The Last Giant and the Giant Lord are the same enemy. The Last Giant breaks his chains when he sees you because he recognizes you from when you fought him the first time... in the memory when you fought him as the Giant Lord.
You have valid points, but showing a clip of you pulling a whole bunch of mobs and then running into a deadend while talking how this game is artificially hard was kinda cheap.
Every review of Dark Souls 2 does that. It’s garbage and they know it. When comparing it to the other games they always show Artorias or the Nameless King, and then show The Prowling Magus fight of all things for DS2. Like wow what a comparison. Almost like they forgot Bed of Chaos and Pinwheel exist. Curse rotted great wood. Easy/Dumb fights yet its always “Nope! Ds2 is the worst because I said it is and thats final”. Lack of braincells and getting good honestly.
@@shieldmaiden101 he made a comparison with Old Iron King and Ceaseless Discharge, even then CD is way better than OIK. I love reading seething DS2 fans comments lmao
@@jac1793 CD is better than Ivory King? Id ask you to elaborate but I know you’ll have nothing to offer. Its funny to see Ds1 fanboys think their game is flawless and perfect when it performs worse than ds2 in every regard, even with the remaster.
@@shieldmaiden101 i would argue first half of DS1 is flawless until after Anor Londo it becomes worse then DS2 in most ways, Also another add to the pile is Artorias and Manus has one of the most worst and boring boss runbacks in DS1
@@jac1793 Firstly you had nothing value of say if you aren't gonna use actual objective arguments. sorry man but saying "this is better than the other" without elaboration is more brain rot to me than even seething ds2 fans, Ceaseless is one of the worst bosses of such a small game as DS1, presentation was immaculate but that boss is pure gimmick that doesn't even mesh with Dark Souls Core Gameplay and it's intended to be that annoying old retro style platform boss mechanic. Secondly i assume you meant Old IRON King not IVORY King. Old Iron King is the Balrog rip off from LOTR, Burnt Ivory King is the one where you have knights with you. I would agree with you that Old Iron King is worse than Ceaseless.
There's a clear difference between a title and an in game cutscene basically breaking the fourth wall and telling you you're going to die a lot. Imo the "prepare to die edition" is still a little cringey but ds2's cutscene is far worse.
@@bito2041 is it really a fourth wall break when the game has a god damn chariot running in circles for eternity in hopes that the undead it crushes stop getting up? you wouldn't be the first one to "die" several times, people that don't really "die" when they are killed are even considered a plague in this world
I really dislike that subtitle. It makes the game seem hard just to be hard and not to guide or teach the player. I imagine that title and a bad impression from going the wrong way from Firelink or getting stuck has made people quit the game (and maybe the series) when they otherwise wouldn't. I get that it's marketing but it gives a very poor image of what Dark Souls is about. I think it has done more harm than good. I'm glad that DS3 is called "the fire fades edition" instead of
The very first original release version of Dark Souls from 2011 had the official tagline "Prepare To Die" on the back of the box, so that was already an indicator that it was going to be a relatively brutal experience.
Take a shot every time someone erroneously calls that one zone the "Huntsman's Corpse." or "Illusionary Wall."... I understand a "copse" is a very antiquated word, but it's become very clear most people read first two letters and just fill in the blank.
I'm an actual arachnophobe, and I can confidently say Freja doesn't do anything for me. Ironically enough, the more monstrous you make a spider, or the more you deviate from a real spider in general, the less I'm averse to it.
Great horror comes from a pseudo-realism, like zombies or aliens are just kinda whatever, but something like a simple serial killer is way scarier, makes sense that a more realistic spider would affect you more
Majula's theme makes me feel like I'm lost in a dream within a dream, a strange sense of nostalgia, tranquil and unearving at the same time. Kinda hard to explain. I love it
Something about Majulas theme makes me want to stop playing. It's like a weird mixture of depressing, annoying and boring to me. Like I want to fall asleep but also want it to stop. I never stayed in Majula long because of the music alone.
Sorta felt the same, when stepping into it was like this is a safe haven outside of all the chaos it felt out of place in a good way. And dark souls way of reincarnated souls and how the world twists it just feels like a big dream
I want to note that there are actually a fair bit of classic 'Illusory Walls' in this game, with the main difference being that you don't roll/attack them but instead open them using the interact button. The pharros lockstone doors are a completely seperate thing.
Interesting fact: if you go into Fume Knight’s arena with any of Velstadt’s armor on, he’ll immediately buff, and the whole fight is his second phase. It’s cool because there’s a lore reason for it, and I’ve never seen a boss be reactive in that way before or since.
Fume Knight is likely the most noticeable one gameplay-wise, since his fight is usually long and two phases are very distinguishable, but this kind of stuff happened both before and after: In DS1, Ceaseless Discharge will grow an extra arm in rage, with an accomodating moveset, depending on whether or not you decide to loot the corpse of his sister he's guarding. In Bloodborne, Father Gascoigne can be transformed into his final beast mode phase early if you play his daughter's music box repeatedly.
Raime called out Nashandra because he could see through her BS. Velstadt kicked his ass because he was blinded by his faith. Raime was exiled (probably by choice) and he went "in search of greater power" to bring back and save the kingdom. My guess is he was either looking for the Iron King or Alonne for help, but Nadalia trapped Raime and used him as a guardian. This is my interpretation of the lore anyways, and why Raime hates Velstadt
Theres a similar thing that happens in a game called limbus company, if you use a character that is the villain's love interest and use the parallell universe version of him where their twisted love is mutual she gets immediately stunned for the first round of combat.
He only buffs if you're wearing Velstadt's helmet. My usual fit is Velstadts armour with the Heide Knight helm and he never buffed until he normally does. If I were to put on the Helmet he would buff
The only reason I personally disliked DS2 overall was because they shoved like 15 enemies in one small room every other area. I didn’t mind the 42 bosses, but the areas made me so upset.
@@Magnus_Effect play the original version the enemy placement and numbers are 100 times better The scholar of the first sin made this game bad and add alot of unnecessary fluff for difficulty ruclips.net/video/dgJM4O8mAys/видео.html
@Magnus_Effect man if you dont want 1000 enemies in a single area than you should play the original game it really sucked for me in my first playthrough
37 minutes in, you mention the lockstones being how you show illusion walls. Have you seriously played through ds2 and made this video without realizing there are other hidden walls?
99% of negative reviews for Ds2 do this. They either conveniently forget aspects of the game or foolishly dont discover them and then try to make a video saying how bad the game is. I mean can they get any sillier?
@@shieldmaiden101youve been dickriding this game so hard on these comments but it’s legit so fuckin mid that it’s embarrassing watching you make a fool of yourself
@@shieldmaiden101ah yes, because the only person who can review a game is the one who has discovered all of it. If that was the case nobody should be able to review Baldurs Gate 3
I'm pretty sure more than 3 Gargoyles can spawn in that boss fight. New Gargoyles spawn on a timer so if you don't kill the first ones fast enough I think it can get up to 5-6 Gargoyles at once.
Yup. I played cautiously which hurt me cause I was fighting 5 at once. Still got it first try, but damn, as someone who dreads facing them in ds1? I dread the ds2 ones more 😂
I found that out the hard way. They basically just combined the Bell Gargoyles and The Four Kings from the first Dark Souls together. I hated that even more than the Ruin Sentinels fight.
Base game only had a few and there wasn't an OoT water temple-esque way you could use them in the wrong order and get yourself in a state where you need to scour the land in search for another one.
@@g.henriquecosta983 it is only slight given how there were only a few of them in the base game and a ton of fragrant branches. In SOTFS they put them fuckin everywhere
@@shadowdahumanthere was, lol. Basically if you used it at every single occasion (as i did), you could relatively easily get stuck until the last part of the game (most of the locs have another branch beyond a gate where you need a branch, but not always.)
@@alduinfr not really, the people that actually have a brain and still think it's a good game would probably still rate it on the lower end of FROM's games just above Demons Souls, and Sekiro if that gameplay style wasn't really for them.
@@bladechild2449 i still can't see why it should be classified more than a decent game. the enemy spawns are horrible especially in scholar and it just encourages you to run past enemies instead of fighting them. also most of the areas are more annoying than fun and so does the enemies. if they removed adp, make the transition from attack to immediately dodging faster and fix input delay on pc then it would be a lot better. at its current state i see no reason to play it other than wanting to replay all dark souls games again. it's just too hard to get used to it after playing the first one. and also i've seen a lot of people play the game without estus flasks since they just can't find the emerald herald since she just camouflages with the enviroment and i've never played a souls game with a guide until this one. i poured 12 hours into the game and i am having fun but only on the bosses and also the fact that i'm playing the original makes difficulty curve a lot better since unlike schola, the difficulty curve is actually from easy to hard not hard to easy like scholar.
@@bladechild2449 played the whole series in order (except Demon's Souls). Couple thousand hours in the series. Loved Souls ever since I first played ds1. Platinumed Sekiro (I don't usually platinum games). Dark Souls 2 is my favorite Fromsoft soulslike. It's meatier, deeper (soo much build variety-and the builds actually play differently unlike DS3 and Elden Ring), and the arcadey combat fits perfectly with group battles. I love it. I think maybe group battles are too tough for many souls fans since all the other games focus primarily on one-on-ones. And also I think people don't recognize or refuse to personally accept that a big room with archers and little fast melee and big slow melee enemies all at once is synonymous with and should be considered a boss (it just lacks a healthbar). DS2 is the perfect mix of arcade video game combat with souls heart, atmosphere, and zone/enemy variety. I also personally prefer the individual and personal emotional story over the grandiose stories of DS1, DS3, and Elden Ring, although I recognize that's really just up to personal taste. I think fans of DS2 most overlap with fans of Cuphead, of all things. And I'm not saying DS3 or Elden Ring sucked, I still put in hundreds of hours into each of those (although honestly I think Sekiro and Elden Ring together make DS3 redundant).
@@JohnDoe-ligma not talking Pharos lockstone doors. THE REAL illusory walls the ones you have to find by just guessing or looking them up. There are like 5 alone in the ruin sentinels fight room and bro said they only exist in the dlc
A minor correction, fragrant branches of yore are in both versions, and there are exactly as many as there are statues, but some statues grant access to... branches...
Ds2 was my entry into souls games. My first boss was that big dude in the area with the big knights and the dragon at the end. I didn’t know you were supposed to pull levers to eliminate the area at the edge of the arena where you can fall to your death. First time I fought him I didn’t know it was a boss fight so when I saw him spawn I was like oh shit and blanked for a second. He came at me while I was still on the little walkway that leads to the center. He lunged. Missed. And fell to his death. That was my first boss experience in my first ever souls game. And it was freaking hilarious. For that reason ds2 will always have a place in my heart.
I don't believe you for even a quarter of a second. The Dragonslayer is easy to kill with gravity, but only if you know the setup to do it. You have to position yourself all the way to one side, then, at a very specific moment, roll on the tiny sliver of platform between him and the gap. Even if you do the initial part correctly, you have to choose the most dangerous place to roll possible. The only way you could possibly do this without trying to is if you were panicking and throwing your controller around the room, and it just happened to hit the correct inputs lol
@@foop145 not here to prove anything. That’s what happened to me. I froze for a few seconds as he came toward me. I may have dodged when he lunged at me? Don’t remember. Either way it’s your choice to believe or not.
@@Jazzamonroe You'd have to enter the room at the absolute furthest point to the side of the fog gate in order to have even a slim chance at doing this. Then, you'd have to dodge in the direction with the least amount of space between you and the big guy and the pit of death. Again, easy to do if you know what you're doing, but wildly unlikely if you don't. If you're telling the truth, I guarantee you're the only player to ever encounter the quick kill without actively trying to get it. It's fine if you don't wanna argue, but I think it's way more likely you're just making shit up
i remember when it came out, a friend of mine was still in school and didn't had the money for it, so i got 2 copies and gave him one, we played the shit out of it. I had so much fun with this game, me and my buddy did like 3 runs together through the game. i always get goosebumbs when the music starts in Majula.
It was my first actual play through of a DS game, and there's something about it's overall vibe that feels comfortable to me. Partly nostalgia, partly something else. All this time and several hours of playing DS1 and 3 have sorta sullied it for me, but a little bit of that comfy feeling remains. Also Majula best hub area 10/10
My experience was the opposite. Picked it up day one with 2 friends, organized an all nighter at one of their houses and by morning we were kinda bored.
The only people that enjoy this game are people who've never played a souls game before. Its a straight downgrade from DS1 in every way. Thankfully they learned their lesson with DS3.
Small correction, Dark Souls didn't become its own series, because it was so good in comparison to Demon's Souls, Demon's Souls *couldn't* become a series because of Sony owning the copyright and not wanting to make it into a series. Edit: I also think you got the chain of events incorrect, they wanted to take Dark Souls in a different route and didn't *let* Miyazaki take the helm for 2.
29:00 is just a straight up lie. There exactly enough branches to unpetrify every statue in each game cycle. A few of the statues can be skipped while still getting the item behind it too.
Really? I remember the first time I played I’d end up using up my branches so that another area would be locked. I kept searching for more branches, but found none so I had to do another entire run, only for me to do the same thing on that run too.
@@lurbaranda6841 are you talking about the one with Manscorpion Tark? If so then yeah, killing npcs will lock you out of many things in these games lol
This game took so many risks and made so many interesting changes that were either never tried again or were aped for Elden Ring. Unfortunately, no other From game has ever implemented the kind of NG+ changes that made this game such a treat and surprise to go back through, even changing things up through NG+4 or 5 if I remember right.
I don't like that NG+ changed things. It doesn't make it feel like ng+ but as a part two in my opinion. Like you can't get everything on NG so its just part two to get what you want or what can be experienced. I dislike it immensely.
