison, believing 6 was guilty, 6's parents fell into a deep depression, eventually committing suicide over what they believed 6 had done. After serving 17 years of a 30 year sentence, and getting out on good behaviour, 6, now muscled and skilled as a fighter, thought he might get revenge on 7. But when he finally tracked down 7, he found out that 7 had installed a micro-bomb into 3's body, and should he be killed, the bomb would automatically go off and kill 3 as well. And though she was still in a mostly fugue state, 6 couldn't bring himself to hurt her any further, and decided to try and move on with his life. However, being an ex-con, it was difficult for him to get a job. 6 finally found employment at a diner, which 7 then bought, and proceeded to again undermine and toy with 6 at every turn. 6 tried to find employment elsewhere, but 7 contacted any potential employer and soured them against 6. 6 finally realized that no matter what he did, 7 was going to try and ruin his life, and he resigned himself to living as a broken, lonely man, never able to stand up to the depraved, amoral 7.
Where did you find this from
what did I just read?
I just watched all these. I wanted to say THANK YOU for your effort, time and thoroughness. Its invigorating.
I think hbomber guy simply fails to seperate his opinion from facts. Simply saying 'I like this better' instead of 'this IS better' would work better for him.
but he does do that?
I mean it’s kind of obvious that it’s his opinion because *all reviews are subjective anyway*
@@aaaaaahhh9537 Except he presents his opinions as fact while using very flawed and dishonest arguments to obfuscate his deception. Secondly, reviews are, by nature, not subjective. People use reviews to gauge whether or not they wish to buy a product or consume a piece of media. It is the responsibility of the reviewer to separate their subjective views on the subject from the objective quality of said product to provide as comprehensive a review as possible. This is why MauLer has chosen to respond to Hbomberguy's video.
Also, just because something is subjective does not mean it is immune to criticism. Opinions can be incorrect or misinformed, and to place opinions on an untouchable pedestal is the height of hubris.
@@gasterblaster9817 He's a commie subhuman. For him TRUTH is what he wants to be true.
@@pacman_pol_pl_polska where the f*ck did the "commie subhuman" part come from?
I guess Harris misses the point that Virgil isn't the best fight because he's the same size or on equal footing but because of context and his personal history with Dante
“He doesn’t often use genuine events to create his points, rather, he uses what he remembers, and this means that his script, very likely, doesn’t go beyond his first draft, while in comparison THIS IS MY FIFTH !!!!!! “
Fucking GOLD MauLer !!!!! Pure GOLD
39:20 that doubletime. Impressing
RAP GOD
I went for the platinum trophy and when you play the game for that long all the flaws are clear to see.
"Pretend it's what you wanted and see how you feel."
-Bilbo Baggins
Are these made with chatGPT heh
Rewatched to hear you say "The Magikarp of Dark Souls"
Because of Matthewmatosis, I know read all writing with his voice. Sometimes I forget that that's not normal and I laugh to myself.
Don’t play dark souls, probably never will because I like games that don’t make me feel toooo incompetent (not easy as I’m a pretty poor gamer but I try!) - however, listening to Mauler talk things through is so relaxing I’m more than happy to sit through hours of videos where I don’t understand any of the references.
4 year late comment, but I always felt that having the Capra Demon and Taurus Demon be an early fight (along with the Asylum Demon, I guess) but then be a 'normal' enemy later on was actually a gameplay decision more than a boss design decision. Like, they are a bit boosted in stats for the boss itself, but it feels like an intentional design decision to make it seem like your early fight were just against big fuckers that were in your way, rather than actual named bosses with a specific identity and place in the world.
Like you were meant to be so weak early on, that perfectly normal enemies could be considered bosses, if that makes sense?
Though I guess the presence of Black Knights does the exact same thing (as well as enemies you encounter when going the 'wrong' way) so I might just be overthinking it for a want to justify a meh decision by the Devs.
Why does Old Dragonslayer use DARK element attacks?
He's a Dragon slayer. He should be using Lightning.
This isn't even deep lore, Dark Souls 1 STARTS by telling and SHOWING you that the instrumental part of killing dragons is to break through their stone scales with LIGHTNING. Ornstein also specifically used lightning, dragons take more damage from lightning, and if you take Dragonslayer's boss soul and get a weapon from it, you'll get Ornstein's spear and it deals LIGHTNING damage, not Dark.
So why does he use Dark!? I've tried to find out, if you look at his boss soul, which is where you normally find notable lore details, it just says this boss reminds you of Ornstein..... THAT'S IT! That's all it fucking says! The weapon doesn't mention anything about the actual boss either. There's ZERO fucking lore on this guy, just that he reminds you of Ornstein. It doesn't even confirm if he IS Ornstein, it's just member berries inside and out!!! There is literally a section in his wiki entry debating if he's Ornstein or not. It's fucking ridiculous.
In other Dark Souls games, if the game establishes something, and then you find something that breaks this pattern, you normally have at least a little information available to at least get you on the ROAD to figuring out "Oh, so this knight that serves the kingdom is here, where the kingdom's enemies are, because he's one of the traitors from this event in the lore."
