I just experienced that for the first time today. I have never played through DS2 and I was shocked when I saw him spawn behind me. I ran to the opposite end and equiped my buckler and prepared to parry like a champ and then he just disappears through the ground.
I'll never forget the first time I died in this game. The first ladder in Things Betwixt. I found out that pressing B dismounts ladders now, rather than sliding down them in DS1. Fell what looked like 10 feet. Died.
@@mellomoose_ What do you mean its balanced, the npc will ABSOLUTELY not cancel their attack animation, have a 180 turn jumping attack. More health then bosses themselves and have poise for days.
The enemy AI is broken because all enemies have special scripts made to ambush you. If you come at them in any other way other than what the developers intended they break. This becomes extremely obvious if you're farming Twinkling Titanite in Shrine of Amana starting from Rhoy's Resting Place. The Archdrake Mages will not notice you until you're right behind them, but if you're running from the other direction (as you would, in your first go through) they'll aggro at you from a kilometer away.
Never experienced this once ever, "they break" what do you even mean, they fight normally with their moveset as they always do. Sounds like ur just pissed u got ambushed, which is fine, but don't make up crap about it.
@@AlexisTheDragon no - he means that they don't aggro if you approach them from the opposite direction the developers intended. Yes, *when* they aggro they use their moveset. They're not that broken. The issue is - They flatly ignore until almost within melee range when approaching them from one end and engage you at upwards of 100ft from the other end, because they are not coded properly. I love this game, and this is just a fact about it. They wanted the ranged enemies to engage you early. They forgot to consider you will eventually, maybe, approach them from the other end, and forgot to make them aggro at the same range. You responded to this with "lol u mad at being bad" and I am having to explain it to you instead. You learn to laugh at how ridiculously shoddy certain parts are because it's still a genuine piece of art. People do make up crap - this ain't it. I despise the fact that we have 8-point snap movement, yet Majula is a positive heaven of atmosphere. Properly loving this game means accepting where it is simply a bit shit. It's denial and insulting people with actual criticisms otherwise.
@@AdamOwenBrowningsneaking up on enemies from behind is an intended game mechanic, not the enemies being "broken" or "a bit shit" you already went through them from the front and beat a boss, why not be rewarded by being able to sneak up on them?
I am pretty sure there is a lore reason they attack the trees. No, seriously. The trees are Giant Trees, and the soldiers fought the Giants, so maybe the Hollowing has made them think the Trees are actual Giants.
Pretty sure this is the case too, though the game botches this in the most awkward way. If it was meant to be evocative that they were attacking the trees, they should have had the enemies spawn directly next to the trees and refuse to strike anything but them (a lone hollow does this in Dark Souls 3 by striking a wall and shaking his head)
bob bobert there are actually 2 hollow soldiers that spawn near that exact tree, and they attack it endlessly, until you aggro them, but I've never seen the hallway soldiers run all the over to it. Maybe the tree soldiers didn't spawn for some reason, but the game had to have someone attack the tree, so they brought ovet the nearest possible candidate?
The running soldier is supposed to run to the tree to draw your attention to it, that way you would get a hint to where the tree is later in the game. he will always take that path.
Steven Reynolds I've played through this area multiple times, and I've never seen a soldier run all the way over to it. They're usually just there, and you're supposed to notice the tree by following the loud attacking sounds.
I to have played it Multiple times, and that one soldier always sprints to that tree, as for knowing about the tree by sound, the running soldier is a visual cue for the off chance you cant hear the sounds.
@@megashark1013 There is a pathetic youtuber that goes by the name of Odysseus something that went on to defend that garbage mimic hitbox and that grab attacks grabbing you when you're behind them is totally how hitboxes should work. I still like the game a lot but it is genuinely funny how some DS2 fanboys really do go out of their way to defend some of the downright infuriating flaws of the game. I recommend checking some of his DS2 hitbox videos and their comment sections for a good laugh.
Am I the only person who noticed how he said it's bs you can't backstab enemies while he shows a clip of him not being able to backstab jester Thomas lmao
@@Mando23456. Yeah, the game makes it more difficult to circle a locked on enemy to backstab. This doesn't exist in DS1/3. The missed backstab animation seems too frequent in DS2.
"The hitboxes not matching up with the character models is actually a genius decision by the developers - keeping the player constantly on their toes and wondering what will happen next! I like it a lot! I think more games should do it!" - HBomberGuy
You know you can just scroll up to the video and see Mauler providing dozens of examples of them not working correctly, right? I dunno why you ignored it to scroll down and reply to me. It's like turning up to a Hitler speech and getting into a fight with a random guy in the crowd for being a nazi@@uberbyte7467
@@frocto1 some are genuinely bad such as the mimic grab. However the ones he showed were mainly grabs that teleport you into the attack. Oftentimes what happens is people forget that you have less i-frames in a roll than the other games so they don't realize they can still be hit mid roll and claim that the attack that actually clipped their foot shouldnt have hit them. the grabs still look janky as hell but what he neglected to mention was that it happens in other souls games too (dancers grab teleports you and so does the golem from darksouls 1) If you dont believe me look at some hitbox comparison videos, this guy blows the flaws of the game massively out of proportion.
@@trippyspec1759 no, its a fairly old video but one of my favourites so i made these timestamps and asked mauler if he could add them to the video for ease of viewing
That's actually a great call. The other Fromsoft games feel like a tight progression and story while this game felt like a long journey through many unconnected worlds
I also hate how ds2 and even 1 sometimes used the "Y axis turned" enemies. So basically if you try to circle an enemy to find an opening, most of the time they'll have some sort of side/back attack to cover their flanks. That's perfectly fine. But in Dark Souls 2, there are many cases that the enemy just rotates in one place to face you constantly without any animations and hits you with its forward-facing attacks. The salamander pit section is a prime example of this. Instead of actually giving animations to the enemies to be able to hit you from the side, they just rotate along you to face you constantly. Feels extremely cheap.
@@arditazman6823 It's not an issue of date, many old games are still animated beautifully. It's an issue of absolutely destroyed development. This game went through hell before it was released.
There's also the fact that the hollow soldiers attack the giant trees for lore reasons (they as hollows aren't aware that the war is over and continue to smack away at the giants' corpses).
@@joshuakim5240 Yes. His argument is that the ai purposefully ignored him to attack, however, that's an easy mistake to make, so i see how you thought that.
You people say that, but most of the time is pretty underwelming, Is good to show up in pvp but for pve those showofy attacks are not as strong, fast or reliable than just using basic atacks.
@@Thegeobot That solely depends on your weapons of choice for power stancing In particular for smaller arms the effect of power stancing is rather useful even in pve as it increases the poise damage per attack due to the combined attack with both weapons making it more reliable in regards to stunning enemies Not to mention that combined counter damage can give a huge boost in overall damage
@@Thegeobot dont forget that if you press (and release) the two-handing/powerstance button in time with ANY attack while in powerstance, you'll negate some of the start-up frames, effectively speeding up the attack. Very useful for powerstanced greatswords, katanas, great hammers, the list goes on.
@@philharvey5519 the part that they’re referring too is at 12:00 minutes in , using your L analog you can only move in 8 directions , it’s hard to notice because just about everyone compensates with their R analog which moves the camera .
@@philharvey5519 I believe they mean it’s challenging. Either that or referring to the fact that every game that’s somewhat hard gets referred to as the Dark Souls of whatever genre it’s in.
@@philharvey5519 bad, considering how much compensation you had to use your R analog as apposed to other games , moving in a straight line in dark souls is only ever easy when facing your camera forward.
@@Sweetluckk so if it’s so easy to counteract then why is it such a big deal? I have a much bigger problem with the restricted rolling in 1, and combat near cliffs becomes a huge issue.
Made it to the "hitbox" section, watching at around 25:00, and all this is doing is making me really, REALLY appreciate Bloodborne, Dark Souls III, Sekiro, and Elden Ring. They clearly improved is all I'm saying.
If I've understood it correctly it's not so much about actually improving as it is about Dark Souls 2 being developed by a sort of B-team within the studio, while the A-team worked on Bloodborne. Apparently they split the studio into two teams after Dark Souls 1 and most of the talent and resources seemingly went into the Bloodborne team after that.
@@koerel from what I understand, the Ds2 team had 2 directors that studied under Miyazaki, but had differing views on the game, but one took the lead and the other followed. After something happened, not sure what, the lead director left with the game kind of in a half state, and the other director had to pick up where he left off, and tried to steer the game back into the traditional DS formula, which left the team with the bad assets and the levels that they rushed putting where they could.
I would eliminate Elden Ring from that list. Elden Ring has MANY of the problems listed in this video, including new ones that are arguably worse. It’s easy to ignore such problems because Elden ring is supposed to be a good game, and ds2 is supposeded to be the one mediocre or bad From game, . . . But in my very extensive Elden ring experience its input coding, hitboxes, and new things like aim punch and etc are as terrible or at times even WORSE than the issues of ds2. It’s also just foundationally flawed and an inferior souls game IMO but for that don’t listen to me and instead go watch Demodcracy, NeverKnowsBest, John Anderson, and etcs videos on the topic.
@@Nachtmar3 I dunno man, I checked out their videos, and all they really talk about it how disappointed in the game they are and design of the world, nothing about broken mechanics.
@@Nachtmar3 I agree, both Elden Ring and DS3 have plenty of jank/broken hitboxes. In Elden Ring, the action queueing is unresponsive at times, and somehow, after a decade of making these games, the camera still sucks. Not a masterpiece at all.
If I'm not mistaken there are zero songs from ds2 in this video outside of ingame footage This should tell how forgettable the songs are in this game outside of Majula theme
@@TheSlammurai just in this case, you have to explain the plot and why it make sense to move to the next scene. For some that could be really fun, for others it might become a chore
As one of those people that really does like dark souls 2, this is the best way i have seen it put. The game has it's issues, there is no denying that. Some of the claims in this video, slowly, but lately have been getting debunked (Look up Domo3000, he has great videos covering a lot of claims about it). But in general, yes, it has flaws. Every game has flaws, but in general, once you accept that and start to look at the good sides, it's very enjoyable to play and watch. The constant comedic energy of AI, the bizarre and sometimes downright comedic combat scenarios, the "Bosses' (Looking at you, Prowling magus), it all comes down to an expirence that, if you want to approach just like DS1, it is janky and annoying, but on it's own merits, it's so much fun. Finished my latest playthrough today, and had a blast doing so, but i will not deny some problems i did encounter
I actually enjoyed DS2 a lot despite some of these issues. I will say, though, for anyone getting frustrated with the Jester, it is impossible to backstab him and if you get his armor set, it keeps you from getting backstabbed
ive actually been playing DS2 alongside watching his RE: series as well as this and there are times where i can have first hand experience that prove for his points but as you say im still playing it and still having fun.
@@ninyndolvr That's a very important thing to know when watching Mauler: He is (or at least tries) to be extremely objective and has a complete disregard for our subjective parts. I love ds2 and prefer it vastly over ds3 but ds3 is much better designed and has many less broken features.
@@tomvandalen2212 i can't play ds3, and not sure why. I think it just chagned too much, and in regards to if it's a better game or not, I'm leaning on the side of no since it seems to be hard for hard sake, where as dark souls 1 was a realistic level of difficulty, imo. It's opinion, and yeah, combat is fast paced, but it's like they learned how people played and enjoyed Dark Souls 1 and said, nah, let's stop that, no fun allowed.