@@lethalButters but it was only ever mixing things up or little surprises that were only cool because they subverted your expectations of what happened in the first playthrough, not real swathes of content that were taken out of the first run.
Wow. These comments. Talk about some whiney ungrateful little f*ckpukes. I totally agree with you, putty. The game was massive by itself, and almost doubled in size with the dlcs. Then adding new bosses and treasures and secrets you could only unlock in a new game + was awesome. I'm really curious why people think this one wasn't as good as the others.
You don't need lock stones to open the walls, only the ones associated with the contraption, example in the ruin sentinels boss fight, nd all over DS2 there are walls that are unmarked atlest 4+ in the ruin sentinels boss fight room that if you press X on the wall, a portion of the wall will move, there will be a distinct noise , smoke, nd it will reveal a room or even pathway
Oh man...when DS2 released I did hit so many walls for secrets...I almost lost hope when I learned on the web, that actually you have to press the A (Xbox) or X (Playstation) button to reveal the walls. I got so mad!!! :D I mean I get it. The devs nerfed the weapon's durability real hard, so if you hit every wall, then your weapon breaks very fast, but still...that was the only solution? That you change a VERY common gimmick from DS1?
@@nyuszicsib I know you what you mean, I spent the whole game playing normally then found a hidden wall, accidentally pressing X (a) on it then I went around every wall pressing X like a freak , there is one wall in no man's wharf that you actually have to hit , it breaks the wall , it's in the last building, has all the poison jars in it ,on left side of room is hidden wall, right side you literally break the wall, I'm a long time DS2 player, and have recently begun ds1 just cleared it 2 days ago , and have already made it back to anor londo, fighting orinstein and smough again, best fight in the whole game imo, not really a fan of the gimmick bosses , eg the 4 old ones , nd ceaseless discharge , also you don't have to hit the walls in ds1 you can just roll thru them
In retrospect, DS3 and ER have proven that DS2, desite being very unpolished visually made the right calls to gameplay, to the point that both DS3 and ER reused most of the stuff pioneered by DS2: -estus shard/golden seed system -midroll up to 70% weight -weight only affecting the length of the roll, not the speed (except fatroll) -rolling in any direction while locked on -hit stun limit in PvP to prevent infinite stunlocks -backstabs have 2 way confirmation via a grab animation -casting magic also consumes stamina to limit spam -jumping attacks on all weapons unpariable -ultra weapon unpariable except running/rolling attacks -parry frames active at the apex of the shield swing, not instantly at the start -guardbreak on a blocking enemy allows for a riposte -4 ring slots so you can still have some interesting synergies instead of having 99% of players just put on Havel's ring and Ring of Favor
Estus works differently in DS2 from how it works in the other Dark souls and Elden ring. Midroll isn't actually dependent on weight in DS2, adaptability only exists in DS2. Weight affects the length of the roll in Elden Ring (not sure in the other dark souls). Can you even roll in any direction while locked on in DS2? Doesn't it just snap like in every other situation? Let's be real here, the only thing that came from DS2 is powerstancing.
honestly, i'd say the stuff that future titles get from DS2 is not enough. just imagine something like auto boss transition based on equipment (this impacts world building), actual NPC summon/invader role play instead of mindless AI. secrets that are only seen by using a torch (also shows your progression on the area), breakable chests that makes people think twice attacking them to check if it's a mimic, better NG+ cycles, challenge run rewards, the Pursuer being a mini boss that pop ups somewhere and scaled up and rewards you if you kill him, a lot of unique type of weapons and armors, side quests being more than talk to them in every location (they actually need to fight and stay alive after the boss which made sense), story that is not a senseless quest we do because we are told so, DLC key items have effect on the base game, DLC is actually connected to the base game story, an area that completely changes after getting a key item, and probably more. I played DS2 first along with the DLCs and while it didn't blown me away, i think it's fine, but when i played the rest, they seem lacking small features and just mainly focus on ambiance, interconectiveness and combat.
The talk about the terrible boss runs in DS2 reminded me how much I appreciate the checkpoint placements in Elden Ring. Nearly every boss has either a checkpoint directly outside the arena, or a shortcut. It means the bosses can be learned and enjoyed without needing to grind through the area every time. I *beat* the area. Now my treat is the boss fight.
@@darkspine133The runback to Placidusax is definitely a chore, but at least you don’t risk dying of gangup enemies because of it (unless you don’t use the grace before Maliketh)
@@mattia0079 True, it's not quite Blue Smelter Demon runback levels of bad. It just stands out a lot since they implemented the stake of marika system.
@@darkspine133 it’s not really the only one ER has a bit more tedious, Rennala had a longer runback too. Again, though, they’re only longer, not really difficult. You can mostly avoid enemies apart from what, two of them? And they might not even aggro in the case of Rennala
Luckily there's a bonfire directly outside the Royal Rat Authority's boss room, but that's probably only because the boss fight itself is so cheap and infuriating.
After having just finished the game I can say confidently that my main issue is how places like Iron Keep and Shrine of Amana made you not want to even explore because it felt like stopping for anything was gonna result in you getting jumped for it by all the enemies who insist on chasing you to the ends of the earth. Even if it was somewhat difficult to run through it all,that difficulty made you want to just get it over with as opposed to taking your time and risking death again before you even got to the boss of the place.
A minor thing: The elevator actually isn't a mistake, they screwed up in modelling the landscape behind the windmill. You actually travel into the caldera of a volcano - something one could describe as an Earthen Peak - so going up is the correct direction. However, you never get the impression that the windmill leads to the volcano because they straight up forgot to extend the mountain in the background a bit. There's a mod that fixes it and suddenly everything makes sense.
That's a really hard cope. I don't think it should have to be explained why relying on an external player-made mod to "fix" such a blatantly obvious thing in what the developers consider to be the "complete, definitive edition" of the game does not work in the game's favor. It actually kinda makes the game look a like worse because that sounds so clearly like something that *should* have been there, and the fact it's missing just makes the game look like even more of a joke.
@@Bthakilla4rilla It takes a spectacular lack of reading comprehension to miss my criticism of From's landscaping skills, while also missing that you do in fact travel upwards into a volcano - and thus the elevator shouldn't be travelling down like the vid suggests. I can't figure out if this is because you didn't watch the video, because you can't read and understand context clues or because you're so enraged 10 years later that even the slightest factual correction causes you to imagine wild scenarios, where the world will now believe Dark Souls 2 to be a 10/10 game because we know the elevator didn't go the wrong way.
@Bthakilla4rilla It's not a cope, it's a fact that reading their interviews would prove. The "sky" in Harvest Valley isn't even the sky, it's a thick layer of smog obscuring what "up" is.
Tanimura: The idea is that the lake of magma is actually on the upper strata, like a caldera lake on a plateau. However, looking down from the top it was far too wide, that and the fact that there isn’t an adequate transition between locations meant we didn’t really communicate the idea as well as we could have. They didn't forgot anything they just sucked at level building
The level itself is good and the ghost enemies are interesting but the mobs, the dragon butts 2.0 and the bosses are awful, Sinh is the second worst dragon fight by From (I don't count dragon god as a fight).
Theres a lot of cool stuff in ds2. I really like exploring it, and the drip and weapons are probably the best in the series. What i really dislike, is how there are so many enemies everywhere. Man, sometimes like 10 enemies will just swarm you out of nowhere
Hi not trying to say you're playing the game wrong but imo the game really encourages you to have diversified options ready for a variety of encounters. Much like type resists on enemies were tuned way up prompting you to have multiple solid answers to different resists type, i think always keeping in mind to have solid AOE answers to mob ganks etc imo makes it more manageable and more fun :))) also the game i think the game kind of expects you to play dirty e.g using bows to cheese low hp mobs when you can shoot them for free, or just holding sprint as soon as you smell a whiff of bullshit and running to something you can use to abuse the AI like doors as chokepoints, or stairs to abuse pathing
Sounds like you were playing the Scholar of the First Sin version of the game. It’s not as good in many ways as the original DS2, and added many more enemies and changed their placement. It seems to encourage online play much more. The original DS2 is much better for solo play.
I agree! The Scholar of The First Sin was dumb and added enemies in stupid ways. I beat OG DS2 near release 3 times! It was fun, but definitely worse world building and map design than DS1 & DS3..
@@shanegale6143 He's not playing it wrong, DaS2 gets DaS wrong! In both DeS and DaS the gameplay was focused on carefully crafted worlds AND enemy encounters, DS2 gameplay ends up feeling redundant because it just throws enemies at you and the game world isn't crafted as well as the others.
@@duncanmacleod7287 It doesnt matter if das2 gets das wrong because das2 is not das. das2 is das2 LOL if u wanna play das ...then play das? dont play das2? I'm sorry that you think dark souls 2 "gets dark souls 1 wrong" when all you mean is "the levels dont diagetically connect back to the starting area " - when thats obviously not what it was trying to do, even if we use your analytical framework that already made no sense on its face LOL
DS2 just feels so bad to play. DS1 and Elden Ring both hooked me instantly and DS2 just felt like such a downgrade, like it was a cover band instead of the real deal. The death/health system also is just so stupid. DS1 literally had the perfect system for that and they just HAD to mess with it and screw it all up. If it ain’t broke, do not “fix” it.
This is not helped by the fact that Miyazaki was away to work on Bloodborne & someone else worked on DS2. That someone else JUST SO HAPPENED to eventually co-direct Elden Ring, and that game has many questionable design choices as well. But I definitely agree concerning DS2: The unqualified moron who thought it was OK to “fix” these issues misplaced his beliefs & eventually made a fucking mess.
I like the video but honestly disagree with almost every point and a few things said were actually incorrect, like the illusory wall and Pharos Lockstone debacle and the thing regarding Mytha's arena is concerned. As some have already pointed out most illusory walls are, in fact, not locked by a Pharos Lockstone. You simply need to press the "activate" button on a wall you suspect to be fake. They're not so much illusions in DS2 but walls that open like a door, instead of disappearing they slide out of the way. In regards to Mytha's arena you are burning the wooden windmill that is powering a pump that pulls poison up from the poison swamp. It is not "a random metal pipe that doesn't make any sense". No offense but it really doesn't seem you paid attention to what your character was actually doing...or the giant burning windmill that's exceptionally hard to miss after you light it on fire. I think it's important to listen to the other side of most any topic, so while I disagree with most of these perceived issues I don't dislike the video especially since it wasn't made with any perceivable intent to bash or slander the game which many people tend to do. You can say you don't like things about a game and that's fair, but the second you say something is objectively bad and indefensible you better be able to make a convincing argument as to why because if someone else likes it regardless? Well that "Fact" of yours is still just an opinion whether you like it or not.
Mate.... I have seen at least 5 people play this game myself included (not including people I've not seen this section from). So 4 people who had no spoilers. Every single one of them was baffled by the idea that your floompy torch could in any way interact with the metal pipe that leads to the windmill when I told them after they had few unsucessful attempts at the boss. Even if that weren't the case this is countrintuitive and as such a bad game design. When you want players to preform a certain action you need to lead them to it. Not expect them to bang their head against every object in the game with any interactable items at their disposals (that's for secrets and easter eggs not important boss mechanics). You make it just obvious enough that it is within the realms of possibility of what the player might figure out. Not expect them to light a giant metal shaft that leads to enourmous wheel that is somehow supposed to be connected to the poison pool in the boss room... Do you see the issue? There are too many steps where logic is missing and one giant "jump the shark" moment where you preform an action that isn't anywhere else in the game and is by all means an impossibility (that being setting a giant shaft on fire). THIS is the reason why it isn't sensible to defend this specific point in the game. Because intuition of the players was never conditioned to anything like this being a possiblity and nothing suggesting in the moment that it should be logical course of action for the player.
Retroactively learning what the windmill is doing doesn’t automatically make it intuitive for a player to understand. Having the player walk through some sort of pump room with poison leaking from the pump and the shaft leading to it would’ve been much more acceptable.
Man, I've spent so much time invading in the looking glass knight area. Being able to be summoned into another player's boss fight was probably the coolest idea in DS2
I think it's actually a development on the old monk fight from demon's souls! Imo it was a really nice implementation since it's not reliant on the pvp, but has it as like an extra
@@ryanb5127 problem is that looking glass was so easily exploitable for the invader, that might be why you liked it, cause you won all the time lmao Invaders rlly shouldn’t be able to heal the boss, that shit’s so broken
Watched video. Can safely say this did not enlighten me as to how DS2 is worse than I remember and that this video just sort of echo chambers the non issues people have already outlined when trying to frame DS2 as a lesser game.
@@dippahh9064 As someone who not only watched the video but also beat every boss in DS2, not only are the issues presented valid, but I honestly think he was being too nice to the game, some bosses that I think are genuine travesties he graciously only said were flawed. Like to ignore this video's criticisms is to put your fingers in your ears going "lalala" without actually caring about the points
@@DuoFaceGaming"the old ivory king feels cute and less grand because it's not a one on one fight" the narrative flew over guy's head. I could go down the list of other opinions I disagree with or things about the game that he got wrong but it's no real point. Ds2 just catches more hate than it deserves and that's pretty much where the story ends
37:25 just to clarify, pharos lockstones are not the only illusory walls. There's actually like 6 or so in the boss room for the ruin sentinels and many more throughout the game. Difference is, Dark Souls 2's actual illusory walls you have to walk against the wall and press X (for PlayStation users) or the corresponding button to you're platform as opposed to hitting or rolling into them like DS1. They are entirely separate from lockstone walls though.
Just shows how little this guy knows or cares about how the game was made, and the worth of his criticism. Anyone actually worth their salt would've never been so utterly inept as to somehow miss that.