Something like that, but there's just NOTHING with this fucker. The lore of the Souls series is hidden, and intentionally incomplete, but it's not BROKEN. If they say warriors of sunlight use lightning, then they use lightning. If one of them doesn't use it, that's probably some lore about that specific character you can dig in to. This feels like SUCH a stark change to make to such a famous Dark Souls boss, but they just didn't say ANYTHING about it. Because this isn't a boss, it's just a member berry obstacle to pretend they've actually constructed a Dark Souls game.
These notes on boss fights remind me that one of my favorite bosses in any video game is the Regent of the Mask in Ninja Gaiden 3. I don't think a lot of that game is really good, but the fights against that particular dude with a sword are far more interesting and engaging that the ones against giant robots and dinosaurs. It's something that varies a lot.
Hot Take, PvP across all the games would be significantly improved if invaders were targeted by mobs to. There's no reason an invader should have the advantage of HAVING ALL THE MOBS IN THE AREA ON THEIR SIDE!
The guy defending the game liked it so much that he couldn't be bothered to play it to get footage. What a joke of a person.
Probably started it up to get footage then realized how much it does not conform to his opinion of reality
@@koontz1154 then why make the video at all?
I saw a homebrew spell for dnd. I didnt like it, called it out as weak. Did the math, it wasnt as weak as I thought, looked around, arrived to a different conclusion, and wrote that into my new comment, instead of hanging on to my previous stance.
If during the research to make something, you discover things that go against the very thing you want to make, why do you keep going?
@@texteel sometimes peoples brains don't have as many wrinkles as others' and it isn't conducive to being logical. Also what does your comment even represent as a point? The previous was about him not even getting his own footage for whatever reason and that alone is pretty suspect if he "likes" the game so much to not be bothered to play it for relevant footage. All in all some people don't care they are/could be wrong, especially when they make money off said opinion.
@@koontz1154 I meant that Harris, while doing research about a topic, found evidence that round contrary to his original position, he should have reevaluated doing the video on the first place, or, at the very least, change his position, and present that in the video.
He did neither, he stuck to the original idea, not caring what he uncovered, which is a very bad look
@@texteel oh, sorry, I completely misunderstood where you were coming from.
I just freaking love the rant at the end! Wow, you put so much work into this its acctually insane! You're amazing
Revisiting this series after getting to level 72 in Elden Ring. Think I’ve only fought Margit as far as story bosses go. I hope you end up reviewing it. I know you’ve been enjoying it. I’d be watching your streams but I’m too busy taking care of my new born and playing the games myself. Can’t wait to go back and catch up
Playing elden ring and raising a family sounds like a good time, god speed
My favorite fights in DS1 are the Asylum Demon and his iterations, Gaping Dragon, Orinstein and Smough, Seath, and Artorious in the DLC. In Bloodborne, my favorite fights were Gascoigne, the Shadows of Yhrnahm, Gerhman, and Lady Maria in the DLC. It's about what the games are designed for. Taking on the giant and impossible foes is fun and rewarding with Dark Souls mechanics, while the vicious dance between hunters in Bloodborne is thrilling and exciting because of it's mechanics.
Did you predict chungus?
What the fuck's a chungus?
You don’t know chungus?
@@brokenlordofcinder4128 I'm from the Mi6, if you have any Information on how the queen was to be assassinated on janurary 5th, please share them with us.
@@franzchenherbert3937 I believe that they’re talking about Big Chungus, it’s a meme. Not sure if it has anything to do with the assassination of the Queen.
I literally just watched the videos that are the subject of these videos for the first time last night. I thought they were quite good. Now I'm watching these for the first time, and I'm loving them!
6 years late and agree with 99% of everything here *except* that the Heide Knight attack is poorly telegraphed. You said it yourself-they're blind. They stop and stand still, home in on you, then lunge quickly to attack. That's an attack I personally love not only because of how jarring and alarming it is at first, but also because once you learn the clear and consistent pattern, it is incredibly easy to punish reliably. (I cannot believe I just defended DS2.)
I agree. The pause itself is the telegraph.
Been watching efap for a little under a year now, and have just now started watching your backlog of videos. It is surprising to me how well researched your early videos were. You got some stuff wrong here and there (closing doors quietly in outlast) but overall I am very impressed. These videos could easily be released now and still be considered great. Which I suppose is the point of extensively researched and well thought out argumentation. Great work.
Artorias is one of the best fights because of his story and design.
The lore is amazing in the DS series. :D
Bloodborne is the best to me tho, I prefer the faster paced setting.
"What person, pray tell, dodges like this in real life, and were they in low gravity at the time" nearly fucking killed me
“His scripts don’t go past a first draft, while in comparison……. I’m on my fifth.”
- Was such a boss line holy shit, can I fight you in Froms next game?
Idk how much of a boss line it is to say you’ve been Malding over a video that the author didn’t really give a shit about hard enough to write 5 different drafts for 7 hour long videos
@@LolAdz1 Why did you comment?