@@tomvandalen2212 for me, dark souls 1 is still the best, i love it, and demon souls is a close second i love a game that works and that i can get op in if i choose to (i love the disgaea games, for example), and the game never drops the challenge, so it's not just stats, it's also a degree of skill, but not 'my whole life is dark souls' level skill, more 'you never forget how to ride a bicycle' skill. everyone has their preference, but DS3 disappointed me about as much as mass effect 3 :P
@@redgeoblaze3752Exactly. Shows dedication and perfection of the craft. I love DS but in comparison I am laughably bad. 14 runs (on top of those he has played previously!) for one video. He’s insane
I started playing ds2 the other day for the first time and laughed out loud when a knight killed me and then pulled a full 360° degree turn to throw himself off the nearest cliff
The AI pathfinding problems are more to do with nodes. The reason the square in Shulva is inaccessible to the enemies is because at some point that square can become a pit for an elevator. Instead of putting nodes over the gap when it's closed and removing them when it's open, they didn't put nodes at all, out of convenience of development I guess, which means enemies literally can not walk onto there. A lack of nodes basically explains most examples of "bad AI" like the gargoyle not jumping- it doesn't jump because there are not any nodes for it to jump to. The connections between nodes is also hilariously bad in this game. More than once have I seen a group of enemies take the same zigzag path through an empty room- they all followed nodes laid out in an inexplicably bizarre fashion.
LSDO the funny thing is that I tested it and he went for me. Idk how programming as I only know how to do 3D models but maybe they have put some specific path finding on it so that he need to get on a specific placement for being able to advance? He did took a lot of time turning around me but he did eventually attack. Have you an idea on what it could be?
@@raphicoco there's explanations I can think of, but none of them can really be confirmed. I'm guessing either that there is a "leash" these enemies can break our from that will eventually allow them to take unorthodox routes. You said the enemy attacked you so it could be that the attack animation itself pushed him over the edge, so to speak. Can't really confirm it without footage though.
Is that why enemies try to attack you through walls and sometimes succeed? Since the nodes they have might not account for the environmental obstructions?
@@tytsty5716I think that has more to do with how the game handles player detection for enemies. If they succeed in hitting you thats just a hitbox issue.
@@tytsty5716 I did test out how and when they do it and realized that they don't attack you wen you are behind a wall. Wen they do, it is because they have already started there attack animations way before you got behind it. It is a consistent problem in every single souls games. But I guess they cant just make there attack animation stop or bounce it off the walls as it would have been extremely exploitable.
Whoa, what the hell, I had no idea that ADP affected the speed that you used estus That would explain why my depraived tank character with only 6 ADP (Yes, I'm serious about that ADP, never leveled it) consumes estus slower than a god damn snail trying to move a mile.
Man that was easily one of the most frustrating things for me going from DS1 to 2. I can understand wanting to change the system a bit to keep things challenging for returning players, I mean I admit I was pretty reliant on estus and lots of it (never less than 10 if I can help it) in DS1. But not only does your character pull their flask out comically slow, but it's not even a quick fill up on HP anymore, it heals over a second or two. When I started the game and had life gems but no flask, and saw how slow those heal... I guess I didn't expect the main heal to be slow too lol. I thought it was bad enough that you only start with one estus charge!
I did the same. I played demon's and ds1 first and never use wikis or guide first playthrough. Had no idea what adp was through the description left it alone. Finished the game, went on the wiki and facepalmed when I realised i'd made it harder for myself.
My 12 year old was watching me. I was fighting fume, which is one of the only bosses I have trouble with He was like “yo, you got a tall ass knight with a big ass sword comin at ya. Drink faster man
@@adonisx82 Ah yes, Fume Knight. Weirdly enough, with 6 ADP, I never had a problem with him, and I would frequently be seen with the red eye ring, helping others beat the Fume Knight. I know others struggle with certain bosses, so if I beat them easily, I will go out of my way to help others. It's a nice feeling :>
That 8 directional movement is something I noticed immediately, it feels like something a mad employee would tweak in after they got pissed off. It drove me so crazy I couldn't even play the game after a few hours.
Yeah i recently raged quit the game because i kept dying at one point from falling. Just felt unfair and most of the time it was the game just not doing what i thought it should of been able to do.
In fairness to DS2 (not that this remotely helps it’s case as a whole), at 1:06:45 , the reason for a lack of backstabs is because Jester Thomas’ set prevents you from getting critical attacks from behind. Not that the average player would know, given the set is sold by Magerold in Iron Keep and most people hardly talk to the guy if ever, from what I’ve heard. ..That said, every other clip there was a hilarious showcase of this game’s horrifically inadequate backstab system. Bonus: at 37:00, the hollows attacking the tree isn’t a bug or pathing issue, rather, that’s a tree that was formerly a giant, which those hollow soldiers fought. DS2’s best attempt at environmental storytelling I suppose. Though the prioritization of attacking the tree over the player is a.. different matter. Other than these two minor oversights the video is an excellent critique, and puts into words many of my own scattered thoughts-and issues, regarding this game. I know I’m ages late to the party on this video, but I’m glad to have seen this series.
Also at 45:22, the zombie running ahead of the player is on purpose. The zombie was supposed to be a bait that you chase and it'll lead you to ambushes.
@@jigsawharlequin862 If you have a good eye while playing this game, you can sometimes spot regular enemies speeding up in much of the same manner when you're sprinting. It's random and uncommon but it happens. Claw hand on the controller can help you find it since it happens more often off camera.
@@charlie1234500 yeah a very noticeable example was one of the door ogres in aldia’s keep sprinting at me at mach speed. Then when i wanted him to come to me he walked at normal speed lol
@LeadFaun Makes sense to me, the Giant would be a bigger threat, and if some semblance of memory was still in the Hollow soldier's mind they'd probably associate the giant with something that needs to be killed.
@LeadFaun Well yeah, the shitty scripting spawns him away from the Giant And no, So long as you've talked to Drummond first, They'll only attack you if you somehow damaged them in one of the memories, which for some reason doesn't reset until NG+
@LeadFaun Well yeah, they're Hollow, of course they attack you outside of the Memory, and inside they're supposed to be Neutral to you after talking to Drummond unless they take any kind of damage from you, before and after speaking to him. There's likely a bug involved.
As are the knights hitting the tree (i.e. old ass giant corpse). I guess you'd think they should stop and attack the player, but, you know, priorities.
@@bsh819 The zombie running is its form of attacking the player. It's supposed to lead you into other enemies and ambushes. It's a tactic used in all 3 Dark Souls games, not just 2.
@@Netirumi I was talking about the tree whackers. Your right about the troll zombie of course. There's also the torch guy in undead crypt that can follow you all the way to Agdayne, causing... problems.
I am so glad I watched this entire series, and that this did not disappear under the rug the way you thought it would. You make exceptional content and I look forward to watching the rest of your videos.
@@AtreyusNinjayeah domo is actually smart, mauler Iis a big idiot making all the problems for himself then blames the game, hell if there's maybe one of two genuinely bad hitboxes everyone hates on on but when DS1 is plagued with a lot of them no one cares
The point with ADP is especially frustrating since I played DS2 directly after DS1 and in DS1 everybody told me not to put points in resistance as it's some kind of joke from the developers so I thought "Oh it will be the same with ADP I guess" and then I wondered the whole game why enemy swings always hit me even when I thought I rolled away early enough.
Literally sunk like 30 hours into my character and beat most of the game and dlc and only realised what adp actually was and why I was getting hit so much💀💀
@@humbelgenetv I did. Deleted the game again but after some perseverance I decided to make a brand new character and start from scratch. The game honestly isn’t that bad it’s just some of the choices they made were pretty stupid. The whole thing with ADP was so stupid. Nothing about the skill tells you what it does so some of us went through the whole game thinking our rolls were unfair because we didn’t have a single point. But also the fact that certain bosses are extremely easy when your rolls throughout the game are constantly getting better and better. They didn’t think that ADP would have to work around the game and each boss specifically in order for there to be balance
@Thadson makes rolling through certain attacks wonky and also allows the player to backpedal diagonally when retreating which reduces your chance of jumping off the ledge like a scrub. unpopular opinion but 4 directional rolling made the combat feel weightier and made me more conscious of my positioning.
I remember my surprise during my first playthrough when, in undead burg, near the first bonfire, one of the hollows down the stairs and to the side did a jump attack towards me that travelled around a 90 degrees angle and up the stairs to hit me.
@@RorytheRomulan yeah, didn't like it back then, but for now it's just a funny memory. I do think these games, even the more recent ones, have too much tracking on certain attacks, but I guess that with experience and being used to it I just don't notice as much, or just learned to deal with it. Really absurd situations aren't too frequent luckily.
"I'm not directing that at anyone in particular, but I'm sure you understand *Harris.* " I love being British and having access to that level of sudden and unexpected vitriol.
@@xelic1996 It's a RUclipsr named HBomberGuy (the H likely stands for Harris) who made a terrible video praising Dark Souls 2 by pretending Dark Souls 1 was bad by comparison. I could be wrong, but I think him and MauLer are friends to an extent. MauLer enjoys his videos and respects Harris, at least.
Thanks, I've now watched his video on it and working my way through the series in proper order now. The dude seems decent, but just made a lot of on the spot arguements without trying to really back anything up
@@xelic1996 He's an okay guy, but the way he misrepresents Matthewmatosis' points and cuts his video, completely changing his points, is really damn scummy. Also the extremely smug and condescending attitude he had towards him for no good reason is really disgusting to listen to. A lot of people, including myself, regard Matt as a very good critic and it was just so strange and gross to see this stuff.
@@TheSlammurai Indeed, but Harris does not respect mauler, in fact Harris seems to react very childishly to criticism in general. Pretty unfortunate since Harris genuinely makes fantastic videos
Doesn't mean you can't like it, all games have flaws and if you can like the game even with the flaws then all power to you. My fav is ds3 and it has its flaws. But I still love it. Like what you want. Even if it has issues! :D
@@zxnch217 bro shut tf up, a majority of people like DS3 even though it's just Bloodbourne with dudes in armor, you'll never know the suffering of being a DS2 fan.
To be fair, I'd love for him to go *into* Dark Souls 1 with the same intent to pick it apart and see what he comes out with (bonus points if he plays through the *original* PC port without fan fixes, so he can see what PC players had to deal with *before* they came into Dark 2.)
You have to find criticism in things you enjoy. it’s your responsibility to voice them so that the thing you enjoy doesn’t slip into mediocrity. ( i.e NBA 2K or madden.) From soft learned from these criticisms and gave us DS3 and bloodborne🤷🏾♂️
@@ryanburke9490 Nah m8, I pretty much agree with everything Mauler said. But when I wrote that comment I didn't realize it was a response to hbomberguy's video and thought this was supposed to be another defense of the game.
There is a way to fix this on PC! - Exit Dark Souls 2 : Scholar of the First Sin - Download the file named, "Durazno v0.6-43.7z" - Extract to your Dark Souls 2 SOTFS install location (easily located by right clicking on the title in your Steam games list, left clicking on the "Properties" option, left clicking on the "Local Files" tab, and left clicking on the "Browse Local Files" option, and then double left clicking on the "Game" folder) you may need a separate tool to complete this part -Once extracted double left click on the "x64" folder that has appeared, select all items present in this folder, copy it, and paste it into the "Game" folder - Right click the "Durazno.exe" and run it as an administrator - Change the options to the ones down below; LinearADZ: Checked Deadzone: 20 AntiDeadzone: 36 - Close the Durazno program - Launch Dark Souls 2 : Scholar of the First Sin - ??? - Profit massively from having normal, reasonable, and expected movement rather than 8-directional nonsense Praise the Omnissiah. Edit : This only works if you're using a controller on PC. Double Edit : Additional instructions because SotFS is a 64-bit program.