@@asdergold1 yeah, honestly there was a ton of shit wrong with this video that I noticed; I just didn't feel like being the guy to really dig into all of it. Not to mention if this guy cba to do his research and make sure he has any credibility, I'm not gonna waste my time correcting him on everything.😂
I won't lie, I always found this game much easier when I didn't level adp and instead increased my equip load, get to the point where you have Havel's armour and huge shield without slow rolling.
That's exactly what I did. I got both Strength and Vigor all the way up to 50, fully upgraded the Large Club to +10, and kept increasing Vitality to the point where I could actually carry everything and still move normally.
I agree with so many the points in this video. Dark Souls 2 has it's fun parts but it's mostly a boring and janky game. DS1 was better and I still have to play through Dark Soul 3. Life gems actually became something I liked in DS2 simply because of the many janky, ganky combat experiences in the game.
Despite all the cool things Ds2 tried, I will always remember it for the damn run backs. I'd rather chew glass than have to go through to the iron passage and the frigid outskirts again
I gave up at the Old King's Grave (or whatever it's called) I died a lot getting to the room with the boss fog, saw there were about 14 enemies in it, and just lost the will to play. I had no desire to run back there over and over getting killed over and over.
I kinda got used to the runbacks being this long slog of essentially a war to go through. Kinda ruined DS3 and ER for me, too, as you can just run by enemies in those games which makes me feel like I didn't earn the runback to the boss. I dunno if it's Stockholm Syndrome or the layout somehow making a better overall experience to me, but ngl I feel like DS2 did runbacks better OUTSIDE OF FRIGID OUTSKIRTS AND IRON PASSAGE WTF?!
The one thing dark souls 2 does best is armor and weapons galore. For all the things Ds2 does wrong,it does things so right that they should've stayed for the rest of the series.
@@zuzuzip4533 yeah I over stated best souls game lol. It's my favorite of the three though and feels bad when it gets shit on. I just wish people who hated the game grabbed someone who loves it and tried it with them... I literaly have a blast playing this game with people.
There are two things that made me dislike ds2 1) The boss runs were terrible and just so damn obnoxious 2) they made the combat system clunkier than DS1 which was pain
I think the intro of DS2 is meant to mirror The Three Fates from Greek mythology, especially with the thread going through the wheel as Clotho spun the thread of human fate, the other sister measures it then the last sister cuts it. Meaning they know when you die
The story of ds2 is that youre turning hollow and losing your humanity slowing so you go there to try to stop the hollowing. But the longer you are there, the less you remember which is an exact parallel to the intro scene and how the player forgets entirely as well. Not understanding the story doesn't mean its just bad, it just means you havent took the time to understand it. It just seems to me you dont get this game at all
Well, actually I played it again last year and it is WAY BETTER than I remember. The biggest flaw I encountered in all the game (and the only one that actually mattered to me) was the enormous ammount of bosses that weren't memorable, and I didn't care. The worst part is that half of them were justa a lot of common enemies grouped together in a closed room.
It has the worst bosses in the series for me (gank squad in the cave, magus, covetous demon, lud/zallen, ancient dragon etc.) but still also some really really cool ones (alonne, raime, ivory king, sinh, velstadt, mirror knight). Most of them are just meh and if I wouldnt have played both versions of ds2 combined for over 1000 hours back then I would have forgotten most of them😂
@@thex6992 The "gank squad in the cave" is mentioned in the video too, and I'm at my limit, IT WAS A MULTIPLAYER BOSS, all DLC's had a multiplayer zone, where you were encouraged to jolly cooperate because of the enemy density or other factor, the fact the you cant find a grope nowdays is not the devs fault
I want to remember DS2 haters some of the really awesome mechanics, qualities or aspects that were created with this game that didn't exist in Dark Souls 1 or in the original Demon's Souls, some of them even carried over to DS3 or Elden Ring: * Much better graphics than DS1 or Demon's Souls. It's lighting effect is better than Elden Ring, even (e.g. when you are holding a torch, the shadows on the walls are amazing). * Much better and more intuitive menu system. * Majula. Arguably the best hub in any souls game (and what a great background music it has!). * Spell casting costing stamina (magic not consuming stamina in DS1 is unfairly broken). * Staves and chimes can be upgraded. * Hexes as a new category of magic. * Bonfire Ascetics. * Power stance. * Weapon infusion. * 4 ring slots (in DS1 there's only 2 slots). * Many weapons have actual weapon arts (then again, I'm comparing to DS1, where they didn't exist). * Torches. * Armor gear that actually have special effects (shortening casting speed, preventing backstab, reducing fall damage, etc). * Casting speed not scaling with DEX, unlike DS1. * Max health lowering down when hollowed. * Ability to drink Estus on a ladder. * Actual poise (and that's somethng they did MUCH worse in DS3, with passive poise, where everything feels like a DEX build)! * Ability to climb the ladder quicker, at the cost of stamina. * DS2 has arguably the coolest looking sets in the franchise, too. Imo, the most fashion souls of all. * Imo, DS2 is also the most replayable of all (even though DS1 is my fav). Thank to how the game changes in NG+ and beyond. * The ability of relocating points of attribute with Soul Vessel. * Souls level. Despite the backlash, this is a great balance mechanic that didn't exist in DS1.
Like during this timeline? He was working on Bloodborne. Yui Tanimura was the director for DS2 in the end. Miyazaki was just supervising things at the time for DS2 because of Bloodborne. Also Miyazaki and Yui Tanimura did team up to create Elden Ring
@@sub7se7en yeah pretty much. And is in charge of directing the team of artists, programmers, etc. to make sure they are on track with what he wants to create. In the gaming industry they’re called creative directors but basically are the boss you could say. Like a movie director making a movie
My favorite part of this game was how, due to every aspect of it being so overwhelmingly cheap and unfair, it really made me appreciate even more just how fair, well-designed, and wonderfully optimized DS1 and even Demon's Souls were by comparison.
Darksouls two being the ONLY part where the NG is actually +, with new enemies, new bosses and new loot added after your first run. DS2 is shunned for not being by Miyazaki, not its content.
It's shunned because of the terrible mechanics and worse quality of the content it brings. If this was a game at the level of the rest, it wouldn't have gotten shunned in the first place
No, you’re delusional. It gets all the flak for its experimental design choices which suck, and the fact that it never understood the design philosophy of the series
@@aidancallaghan No, it gets such a bad rep, because most idiots were new to souls and just sukked at playing the game. Now that EldenRing is Mainstream it turned good for no actual reason other than handholding those dimwits.
In vanilla the sentry is used like twice or so, the area before the lost sinner had those cool mutated monsters which are found in cages in aldias keep The problem with the ultra greatsword is that the lock is kinda weird coz if u use your left analogue stick it attacks in that direction and not at the locked on target
Worst thing in DS2 for me is by far boss run backs and overly unnecessary numbers of enemies in levels. I died so many times just trying to get through the fog wall for smelter demon at iron keep that by the time I beat him, the enemies weren’t even respawning in the run back anymore 😂
@@Hans1994yout it still requires practice however as you need to dodge an arrow from behind as you get close to the fog gate, if you do it right the captain near the fog gate shouldn't have time to swing before you run past him and enter.
@@Hans1994yout alternatively you can also jump to the broken stairs on the right, but i've found that some characters can't jump high enough for some reason but butterfly wings might help.
I have to disagree on the torches part. It was amazingly practical and useful in DS2 which i think what DS1, 3 and ER lacked. I might be alone on this but the sense of progression i felt after lighting up No Man’s Wharf and The Gutter was so good. And another use of torches was scaring the spiders off and those green creatures in NMW, also burning the crawling mobs in the Brume Tower and baiting them to explode was so satisfying. Like come on man torches in DS2 were cool Another minor thing is DS2 actually had some gorgeous vistas to look at but they go unnoticed pretty often. Overall great video! Rare algorithm W. Keep it up and looking forward for future videos!
It's not bad using torches but compared to the trailers that showed torches being necessary to navigate through some areas, the released game is a bit disappointing.
For me not since i was not told you could light up anything in that place (No man's Ganks) or anything, so i had to walk around the entire area like 4 times before checking youtube to know what the hell you had to do, also that place was so filled with ganks i usually end up getting like 13 enemies and dogs stuck in doors even when killing most of them at the bell that brings the phantom ship.
I actually really like the visual progression of lighting up a normally dark area. It just so happens that the design of these areas was incredibly poor at base and honestly not really worth anyone's time to begin with.
I always felt that DS2 feels different mechanically compared with other fromsoftware games. Rolling, attacking and hit boxes feels weird. 10:40 resumes what I felt.
While you may be right, it's still such an improvement over dark souls 1's controls tbh. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, they were just clunky af and often times didn't feel fun to play lol. I feel like a lot of ds1's notorious difficulty comes from the fact that the game has such bad controls and the animations feel slow and rigid
the reason the movement feels off is because it is. it doesnt actually have full 360 degree movement. its a very strange system, theres some very good videos on here explaining why its jank. i have no idea why they thought it was a good idea to get rid of full 360.
You can knock off one of the dukes dear Freya's heads and it acts like a beach ball. You can run into it to knock it around very fun given its about the only ragdoll you can really interact with.
You don't have to go too deep to find the game's problems. - 8 direction snapping - too many enemies ganking you - too many bosses, most of them are forgettable, some of them are even gank you - the effigy and healing system - weird level and world design - soul memory - ADP - every weapon is made out of wet cardboard - broken hitboxes (this is the biggest problem I have with the game) I saved you an hour. You're welcome. The other titles have some pretty glaring issues but they are not as obvious at first glance for most people in my experience. Whether you like DS2 or not depends on how much shit you can put up with. Same with the other titles. To me, this game is just insufferable. It is what it is.
Couldn’t agree more! I’ve been using ds2 as a warm blanket for a few weeks, been bad times lately and playing it just took me away! Funny part is, I flippin’ HATED this game when it first dropped, time changed that lol
When i saw that title i thought i got recommended an old 2014 video but lo an behold it was made in the year of our lord 2023 and i still can't believe it. Before watching it i already expected a couple things, "It's bad because no Miyazaki", the same parroted arguments i've heard a dozen times before, and a lot of bad faith, and oh boy did i get exactly what i was looking for. If i had to chose my favorites arguments from this video it would be first "I'm forced to go back to Majula to repair because i meleed the enemies who break your armor when you get close to them and there was no other way i could have killed those guys ever", and the magical "Stamina feels bad because when i spend all of it to attack then i can't roll". I've seen that exact video a dozen times already but this one is probably the less subtle yet, the process was obviously about finding a negative side to every single part of the game, even for Majula which is universally liked by even die hard haters of Dark Souls 2, you had to find the negative of "Oh but there's no boss before it so it doesn't feel as good". And speaking of feeling, it's not an argument in itself. I don't know if it was intentional or not but many times through the video the only thing you have to back up your argument is "it feels bad", "it feels clunky", "it feels odd", "it feels weird", "it feels foreign", "it feels rushed", and so on. Just another hit piece, but almost 10 years late
You only disprove a couple, while almost every other argument he gives is perfectly valid. God awful hitboxes being a massive drop in quality, and I doubt there is something you can say to change that.
@@addison_v_ertisement1678 Yes obviously i can't make a youtube comment disproving every single argument he's making in an hour long video, i'd gladly discuss any you feel is valid though. And about hitboxes the only thing i can say is that i personally didn't see anything wrong with them, sometimes they're bad, sometimes they're very good, 99% of the time they're just normal. For every souls game you're going to find both good hitbox examples and bad hitbox examples, here's two good ones i found for Dark Souls 2 if you still believe what he said about shifting your hitbox not being a thing. ruclips.net/video/VcHkh08xjeM/видео.html ruclips.net/video/UARhHVuzuXI/видео.html
Fun fact about Sir Alonne (actually there is two): If you enter the boss room in a certain armour of his friend he will react differently at the beginning. And nr 2 if you beat him without getting hit he will commit seppuku
I don't think I've ever, EVER seen a single video game that was received well at launch get piled on as badly over time as DS2, man. It certainly has its issues and DS3 and Elden Ring have made it stick out more in retrospect but Jesus, it feels like everyone who's talked about it the last few years acts like it PERSONALLY killed their family and made them watch. It absolutely is the black sheep that sticks out like a sore thumb of Fromsoft's catalogue since Demon's Souls but it's not even in the bottom 10,000 worst games of all time or anything close to that.
My biggest complaint with DS2 has always been that the game feels artificially difficult. I really wanted to like it and I'm trying another playthrough right now, but it just feels... off. Glad it wasn't just me!
Nothing says artificial difficulty like downgrading the smooth movement of DS1 into the disturbing "movement" that was in DS2. It will always feel off when your char is lagging alot when it comes to the responsiveness of the inputs
Mine too. The worst aspects of this are the permanent Hollowing effect that decreases your max health capacity everytime you die, the absolutely abysmal durability of all your equipment that forces you to rest back at the bonfire to restore it before it completely breaks, and the fact that you're forced to sacrifice a Human Effigy every time you want to attempt to fight the Darklurker.
This is exacerbated by the Scholar version, which is the version most people played. Scholar changes a ton of areas to be incredibly annoying as if they wanted to lean into the "Dark Souls is hard" meme.