@@undyne6280 why did YOU comment?
@@LolAdz1 I actually said something nice and supportive of the video.
You actively decided to be a dick just cause.
@@LolAdz1wat
I think what's an interesting point to raise as well that DSII is a very different game to DSII:SotFS. I remember really enjoying my time with the former as my first foray into the Dark Souls universe, and despising some of the changes to enemy placement in particular in SotFS when I came back to it.
Regardless, absolutely love your videos and the sheer level and detail in your critical analysis. Thank you!
I've always played in offline mode for that exact reason
Good on you honestly. Just dont disconnent
I loved the diverse ambience and the unique environments from dark souls 2 which made it more enjoyable to explore in my experience. One time you are in a place filled with sand then another time it's a place like the stone city and then you are in a polished marble castle.
I love the idea of someone going through their script and going "Oops, it's the 5th draft now. Better change that line."
NPC invasions like Armourer Dennis made me wonder if I was fighting a real player or not. The invasions in Dark Souls 1 and 3 seemed to make sense from a lore perspective, they were actual characters like yourself trying to survive in the world to the best of their abilities. In Dark Souls 2 it seems like they are just a demo for what offline players could experience if they went online. Because how else do you explain "Armorer Dennis", the armorer with who is also seriously into sorcery? It's as nonsensical as when you encounter a real player calling themselves "Havel monster" but whom favors rolling around half naked with 2 ultra great swords.
Maybe that was the intention, but I think NPC's like Kirk are a lot more memorable and believable than fucking "Armorer Dennis" (I swear to god they must have named him that by accident, he's probably supposed to be named Gandalf the fuckwit), because Kirk actually has his own story and reasons for doing what he is doing. He is a part of Lordran, Dennis is just an obstacle.
I hate the NPC invasions in all these games, if I wanted to play with human-sized characters I'd be online.
This guy doesn't get Dark Souls at all. Im glad you do.
Never played the game. Or any of the soul series, But what I love deeply and cherish immensely is your ability to dismantle every and any argument this fool makes. It’s a complete pleasure to my brain and ears to hear you analyze, speak and viscerally destroy any of his arguments. You are the GOAT of RUclips Mauler. Drop the mic
I like this guy ☝️. He gets it 👍
Mauler é um idiota completo...quase todos os argumentos dele são subjetivos, facilmente refutaveis e podem ser usados contra os outros
I've played some games in the Souls franchise, but I can say the same thing you did for his videos on the other games he did critiques on. Haven't played any of them, but there's always so much context and evidence to back up his well crafted arguments.
Is MauLer always right? No. Do I disagree with some stuff in the hours upon hours of footage I've watched. Sure.
But he owns his mistakes, can provide quotes while his "opposition" strawmans him and he's always up for discussion or a debate as far as I can tell... and I respect that dedication and ideology!
In DS1, the Asylum, Taurus, and Capra demons had lore reasons for being in those places, hell the Capra demon even had a lore reason for why he had dogs with him.
Doesn’t make it a good fight though. Hell I liked The Last Giant more than the Asylum Demon. Taurus is fine, but Asylum and Capra I wouldn’t consider “decent” fights.
i feel like when he says "like a real person would [dodge]" he means the rolling and with real person he means how players would roll away from attack combos. he is still wrong though
Yeah, i took that the same way, not sure how MauLer got IRL rolling lol. Bomber is still wrong, as no player character rolls like he does. It's def closer to a player character fight though. I also prefer fighting enemies that are closer to my player character in terms of aesthetics and movesets, probably why i love DS2 so much, despite my many grievances with it.
He should phrased ased it better then.
i would like to add to the pvp part of the video that while straight pvp, meaning just 1v1 fighting can indeed be very bad. BUT if you play on a f*cking around level, dark souls pvp can be so insanely fun. and the game really supports that kind of playstyle with tems at your disposal. just for example the item that turns you into a random prop in the world, when the game turns into a prop hunt out of nowhere to confuse your invader it can get quite hilarious. another aspect is the generel attitude of each dark souls player when fighting. there are so many dumb but funny moments you can get out of dark souls just by interactions with other players that take place. point being there more layers in dark souls pvp than just killing each other.
It's weird seeing Harris gush about fights on equal footing with similar skills, going so far to call it "compelling" when that's essentially every Marvel and DC villain and a general mark for severe lack of creativity.
the crest fallen knight and the guy who gives you estus flasks are memorable because you got to know them and understand them prior to them hollowing, both of them were risking hollowing just by existing and next you meet them they're maddened and you must put them down like a sick animal lest they continue their assault on you everytime you walk by them, they're memorable not because what they can do in fights, but because the narrative
"Genuinely good arguments" oh Mauler... Going through this a third time and I am really enjoying it. Good content.
I am here on pilgrimage once again!
Harris calling Garl Vinland the real, actual, genuine boss of the Valley of Defilement is wrong on so many levels. I get the impression he doesn't actually care about the story or setting of the Souls Series that much.