@MysteriousAeon It's a possibility. I have had a friend get banned for (in theory) just using this but I have not. There are rumors people have been soft banned for using graphic injectors (SweetFX and ReShade, for example), x360ce (Xbox 360 Controller Emulator, used to play the game with controllers other than an actual Xbox 360 one), and/or the DSFix/DSFix64.
Same I didn’t know it existed but I felt something fishy was going on with the movement but I couldn’t tell why and now it’s confirmed I am awestruck that they changed something that the first game in the series had so they didn’t even need to put in the work they actively did this whyyyyy
That whole part about you attacking in the wrong direction instead of where you're locked on to is unbelievably prominent in the Aava & Lud & Zallen fights for some reason.
The amount of times I tried to swing my great sword and missed was nuts. I originally thought my focus was massing up because I fiddled with the camera while focus was on. It wasn't the case, just poor focus mechanics with bigger weapons.
You all 3 need to know that even if locked on, large weapons in dark souls 2 *must* be manually aimed. Any control stick input during the attack and it will go that direction, locked on or not
The editing of this piece is great, but the script? Impeccable. Every sentence has a great rhythymn to it, and the complaints are presented very coherently. Great job!
could you imagine in blighttown im dark souls 1, the poison dart spitters managed to hit you through the walls because the walls werent considered as a mesh?
@@dearcastiel4667 through the Valley of Drakes? You do lose quite a few souls and items and honestly, um, it's not that bad of a place if you have the right gear!
@@brocolyrics4331 the only thing you're missing is Power Within and eventually the iaito, both of which can be grabbed in a single suicide run before leaving the area for the Valley. Also at that point you normally don't have access to poison-resistant gear (the only aviable is Dusk's set but then you have no poise, and the poison-bite ring costs so much no normal player have it at this point. I generally go through the area for power within because that spell is absolutly OP in NG, but if somehow I don't need the spell I clearly don't bother doing blighttown, and even skip gaping dragon as well.
No! Every time I turn in an estus shard and my character sits there running through the hand folding prayer animation, I wonder how many more shards I picked up and just how long I will have to sit there just to finish turning them in.
They probably wanted to make opening chest better by making the animation longer to create more anticipation, like zeldas do. It's not a bad thing on itself, except for the fact that several times in the game you find 3 or more chests in the same room. Opening them becomes a chore instead of a reward, specially when some of them contain just some random consumable. To be fair, DS1 did that too in archives and in havel's room, but there were actually reasons for it. In archives, one of the chests was a mimic, and in havel's room i'm pretty sure the point was to convey how massive havel's set is, that it doesn't fit in 1 chest (and there was also a mimic). Admittedly, DS2 sometimes tries to slip a mimic surrounded by chests too, but most of the time, it just looks like they wanted to waist your time instead of putting a corpse with the item on it.
@@StephanuSneed That's not why they did it. They did it so you can't rush in and snag something and run away from enemies, you are forced to fight what is in the room.
@@FirstLast-yc9lq That might be right, but a lot of the times you find multiple chests there are 1 or no enemies around, so my point stands that it's just obnoxious. Also, the fact they kept mimics, made wooden chests breakable and added metal unbreakable chests and trap chests supports my point they wanted to make opening a chest more interesting.
"The point of it is to provide a genuine defense of Dark Souls 2... without focusing on any negatives." Proceeds to completely bury the game and piss on the grave.
@@MHMega Completely disagreed, there's way more bad than there is good objectively speaking, to just go "durr there's more good than bad" after MauLer went from top to bottom to be as detailed as possible in showing the bad of the game is pretty stupid.
@@wordsoflove8787 you're just being disingenuous, I've never experienced any of the problems mentioned in this video solely in ds2, in fact I've experienced more of these issues in ds1. The one that really bugged me was the upgrade materials section, comparing it to bloodborne that has like 25 weapons to ds2 which has at least 100. Hoe tf am I supposed to know what weapon I'll want to use my 1 blood rock on when I'm a new player. "Oops I dont like this weapon, now I have to go to ng+ just to get the one I want"
Man, I can't help but laugh every time I hear that fart sound effect when a Dragonrider falls off a ledge. Thanks for this series, it's been a fantastic ride. Looking forward to watching the rest of your current stuff as well as your future work. Good shit.
I watched this series like a pod cast, running in the background most of the time, and hearing that sound cued me into the fact that his video just showed a Dragon rider, killing himself XD It was great!
Is it weird that i love the Dragonriders specifically because they're such hilarious failures? They're like a sitcom character who tries to be cool but always ends up looking stupider the harder they try.
Ds2 was my first ds game and I legitimately didn't know that back stabbing was a mechanic till i played the other games and went back and tried in ds2. When I played ds2 in 2017 or so I thought it was a much older game. I genuinely thought it came out in like 2007 bc of how janky it felt. Can't explain my suprise when I found out how new it was. With it being my first game I think it set a weird precedent for the other games. They felt.... weird. I just assumed the other games were meant to feel the same. Not in a sense of mechanics or broken ai, but in a way that they didn't make me as angry. Ds2 often felt like it was intentionally trying to piss me off rather than try and teach me a mechanic or a way to approach a situation and I think this goes back to the 'tough but fair' sentiment from early in the video. And I honestly think it made me enjoy the other games more. So at least one good thing came of it. I know this is an old video so if you're reading this, hello and thanks for reading. I should really be asleep lol
2 definitely feels like a beta test of a AA title, like something from Eastern Europe, especially when compared to the other titles. Playing it before any of the other ga mes is probably the only way to truly enjoy it for most fans of the series, you don't go in with a bunch of expectations for how things "should" behave or work.
I often feel like I am in a wierd fever dream any time I play this game. There is something about the controls never being fast enough and the constant illogical things happening that is very nightmarish. The flotiness of combat makes this even worse, because you can't feel the impact.
@@mytotim8978 -Having to aim your swings even with lock-on -8-Directional movement -I-frames tied to stat -Some weapons being unable to target enemies from the floor -Lock-on targeting enemies that are far away -Enemies having an insane tracking Sure
I have replayed all 3 games recently and there is something very uncomfortable i've found during that time. DS1 is very slow but you're just as slow as the enemies, in DS3 you're pretty fast but so are the enemies too. There's consistency in speeds and reaction times for both of you. In DS2 however, I felt something was off. My attacks and some enemy attacks can come out really fast, but the speed of the game is completely botched by other, unnaturally slow animations. This is especially true for enemies. They tend to have ridiculously long recovery animations which, tied with DS2's habit to have a fuck ton of enemies doing a 3 part combo, makes it really boring to look at. They will also have huge windows of doing absolutely nothing and looking at you before doing a fast attack that contradicts such a long wait time. The player is also plagued by this inconsistent speed. You can swing your weapons very fast, yet you will chug estus at the speed of a snail. You can spam roll almost as fast as DS3 but if you try to roll after attacking you will be locked by long recovery frames before you can actually start doing it. This is not a problem in DS1 because everything is equally slow as fuck, and it's not a problem in 3 because you can skip the recovery frames, you can roll as soon as your attack landed. Overall DS2 displays a lack of consistency in its speed, which tends to make everyone look as fast puppets locked behind a one time action before needing to reload a gigantic battery.
Late to the party on finding this video, but as a professional AI programmer for video games this video makes me cry inside because I understand why a lot of the AI bugs are happening, especially the pathing the ones. Assuming they used nav mesh, which is commonly used for pathing, the "square of torture" happens because they painted that area as somewhere the ai can't go. The ai perceive that square as a hole, there is nothing there they can walk on to them. They did that because at some point the square will open. However you can turn the pianter on and off so that way the ai will walk over it when it is closed and not mistakingly fall into to it when it is open.
the game has a lot of problems but I find the movement to be the worst one. The horrible dead zones and the wonky animations for everything is just a direct downgrade from DS1. Worst thing by far is the roll; in DS1, DS3 and BB the roll/dodge will always keep you faced towards the locked-on enemy. There is a different roll animation depending on if you roll left, right, forwards or back. The attack directly after rolling will always be towards the target. In DS2, there is only 1 roll animation and it's directly forward, so if your attack is timed to come out the moment the roll ends your character will not have enough time to rotate and correct itself towards the enemy before the attack plays out (as seen at 1:03:24). On top of that they decided to only allow about 20° of freedom to pivot most attacks. All that does is take away player control and make everything feel way more stiff. Also I'm sure someone has told you already but the manual aiming of large weapons like great hammers and ultra greatswords using the left stick is actually a feature, not a bug. I agree it takes the whole point of locking-on away but someone developing the game decided that was a good idea. It is even included in DS3 as a lock-on option. I've only known 1 person who actually preferred it, he said it was useful for PVP.
Come on now, I hate ds2 as much as the next guy but to say that DS1 had better rolls is dumb. In ds2 you can atleast roll in more than 4 directions while in lock on.
@@crim1188 Ds1 has better movement over all. I've played the shit out of both and I never get tired of Ds1. I got second hand rage at seeing the dogshit hitboxes and gay movement system montage. Brought back a flood of memories. Ds2 was the only one in the whole series that made me actually mad. Ds1 is way better than the floaty bullshit.
I'm aware I'm late and I bet someone has already explained this but at 29:20, you're correct that this game has a lingering hitbox issue. I've farmed the Giant Lord for quite some time and I've noticed that all his attacks have lingering hitboxes, to the point where I'll strafe a stomp, go back to hit him, and then be flung back as if the stomp had landed. This has happened multiple times and even happened a couple times with his sword. It's to the point where I wondered why no one brought it up when mentioning the poor hitboxes.
How much of the ai walking to their deaths do you think might be caused by them being tied to the same 8-directional movement that you have, while lacking player sensibilities?
@@erenemre9461 I can confirm it's present on Xbox 360 and Xbox One Scholar edition, but I also never noticed that was specifically what was happening while playing the game until I watched the video and it was pointed out, and now I can't un-see it
This was an amazing end to an amazing series. Thank you so much for putting in all that work! I love Dark Souls II but I agree with about everything you said. I've watched this series in only two days, it's been enjoyable all the way through. You have earned yourself another sub. Edit: forgot to tell you that I found the little poop sounds at dumb boss behaviours way too funny
I feel like the most backwards thing about ADP hasn't been mentioned yet: It makes the game easier not because the player is getting good, but because of a stat increase. In all other souls games, the difficulty of the game increases over time to compensate for the stats you get by leveling up. Because of this, the game stays challenging from start to finish on a normal playthrough. Enemies you encounter later in game have more HP, absorb more damage, hit harder etc than enemies you encountered earlier. To compensate having more i-frames in later stages of the game, enemies would have to hit for LONGER with each attack. This is obviously not the case. Even a player that doesn't learn from his mistakes, a player that doesn't get good, will have an objectively easier time towards the end of the game than in the beginning, thanks to this one stat. I feel like this is completely contrary to the design philosophy of the combat and therefore a massive shame.
piai55 good point I beat one a little bit ago and just finished all of fire fade edition of 3, bloodborne and am trying to get into this game and it feels so much more clunky but I guess I’ll push through and figure it out
Yes. And Dark Souls 1 even acknowledges that with the Gargoyles by putting it with the SAME stats later in the game. You are dealing more damage by this point and you should also be able to take more. Yet, by any mean, there's a good chance you won't even need it. Because the Gargoyles can't touch you anymore because you've internalized game mechanics and you know how to dodge every thing the simplistic Gargoyle pattern can throw at you. On my first play through the game, I did something I am very proud of while seeing the Gargoyle when you meet another one. I ran back to the fire, put on ALL the gears that I had used to beat the Gargoyles on the church and I beat this one easily while having the same equipement as the first encounter. I wanted to see if I was getting better at the game or if my equipement/stats were. Turn out, it was me, I was getting better at this. And it showed. It also showed when I started a new character. Pitty the second game never give you that.