I played this with kb/mouse, and one issue I discovered was that by default, one of the basic actions was bound to LMB, and another action was bound to doubleclick LMB. The game distinguished between the two by waiting a moment for the second click, and if it didn't come, acknowledge it as a single click. This meant that you had severe input delay on attacks. There was a toggle in the options that disabled this behavior and made the game actually playable, but the critical flaw there was that even though the UI remembered the setting across game restarts, it wouldn't actually apply at startup, and would default to 'off'. So every time I started a new session, I had to remember to go to the options, and toggle that setting back and forth to be able to play properly.
i adapted by using the keyboard to attack instead. Sounds awkward, but honestly the Souls games have such low APM requirements that you can play it all with one hand, only using the right hand for freeaiming. Kinda wish i made the same discovery as you. I just assumed the double click delay was impossible to fix and gave up on it after toggling it on and off made no difference. Would've made the first 100 hours easier
Nah there’s equal amounts in SotFS, though it’s easy to use one in the wrong place and softlock yourself out of getting a few branches- a lot of players prolly missed statues on their playthroughs cos some fragrant branches would only be able to be collected if you unpetrified certain statues
"my first Dark souls game was Dark Souls 3" Stopped watching there. What could you possibly have to add to this discussion that heavy hitters like Matthewmatosis haven't already covered anyway.
One thing I think why DS2 is so beloved is it being a part of DS series. I think if you removed the title and just changed the iconic things in the game slightly then it would’ve been forgotten. I just rekindled love for DS1 recently and found it to be my favorite over 3. But I’ve tried and tried again to get a love for 2 and cannot.
I finally returned to DS2 after haaaaaating its guts for a good few years. I first played it shortly after beating DS1 and I love DS1. DS2's changes to familiar systems and the absolute loads of enemies with weird or non-existent wind-ups (or my favorite, stunlock attacks) really made my blood boil. And that's coming from someone who never raged at DS1. When I returned to it this year because a friend of mine urged me to (he wanted to see me stream it) I actually had a surprisingly good time with DS2 and I think it is in large parts because it's been a while since my last DS1 run. The movement doesn't feel as clunky when you don't quite remember how DS1 felt. The enemy hordes aren't quite as bad if you don't constantly expect DS1's rules "of fairness" like I did. I went in expecting a harsher game than DS1 and tried to lean into its mechanics instead of getting annoyed by them because they are different. And yeah, then there's quite an okay game here. I actually like DS2's level curve for example. You start out very weak, but because you level up fast, that RPG feel of strengthening your char actually came to me - ESPECIALLY as I leveled ADP and found a sweetspot I could sit at for a while (I stayed at 16 ADP for a LONG time; I blame Monster Hunter). I'm aware DS2 is kind of a mess, but in a way it makes me wonder how much comparison is fair for a game before it gets judged for what it isn't instead of for its merits. Would DS2 get judged as harshly if it wasn't a Dark Souls game? That's the thought I can't shake.
While it’s a nice crutch, you absolutely don’t need adp Last time I went to drangleic I got to the castle with a build that had 3 adp Sat there for pvp and then dropped it again
It think the main reason DS2 is hated is precisly because it isn't the first half od DS1-2. But what everyone forgets is, that that was lightening in a bottle - a once in a generation alignement if the stars, that made it that special. If DS2 tried to copy or improve that, they would have failed spectaculary. So they had to be different. And I for one can absolutely appreciate it for what it is.
If DS2 wasn't a dark souls game people would have forgotten about it already. So no, it wouldn't be judged as harshly because there would be nobody left to judge it.
There actually are hidden doors, that don't require lockstones though. you just cant hit or roll trhrough them, but need to press a/x while standing in front of them
Fair points, but DS2 is still my favorite Dark Souls. There's just something about the tone and style of it all that really appealed to me; the more Arthurian theme, how many areas were allowed to be really beautiful even after falling into ruin, and how it somehow felt brighter and more hopeful than the other two. Majula, in particular, is definitely the best hub area in my opinion. And I rather appreciated that the NPCs you collect don't all go insane and die in the end, resulting in this little village of weirdos just getting by. I guess it's fair to complain about some of the mechanical stuff, but that honestly never bothered me enough to lower my opinion of the game.
Seems to me like skill issue, because it's the easiest DS in whole series and is only challenging if you intentionally decide to make it harder by 1 specific covenant or by doing challenges (no heal/no death/no damage/no bonfire). Y'all know, i can summarize ALL this rant about "how bad DS2 was" to just 3 words: git gud, casul.
Not liking majula honestly feels criminal, I started with elden ring and decided to buy the whole dark souls trilogy, I’ve only played ds1 so far and firelink doesn’t even feel closely as optimized as majula, sure firelink has a more homely vibe but majula is honestly breathtakingly beautiful, just as beautiful as the beginning of limgrave, just my opinion though
50:58 That was my criticism as well. I was fortunate enough to beat her first try but I noticed that if I lost I would be pissed that there was no bonfire anywhere near her that I found. Finding the bonfire is significantly harder than the fight itself. I only found it after the fight because of a player message I spotted after 30 minutes of searching.
I love DS2. I just replayed DS1 and i gotta say people have severe nostalgia glasses for that game. The bosses in the second half of DS1 suck, especially seath, and bed of chaos, and a final boss that you can easily parry 100x in a row. Lost Izalith is an awfully made area, with 1000 of the same enemies plunked on top of each other, and the annoying gimmick of having to wear a ring to even traverse the environment, only to repeatedly swap it back out to fight the boss. Oh and dont forget the invisible pathways on the way to Seath, what great game design. DS3 graphics wise is great, but its easy and you can just spam roll through everything.
it was good As in the lore, as you get stronger and learn tactics of evading. That’s why i like it, if people can suck off other stats for making ones character better then what makes ADP so bad?
@@LeGabrielMan it gatekeeps one main core gameplay mechanic, you need to level it up if you are dodging attacks head on to be aggressive or else you will get hit, multi hit attacks are just impossible to roll through as a base adp gives the same i-frames as a fat roll in ds 1, and on the other hand if you give adp priority you will turn the already easy gameplay to a complete joke even though they try to make the game feel like it is so hard which is not
From an rpg perspective it makes complete sense. It makes sense that how well your able to dodge is tied to your agility. Plus it allows you to choose between having a fast rogue like character or a heavier one that uses more poise. Or you can say fuck both and be some mage guy that kills everything from 20 feet away cuz he has no armor or athletic skill. Like yes from an action game perspective it’s really annoying but dark souls mixes action and rpg elements and in an rpg game a mechanic like that is pretty typical.
Ah yes, life gems… you mean “grass.” And also effigies… you mean “arch stone shard”. DS2 isn’t built around the isolated level system is why it feels weird there and not so much in Demons Souls
I also hated the Hollowing Effect that decreases your max health capacity every time you die, as well as being forced to sacrifice a Human Effigy for every attempt to fight Darklurker.
@@ZeroFanfare Grabs are still part of that. Almost everyone knows how bad they're and there's videos showing it. My fault for getting eaten by a mimick that I was behind before it hatched.
DS2 had the best PvP IMO. So many crazy builds and awesome areas for invasions. I miss shield checking noobs. I loved the rat covenant too. Man I miss hiding in the Doors to Pharos area and spamming Dark Fog on people as they got sucked into my world. Watching them scramble to get to safety while poisoned and under heavy fire... Fuck man, so good. Also. POWER STANCE. What a great mechanic. So much good shit from DS2 just left on the table and forgotten. Elden Ring didn't even get a covenant system! WTF?! I can admit the animations did feel wonky, the hit box shit was frustrating and the enemies were mostly all just another dude in armor. But some of it was fucking magical, and it's a shame it's the one game in the franchise that more souls-like than it is souls proper.
The bosses are bad, the levels are bad, the enemy designs are bad, the enemy placement is bad, the story is bad, the graphics are bad, the controls are bad, the world is NONSENSE. Of course all the fans will talk about the pvp and Majuuuulaaaa.
The Last Giant and the Giant Lord are the same enemy. The Last Giant breaks his chains when he sees you because he recognizes you from when you fought him the first time... in the memory when you fought him as the Giant Lord.
That's actually insanely cool.
@@blackzero1956Well the lore in ds2 is absolutely amazing.
@hideforblue1364 Yeh. Really underrated actually.
@@hideforblue1364 The lore of DS2 literally contradict the lore in DS1 many times in the game
@@vincenzobulla113 How?
You have valid points, but showing a clip of you pulling a whole bunch of mobs and then running into a deadend while talking how this game is artificially hard was kinda cheap.
Every review of Dark Souls 2 does that. It’s garbage and they know it. When comparing it to the other games they always show Artorias or the Nameless King, and then show The Prowling Magus fight of all things for DS2. Like wow what a comparison. Almost like they forgot Bed of Chaos and Pinwheel exist. Curse rotted great wood. Easy/Dumb fights yet its always “Nope! Ds2 is the worst because I said it is and thats final”. Lack of braincells and getting good honestly.
@@shieldmaiden101 he made a comparison with Old Iron King and Ceaseless Discharge, even then CD is way better than OIK. I love reading seething DS2 fans comments lmao
@@jac1793 CD is better than Ivory King? Id ask you to elaborate but I know you’ll have nothing to offer. Its funny to see Ds1 fanboys think their game is flawless and perfect when it performs worse than ds2 in every regard, even with the remaster.
@@shieldmaiden101 i would argue first half of DS1 is flawless until after Anor Londo it becomes worse then DS2 in most ways, Also another add to the pile is Artorias and Manus has one of the most worst and boring boss runbacks in DS1
@@jac1793 Firstly you had nothing value of say if you aren't gonna use actual objective arguments. sorry man but saying "this is better than the other" without elaboration is more brain rot to me than even seething ds2 fans, Ceaseless is one of the worst bosses of such a small game as DS1, presentation was immaculate but that boss is pure gimmick that doesn't even mesh with Dark Souls Core Gameplay and it's intended to be that annoying old retro style platform boss mechanic. Secondly i assume you meant Old IRON King not IVORY King. Old Iron King is the Balrog rip off from LOTR, Burnt Ivory King is the one where you have knights with you. I would agree with you that Old Iron King is worse than Ceaseless.
"dark souls games don't tell you in your face that you're going to die a lot"
DARK SOULS PREPARE TO DIE EDITION
There's a clear difference between a title and an in game cutscene basically breaking the fourth wall and telling you you're going to die a lot.
Imo the "prepare to die edition" is still a little cringey but ds2's cutscene is far worse.
@@bito2041 is it really a fourth wall break when the game has a god damn chariot running in circles for eternity in hopes that the undead it crushes stop getting up?
you wouldn't be the first one to "die" several times, people that don't really "die" when they are killed are even considered a plague in this world
@@bito2041It was also a subtitle only added with the pc release, which people tend to forget.
I really dislike that subtitle. It makes the game seem hard just to be hard and not to guide or teach the player. I imagine that title and a bad impression from going the wrong way from Firelink or getting stuck has made people quit the game (and maybe the series) when they otherwise wouldn't. I get that it's marketing but it gives a very poor image of what Dark Souls is about. I think it has done more harm than good.
I'm glad that DS3 is called "the fire fades edition" instead of
The very first original release version of Dark Souls from 2011 had the official tagline "Prepare To Die" on the back of the box, so that was already an indicator that it was going to be a relatively brutal experience.
The search continues... for a video about DS2 where they actually say "bonfire ascetic" instead of "bonfire aesthetic"
wait he said it right though
That word's stupid though if it didn't want to be mispronounced it should've been a better word.
@@bloorb0569 just read then
Take a shot every time someone erroneously calls that one zone the "Huntsman's Corpse."
or "Illusionary Wall."... I understand a "copse" is a very antiquated word, but it's become very clear most people read first two letters and just fill in the blank.
He literally said it correctly. Just got to that section of the video and he 100% didnt say aesthetic.
I'm an actual arachnophobe, and I can confidently say Freja doesn't do anything for me. Ironically enough, the more monstrous you make a spider, or the more you deviate from a real spider in general, the less I'm averse to it.
Same freja wasn't that scary,the dog sized spiders on the other hand made that area hell
Great horror comes from a pseudo-realism, like zombies or aliens are just kinda whatever, but something like a simple serial killer is way scarier, makes sense that a more realistic spider would affect you more
But the ones in bloodborne on the other hand 😢
@mark0183 the ones in bloodborne actually made me scream In terror first time seeing them
Thats kind of in porpouse cause imagine an actual and very detailed giant spider, that is something really messed up to see.
Majula's theme makes me feel like I'm lost in a dream within a dream, a strange sense of nostalgia, tranquil and unearving at the same time. Kinda hard to explain. I love it
touch grass
@@ileamonster You're commenting on a one-hour video critiquing a videogame
@@ileamonster Majula's grass I would
Something about Majulas theme makes me want to stop playing. It's like a weird mixture of depressing, annoying and boring to me. Like I want to fall asleep but also want it to stop. I never stayed in Majula long because of the music alone.
Sorta felt the same, when stepping into it was like this is a safe haven outside of all the chaos it felt out of place in a good way. And dark souls way of reincarnated souls and how the world twists it just feels like a big dream
I want to note that there are actually a fair bit of classic 'Illusory Walls' in this game, with the main difference being that you don't roll/attack them but instead open them using the interact button. The pharros lockstone doors are a completely seperate thing.
Yeah, that definitely confused me at first too. I thought the Pharros Lockstone doors were DS2's version of the original's illusory walls.
This guy did no research and played like a moron and wonders why he had no fun
That's dumb
Stupid developers
Interesting fact: if you go into Fume Knight’s arena with any of Velstadt’s armor on, he’ll immediately buff, and the whole fight is his second phase. It’s cool because there’s a lore reason for it, and I’ve never seen a boss be reactive in that way before or since.
Fume Knight is likely the most noticeable one gameplay-wise, since his fight is usually long and two phases are very distinguishable, but this kind of stuff happened both before and after:
In DS1, Ceaseless Discharge will grow an extra arm in rage, with an accomodating moveset, depending on whether or not you decide to loot the corpse of his sister he's guarding.
In Bloodborne, Father Gascoigne can be transformed into his final beast mode phase early if you play his daughter's music box repeatedly.