like I think DS2 is complete shit but your point is just wrong you also got a lot stronger by increasing stats in the other games I think I 4 hit the last boss in DS1 he could not even stagger me and I just crushed him with the dark knight great axe and the enemies in DS2 also get stronger
@@peddazz2365 Evidently you did not really read or understand what I posted. Let me explain it again: In DS1 and DS3, no matter what stats you level up, there is a way for enemies to counteract it to a certain extent. You have basically 2 types of stats: you can either take more damage, or deal more damage. Which gets counteracted by the enemies dealing more damage or being able to take more damage. This is what you call standard, good game design. If you grind the shit out of the game of course you are going to break the balance the devs implemented into the game. Off the top of my head I cant even think of a single game implementing a similar system where this isn't true. You purposefully breaking the decently balanced ingame system is not bad game design. I doubt you would call Skyrim's, Borderlandses or Diablo's leveling system bad JUST BECAUSE you can out-level the enemies, just to name a few well known ones. What IS bad game design is a system like the one in DS2: where you gain stats that enemies CAN NOT counteract. ADP can not be counterbalanced by the game, because enemies would have to hit LONGER. Let me give you my actual real world example: In DS2 I knew that ADP was the stat to go for because I had to google why my dodges just weren't working. The internet told me to dump a bunch of points into it early on and to not focus on anything else. The result I got was a game that had a spike in difficulty early and was ruined after my ADP dump. If DS1 or DS3 get so easy that it spoils the fun, I just stopped leveling my HP or Strength and let the enemies catch up (which didn't even take too long to be honest). The souls I invested into items, armor and weapons. In DS2 once you dumped too many points into ADP the only way to increase the difficulty that was lost thanks to enemies not being balanced around long dodge times is to delete your save file and start over.
I really enjoy the story for DS2, its an interesting spin on retelling the original. Vendrick realized the cycle he was stuck in and made his best effort to escape it, unable to cure hollowing but found a way for our character to nullify it, and thus exist outside of the cycle. Would have been cool for Dark Souls 3 to have an npc like that, thats existed outside of time with all the knowledge they've garnered
I liked the curse of want angle. It's essentially the same spirit of the first game but without the fire metaphore. It was also much better delivered. I feel ds2 is the only one that did the best at trying to explain the jist of things without Google necessary.
Slave Knight Gael somewhat fits your description of said NPC. He's elderly but still on a quest to create a new world without this cycle. Many believe Gael is the player character from 2. I don't think that lines up logistically, since Gael has some backstory lore that conflicts with this game. Still, I love the theory and choose to believe it. In Dark Souls 3, you end story mode by fighting the character from DS1. There's poetic pleasure in ending the final DLC by fighting the player character from DS2.
@@casketbase7750 That is my lore pipe dream, because it saddens how ds3 kinda ignores 2 and just keeps focusing on ds1 instead of progressing and exploring thing on the cycle and beyond
@@iago110DS3 has plenty of references to DS2. You can see the ruins of Earthen Peak in the Dreg Heap, there’s a massive variety of returning weapons, armor, and rings from DS2 as well. There’s also paintings of things like Nashandra or Eleum Loyce in the room with all the silver knights in Irithyll. Also the spell “Soul Stream” literally has a reference to Aldia in its item description.
@@GoldieRinglets "iM sOrRY fOr yOuR lOsS" you say while invading at Pontiff and getting ganked by the whole population of Anor Londo, and after you die, everyone starts pointing down & throwing dung pies, then the hatemail starts coming in "You're trash" "You're a fucking idiot" "Racial slur". After that you hear a knock on your door - the gankers are coming for you irl. You try to run but they catch you. They start beating you up and when theyre done they spit on your unconcious body and set your apartament/house on fire.
He will never reply. I think he learned his lesson on this topic. Not that his defense was wrong, but the way he attacked Mat Metosis was insulting a lot of times.
@@Illusive_Batman do you mean that he tried to defend it was not wrong? because with that I would agree but with what he actually used as a defense with that there was a lot wrong
@@Illusive_Batman He didn't defend it lol. He just stated that he liked the game because feelings when it's objectively the worse of the three games because of various reasons denoted in this video.
A new fan here and this is the first Dark Souls game I play and finished. I sighed of relief when I find out the hitboxes, AI, and Health Reduction mechanic are actually real downsides and are not actually the main reasons of why the game is challenging. I thought DS2:SOTFS is already a masterclass in giving the whole Dark Souls experience. After learning some objective flaws and also having experienced it myself, I'm kinda hyped for other installments in the series that will deliver what this game didn't.
When I played Dark Souls 2 for the first time, I noticed the dead zones on movement right away. I thought it was an issue with my controller or copy, so I looked online to see if it was a common issue. First thing I saw were people complaining about the deadzones before some dude responded by saying "There are no deadzones. Shut up, trolls." That interaction might as well have set the stage right there for this game. Fanboys just blindly defending issues that are right under their noses. I don't understand that mentality. Harris' video was another example of this, where the flaws weren't flaws, they were actually genius!
Ced von Lewyn I’m fine with people hating what they want but tbh I don’t understand some people’s complaints with this game or others like fallen order. Someone claimed that fallen order ran poorly on ps4 yet my ps4 is gen 1 and ran it perfectly, People complain about the dodging in dark souls 2 yet in 1 it takes about 1 second for my character to get up from a roll (who is wearing robes not armor). I don’t want people judging unfairly if you’re putting something on trial remember to make sure a problem you list or bug you find wasn’t also in the first one or better yet worse in the first one (unarmed builds).
will vermillion The problem people have with rolls in DS2 isn’t the length of the animation though, it’s the impact the stats of your character has on the duration of your invulnerability, and the impact it has on the gameplay (ie : it either makes it crappy because you didn’t level it enough and hence your rolls barely award you any invulnerability, or you leveled it but then the invulnerability window is so big it takes away much of the challenge). Also, DS2 works perfectly fine on my PS4 too, so maybe you were talking to PC players, or you were talking to people with a game or a console that had some sort of issue (or we’re both lucky). And what’s the problem with unarmed builds in DS1 ? (Or demon’s soul, but I’m pretty sure you aren’t talking about that game ^^)
Something that sticks out to me as DS2 being my favorite Souls game is that it was easier to play with a group of friends. My circle of friends played through this entire game together, area to area and through all of the DLC's and I think thats why I love it the most. We were all scattered about the world during that time because of the military and it was nice to experience the game together.
You mean after DS1? I agree. But since DS3 came out, that one is easily the best when it comes to connecting with other players. Hell it made it almost too easy. The simple password matchmaking that isn't limited by wonky rings and soul memory made it so that glitching into unscaled was actually possible. There were few barriers keeping you from playing with friends.
@@TheStraightestWhitest The issue with DS3 is that our lives became too busy to play games together a while after DS2 came out. Some of us had kids, some of careers got in the way, etc. It was the last game we played cooperatively.
This game is extremely janky and weird but it's still my favorite. It has the most build variety by far. Only in DkS2 can somebody beat your ass with a Dark-infused Ladle.
This is what I love about it. I spent more time just PVPing in it on launch than I probably have playing the rest of the series all together, just because there was so many builds to try and experiment with. DS3 just had R1 spamming estocs and straight swords. Personally I thought it felt way better to control than either DS1 or DS3 but I will admit it took some getting used to coming off the first one.
I can’t believe I didn’t recognize the whole snap points thing when playing. I knew the movement felt clunky and off. It just seems so dumb to have included this
I cry everytime I see Majula. It's just so beautiful to look at and the music also makes me sad. It also gives off a nostalgic feeling every time you return back to it.
I love how serious Mauler's voice is when he says "This shit can get you killed", as if it's Vietnam. Lots of good points that I didn't realise though. I had really fond memories of DS2 for its variety of locations, numerous bosses and I really liked weird atmosphere of Drangleic and Majula. But I do remember getting really,, really frustrated with many points of the game, and I thought it was just because I was playing SOTFS edition and that clearly the enemy changes were really difficult. But now I see there were actually a bunch of really dumb design decisions in this game. I adore both DS2 and DS3, they each do some cool things, but I'll continue to recommend DS1 to first time players. It's the quintessential experience IMO, and the sequels are variations on the theme (Haven't played Demon Souls).
Demon's Souls is very janky in its own way, but pretty good. There were a lot of improvements and changes that went into Dark Souls. For example, the soul form to hollow was a good change, and one that they did walk back slightly in DS2. That and getting rid of world tendency. World tendency was a good idea, but backwards for a game. A game should reward players for challenging themselves with better rewards and better challenges. Demon's Souls punished you for dying in an area by making things more difficult, and rewarded you for beating bosses by making things easier. However, at the worst world tendency, rare enemies would spawn that dropped items used in upgrades or crafting, can't remember which. Meaning that in order to get the best stuff, you either needed to die repeatedly, or just do things to make the world a worse place. Makes sense from a world standpoint, but not a gameplay standpoint. Basically, if you weren't very confident or just not good, it was better to die in the nexus and it led to the nexus being covered in bloodstains. There were also people running dual ultra-great swords and the massive hammers. I'm not quite sure how that worked, I was never very good at Demon's Souls.
To be completely fair, every Dark Souls can pull off such feats, as it should be able to, but DS3 does it the most consistently because it has more fluid and just better animation overall. I love the dragon slayer armour fight thanks to these details, the way he swings his giant axe makes it that if you're crouched because of an animation, you won't get hit. Pontiff is also a great example with his sword flurries, because he's so tall compared to you, at certain angles his attacks will go overhead and not hit you. It's really satisfying to look at.
@@Akakiryuushin that's not at all why. there's no rule saying that more weapons means less care is put into hitboxes. armor doesnt even contribute to hitbox anyways, player hitboxes are always the same size, unaffected by armor. the reason ds3 and ds1 have better hitboxes than ds2 is because more care was put into them. ds3 in particular is because of that, but also because it has smoother and more fluid animations, probably as a result of it being newer.
@@lexark uh never wore big armor so I didnt know that. But more weapons does mean less care unless you also had more time to work on them. What requires less work making accurate hitboxes on 30 weapons or 100?
@@Akakiryuushin that sort of thing only makes sense in theory. if the amount of weapons was the cause of the reduce hitbox quality, then the quality would drop off in the weapons they designed last, and theyd be great in the ones they designed first. of course, we wouldn't know the order in which they designed the weapons so we couldnt prove this, but ALL ds2 weapons are "consistently inconsistent." any individual weapon can be great sometimes, but also sometimes pretty shit. there was no conscious decision made to half-ass the hitboxes as a result of there being a lot of weapons, because dev teams are divided up across the game, some people work on textures, some on models, some on hitboxes. they would've had the time, and they did have the time. they just did a terrible job, period.
If i'm remembering correctly, i looked into the issue with the hitboxes when the game was still in it's prime. The community came up with 2 possible answers: either the collisions are proximity based (they're close enough so a hit is registered), or the scripting decided whether the hit landed at the very beginning of most animations. The most notorious example is the mimic grab.
I finally played Scholar of the First Sin this year (I decided to go back and play through the whole series after finishing Elden Ring. I completed Scholar last week) and you are soooo spot on about all of this. Just the failing with the ADP system alone is enough to make the point this isn't a particularly good game, but then the wonky AI, the absolutely awful hitboxes (good luck hitting those rare lizards...) and just the sheer amount of overwhelming BS the game throws at you is icing on the proverbial crap cake. I love these games (I've loved them since King's Field), but this is absolutely the worst game in the entire series. I'd replay all of these games...but not Dark Souls 2. Great video.
35:45 around here, I know for a fact that the Dragonrider de-aggroed because they are all literally supposed to leave you alone the moment you step into that ring of light that Velstadt knelt it
Yeah same. I do think it's the worst designed in the trilogy, but there are a lot of systems and ideas that I wished were carried over in fully working condition to the third game. Especially (viable) dual wielding and power stance.
I knew there was something wrong with the movement, but I never even considered Snap Points to be the problem. Thanks Mauler! Also, really solid series. Will be watching for your content for sure.
Its been years since ive played DS2, one of the things i loved about this game more then the other 2 games was the way they handled dual wielding. Having a power stance system that let's you dual wield any weapon was very fun and i enjoyed it a lot
@@Burusagi Not sure about Elden Ring, but Dark Souls 3 definitely did not have powerstancing. There's a couple weapons that are dual-weapons intrinsically, i.e. Gotthard Twin Swords, Brigand Twin Daggers, Farron Greatsword. When you two-hand these weapons they give you a dual-wielding moveset but there's no system where you equip weapons in both hands and you get a dual-wielding moveset
OMG the movement control stuff i knew something fell crappy with the controls. i knew there was something that made it so hard but for a moment i thought that maybe it was me or something. thank you so much for that.
It was probably put in there so they could boast about the difficulty since the s are also tied to states so when the game came out players would die a lot since they would be dodging correctly but they’d still die because of this stupid movement bullshit
@@tytsty5716 Assuming a sequel game should have the exact same function mechanic as the predecessor with no changes. You don't even roll the same to dodge in DS3 as you did in DS1. At least, not without learning how much active frames are on an attack. The roll timings have ways differed. So, no. That's not a passing argument to make on its own. That seems to just be a failing on players' conditioning themselves off one game to play another game the same. This isn't a justification for the faulty movements of DS2 or tying s to a leveling stat itself. But to point out that you can't make the argument of "well that's how I did it in the previous game" as an excuse for doing what may have just been a flat out bad move at the time. Even when you take ADP out of the game, as what MauLer pointed out, the wonky hitboxes exist independently in DS2. Just rolling into a sword attack instinctively while not taking into account how long the attack frames are or when does your s start would get you killed regardless. What makes all this bad is the fact DS2 does not communicate this to the player at all as s and frames in general are "meta-knowledge". To streamline my point, players have equally made their share of bad rolls too that no amount of ADP or proper hit detection would have fixed such as rolling into angular downward swings were always a gamble in learning if you timed it well or not. The Purser is a prime example of that. Most people roll into his sword before he's even finish initiating the swing for you to accurately tell were the sword is going. Therefore getting clipped if not flat out interrupted.
also >standing behind the left shoulder of Vorgel >"y no backstab? bad gaem" another >trying to backstab a MOVING Rampart Golem >"y no backstab? bad gaem" However, I believe that you CAN backstab while blocking, but only under specific circumstances - LimitBreakers made a video about it, check it out
Bence Gellért Bakos in ds2 you can backstab with the shield up, and he also showed clips with backstabs triggering when you're on the side or in front of enemies
There were also one or two examples where a player would start a backstab on one enemy, only to hit another as it got in the way, resulting in the "slap in the face" moments. Of course it wouldn't work. Maybe I'm biased, though, since I feel like I know the game enough to know when a backstab is "off" or not.
You are biased, or haven't played the game enough. I played the original through 4 times when it was first released and these backstab fails happened all the time, especially the "slap in the face" ones.
There are a few minor points of contention that don't diminish the overall points, but do render certain examples used inappropriate. The first is the FoFG mobs attacking trees. The trees are the giants they fought long ago, and their attacking them is completely intentional. Next, that hollow in Huntsman's Copse is meant to run from you and never attack. In the backstab section, Jester Thomas is wearing the Jester armor set, which prevents backstabs. As I said, this is pretty hyper specific context and doesn't affect the overall messages of the sections.
Just an FYI, since you didn't seem to mention it in the video for the greatsword the overhead swing is actually working as intended it swings in the directly that you are pressing the left stick in when you swing it. It's not a problem in those cases with the focus as much as it is with the game not communicating, for that specific weapon, that it reacts to your left stick's orientation. For the rest, the focus issues are completely valid as far as I have seen.
Question, I had noticed this "feature" when playing the game years ago, but I can't remember right now: was this a thing you could toggle off? If it was, then ok, it's a cool system to allow for precise aiming with slow weapons. If it wasn't, however, it's a glaring flaw. When I use focus, I want the attacks to respect my focus, not the direction I'm moving. If I still have to aim, what is focus for? And yes, I know focus works if you don't move the left stick while attacking, but it's still flawed, as circling and backpedaling are the two movement options focus is specifically good for, yet they would cause you to miss your attack.
@@nicosonico94 You can toggle this off in DS3 but not in DS2. I understand they didn't wanted big slow weapons to just automatically track a target while swinging, but the problem is that controllers sucks at aiming, which is why we have target lock in the first place. It's too hard to move, aim and control the camera at the same time, unless maybe if you use an elite xbox controller with the buttons in the back of the controller.
@@patlefofort It is not that hard to move, aim, and control the camera. This is incredibly common with ultra greatsword use in pvp as the weapons are slow so people attack away from the center of the camera in hopes of predicting a roll in a specific direction making their roll timing bad. Not that complicated with a controller that lacks buttons on the back of it.
He also says lock on worked fine in the other games which is a blatant lie. The lock on system has been broken since Demon's souls and you have always had issues attacking out of a roll. It isn't DaS2 exclusive and it's one of the big complaints against the series stagnating. The combat speed increased but none of the flaws the combat has were addressed, not even fundamental ones like the lock on breaking or targeting the wrong enemies.
The greatsword is fucking amazing in 2, i'm honestly willing to justify that game simply because of how amazing it feels to sweep enemies with that massive Berserk sword. That, and there's just so much fucking weapons, shields, armor, rings, etc. It honestly feels like a collectathon sometimes, and i'm pretty okay with that. *granted, its a subjective reason. If i were being more objective, i'd go on about how i think the amount of souls and health items the game gives you makes it a good entry point into the Souls series for beginners, but i'm just dicking around rn tbh.
Personal bookmarks: 30:27 The holy square of safety 41:44 Frank is like, "Oh no no no" 1:01:58 Thanks, Lock-on 1:03:13 Lock-on can get you killed 1:05:44 Backstabs don't work 1:09:11 Backstabs Shouldn't work there! 1:12:25 Smaller mistakes 1:14:14 Graphical messes 1:15:30 Ragdoll fisix 1:22:20 Time-Consuming annoyances 1:23:56 FromSoftware members not present in DS2
Anybody else want to see more of the dude who was laughing at the Hollows running to and attacking the giant-tree? Seems like he'd be a lot of fun to watch.
I just finished getting the platinum trophy yesterday and I immediately deleted the game. I hate it so much but I really wanted to get all of the platinums for the souls games. Now I’m on ds3 and it’s soooo much better lol
I played Bloodborne a month ago and got really into it. Last week I finally got into, and beat, Dark Souls 1. So I moved on to DS2 and... Honestly, I can't get past the starting areas. And the frustration I am feeling doesn't seem to be like it was with the previous games. I'm just annoyed. I don't want to go any farther.
@@BakaHoushi you might be burnt out something similar happened to me playing dark souls 3 the first time but ended up really appreciating that game. cant say the same for 2 though
Also: Jester's Robes (what the pyro jester uses) removes the backstab window from you wearing it, same with the Turtle Knight Armor. Not very intuitively explained in the former case.
Love this vid, but i have some corrections to make. In forest of the fallen giants, the hollows attack the Giant Trees on purpose, since these are hollows of soldiers that fought on the Giant Invasion. The extremely quick hollow in Huntsmen Corpse is not a bug. It is just an unique enemy that runs from you and if you get to kill it you are rewarded with some interesting loot. Jester can't be backstabed because his breastplate nullifies critical hits, but backstabs are bad in this game anyhow haha. That's all my points i think, great vid.
The hollow attacking the trees mistake is pretty funny considering in his responses he accused the other dude for "not knowing the game" and here he is not knowing a fucking central point to the whole story (the war against the giants and how they became trees), lol.
@@rat9199 Not really, he isnt talking about the hollows that spawn in already close to the trees, he means a completely different one just fucking off mid fight
@@rat9199 I couldnt tell you if its intended since it has never happened to me or hasnt happened in some lets play series i have watched, i have seen it in videos, but i dont think its working correctly. It may be intended, but it seems kinda buggy
Hollows attacking giant trees isn't the issue, it's that the hollow soldiers who spawn next to the tree after the Pursuer bossfight will lock on to the tree in the courtyard (the one already being attacked by 2 other hollows) instead of the one he spawns right next to, and will proceed to make a beeline through half the stage to get there. This is because they spawn before their tree is loaded, but are programmed to lock-on to the closest tree and go attack it anyway. The worst part is that casual players might not even know about it because half the time the hollows try to get down through the big hole where the Drangleic set is they will accidentally by flinging themselves into the ocean because of poor pathfinding. It's a very minor issue, but people defending it with lore are completely missing the point of the criticism.
I was actually suprised at the first 6 minutes, but I have to admit it felt forced and was about to point it out. But then the real show began. About the Human Effigies, there's a lot more on the "definitive" edition of the game (perhaps to push co-op?) when compared to Vanilla. I usually have 50 or so once I reach the end on SotFS, while on Vanilla (while only using a few) I only have 20 or so. About the backstab at around 1:07:00, the NPC phantom is wearing an chest piece that prevents backstabs. Just felt like pointing that out. Feel like dropping this on the Dark Souls 2 subreddit to get some attention going (maybe even r/gaming while we're at it), because I think this deserves it.
I may be blind, but the only thing I see *puts on sunglasses* are two terribly flawed games that people love for different reasons and can't help needing to justify their love of the flawed games because love is an irrational emotion and no one takes it seriously. So they'll fight till the end of the world trying to say which is better. Instead of admitting that the reason they love the games is because they're flawed. But that's none of my business...
the first 6 minutes of the game made it sound like he has literally never played the game. his pros sound like marketing strategies. he is ignoring the actually good parts of the game even in that part of the review
I love the irony of something called "The Pursuer" having an extremely short aggro distance before it gives up and leaves.
This comment is so underrated its depressing.
@@senpaikaroo Well maybe in the lore, his full title was lost to history The "Halfhearted" Pursuer perhaps.
I just experienced that for the first time today. I have never played through DS2 and I was shocked when I saw him spawn behind me. I ran to the opposite end and equiped my buckler and prepared to parry like a champ and then he just disappears through the ground.
@@anti-socialmass1708 Yeah, that sounds like Dark Souls 2. LMAO
He should've been named as "The Retreating Pursuer".
I'll never forget the first time I died in this game. The first ladder in Things Betwixt. I found out that pressing B dismounts ladders now, rather than sliding down them in DS1. Fell what looked like 10 feet. Died.
Yeah...almost like your character is made of glass
@@patrickn.4113 glass can handle a higher drop then the undead in this game
*than
Did you remember to level up your Calcium stats? That was new to this game. 😏
Geralt style.
C and the potassium stat too
in defense of the lock-system it works flawlessly for enemies, they never miss.