Raime called out Nashandra because he could see through her BS. Velstadt kicked his ass because he was blinded by his faith.
Raime was exiled (probably by choice) and he went "in search of greater power" to bring back and save the kingdom.
My guess is he was either looking for the Iron King or Alonne for help, but Nadalia trapped Raime and used him as a guardian.
This is my interpretation of the lore anyways, and why Raime hates Velstadt
Theres a similar thing that happens in a game called limbus company, if you use a character that is the villain's love interest and use the parallell universe version of him where their twisted love is mutual she gets immediately stunned for the first round of combat.
Fume Knight was so fucking hard.
He only buffs if you're wearing Velstadt's helmet. My usual fit is Velstadts armour with the Heide Knight helm and he never buffed until he normally does. If I were to put on the Helmet he would buff
The only reason I personally disliked DS2 overall was because they shoved like 15 enemies in one small room every other area. I didn’t mind the 42 bosses, but the areas made me so upset.
Did you play scholar of the first sin right
@@pizzacrumbles of course
@@Magnus_Effect play the original version the enemy placement and numbers are 100 times better
The scholar of the first sin made this game bad and add alot of unnecessary fluff for difficulty
ruclips.net/video/dgJM4O8mAys/видео.html
@@pizzacrumbles oh wow. Interesting, I had no idea
@Magnus_Effect man if you dont want 1000 enemies in a single area than you should play the original game it really sucked for me in my first playthrough
37 minutes in, you mention the lockstones being how you show illusion walls. Have you seriously played through ds2 and made this video without realizing there are other hidden walls?
99% of negative reviews for Ds2 do this. They either conveniently forget aspects of the game or foolishly dont discover them and then try to make a video saying how bad the game is. I mean can they get any sillier?
@@shieldmaiden101 it just solidifies how trash design is DS2
@@shieldmaiden101youve been dickriding this game so hard on these comments but it’s legit so fuckin mid that it’s embarrassing watching you make a fool of yourself
@@shieldmaiden101ah yes, because the only person who can review a game is the one who has discovered all of it. If that was the case nobody should be able to review Baldurs Gate 3
Maybe he didn’t find them because they’re HIDDEN, my guy
One of these days i want a bonfire so close to a boss that you can see it mid bossfight. As if to say "we're pretty confident in this boss"
Basically Malenia
Fume Knight
I'm pretty sure more than 3 Gargoyles can spawn in that boss fight. New Gargoyles spawn on a timer so if you don't kill the first ones fast enough I think it can get up to 5-6 Gargoyles at once.
Yup. I played cautiously which hurt me cause I was fighting 5 at once. Still got it first try, but damn, as someone who dreads facing them in ds1? I dread the ds2 ones more 😂
I found that out the hard way. They basically just combined the Bell Gargoyles and The Four Kings from the first Dark Souls together. I hated that even more than the Ruin Sentinels fight.
@@christopherregan1654sentinels were easy
@@anthonykarnes6804wowee you’re so good at the game! Thanks for adding nothing to the conversation lmao
Optional boss that I discovered literally at the end of the game. Those gargoyles didn't stand a chance 😂
Just a slight nitpick, Scholar didn’t add the fragrant branches of yore, those were a base-game mechanic
Base game only had a few and there wasn't an OoT water temple-esque way you could use them in the wrong order and get yourself in a state where you need to scour the land in search for another one.
They were fairly scattered and didn’t have you using as much as you would in SOTFS
that isnt even a slight nitpick, thats a major point
@@g.henriquecosta983 it is only slight given how there were only a few of them in the base game and a ton of fragrant branches. In SOTFS they put them fuckin everywhere
@@shadowdahumanthere was, lol. Basically if you used it at every single occasion (as i did), you could relatively easily get stuck until the last part of the game (most of the locs have another branch beyond a gate where you need a branch, but not always.)
Like to dislike ratio is 11K vs 6.4K for those who don't have a plugin installed
and people still say that ds2 is underrated. like it's so underrated that its now really overrated.
@@alduinfr not really, the people that actually have a brain and still think it's a good game would probably still rate it on the lower end of FROM's games just above Demons Souls, and Sekiro if that gameplay style wasn't really for them.
@@bladechild2449 i still can't see why it should be classified more than a decent game. the enemy spawns are horrible especially in scholar and it just encourages you to run past enemies instead of fighting them. also most of the areas are more annoying than fun and so does the enemies. if they removed adp, make the transition from attack to immediately dodging faster and fix input delay on pc then it would be a lot better. at its current state i see no reason to play it other than wanting to replay all dark souls games again. it's just too hard to get used to it after playing the first one. and also i've seen a lot of people play the game without estus flasks since they just can't find the emerald herald since she just camouflages with the enviroment and i've never played a souls game with a guide until this one. i poured 12 hours into the game and i am having fun but only on the bosses and also the fact that i'm playing the original makes difficulty curve a lot better since unlike schola, the difficulty curve is actually from easy to hard not hard to easy like scholar.
@@bladechild2449 It's not better than Demon's Souls, either. It's firmly at the bottom of the list, and it sucks.
@@bladechild2449 played the whole series in order (except Demon's Souls). Couple thousand hours in the series. Loved Souls ever since I first played ds1. Platinumed Sekiro (I don't usually platinum games).
Dark Souls 2 is my favorite Fromsoft soulslike. It's meatier, deeper (soo much build variety-and the builds actually play differently unlike DS3 and Elden Ring), and the arcadey combat fits perfectly with group battles. I love it. I think maybe group battles are too tough for many souls fans since all the other games focus primarily on one-on-ones. And also I think people don't recognize or refuse to personally accept that a big room with archers and little fast melee and big slow melee enemies all at once is synonymous with and should be considered a boss (it just lacks a healthbar).
DS2 is the perfect mix of arcade video game combat with souls heart, atmosphere, and zone/enemy variety. I also personally prefer the individual and personal emotional story over the grandiose stories of DS1, DS3, and Elden Ring, although I recognize that's really just up to personal taste.
I think fans of DS2 most overlap with fans of Cuphead, of all things. And I'm not saying DS3 or Elden Ring sucked, I still put in hundreds of hours into each of those (although honestly I think Sekiro and Elden Ring together make DS3 redundant).
Bro hasn’t found half the illusory walls in the base game then LMAO
You can't. Not in a single playthrough.
@@JohnDoe-ligma not talking Pharos lockstone doors. THE REAL illusory walls the ones you have to find by just guessing or looking them up. There are like 5 alone in the ruin sentinels fight room and bro said they only exist in the dlc
A minor correction, fragrant branches of yore are in both versions, and there are exactly as many as there are statues, but some statues grant access to... branches...
Ds2 was my entry into souls games. My first boss was that big dude in the area with the big knights and the dragon at the end. I didn’t know you were supposed to pull levers to eliminate the area at the edge of the arena where you can fall to your death. First time I fought him I didn’t know it was a boss fight so when I saw him spawn I was like oh shit and blanked for a second. He came at me while I was still on the little walkway that leads to the center. He lunged. Missed. And fell to his death. That was my first boss experience in my first ever souls game. And it was freaking hilarious. For that reason ds2 will always have a place in my heart.
Gravity, the real enemy (even irl).
I don't believe you for even a quarter of a second. The Dragonslayer is easy to kill with gravity, but only if you know the setup to do it. You have to position yourself all the way to one side, then, at a very specific moment, roll on the tiny sliver of platform between him and the gap. Even if you do the initial part correctly, you have to choose the most dangerous place to roll possible. The only way you could possibly do this without trying to is if you were panicking and throwing your controller around the room, and it just happened to hit the correct inputs lol
@@foop145 not here to prove anything. That’s what happened to me. I froze for a few seconds as he came toward me. I may have dodged when he lunged at me? Don’t remember. Either way it’s your choice to believe or not.
@@Jazzamonroe You'd have to enter the room at the absolute furthest point to the side of the fog gate in order to have even a slim chance at doing this. Then, you'd have to dodge in the direction with the least amount of space between you and the big guy and the pit of death. Again, easy to do if you know what you're doing, but wildly unlikely if you don't. If you're telling the truth, I guarantee you're the only player to ever encounter the quick kill without actively trying to get it.
It's fine if you don't wanna argue, but I think it's way more likely you're just making shit up
@@foop145 the only one? It 100% was discovered by accident in the first place. But alright. Have a nice day bro.
i remember when it came out, a friend of mine was still in school and didn't had the money for it, so i got 2 copies and gave him one, we played the shit out of it. I had so much fun with this game, me and my buddy did like 3 runs together through the game. i always get goosebumbs when the music starts in Majula.
It was my first actual play through of a DS game, and there's something about it's overall vibe that feels comfortable to me. Partly nostalgia, partly something else. All this time and several hours of playing DS1 and 3 have sorta sullied it for me, but a little bit of that comfy feeling remains. Also Majula best hub area 10/10
My experience was the opposite. Picked it up day one with 2 friends, organized an all nighter at one of their houses and by morning we were kinda bored.
Gay
The only people that enjoy this game are people who've never played a souls game before. Its a straight downgrade from DS1 in every way. Thankfully they learned their lesson with DS3.
@@smurfdaddy420 i enjoy this game and all the others and elden ring as well, *shrug* i play it more frequently than any other.
Small correction, Dark Souls didn't become its own series, because it was so good in comparison to Demon's Souls, Demon's Souls *couldn't* become a series because of Sony owning the copyright and not wanting to make it into a series.
Edit: I also think you got the chain of events incorrect, they wanted to take Dark Souls in a different route and didn't *let* Miyazaki take the helm for 2.
29:00 is just a straight up lie. There exactly enough branches to unpetrify every statue in each game cycle. A few of the statues can be skipped while still getting the item behind it too.
Really? I remember the first time I played I’d end up using up my branches so that another area would be locked. I kept searching for more branches, but found none so I had to do another entire run, only for me to do the same thing on that run too.
You can lock yourself out of one of them.
@@lurbaranda6841 are you talking about the one with Manscorpion Tark? If so then yeah, killing npcs will lock you out of many things in these games lol
@@whodatismeisheactually you can still get it if you talk to him through the gravestone
There's a guy called domo3000 that debunks a lot of these common complaints and shows that a lot of them are just straight up lying
This game took so many risks and made so many interesting changes that were either never tried again or were aped for Elden Ring. Unfortunately, no other From game has ever implemented the kind of NG+ changes that made this game such a treat and surprise to go back through, even changing things up through NG+4 or 5 if I remember right.
Why would you ever go through it twice? Going through it even once is torturous enough
@@twoshu8940L take
I don't like that NG+ changed things. It doesn't make it feel like ng+ but as a part two in my opinion. Like you can't get everything on NG so its just part two to get what you want or what can be experienced. I dislike it immensely.
@@lethalButters but it was only ever mixing things up or little surprises that were only cool because they subverted your expectations of what happened in the first playthrough, not real swathes of content that were taken out of the first run.
Wow. These comments. Talk about some whiney ungrateful little f*ckpukes. I totally agree with you, putty. The game was massive by itself, and almost doubled in size with the dlcs. Then adding new bosses and treasures and secrets you could only unlock in a new game + was awesome. I'm really curious why people think this one wasn't as good as the others.
Can we simply agree that Majula's theme is perfection.
I'd say it's 2nd best ds1 the best,ds1 & 2 have the best hub
@@goodhoonter9882 Honestly good point, ds1's firelink theme was great.
DS3 hub for me, after you give the firekeeper the eyes. Really hunting theme.
That's one of the few things I can say are good about DS2
i hate majula theme its so lavender town 2.0 bad as hell man 😂😂😂😂
You don't need lock stones to open the walls, only the ones associated with the contraption, example in the ruin sentinels boss fight, nd all over DS2 there are walls that are unmarked atlest 4+ in the ruin sentinels boss fight room that if you press X on the wall, a portion of the wall will move, there will be a distinct noise , smoke, nd it will reveal a room or even pathway
Oh man...when DS2 released I did hit so many walls for secrets...I almost lost hope when I learned on the web, that actually you have to press the A (Xbox) or X (Playstation) button to reveal the walls. I got so mad!!! :D
I mean I get it. The devs nerfed the weapon's durability real hard, so if you hit every wall, then your weapon breaks very fast, but still...that was the only solution? That you change a VERY common gimmick from DS1?
@@nyuszicsib I know you what you mean, I spent the whole game playing normally then found a hidden wall, accidentally pressing X (a) on it then I went around every wall pressing X like a freak , there is one wall in no man's wharf that you actually have to hit , it breaks the wall , it's in the last building, has all the poison jars in it ,on left side of room is hidden wall, right side you literally break the wall,
I'm a long time DS2 player, and have recently begun ds1 just cleared it 2 days ago , and have already made it back to anor londo, fighting orinstein and smough again, best fight in the whole game imo, not really a fan of the gimmick bosses , eg the 4 old ones , nd ceaseless discharge , also you don't have to hit the walls in ds1 you can just roll thru them
Yeah he's based this video on watching other people play, doubt he even played this game himself, so many things wrong in this vid.
@@mariuszpudzianowski8400I literally just finished platting the game and he wasn’t off the mark on much, dude.
two words: Soul Memory. Besides that it's a masterpiece.
In retrospect, DS3 and ER have proven that DS2, desite being very unpolished visually made the right calls to gameplay, to the point that both DS3 and ER reused most of the stuff pioneered by DS2:
-estus shard/golden seed system
-midroll up to 70% weight
-weight only affecting the length of the roll, not the speed (except fatroll)
-rolling in any direction while locked on
-hit stun limit in PvP to prevent infinite stunlocks
-backstabs have 2 way confirmation via a grab animation
-casting magic also consumes stamina to limit spam
-jumping attacks on all weapons unpariable
-ultra weapon unpariable except running/rolling attacks
-parry frames active at the apex of the shield swing, not instantly at the start
-guardbreak on a blocking enemy allows for a riposte
-4 ring slots so you can still have some interesting synergies instead of having 99% of players just put on Havel's ring and Ring of Favor
Also unique movesets for dual weapons.