I mean you’re not wrong.
i just started a new game in like 5 years and holy shit u r not kidding lmao they will 180 more than half the time its wild
lmao
lmao
@@mellomoose_ What do you mean its balanced, the npc will ABSOLUTELY not cancel their attack animation, have a 180 turn jumping attack. More health then bosses themselves and have poise for days.
The enemy AI is broken because all enemies have special scripts made to ambush you. If you come at them in any other way other than what the developers intended they break. This becomes extremely obvious if you're farming Twinkling Titanite in Shrine of Amana starting from Rhoy's Resting Place. The Archdrake Mages will not notice you until you're right behind them, but if you're running from the other direction (as you would, in your first go through) they'll aggro at you from a kilometer away.
sme with the homing missle mages in amana just aggro from amile away and link everything around them
Never experienced this once ever, "they break" what do you even mean, they fight normally with their moveset as they always do.
Sounds like ur just pissed u got ambushed, which is fine, but don't make up crap about it.
@@AlexisTheDragon did you read the rest of the paragraph?
@@AlexisTheDragon no - he means that they don't aggro if you approach them from the opposite direction the developers intended. Yes, *when* they aggro they use their moveset. They're not that broken. The issue is -
They flatly ignore until almost within melee range when approaching them from one end and engage you at upwards of 100ft from the other end, because they are not coded properly. I love this game, and this is just a fact about it. They wanted the ranged enemies to engage you early. They forgot to consider you will eventually, maybe, approach them from the other end, and forgot to make them aggro at the same range.
You responded to this with "lol u mad at being bad" and I am having to explain it to you instead.
You learn to laugh at how ridiculously shoddy certain parts are because it's still a genuine piece of art. People do make up crap - this ain't it. I despise the fact that we have 8-point snap movement, yet Majula is a positive heaven of atmosphere. Properly loving this game means accepting where it is simply a bit shit. It's denial and insulting people with actual criticisms otherwise.
@@AdamOwenBrowningsneaking up on enemies from behind is an intended game mechanic, not the enemies being "broken" or "a bit shit" you already went through them from the front and beat a boss, why not be rewarded by being able to sneak up on them?
I am pretty sure there is a lore reason they attack the trees. No, seriously. The trees are Giant Trees, and the soldiers fought the Giants, so maybe the Hollowing has made them think the Trees are actual Giants.
Pretty sure this is the case too, though the game botches this in the most awkward way. If it was meant to be evocative that they were attacking the trees, they should have had the enemies spawn directly next to the trees and refuse to strike anything but them (a lone hollow does this in Dark Souls 3 by striking a wall and shaking his head)
bob bobert there are actually 2 hollow soldiers that spawn near that exact tree, and they attack it endlessly, until you aggro them, but I've never seen the hallway soldiers run all the over to it.
Maybe the tree soldiers didn't spawn for some reason, but the game had to have someone attack the tree, so they brought ovet the nearest possible candidate?
The running soldier is supposed to run to the tree to draw your attention to it, that way you would get a hint to where the tree is later in the game. he will always take that path.
Steven Reynolds I've played through this area multiple times, and I've never seen a soldier run all the way over to it. They're usually just there, and you're supposed to notice the tree by following the loud attacking sounds.
I to have played it Multiple times, and that one soldier always sprints to that tree, as for knowing about the tree by sound, the running soldier is a visual cue for the off chance you cant hear the sounds.
The hitbox designer was rubbing his palms together like an evil troll when he made them.
Oh I agree the hit box detection in this game can be borderline unfair at times
"Let's make the mimic's grab hitbox be their entire fucking body when they specifically attack in front of them. Genius.
@@megashark1013 There is a pathetic youtuber that goes by the name of Odysseus something that went on to defend that garbage mimic hitbox and that grab attacks grabbing you when you're behind them is totally how hitboxes should work. I still like the game a lot but it is genuinely funny how some DS2 fanboys really do go out of their way to defend some of the downright infuriating flaws of the game. I recommend checking some of his DS2 hitbox videos and their comment sections for a good laugh.
Am I the only person who noticed how he said it's bs you can't backstab enemies while he shows a clip of him not being able to backstab jester Thomas lmao
@@Mando23456. Yeah, the game makes it more difficult to circle a locked on enemy to backstab. This doesn't exist in DS1/3. The missed backstab animation seems too frequent in DS2.
“Is that a cat?”
*Bird noises*
“Oh no, it’s a person”
@@jackwelchel3210 oh comment, where were you my entire life? xDDDDD
Impossible
Domo3000 is showing how wrong is Mauler about DS2, and he is doing an amazing job. uwu
"The hitboxes not matching up with the character models is actually a genius decision by the developers - keeping the player constantly on their toes and wondering what will happen next! I like it a lot! I think more games should do it!" - HBomberGuy
The hitboxes arent shit, people should just learn to git gud,
You know you can just scroll up to the video and see Mauler providing dozens of examples of them not working correctly, right? I dunno why you ignored it to scroll down and reply to me. It's like turning up to a Hitler speech and getting into a fight with a random guy in the crowd for being a nazi@@uberbyte7467
@@frocto1 some are genuinely bad such as the mimic grab. However the ones he showed were mainly grabs that teleport you into the attack. Oftentimes what happens is people forget that you have less i-frames in a roll than the other games so they don't realize they can still be hit mid roll and claim that the attack that actually clipped their foot shouldnt have hit them.
the grabs still look janky as hell but what he neglected to mention was that it happens in other souls games too (dancers grab teleports you and so does the golem from darksouls 1)
If you dont believe me look at some hitbox comparison videos, this guy blows the flaws of the game massively out of proportion.
@@tubasil8786literally just don't stand directly where the mimic will unfold out and you won't get hit
@@uberbyte7467oh yeah fromsoft can never do no wrong, not possible. This "git gud" shit is so corny lmaoooo.
Defence of Dark Souls 2: 00:00
Introduction: 05:55
Movement: 07:44
- Snap-point turning: 07:47
- Ladder blockage event: 11:09
- Fall damage: 12:42
Adaptability: 13:52
- Lack of clarity: 15:13
- Detriment to RPG choice-making: 16:48
Hitboxes: 19:00
- Player hitboxes: 20:50
- Enemy hitboxes: 22:04
- Explosive barrel example: 24:00
- Sir Alonne's grab: 24:31
- Hitbox examples: 25:34
- DS1+3 comparisons: 29:44
|
AI: 30:30
- Aggro ranges/obstruction: 31:58
- Pathfinding: 34:14
- AI suicide: 40:02
- Assorted bugs: 42:31
Boss healing: 47:28
Levelling: 49:35
- Over-levelling: 49:43
- Weapon levelling: 51:28
Human effigies: 54:22
Repair system: 56:23
Focus system: 57:52
- Target prioritisation: 58:28
- Weapon misdirection/inconsistency: 01:01:42
Backstabs: 01:05:35
- Backstab failures: 01:05:56
- Backstab inconsistencies: 01:08:34
- Lack of clarity: 01:11:39
|
Miscellaneous design failures: 01:12:25
- Fragrant branches of Yore: 01:12:29
- Headshot staggering: 01:13:25
- Graphical criticism/vagueness: 01:14:13
- Model animations: 01:15:08
- Miscellaneous modelling: 01:16:15
Audio: 01:18:11
- Item pick-up audio cuts: 01:18:55
- Boss music: 01:19:45
- Audio inconsistencies: 01:20:37
Minor nitpicks: 01:21:57
- Disconnection message: 01:22:03
- Unskippable credits: 01:22:36
- The "B-Team": 01:23:32
|
Overview: 01:25:17
- Combat: 01:26:12
- Exploration: 01:27:16
- Resource management: 01:28:21
- RPG Elements: 01:28:47
- System subversion/redundancy: 01:29:22
- Aspects kept/dropped in DS3 from DS1/2: 01:31:03
Conclusion: 01:33:10
- Comment from Harris: 01:35:39
- Video quality upkeep: 01:36:43
- Closing: 01:37:47
- Final thanks: 01:40:15
Extra clips: 01:42:12
I love you
You droped your cape.
Was this in the description before you posted it?
@@trippyspec1759 no, its a fairly old video but one of my favourites so i made these timestamps and asked mauler if he could add them to the video for ease of viewing
This man is a seasoned gamer, I can tell.
1 hour, 46 minutes, and no ads. He did that shit for us.
Seriously. Heroic.
That Mauler longman for ye
Uh....there are ads
WinnieTheGrizzly ok I see no ads now but the first time I watched this video there were like twenty
Finnen Devine No, I see ads.
A full play-through of DS2 including the DLCs feels like an Odyssey
That's 100% correct. I'm sometimes replaying all games and Dark Souls 2 always takes the longest
Honestly to me ds2 sotfs feels the most like a journey to me out of a the trilogy
@TS nothing wrong with the map not being interconnected
I just finished it again. It is most definitely an odyssey. I love DS1 but SOTFS holds a special place in my heart
That's actually a great call. The other Fromsoft games feel like a tight progression and story while this game felt like a long journey through many unconnected worlds
I also hate how ds2 and even 1 sometimes used the "Y axis turned" enemies. So basically if you try to circle an enemy to find an opening, most of the time they'll have some sort of side/back attack to cover their flanks. That's perfectly fine. But in Dark Souls 2, there are many cases that the enemy just rotates in one place to face you constantly without any animations and hits you with its forward-facing attacks. The salamander pit section is a prime example of this. Instead of actually giving animations to the enemies to be able to hit you from the side, they just rotate along you to face you constantly. Feels extremely cheap.
they are old games cuh
@@arditazman6823 2014 is not that old lol
@@arditazman6823 Dark Souls 1 didn't have that problem.
@@arditazman6823stop defending shitty design
@@arditazman6823 It's not an issue of date, many old games are still animated beautifully. It's an issue of absolutely destroyed development. This game went through hell before it was released.
I'm late as hell but in the backstab section 1:06:54 You can't backstab Jester Thomas because the Jester's Robe Top stops backstabs
Hey, i didn't knew that. Thanks for correction man, the more you know! :)
There's also the fact that the hollow soldiers attack the giant trees for lore reasons (they as hollows aren't aware that the war is over and continue to smack away at the giants' corpses).
@@joshuakim5240 Yes. His argument is that the ai purposefully ignored him to attack, however, that's an easy mistake to make, so i see how you thought that.
The number of times he hit it. The armor should have broke. But since the game cant detect shit it makes that robe a little op.
Late to the party too, but he tried backstabbing with his guard raised. I pretty sure all of the Souls games required you drop it before you backstab.
I think power stance was one of DS2s strongest points. I really miss that.
You people say that, but most of the time is pretty underwelming, Is good to show up in pvp but for pve those showofy attacks are not as strong, fast or reliable than just using basic atacks.
@@Thegeobot True. But I simply liked the choice. I rarely used it myself, but more choice is always good, especialy when playing fashion souls.
This and good cloth physics and better designs on sets that later re-appeared in 3
@@Thegeobot That solely depends on your weapons of choice for power stancing
In particular for smaller arms the effect of power stancing is rather useful even in pve as it increases the poise damage per attack due to the combined attack with both weapons making it more reliable in regards to stunning enemies
Not to mention that combined counter damage can give a huge boost in overall damage
@@Thegeobot dont forget that if you press (and release) the two-handing/powerstance button in time with ANY attack while in powerstance, you'll negate some of the start-up frames, effectively speeding up the attack.
Very useful for powerstanced greatswords, katanas, great hammers, the list goes on.
dark souls 2s movement system is the dark souls of movement systems
Your comment about dark souls 2’s movement system being the dark souls of movement systems is the dark souls of comments
@@philharvey5519 the part that they’re referring too is at 12:00 minutes in , using your L analog you can only move in 8 directions , it’s hard to notice because just about everyone compensates with their R analog which moves the camera .