Don’t forget the streamlined upgrade system that’s not a mess like DS1’s, or the vastly improved menus.
Seed of the giants concept is used in DS3 too
The devs show more respect for DS2 than majority of the community ever will.
Estus works differently in DS2 from how it works in the other Dark souls and Elden ring.
Midroll isn't actually dependent on weight in DS2, adaptability only exists in DS2.
Weight affects the length of the roll in Elden Ring (not sure in the other dark souls).
Can you even roll in any direction while locked on in DS2? Doesn't it just snap like in every other situation?
Let's be real here, the only thing that came from DS2 is powerstancing.
honestly, i'd say the stuff that future titles get from DS2 is not enough.
just imagine something like auto boss transition based on equipment (this impacts world building), actual NPC summon/invader role play instead of mindless AI. secrets that are only seen by using a torch (also shows your progression on the area), breakable chests that makes people think twice attacking them to check if it's a mimic, better NG+ cycles, challenge run rewards, the Pursuer being a mini boss that pop ups somewhere and scaled up and rewards you if you kill him, a lot of unique type of weapons and armors, side quests being more than talk to them in every location (they actually need to fight and stay alive after the boss which made sense), story that is not a senseless quest we do because we are told so, DLC key items have effect on the base game, DLC is actually connected to the base game story, an area that completely changes after getting a key item, and probably more.
I played DS2 first along with the DLCs and while it didn't blown me away, i think it's fine, but when i played the rest, they seem lacking small features and just mainly focus on ambiance, interconectiveness and combat.
The talk about the terrible boss runs in DS2 reminded me how much I appreciate the checkpoint placements in Elden Ring. Nearly every boss has either a checkpoint directly outside the arena, or a shortcut. It means the bosses can be learned and enjoyed without needing to grind through the area every time. I *beat* the area. Now my treat is the boss fight.
It is sooo annoying the few times they didn't do that in ER. Especially for Placidusax.
@@darkspine133The runback to Placidusax is definitely a chore, but at least you don’t risk dying of gangup enemies because of it (unless you don’t use the grace before Maliketh)
@@mattia0079 True, it's not quite Blue Smelter Demon runback levels of bad. It just stands out a lot since they implemented the stake of marika system.
@@darkspine133 it’s not really the only one ER has a bit more tedious, Rennala had a longer runback too. Again, though, they’re only longer, not really difficult. You can mostly avoid enemies apart from what, two of them? And they might not even aggro in the case of Rennala
Luckily there's a bonfire directly outside the Royal Rat Authority's boss room, but that's probably only because the boss fight itself is so cheap and infuriating.
After having just finished the game I can say confidently that my main issue is how places like Iron Keep and Shrine of Amana made you not want to even explore because it felt like stopping for anything was gonna result in you getting jumped for it by all the enemies who insist on chasing you to the ends of the earth. Even if it was somewhat difficult to run through it all,that difficulty made you want to just get it over with as opposed to taking your time and risking death again before you even got to the boss of the place.
I liked DS2 as much as 1 and 3. I played tons of pvp in the iron keep
based
Ds2 best PvP
Yup. I think all the dark souls games are fantastic.
A minor thing: The elevator actually isn't a mistake, they screwed up in modelling the landscape behind the windmill. You actually travel into the caldera of a volcano - something one could describe as an Earthen Peak - so going up is the correct direction. However, you never get the impression that the windmill leads to the volcano because they straight up forgot to extend the mountain in the background a bit. There's a mod that fixes it and suddenly everything makes sense.
That's a really hard cope. I don't think it should have to be explained why relying on an external player-made mod to "fix" such a blatantly obvious thing in what the developers consider to be the "complete, definitive edition" of the game does not work in the game's favor. It actually kinda makes the game look a like worse because that sounds so clearly like something that *should* have been there, and the fact it's missing just makes the game look like even more of a joke.
@@Bthakilla4rilla It takes a spectacular lack of reading comprehension to miss my criticism of From's landscaping skills, while also missing that you do in fact travel upwards into a volcano - and thus the elevator shouldn't be travelling down like the vid suggests. I can't figure out if this is because you didn't watch the video, because you can't read and understand context clues or because you're so enraged 10 years later that even the slightest factual correction causes you to imagine wild scenarios, where the world will now believe Dark Souls 2 to be a 10/10 game because we know the elevator didn't go the wrong way.
@Bthakilla4rilla It's not a cope, it's a fact that reading their interviews would prove. The "sky" in Harvest Valley isn't even the sky, it's a thick layer of smog obscuring what "up" is.
Tanimura: The idea is that the lake of magma is actually on the upper strata, like a caldera lake on a plateau. However, looking down from the top it was far too wide, that and the fact that there isn’t an adequate transition between locations meant we didn’t really communicate the idea as well as we could have.
They didn't forgot anything they just sucked at level building
@@Bthakilla4rillaon joke here is that fact someone didn't use a hanger to abort you
Sunken Crown's DLC is some of my favorite in the series. It feels like a DnD dungeon delve, complete with a dragon at the end.
The level itself is good and the ghost enemies are interesting but the mobs, the dragon butts 2.0 and the bosses are awful, Sinh is the second worst dragon fight by From (I don't count dragon god as a fight).
@@night1952 Who’s the worst?
@@JohnDoe-kn7ex Ancient dragon.
@@night1952 As of Elden Ring, I think we can both agree that the sleeping dragon is the new worst dragon fight.
@@deadmeme8011 Not a fight either. And it's great for replays.
Dark Souls Two is the middle child of the games.
I actually enjoyed dark souls 2.
Theres a lot of cool stuff in ds2. I really like exploring it, and the drip and weapons are probably the best in the series. What i really dislike, is how there are so many enemies everywhere. Man, sometimes like 10 enemies will just swarm you out of nowhere
Hi not trying to say you're playing the game wrong but imo the game really encourages you to have diversified options ready for a variety of encounters. Much like type resists on enemies were tuned way up prompting you to have multiple solid answers to different resists type, i think always keeping in mind to have solid AOE answers to mob ganks etc imo makes it more manageable and more fun :)))
also the game i think the game kind of expects you to play dirty e.g using bows to cheese low hp mobs when you can shoot them for free, or just holding sprint as soon as you smell a whiff of bullshit and running to something you can use to abuse the AI like doors as chokepoints, or stairs to abuse pathing
Sounds like you were playing the Scholar of the First Sin version of the game. It’s not as good in many ways as the original DS2, and added many more enemies and changed their placement. It seems to encourage online play much more. The original DS2 is much better for solo play.
I agree! The Scholar of The First Sin was dumb and added enemies in stupid ways. I beat OG DS2 near release 3 times! It was fun, but definitely worse world building and map design than DS1 & DS3..
@@shanegale6143 He's not playing it wrong, DaS2 gets DaS wrong! In both DeS and DaS the gameplay was focused on carefully crafted worlds AND enemy encounters, DS2 gameplay ends up feeling redundant because it just throws enemies at you and the game world isn't crafted as well as the others.
@@duncanmacleod7287 It doesnt matter if das2 gets das wrong because das2 is not das. das2 is das2 LOL if u wanna play das ...then play das? dont play das2? I'm sorry that you think dark souls 2 "gets dark souls 1 wrong" when all you mean is "the levels dont diagetically connect back to the starting area " - when thats obviously not what it was trying to do, even if we use your analytical framework that already made no sense on its face LOL
Despite its countless flaws, I really enjoyed DS2.
It's still my favorite Dark Souls game.
I still miss PVP on iron keep bridge
Ds2 > ds1 > ds3
@@kyeda so True
I did too. Got me through a very dark time. But on an objective level, it's a shitshow. I only saw that once my rose tinted goggles came off.
The lesson you learn from the Blue Smelter Sprint is that the default jump keybind fucking sucks and you need to change it to progress.
Maybe just don't sprint? Idk I've never had that problem.
DS2 just feels so bad to play. DS1 and Elden Ring both hooked me instantly and DS2 just felt like such a downgrade, like it was a cover band instead of the real deal. The death/health system also is just so stupid. DS1 literally had the perfect system for that and they just HAD to mess with it and screw it all up. If it ain’t broke, do not “fix” it.
This is not helped by the fact that Miyazaki was away to work on Bloodborne & someone else worked on DS2. That someone else JUST SO HAPPENED to eventually co-direct Elden Ring, and that game has many questionable design choices as well. But I definitely agree concerning DS2: The unqualified moron who thought it was OK to “fix” these issues misplaced his beliefs & eventually made a fucking mess.
I like the video but honestly disagree with almost every point and a few things said were actually incorrect, like the illusory wall and Pharos Lockstone debacle and the thing regarding Mytha's arena is concerned.
As some have already pointed out most illusory walls are, in fact, not locked by a Pharos Lockstone. You simply need to press the "activate" button on a wall you suspect to be fake. They're not so much illusions in DS2 but walls that open like a door, instead of disappearing they slide out of the way.
In regards to Mytha's arena you are burning the wooden windmill that is powering a pump that pulls poison up from the poison swamp. It is not "a random metal pipe that doesn't make any sense". No offense but it really doesn't seem you paid attention to what your character was actually doing...or the giant burning windmill that's exceptionally hard to miss after you light it on fire.
I think it's important to listen to the other side of most any topic, so while I disagree with most of these perceived issues I don't dislike the video especially since it wasn't made with any perceivable intent to bash or slander the game which many people tend to do. You can say you don't like things about a game and that's fair, but the second you say something is objectively bad and indefensible you better be able to make a convincing argument as to why because if someone else likes it regardless? Well that "Fact" of yours is still just an opinion whether you like it or not.
Well said
Mate.... I have seen at least 5 people play this game myself included (not including people I've not seen this section from). So 4 people who had no spoilers. Every single one of them was baffled by the idea that your floompy torch could in any way interact with the metal pipe that leads to the windmill when I told them after they had few unsucessful attempts at the boss.
Even if that weren't the case this is countrintuitive and as such a bad game design. When you want players to preform a certain action you need to lead them to it. Not expect them to bang their head against every object in the game with any interactable items at their disposals (that's for secrets and easter eggs not important boss mechanics). You make it just obvious enough that it is within the realms of possibility of what the player might figure out. Not expect them to light a giant metal shaft that leads to enourmous wheel that is somehow supposed to be connected to the poison pool in the boss room...
Do you see the issue? There are too many steps where logic is missing and one giant "jump the shark" moment where you preform an action that isn't anywhere else in the game and is by all means an impossibility (that being setting a giant shaft on fire).
THIS is the reason why it isn't sensible to defend this specific point in the game. Because intuition of the players was never conditioned to anything like this being a possiblity and nothing suggesting in the moment that it should be logical course of action for the player.
Little puzzle makes big boy cry ):
@@wasabcwasabcI wouldn't even call it a puzzle. It's not hinted at at all.
Retroactively learning what the windmill is doing doesn’t automatically make it intuitive for a player to understand. Having the player walk through some sort of pump room with poison leaking from the pump and the shaft leading to it would’ve been much more acceptable.
Man, I've spent so much time invading in the looking glass knight area. Being able to be summoned into another player's boss fight was probably the coolest idea in DS2
I think it's actually a development on the old monk fight from demon's souls! Imo it was a really nice implementation since it's not reliant on the pvp, but has it as like an extra
@@syrathegreatI think this was the best version of it between old monk and spear church, is still preferred looking glass
@@ryanb5127 problem is that looking glass was so easily exploitable for the invader, that might be why you liked it, cause you won all the time lmao
Invaders rlly shouldn’t be able to heal the boss, that shit’s so broken
cope@@griffin1095
I preferred the Spear church. You got to be a BOSS yourself, that's something new and fresh.
Watched video. Can safely say this did not enlighten me as to how DS2 is worse than I remember and that this video just sort of echo chambers the non issues people have already outlined when trying to frame DS2 as a lesser game.
Thanks for saving me an hour.
watched video. Can safely say every issue presented in this video are 100% valid criticisms.
@@budafuka watch the video, this commenter is talking out of his ass
@@dippahh9064 As someone who not only watched the video but also beat every boss in DS2, not only are the issues presented valid, but I honestly think he was being too nice to the game, some bosses that I think are genuine travesties he graciously only said were flawed. Like to ignore this video's criticisms is to put your fingers in your ears going "lalala" without actually caring about the points
@@DuoFaceGaming"the old ivory king feels cute and less grand because it's not a one on one fight" the narrative flew over guy's head.
I could go down the list of other opinions I disagree with or things about the game that he got wrong but it's no real point.
Ds2 just catches more hate than it deserves and that's pretty much where the story ends
Its crazy that its 2024 and "ds2 is bad cause its not ds1" is still going strong
37:25 just to clarify, pharos lockstones are not the only illusory walls. There's actually like 6 or so in the boss room for the ruin sentinels and many more throughout the game.
Difference is, Dark Souls 2's actual illusory walls you have to walk against the wall and press X (for PlayStation users) or the corresponding button to you're platform as opposed to hitting or rolling into them like DS1. They are entirely separate from lockstone walls though.
Just shows how little this guy knows or cares about how the game was made, and the worth of his criticism. Anyone actually worth their salt would've never been so utterly inept as to somehow miss that.