@@philharvey5519 I believe they mean it’s challenging. Either that or referring to the fact that every game that’s somewhat hard gets referred to as the Dark Souls of whatever genre it’s in.
@@philharvey5519 bad, considering how much compensation you had to use your R analog as apposed to other games , moving in a straight line in dark souls is only ever easy when facing your camera forward.
@@Sweetluckk so if it’s so easy to counteract then why is it such a big deal? I have a much bigger problem with the restricted rolling in 1, and combat near cliffs becomes a huge issue.
Made it to the "hitbox" section, watching at around 25:00, and all this is doing is making me really, REALLY appreciate Bloodborne, Dark Souls III, Sekiro, and Elden Ring.
They clearly improved is all I'm saying.
If I've understood it correctly it's not so much about actually improving as it is about Dark Souls 2 being developed by a sort of B-team within the studio, while the A-team worked on Bloodborne.
Apparently they split the studio into two teams after Dark Souls 1 and most of the talent and resources seemingly went into the Bloodborne team after that.
@@koerel from what I understand, the Ds2 team had 2 directors that studied under Miyazaki, but had differing views on the game, but one took the lead and the other followed.
After something happened, not sure what, the lead director left with the game kind of in a half state, and the other director had to pick up where he left off, and tried to steer the game back into the traditional DS formula, which left the team with the bad assets and the levels that they rushed putting where they could.
I would eliminate Elden Ring from that list. Elden Ring has MANY of the problems listed in this video, including new ones that are arguably worse. It’s easy to ignore such problems because Elden ring is supposed to be a good game, and ds2 is supposeded to be the one mediocre or bad From game, . . . But in my very extensive Elden ring experience its input coding, hitboxes, and new things like aim punch and etc are as terrible or at times even WORSE than the issues of ds2.
It’s also just foundationally flawed and an inferior souls game IMO but for that don’t listen to me and instead go watch Demodcracy, NeverKnowsBest, John Anderson, and etcs videos on the topic.
@@Nachtmar3 I dunno man, I checked out their videos, and all they really talk about it how disappointed in the game they are and design of the world, nothing about broken mechanics.
@@Nachtmar3 I agree, both Elden Ring and DS3 have plenty of jank/broken hitboxes. In Elden Ring, the action queueing is unresponsive at times, and somehow, after a decade of making these games, the camera still sucks. Not a masterpiece at all.
I think my favorite part of this video is that in the 5 minutes when he's praising dark souls 2, a ds3 song is playing in the background
Dang ik it!
Lol and i was thinking “ oh maybe ds2 does have great music “
Omg dude I was laughing my ass off. Because Dragonslayer Armor was being played. And only in the first minute of the defense.
Yeah that is totally an important point to be made.
If I'm not mistaken there are zero songs from ds2 in this video outside of ingame footage
This should tell how forgettable the songs are in this game outside of Majula theme
One of the Dark Souls 2 devs really got destroyed by Marth in Melee and said “The world will know my suffering”
soko da
Minna
@@GobaGNon miteite kure
Domo3000 is showing how wrong is Mauler about DS2, and he is doing an amazing job. uwu
"In Defense of Dark Souls 2"
MauLer: Well yes, but actually no.
Its a response video to Hbomberguy
@@__-fq4uh a bad response to hbomberguy*
@@_doop8257 what makes it bad?
@@VerilyAtlas About the only thing I can think of is Mauler’s complete and utter disregard for the entire concept of conciseness.
@@Noplayster13 His whole measured response was literally about that though? Wtf are you smoking?
If this video has taught me anything, it is that Dark Souls 2 is an amazingly entertaining game when you make fun of all its problems.
It's like riffing on a shitty movie with a friend.
@@TheSlammurai just in this case, you have to explain the plot and why it make sense to move to the next scene. For some that could be really fun, for others it might become a chore
Kinda like Oblivion?
As one of those people that really does like dark souls 2, this is the best way i have seen it put. The game has it's issues, there is no denying that. Some of the claims in this video, slowly, but lately have been getting debunked (Look up Domo3000, he has great videos covering a lot of claims about it). But in general, yes, it has flaws. Every game has flaws, but in general, once you accept that and start to look at the good sides, it's very enjoyable to play and watch. The constant comedic energy of AI, the bizarre and sometimes downright comedic combat scenarios, the "Bosses' (Looking at you, Prowling magus), it all comes down to an expirence that, if you want to approach just like DS1, it is janky and annoying, but on it's own merits, it's so much fun.
Finished my latest playthrough today, and had a blast doing so, but i will not deny some problems i did encounter
But still less entertaining than Yiik.
I actually enjoyed DS2 a lot despite some of these issues. I will say, though, for anyone getting frustrated with the Jester, it is impossible to backstab him and if you get his armor set, it keeps you from getting backstabbed
I just R2 spammed him with my Dragon Tooth and stone ring, fucker couldnt get up
You can't get backstabbed while wearing clown armor hhhmmm
@@beefedcorn ah, so you're a pancake enthusiast
Interrupt his gesture and he won’t attack
@@beefedcorn a man of taste is see.
1:35:35 'this will probably be my most contentious series ever'
Oh LongMan, how times have changed.
what happened
@@mooganify last jedi and claims of sexism due to covering a female fan of it, any coverage is last jedi in general.
Domo3000 is showing how wrong is Mauler about DS2, and he is doing an amazing job. uwu
_MauLer:_ *masterfully and exhaustively expounds upon this game's innumerable flaws*
_Me:_ *"Time to reinstall!"*
ive actually been playing DS2 alongside watching his RE: series as well as this and there are times where i can have first hand experience that prove for his points but as you say im still playing it and still having fun.
@@ninyndolvr That's a very important thing to know when watching Mauler: He is (or at least tries) to be extremely objective and has a complete disregard for our subjective parts.
I love ds2 and prefer it vastly over ds3 but ds3 is much better designed and has many less broken features.
@@tomvandalen2212 i can't play ds3, and not sure why. I think it just chagned too much, and in regards to if it's a better game or not, I'm leaning on the side of no since it seems to be hard for hard sake, where as dark souls 1 was a realistic level of difficulty, imo.
It's opinion, and yeah, combat is fast paced, but it's like they learned how people played and enjoyed Dark Souls 1 and said, nah, let's stop that, no fun allowed.
@@Bjorick Oh yeah Ds3 is a little bit frustrating because of bloodborne and the difficulty meme.
@@tomvandalen2212 for me, dark souls 1 is still the best, i love it, and demon souls is a close second
i love a game that works and that i can get op in if i choose to (i love the disgaea games, for example), and the game never drops the challenge, so it's not just stats, it's also a degree of skill, but not 'my whole life is dark souls' level skill, more 'you never forget how to ride a bicycle' skill.
everyone has their preference, but DS3 disappointed me about as much as mass effect 3 :P
Am I to believe you ONLY spent 3 months on this masterpiece of a series?
Incredible.
What's crazier is that he said he played Dark Souls 2 a whopping 14 times in preparation.
I could barely stomach the one I've been able to finish.
@@redgeoblaze3752Exactly. Shows dedication and perfection of the craft. I love DS but in comparison I am laughably bad. 14 runs (on top of those he has played previously!) for one video. He’s insane
@@Skwadley he clearly enjoy the game, like bethesda haters who spend 1000hours on fo4
@@ni9274 Makes no sense
@@Skwadley Yes it make absolutely no sense to do 14 runs of DS2 if you don’t like the game.
I started playing ds2 the other day for the first time and laughed out loud when a knight killed me and then pulled a full 360° degree turn to throw himself off the nearest cliff
Welcome to Ds2.
Btw Dragon-Rider is a poor soul who requires help and friends
Also ur DP is fucking glorious
The AI can feel remorse. Scariest game of all time.
Even he doesn’t want to play DS2
180? Or did he actually do a pirouette to jump off the cliff in front of him?
The AI pathfinding problems are more to do with nodes. The reason the square in Shulva is inaccessible to the enemies is because at some point that square can become a pit for an elevator. Instead of putting nodes over the gap when it's closed and removing them when it's open, they didn't put nodes at all, out of convenience of development I guess, which means enemies literally can not walk onto there.
A lack of nodes basically explains most examples of "bad AI" like the gargoyle not jumping- it doesn't jump because there are not any nodes for it to jump to.
The connections between nodes is also hilariously bad in this game. More than once have I seen a group of enemies take the same zigzag path through an empty room- they all followed nodes laid out in an inexplicably bizarre fashion.
LSDO the funny thing is that I tested it and he went for me. Idk how programming as I only know how to do 3D models but maybe they have put some specific path finding on it so that he need to get on a specific placement for being able to advance? He did took a lot of time turning around me but he did eventually attack. Have you an idea on what it could be?
@@raphicoco there's explanations I can think of, but none of them can really be confirmed. I'm guessing either that there is a "leash" these enemies can break our from that will eventually allow them to take unorthodox routes. You said the enemy attacked you so it could be that the attack animation itself pushed him over the edge, so to speak. Can't really confirm it without footage though.
Is that why enemies try to attack you through walls and sometimes succeed? Since the nodes they have might not account for the environmental obstructions?
@@tytsty5716I think that has more to do with how the game handles player detection for enemies. If they succeed in hitting you thats just a hitbox issue.
@@tytsty5716 I did test out how and when they do it and realized that they don't attack you wen you are behind a wall. Wen they do, it is because they have already started there attack animations way before you got behind it. It is a consistent problem in every single souls games. But I guess they cant just make there attack animation stop or bounce it off the walls as it would have been extremely exploitable.
Whoa, what the hell, I had no idea that ADP affected the speed that you used estus
That would explain why my depraived tank character with only 6 ADP (Yes, I'm serious about that ADP, never leveled it) consumes estus slower than a god damn snail trying to move a mile.
Man that was easily one of the most frustrating things for me going from DS1 to 2. I can understand wanting to change the system a bit to keep things challenging for returning players, I mean I admit I was pretty reliant on estus and lots of it (never less than 10 if I can help it) in DS1. But not only does your character pull their flask out comically slow, but it's not even a quick fill up on HP anymore, it heals over a second or two. When I started the game and had life gems but no flask, and saw how slow those heal... I guess I didn't expect the main heal to be slow too lol. I thought it was bad enough that you only start with one estus charge!
@@Gorlokk666 Two charges if you know where to look, a.k.a, the well in Majula, but yea, I can guess that caught you off-guard a lot
I did the same. I played demon's and ds1 first and never use wikis or guide first playthrough. Had no idea what adp was through the description left it alone. Finished the game, went on the wiki and facepalmed when I realised i'd made it harder for myself.
My 12 year old was watching me.
I was fighting fume, which is one of the only bosses I have trouble with
He was like “yo, you got a tall ass knight with a big ass sword comin at ya. Drink faster man
@@adonisx82 Ah yes, Fume Knight. Weirdly enough, with 6 ADP, I never had a problem with him, and I would frequently be seen with the red eye ring, helping others beat the Fume Knight. I know others struggle with certain bosses, so if I beat them easily, I will go out of my way to help others. It's a nice feeling :>
That 8 directional movement is something I noticed immediately, it feels like something a mad employee would tweak in after they got pissed off. It drove me so crazy I couldn't even play the game after a few hours.
Like it was designed for an arcade stick.
It's way better than ds1's lock on bullshit
Yeah i recently raged quit the game because i kept dying at one point from falling. Just felt unfair and most of the time it was the game just not doing what i thought it should of been able to do.
@@thatitalianlameguy2235 I’ll never understand how ppl had problems w it all u do is MIND YOUR FOOTWORK….