@@asdergold1 yeah, honestly there was a ton of shit wrong with this video that I noticed; I just didn't feel like being the guy to really dig into all of it. Not to mention if this guy cba to do his research and make sure he has any credibility, I'm not gonna waste my time correcting him on everything.😂
@@asdergold1 It's a broken record honestly, every once in a while someone makes an uninformed DS2 hate video for Clout.
the game is the worst in the franchise informed or not. and the illusory wall thing is minor. you guys are too desperate for a gotcha@@zawarudo8991
@@asdergold1 yeah, how he miss that. The game clearly tell you that you can press x in the wa... Wait, it never tell you...
I won't lie, I always found this game much easier when I didn't level adp and instead increased my equip load, get to the point where you have Havel's armour and huge shield without slow rolling.
That's exactly what I did. I got both Strength and Vigor all the way up to 50, fully upgraded the Large Club to +10, and kept increasing Vitality to the point where I could actually carry everything and still move normally.
I got dark souls 2 when it first came out and it was my first souls game. I was hooked instantly and I will always have fond memories of it.
Exactly, I love DS2 it was my first souls game as well and it’s my favorite
I agree with so many the points in this video. Dark Souls 2 has it's fun parts but it's mostly a boring and janky game. DS1 was better and I still have to play through Dark Soul 3. Life gems actually became something I liked in DS2 simply because of the many janky, ganky combat experiences in the game.
Despite all the cool things Ds2 tried, I will always remember it for the damn run backs. I'd rather chew glass than have to go through to the iron passage and the frigid outskirts again
I gave up at the Old King's Grave (or whatever it's called) I died a lot getting to the room with the boss fog, saw there were about 14 enemies in it, and just lost the will to play. I had no desire to run back there over and over getting killed over and over.
I kinda got used to the runbacks being this long slog of essentially a war to go through. Kinda ruined DS3 and ER for me, too, as you can just run by enemies in those games which makes me feel like I didn't earn the runback to the boss. I dunno if it's Stockholm Syndrome or the layout somehow making a better overall experience to me, but ngl I feel like DS2 did runbacks better OUTSIDE OF FRIGID OUTSKIRTS AND IRON PASSAGE WTF?!
Thanks god i was so overleveled by the time i got there.
Those are co-op areas so if you are trying to solo them, then you are making it harder for you.
@@Ironica82 So you can co-op with no fear of Invasion?
25:44 You can even do that in DS1, if you miss Gwyn with the Zweihander's heavy attack his sword will swing above your head without hitting you.
The one thing dark souls 2 does best is armor and weapons galore. For all the things Ds2 does wrong,it does things so right that they should've stayed for the rest of the series.
For me it feels like everything in this game is meant to just piss you off where as the others are hard but meant to be learnt
Really? Sens fortress isn't to piss you off?
@@standarsh8056sens fortress is actually pretty easy lol.
Fun little area.
I replayed this game so many times. It got me into speedrunning.
It ain't perfect but it is a fun game. I'd play DS2 over plenty of other games in my collection any day
its a speedrunner's wet dream. my 2nd speedrun game after spyro
Hot take...ds2 is best game out of all three souls' games imo. Grab a buddy, it's a blast with friends. Way better than you remember lol
@@michaelpeyton5730 it definitely gets way more hate than it deserves
@@zuzuzip4533 yeah I over stated best souls game lol. It's my favorite of the three though and feels bad when it gets shit on. I just wish people who hated the game grabbed someone who loves it and tried it with them... I literaly have a blast playing this game with people.
There are two things that made me dislike ds2
1) The boss runs were terrible and just so damn obnoxious
2) they made the combat system clunkier than DS1 which was pain
I think the intro of DS2 is meant to mirror The Three Fates from Greek mythology, especially with the thread going through the wheel as Clotho spun the thread of human fate, the other sister measures it then the last sister cuts it. Meaning they know when you die
The story of ds2 is that youre turning hollow and losing your humanity slowing so you go there to try to stop the hollowing. But the longer you are there, the less you remember which is an exact parallel to the intro scene and how the player forgets entirely as well. Not understanding the story doesn't mean its just bad, it just means you havent took the time to understand it. It just seems to me you dont get this game at all
Well, actually I played it again last year and it is WAY BETTER than I remember. The biggest flaw I encountered in all the game (and the only one that actually mattered to me) was the enormous ammount of bosses that weren't memorable, and I didn't care. The worst part is that half of them were justa a lot of common enemies grouped together in a closed room.
It has the worst bosses in the series for me (gank squad in the cave, magus, covetous demon, lud/zallen, ancient dragon etc.) but still also some really really cool ones (alonne, raime, ivory king, sinh, velstadt, mirror knight). Most of them are just meh and if I wouldnt have played both versions of ds2 combined for over 1000 hours back then I would have forgotten most of them😂
@@thex6992 Sorry, but bed of Chaos from DS1 has the worst boss. Coincidentally, it has the worst level leading up to it too.
@@thex6992 The "gank squad in the cave" is mentioned in the video too, and I'm at my limit, IT WAS A MULTIPLAYER BOSS, all DLC's had a multiplayer zone, where you were encouraged to jolly cooperate because of the enemy density or other factor, the fact the you cant find a grope nowdays is not the devs fault
@@edslayer9756 that would be the devs fault tho lol
@@kotzer71 no it's not, you can summon NPCs to help in that area if no players are available, but the npc summons dont help in the bossfight
I actually loved 2. Disguising yourself as a statue and trolling people with traps in the lava area was hilarious.
I want to remember DS2 haters some of the really awesome mechanics, qualities or aspects that were created with this game that didn't exist in Dark Souls 1 or in the original Demon's Souls, some of them even carried over to DS3 or Elden Ring:
* Much better graphics than DS1 or Demon's Souls. It's lighting effect is better than Elden Ring, even (e.g. when you are holding a torch, the shadows on the walls are amazing).
* Much better and more intuitive menu system.
* Majula. Arguably the best hub in any souls game (and what a great background music it has!).
* Spell casting costing stamina (magic not consuming stamina in DS1 is unfairly broken).
* Staves and chimes can be upgraded.
* Hexes as a new category of magic.
* Bonfire Ascetics.
* Power stance.
* Weapon infusion.
* 4 ring slots (in DS1 there's only 2 slots).
* Many weapons have actual weapon arts (then again, I'm comparing to DS1, where they didn't exist).
* Torches.
* Armor gear that actually have special effects (shortening casting speed, preventing backstab, reducing fall damage, etc).
* Casting speed not scaling with DEX, unlike DS1.
* Max health lowering down when hollowed.
* Ability to drink Estus on a ladder.
* Actual poise (and that's somethng they did MUCH worse in DS3, with passive poise, where everything feels like a DEX build)!
* Ability to climb the ladder quicker, at the cost of stamina.
* DS2 has arguably the coolest looking sets in the franchise, too. Imo, the most fashion souls of all.
* Imo, DS2 is also the most replayable of all (even though DS1 is my fav). Thank to how the game changes in NG+ and beyond.
* The ability of relocating points of attribute with Soul Vessel.
* Souls level. Despite the backlash, this is a great balance mechanic that didn't exist in DS1.
Okay, but what does Miyazaki actually do?
Like during this timeline? He was working on Bloodborne. Yui Tanimura was the director for DS2 in the end. Miyazaki was just supervising things at the time for DS2 because of Bloodborne. Also Miyazaki and Yui Tanimura did team up to create Elden Ring
Oh, he’s the creative director if maybe that’s what you meant. Basically the man behind the vision
@@silentservant_ I mean specifically. What does he actually do, in practical terms? He's just the idea guy? That's what it sounds like you're saying.
@@sub7se7en yeah pretty much. And is in charge of directing the team of artists, programmers, etc. to make sure they are on track with what he wants to create. In the gaming industry they’re called creative directors but basically are the boss you could say. Like a movie director making a movie
@@silentservant_ Interesting, thanks for the answer. I've always wondered what on earth he does.
My favorite part of this game was running 15 miles through entire warfields to get to a boss that kills me in one hit.
My favorite part of this game was how, due to every aspect of it being so overwhelmingly cheap and unfair, it really made me appreciate even more just how fair, well-designed, and wonderfully optimized DS1 and even Demon's Souls were by comparison.
So is every boss a million miles away from the closest bonfire. Is it that silly?
Darksouls two being the ONLY part where the NG is actually +,
with new enemies, new bosses and new loot added after your first run.
DS2 is shunned for not being by Miyazaki, not its content.
It's shunned because of the terrible mechanics and worse quality of the content it brings. If this was a game at the level of the rest, it wouldn't have gotten shunned in the first place
No, you’re delusional. It gets all the flak for its experimental design choices which suck, and the fact that it never understood the design philosophy of the series
@@aidancallaghan No, it gets such a bad rep, because most idiots were new to souls and just sukked at playing the game. Now that EldenRing is Mainstream it turned good for no actual reason other than handholding those dimwits.
In vanilla the sentry is used like twice or so, the area before the lost sinner had those cool mutated monsters which are found in cages in aldias keep
The problem with the ultra greatsword is that the lock is kinda weird coz if u use your left analogue stick it attacks in that direction and not at the locked on target
Worst thing in DS2 for me is by far boss run backs and overly unnecessary numbers of enemies in levels. I died so many times just trying to get through the fog wall for smelter demon at iron keep that by the time I beat him, the enemies weren’t even respawning in the run back anymore 😂
if you don't lower the second half of the bridge the runback to smelter demon isn't that hard and you can ignore everything.
@@Ghorda9Seriously? You have made my new game++run so much easier!
@@Hans1994yout it still requires practice however as you need to dodge an arrow from behind as you get close to the fog gate, if you do it right the captain near the fog gate shouldn't have time to swing before you run past him and enter.
@@Hans1994yout not lowering the second half of the bridge only stops the guys on the bridge and behind from chasing you.
@@Hans1994yout alternatively you can also jump to the broken stairs on the right, but i've found that some characters can't jump high enough for some reason but butterfly wings might help.
I have to disagree on the torches part. It was amazingly practical and useful in DS2 which i think what DS1, 3 and ER lacked.
I might be alone on this but the sense of progression i felt after lighting up No Man’s Wharf and The Gutter was so good. And another use of torches was scaring the spiders off and those green creatures in NMW, also burning the crawling mobs in the Brume Tower and baiting them to explode was so satisfying. Like come on man torches in DS2 were cool
Another minor thing is DS2 actually had some gorgeous vistas to look at but they go unnoticed pretty often.
Overall great video! Rare algorithm W. Keep it up and looking forward for future videos!
It's not bad using torches but compared to the trailers that showed torches being necessary to navigate through some areas, the released game is a bit disappointing.
For me not since i was not told you could light up anything in that place (No man's Ganks) or anything, so i had to walk around the entire area like 4 times before checking youtube to know what the hell you had to do, also that place was so filled with ganks i usually end up getting like 13 enemies and dogs stuck in doors even when killing most of them at the bell that brings the phantom ship.
I actually really like the visual progression of lighting up a normally dark area. It just so happens that the design of these areas was incredibly poor at base and honestly not really worth anyone's time to begin with.
True but I hate not having a torch for dark areas, I should be able to access my torch whenever
yeah, i hate ds2 but the torches were something i liked a lot from it.
Glad to see my DS2 crew defending this masterpiece of a game
25:50 Margit’s second knife attack DOES hit him, you can see the effect that it dispersed after landing
I always felt that DS2 feels different mechanically compared with other fromsoftware games. Rolling, attacking and hit boxes feels weird. 10:40 resumes what I felt.
They actually used a completely different game engine from Demon's Souls and DS1. That's why the movement and controls feel so different.
While you may be right, it's still such an improvement over dark souls 1's controls tbh. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, they were just clunky af and often times didn't feel fun to play lol. I feel like a lot of ds1's notorious difficulty comes from the fact that the game has such bad controls and the animations feel slow and rigid
the reason the movement feels off is because it is. it doesnt actually have full 360 degree movement. its a very strange system, theres some very good videos on here explaining why its jank. i have no idea why they thought it was a good idea to get rid of full 360.
@@Rayven_420 honestly i prefer 1s movement to 2. 2 is a very strange movement system, its not fully 360 and feels off.
That's bc its game engine was custom made for it, and isn't used for any other game.
You can knock off one of the dukes dear Freya's heads and it acts like a beach ball. You can run into it to knock it around very fun given its about the only ragdoll you can really interact with.
What the fuck?! Fought that two faced bint four times, never happened to me.
You don't have to go too deep to find the game's problems.
- 8 direction snapping
- too many enemies ganking you
- too many bosses, most of them are forgettable, some of them are even gank you
- the effigy and healing system
- weird level and world design
- soul memory
- ADP
- every weapon is made out of wet cardboard
- broken hitboxes (this is the biggest problem I have with the game)
I saved you an hour. You're welcome.
The other titles have some pretty glaring issues but they are not as obvious at first glance for most people in my experience.
Whether you like DS2 or not depends on how much shit you can put up with. Same with the other titles. To me, this game is just insufferable. It is what it is.
i love dark souls 2
too bad people constantly shit on it, it's not perfect, but it's comfy, i feel totally immersed playing it
Couldn’t agree more! I’ve been using ds2 as a warm blanket for a few weeks, been bad times lately and playing it just took me away! Funny part is, I flippin’ HATED this game when it first dropped, time changed that lol
When i saw that title i thought i got recommended an old 2014 video but lo an behold it was made in the year of our lord 2023 and i still can't believe it.
Before watching it i already expected a couple things, "It's bad because no Miyazaki", the same parroted arguments i've heard a dozen times before, and a lot of bad faith, and oh boy did i get exactly what i was looking for.
If i had to chose my favorites arguments from this video it would be first "I'm forced to go back to Majula to repair because i meleed the enemies who break your armor when you get close to them and there was no other way i could have killed those guys ever", and the magical "Stamina feels bad because when i spend all of it to attack then i can't roll".
I've seen that exact video a dozen times already but this one is probably the less subtle yet, the process was obviously about finding a negative side to every single part of the game, even for Majula which is universally liked by even die hard haters of Dark Souls 2, you had to find the negative of "Oh but there's no boss before it so it doesn't feel as good".
And speaking of feeling, it's not an argument in itself. I don't know if it was intentional or not but many times through the video the only thing you have to back up your argument is "it feels bad", "it feels clunky", "it feels odd", "it feels weird", "it feels foreign", "it feels rushed", and so on.
Just another hit piece, but almost 10 years late
You only disprove a couple, while almost every other argument he gives is perfectly valid. God awful hitboxes being a massive drop in quality, and I doubt there is something you can say to change that.
@@addison_v_ertisement1678 Yes obviously i can't make a youtube comment disproving every single argument he's making in an hour long video, i'd gladly discuss any you feel is valid though.
And about hitboxes the only thing i can say is that i personally didn't see anything wrong with them, sometimes they're bad, sometimes they're very good, 99% of the time they're just normal. For every souls game you're going to find both good hitbox examples and bad hitbox examples, here's two good ones i found for Dark Souls 2 if you still believe what he said about shifting your hitbox not being a thing.
ruclips.net/video/VcHkh08xjeM/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/UARhHVuzuXI/видео.html
Your comment does not sound biased in the slightest however...
Fun fact about Sir Alonne (actually there is two):
If you enter the boss room in a certain armour of his friend he will react differently at the beginning.
And nr 2 if you beat him without getting hit he will commit seppuku
I thought the armor one was Fume Knight
thats fume knight if you wear velstadts helm he goes right to second phase
Fume Knight will immediately enter phase two if you enter his fight with at least Velstadt helmet on. Not Alonne
Very-known facts for any non-newb
Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhh thanks captain obvious
Bruh, your video making style is the DS2 of RUclips.
I don't think I've ever, EVER seen a single video game that was received well at launch get piled on as badly over time as DS2, man. It certainly has its issues and DS3 and Elden Ring have made it stick out more in retrospect but Jesus, it feels like everyone who's talked about it the last few years acts like it PERSONALLY killed their family and made them watch. It absolutely is the black sheep that sticks out like a sore thumb of Fromsoft's catalogue since Demon's Souls but it's not even in the bottom 10,000 worst games of all time or anything close to that.
My biggest complaint with DS2 has always been that the game feels artificially difficult. I really wanted to like it and I'm trying another playthrough right now, but it just feels... off. Glad it wasn't just me!
Yes! Very well stated. It's not just difficult, it's unfair and seems to be proud of this. Almost every victory feels random and unearned.
Nothing says artificial difficulty like downgrading the smooth movement of DS1 into the disturbing "movement" that was in DS2. It will always feel off when your char is lagging alot when it comes to the responsiveness of the inputs
Mine too. The worst aspects of this are the permanent Hollowing effect that decreases your max health capacity everytime you die, the absolutely abysmal durability of all your equipment that forces you to rest back at the bonfire to restore it before it completely breaks, and the fact that you're forced to sacrifice a Human Effigy every time you want to attempt to fight the Darklurker.
This is exacerbated by the Scholar version, which is the version most people played. Scholar changes a ton of areas to be incredibly annoying as if they wanted to lean into the "Dark Souls is hard" meme.
@@christopherregan1654pointless critiques
I played this with kb/mouse, and one issue I discovered was that by default, one of the basic actions was bound to LMB, and another action was bound to doubleclick LMB. The game distinguished between the two by waiting a moment for the second click, and if it didn't come, acknowledge it as a single click. This meant that you had severe input delay on attacks. There was a toggle in the options that disabled this behavior and made the game actually playable, but the critical flaw there was that even though the UI remembered the setting across game restarts, it wouldn't actually apply at startup, and would default to 'off'. So every time I started a new session, I had to remember to go to the options, and toggle that setting back and forth to be able to play properly.
i adapted by using the keyboard to attack instead. Sounds awkward, but honestly the Souls games have such low APM requirements that you can play it all with one hand, only using the right hand for freeaiming.
Kinda wish i made the same discovery as you. I just assumed the double click delay was impossible to fix and gave up on it after toggling it on and off made no difference. Would've made the first 100 hours easier
Which version of this are you playing?
At least DS 2 has the best looking armor sets in the entire franchise.
DS2's Drip goes hard.
29:00 There are not more statues than fragrant branches, thats just plain misinformation.
Nah there’s equal amounts in SotFS, though it’s easy to use one in the wrong place and softlock yourself out of getting a few branches- a lot of players prolly missed statues on their playthroughs cos some fragrant branches would only be able to be collected if you unpetrified certain statues
This is what started me on the journey of rpg's. I will always love dark souls 2
"my first Dark souls game was Dark Souls 3"
Stopped watching there. What could you possibly have to add to this discussion that heavy hitters like Matthewmatosis haven't already covered anyway.
One thing I think why DS2 is so beloved is it being a part of DS series. I think if you removed the title and just changed the iconic things in the game slightly then it would’ve been forgotten.
I just rekindled love for DS1 recently and found it to be my favorite over 3. But I’ve tried and tried again to get a love for 2 and cannot.
I finally returned to DS2 after haaaaaating its guts for a good few years. I first played it shortly after beating DS1 and I love DS1. DS2's changes to familiar systems and the absolute loads of enemies with weird or non-existent wind-ups (or my favorite, stunlock attacks) really made my blood boil. And that's coming from someone who never raged at DS1.
When I returned to it this year because a friend of mine urged me to (he wanted to see me stream it) I actually had a surprisingly good time with DS2 and I think it is in large parts because it's been a while since my last DS1 run. The movement doesn't feel as clunky when you don't quite remember how DS1 felt. The enemy hordes aren't quite as bad if you don't constantly expect DS1's rules "of fairness" like I did. I went in expecting a harsher game than DS1 and tried to lean into its mechanics instead of getting annoyed by them because they are different. And yeah, then there's quite an okay game here. I actually like DS2's level curve for example. You start out very weak, but because you level up fast, that RPG feel of strengthening your char actually came to me - ESPECIALLY as I leveled ADP and found a sweetspot I could sit at for a while (I stayed at 16 ADP for a LONG time; I blame Monster Hunter).
I'm aware DS2 is kind of a mess, but in a way it makes me wonder how much comparison is fair for a game before it gets judged for what it isn't instead of for its merits. Would DS2 get judged as harshly if it wasn't a Dark Souls game? That's the thought I can't shake.
While it’s a nice crutch, you absolutely don’t need adp
Last time I went to drangleic I got to the castle with a build that had 3 adp
Sat there for pvp and then dropped it again
I played DS2 for the first time after bloodborne and DS3, it was fun i liked it
It think the main reason DS2 is hated is precisly because it isn't the first half od DS1-2. But what everyone forgets is, that that was lightening in a bottle - a once in a generation alignement if the stars, that made it that special. If DS2 tried to copy or improve that, they would have failed spectaculary. So they had to be different. And I for one can absolutely appreciate it for what it is.
In my opinion, aside from bloodborne, ds2 was the best.
If DS2 wasn't a dark souls game people would have forgotten about it already. So no, it wouldn't be judged as harshly because there would be nobody left to judge it.
There actually are hidden doors, that don't require lockstones though. you just cant hit or roll trhrough them, but need to press a/x while standing in front of them
No it wasn't. Dark Souls 2 rules.
Watch the video, you minge
Fair points, but DS2 is still my favorite Dark Souls. There's just something about the tone and style of it all that really appealed to me; the more Arthurian theme, how many areas were allowed to be really beautiful even after falling into ruin, and how it somehow felt brighter and more hopeful than the other two. Majula, in particular, is definitely the best hub area in my opinion. And I rather appreciated that the NPCs you collect don't all go insane and die in the end, resulting in this little village of weirdos just getting by. I guess it's fair to complain about some of the mechanical stuff, but that honestly never bothered me enough to lower my opinion of the game.
Seems to me like skill issue, because it's the easiest DS in whole series and is only challenging if you intentionally decide to make it harder by 1 specific covenant or by doing challenges (no heal/no death/no damage/no bonfire). Y'all know, i can summarize ALL this rant about "how bad DS2 was" to just 3 words: git gud, casul.
DS2 is very fresh in my memory as I play it (and all other games) at least once a year. I love it, despite its flaws.
Not liking majula honestly feels criminal, I started with elden ring and decided to buy the whole dark souls trilogy, I’ve only played ds1 so far and firelink doesn’t even feel closely as optimized as majula, sure firelink has a more homely vibe but majula is honestly breathtakingly beautiful, just as beautiful as the beginning of limgrave, just my opinion though
Dark souls 2 got me back into gaming in 2015
But the most important part is that Quelaag is way sexier than Scorpioness Najka
Debatable but i won't disagree
We can ride Najka, opinion invalid
@@alyantza I can ride Quelaag too
@@alyantzaquelaag can ride me >:)
The art style and graphical design of DS1 makes everything look so much better than DS2, including Quelaag.
I played through as a strength build and once again as a Hex build.
I had fun. My only issue was the corridor like level design.
50:58 That was my criticism as well. I was fortunate enough to beat her first try but I noticed that if I lost I would be pissed that there was no bonfire anywhere near her that I found. Finding the bonfire is significantly harder than the fight itself. I only found it after the fight because of a player message I spotted after 30 minutes of searching.
I love DS2. I just replayed DS1 and i gotta say people have severe nostalgia glasses for that game. The bosses in the second half of DS1 suck, especially seath, and bed of chaos, and a final boss that you can easily parry 100x in a row. Lost Izalith is an awfully made area, with 1000 of the same enemies plunked on top of each other, and the annoying gimmick of having to wear a ring to even traverse the environment, only to repeatedly swap it back out to fight the boss. Oh and dont forget the invisible pathways on the way to Seath, what great game design.
DS3 graphics wise is great, but its easy and you can just spam roll through everything.
It's midnight... I really should go to bed, I work in the morning... Ok, one more Chopper video...
ADP is such a bad idea it never came back lol, also the never fixed the mouse input lag from 1.0 all the way to scholar of the first sin
it was good As in the lore, as you get stronger and learn tactics of evading. That’s why i like it, if people can suck off other stats for making ones character better then what makes ADP so bad?
@@LeGabrielMan it gatekeeps one main core gameplay mechanic, you need to level it up if you are dodging attacks head on to be aggressive or else you will get hit, multi hit attacks are just impossible to roll through as a base adp gives the same i-frames as a fat roll in ds 1, and on the other hand if you give adp priority you will turn the already easy gameplay to a complete joke even though they try to make the game feel like it is so hard which is not
From an rpg perspective it makes complete sense. It makes sense that how well your able to dodge is tied to your agility. Plus it allows you to choose between having a fast rogue like character or a heavier one that uses more poise. Or you can say fuck both and be some mage guy that kills everything from 20 feet away cuz he has no armor or athletic skill. Like yes from an action game perspective it’s really annoying but dark souls mixes action and rpg elements and in an rpg game a mechanic like that is pretty typical.
Ah yes, life gems… you mean “grass.” And also effigies… you mean “arch stone shard”. DS2 isn’t built around the isolated level system is why it feels weird there and not so much in Demons Souls
Facts
Imagine having a take and it being this....
Another person who never leveled apd.
Weapon degrading, boss run backs and hitboxes. Those things hurt the game for me but I still like it.
I also hated the Hollowing Effect that decreases your max health capacity every time you die, as well as being forced to sacrifice a Human Effigy for every attempt to fight Darklurker.
@@ZeroFanfare You just said we're whining while literally saying the hitboxes are busted. What was the point...
@@ZeroFanfare Grabs are still part of that. Almost everyone knows how bad they're and there's videos showing it. My fault for getting eaten by a mimick that I was behind before it hatched.
@@ZeroFanfare Doesn't matter, I'm getting hit when I shouldn't.
@@ZeroFanfare ruclips.net/video/yDicGBTRp1Q/видео.htmlsi=72osab5CQdL_vAIl
DS2 had the best PvP IMO. So many crazy builds and awesome areas for invasions. I miss shield checking noobs. I loved the rat covenant too. Man I miss hiding in the Doors to Pharos area and spamming Dark Fog on people as they got sucked into my world. Watching them scramble to get to safety while poisoned and under heavy fire... Fuck man, so good. Also. POWER STANCE. What a great mechanic. So much good shit from DS2 just left on the table and forgotten. Elden Ring didn't even get a covenant system! WTF?! I can admit the animations did feel wonky, the hit box shit was frustrating and the enemies were mostly all just another dude in armor. But some of it was fucking magical, and it's a shame it's the one game in the franchise that more souls-like than it is souls proper.
Was a good comment until you said the latter cringe. Roll souls 3 is hardly a souls like
agreed I still think DS2 PvP was better than Ds1 and Ds3. Maybe it's just the PvE casuals that dislike DS2
@@wasabcwasabcyou think dark souls 3 isn't a souls game?
@@Bendanna93 He doesnt because all that game is, is fast roll spam.
@@trollking6315 i don't really agree with that statement. That is one way to play but hardly the only way.
The bosses are bad, the levels are bad, the enemy designs are bad, the enemy placement is bad, the story is bad, the graphics are bad, the controls are bad, the world is NONSENSE. Of course all the fans will talk about the pvp and Majuuuulaaaa.
You're absolutely right sir
Shrine of Amana (especially the version prepatched, on release day) is enough to make me not want to beat this game more than once.
I died once in that area. Literally not that bad.
To this day, Lud and Zalan are the sole piece of Soulsborne content I haven't completed. And I have 0 regrets.
They're weapons are mediocre too so it's okay.