@@JK-vy8vh I’ll never understand how people had problems with typing English - JUST SPELL CHECK YOUR WORK
In fairness to DS2 (not that this remotely helps it’s case as a whole), at 1:06:45 , the reason for a lack of backstabs is because Jester Thomas’ set prevents you from getting critical attacks from behind. Not that the average player would know, given the set is sold by Magerold in Iron Keep and most people hardly talk to the guy if ever, from what I’ve heard.
..That said, every other clip there was a hilarious showcase of this game’s horrifically inadequate backstab system.
Bonus: at 37:00, the hollows attacking the tree isn’t a bug or pathing issue, rather, that’s a tree that was formerly a giant, which those hollow soldiers fought. DS2’s best attempt at environmental storytelling I suppose. Though the prioritization of attacking the tree over the player is a.. different matter.
Other than these two minor oversights the video is an excellent critique, and puts into words many of my own scattered thoughts-and issues, regarding this game. I know I’m ages late to the party on this video, but I’m glad to have seen this series.
Also at 45:22, the zombie running ahead of the player is on purpose. The zombie was supposed to be a bait that you chase and it'll lead you to ambushes.
@@akmal94ibrahim On purpose, yes. But it still looks hilarious xd They just took a rando zombo and sped it up 5 times xddd Was there no other way?
@@jigsawharlequin862 If you have a good eye while playing this game, you can sometimes spot regular enemies speeding up in much of the same manner when you're sprinting. It's random and uncommon but it happens.
Claw hand on the controller can help you find it since it happens more often off camera.
@@charlie1234500 yeah a very noticeable example was one of the door ogres in aldia’s keep sprinting at me at mach speed. Then when i wanted him to come to me he walked at normal speed lol
Nerd
36:46 The Soldier runs to attack the Giant Tree because it thinks it is a giant, right? Because of the war between them and Vendrick.
@LeadFaun Still, player is a human, tree is a giant, one is enemy, other is not.
@LeadFaun He is still human sized target. I dont even think hollows can see anything beyond silhouettes.
@LeadFaun
Makes sense to me, the Giant would be a bigger threat, and if some semblance of memory was still in the Hollow soldier's mind they'd probably associate the giant with something that needs to be killed.
@LeadFaun
Well yeah, the shitty scripting spawns him away from the Giant
And no, So long as you've talked to Drummond first, They'll only attack you if you somehow damaged them in one of the memories, which for some reason doesn't reset until NG+
@LeadFaun
Well yeah, they're Hollow, of course they attack you outside of the Memory, and inside they're supposed to be Neutral to you after talking to Drummond unless they take any kind of damage from you, before and after speaking to him.
There's likely a bug involved.
45:30 to be fair, that zombie is meant to just run around the woods
As are the knights hitting the tree (i.e. old ass giant corpse). I guess you'd think they should stop and attack the player, but, you know, priorities.
@@bsh819 The zombie running is its form of attacking the player. It's supposed to lead you into other enemies and ambushes. It's a tactic used in all 3 Dark Souls games, not just 2.
@@Netirumi I was talking about the tree whackers. Your right about the troll zombie of course. There's also the torch guy in undead crypt that can follow you all the way to Agdayne, causing... problems.
@@bsh819 Oh, sorry about that. Since you were responding to the original comment, I assumed that you were referring to that as well.
@@Netirumi No worries
I am so glad I watched this entire series, and that this did not disappear under the rug the way you thought it would. You make exceptional content and I look forward to watching the rest of your videos.
Domo3000 is showing how wrong is Mauler about DS2, and he is doing an amazing job. uwu
This video was debunked years ago. Full of blatant lies and misinformation.
@@AtreyusNinjayeah domo is actually smart, mauler Iis a big idiot making all the problems for himself then blames the game, hell if there's maybe one of two genuinely bad hitboxes everyone hates on on but when DS1 is plagued with a lot of them no one cares
@@NevinWarrior-es6ds domo Channel Is Just Amazing, not like that *** of Mauler 😅🤣😭
The point with ADP is especially frustrating since I played DS2 directly after DS1 and in DS1 everybody told me not to put points in resistance as it's some kind of joke from the developers so I thought "Oh it will be the same with ADP I guess" and then I wondered the whole game why enemy swings always hit me even when I thought I rolled away early enough.
Ahahah, the same exact thing happened to me
Yeah same, haven’t gone back to make a build that uses it, but after watching this series I just might have to
Literally sunk like 30 hours into my character and beat most of the game and dlc and only realised what adp actually was and why I was getting hit so much💀💀
I quit like 2/3rds through the game out of pure frustration, never putting a single point into ADP lol might have to revisit it
@@humbelgenetv I did. Deleted the game again but after some perseverance I decided to make a brand new character and start from scratch. The game honestly isn’t that bad it’s just some of the choices they made were pretty stupid. The whole thing with ADP was so stupid. Nothing about the skill tells you what it does so some of us went through the whole game thinking our rolls were unfair because we didn’t have a single point. But also the fact that certain bosses are extremely easy when your rolls throughout the game are constantly getting better and better. They didn’t think that ADP would have to work around the game and each boss specifically in order for there to be balance
I finally understand what's weird about the movement in DS2. Thank you for that.
I’m use to turning my camera around while moving as well
@Thadson makes rolling through certain attacks wonky and also allows the player to backpedal diagonally when retreating which reduces your chance of jumping off the ledge like a scrub. unpopular opinion but 4 directional rolling made the combat feel weightier and made me more conscious of my positioning.
@@dikasmusha6194 Nah the 4 directional rolling was disgusting. After Ds2, BB and Ds3 the 4 directional rolling became so obsolete
Is this only a problem with the PC ports, because I didn't notice this on the Xbox 360 version?
@@crazyinsane6640 The issue occurs only in the Scholar of the First Sin edition. Including the dx11 pc port.
Really bothers me that the Hollows went from dried up, skin-and-bones husks to fleshy--even buff at times--with green skin and open sores.
They turn hollows into green Juans.
It's because zombies were super fucking popular when DS2 came out
He becomes the hulk
That's because hollows don't exist in drangleic. They're all zombies lmao
Well, I guess that's your butthurt, so it's what, your problem?
After finishing Dark Souls and watching this again, I appreciate Souls 1 even more now in spite of enemy attacks tracking with player movement.
I remember my surprise during my first playthrough when, in undead burg, near the first bonfire, one of the hollows down the stairs and to the side did a jump attack towards me that travelled around a 90 degrees angle and up the stairs to hit me.
@@Feanor1988bis That's awful. Sometimes I tried to make him fall, but the game never seems to want to do that when I'm trying to proc it.
@@RorytheRomulan yeah, didn't like it back then, but for now it's just a funny memory. I do think these games, even the more recent ones, have too much tracking on certain attacks, but I guess that with experience and being used to it I just don't notice as much, or just learned to deal with it. Really absurd situations aren't too frequent luckily.
That was a plot twist at the beginning. I love this game though, but it DEFINITELY has its flaws
Finally, someone that has a good palette in their tongue and can actually take criticism.
TomatoMan4 same here my dude
Every game has flaws and everything is subjetive.
@@andr0zzsenpai bad hitboxes arent subjetive XD Thats a objective flaw. Like the Game all you want, but dont Tell me an aple is an mango.
@john oboczky I I ähh I dont understand I am ehm. Okay.
Your voice reminds me of a less approving Vaati
He reminds me so much of TotalBiscuit!
Should look up The Spiffing Brit. I thought they were the same person at first.
@@volcanolord100 Yeah, Spiffing Brit for me for sure too :)
Vaati after a long day of babysitting Edwad.
I knew he wasn't Spiff after about 5 seconds with no mention of Yorkshire Tea.
:P :P
"I'm not directing that at anyone in particular, but I'm sure you understand *Harris.* "
I love being British and having access to that level of sudden and unexpected vitriol.
I'm super duper late but who is this Harris? Is that who this is in response to?
@@xelic1996 It's a RUclipsr named HBomberGuy (the H likely stands for Harris) who made a terrible video praising Dark Souls 2 by pretending Dark Souls 1 was bad by comparison. I could be wrong, but I think him and MauLer are friends to an extent. MauLer enjoys his videos and respects Harris, at least.
Thanks, I've now watched his video on it and working my way through the series in proper order now. The dude seems decent, but just made a lot of on the spot arguements without trying to really back anything up
@@xelic1996 He's an okay guy, but the way he misrepresents Matthewmatosis' points and cuts his video, completely changing his points, is really damn scummy. Also the extremely smug and condescending attitude he had towards him for no good reason is really disgusting to listen to. A lot of people, including myself, regard Matt as a very good critic and it was just so strange and gross to see this stuff.
@@TheSlammurai Indeed, but Harris does not respect mauler, in fact Harris seems to react very childishly to criticism in general. Pretty unfortunate since Harris genuinely makes fantastic videos
I just watched this man destroy one of my most favorite games ever, and every point he made I agree with :'(
Doesn't mean you can't like it, all games have flaws and if you can like the game even with the flaws then all power to you. My fav is ds3 and it has its flaws. But I still love it.
Like what you want. Even if it has issues! :D
Bro i love this game because its horrible, its so bad but so fun, and fashion
@@zxnch217 bro shut tf up, a majority of people like DS3 even though it's just Bloodbourne with dudes in armor, you'll never know the suffering of being a DS2 fan.
@@Snakeskin94 bro relax for a bit, no need to be toxic
To be fair, I'd love for him to go *into* Dark Souls 1 with the same intent to pick it apart and see what he comes out with (bonus points if he plays through the *original* PC port without fan fixes, so he can see what PC players had to deal with *before* they came into Dark 2.)
“In defense of Dark Souls 2”
*spends the next hour and a half shitting all over the game*
thats the joke
It says in the description he is just pointing out it’s flaws in order to defend the game not really a joke
i love DS 2 and i dont think its shitting hes right on point
You have to find criticism in things you enjoy. it’s your responsibility to voice them so that the thing you enjoy doesn’t slip into mediocrity. ( i.e NBA 2K or madden.) From soft learned from these criticisms and gave us DS3 and bloodborne🤷🏾♂️
@@ryanburke9490 Nah m8, I pretty much agree with everything Mauler said. But when I wrote that comment I didn't realize it was a response to hbomberguy's video and thought this was supposed to be another defense of the game.
Your video is amazing and clever, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD YOU SHOWED ME THE MOVEMENT PROBLEM AND NOW I HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT EVERY TIME I PLAY xD
lol, 8 directions, 8 directions, 8 direc...
This is hell.
There is a way to fix this on PC!
- Exit Dark Souls 2 : Scholar of the First Sin
- Download the file named, "Durazno v0.6-43.7z"
- Extract to your Dark Souls 2 SOTFS install location (easily located by right clicking on the title in your Steam games list, left clicking on the "Properties" option, left clicking on the "Local Files" tab, and left clicking on the "Browse Local Files" option, and then double left clicking on the "Game" folder) you may need a separate tool to complete this part
-Once extracted double left click on the "x64" folder that has appeared, select all items present in this folder, copy it, and paste it into the "Game" folder
- Right click the "Durazno.exe" and run it as an administrator
- Change the options to the ones down below;
LinearADZ: Checked
Deadzone: 20
AntiDeadzone: 36
- Close the Durazno program
- Launch Dark Souls 2 : Scholar of the First Sin
- ???
- Profit massively from having normal, reasonable, and expected movement rather than 8-directional nonsense
Praise the Omnissiah.
Edit : This only works if you're using a controller on PC.
Double Edit : Additional instructions because SotFS is a 64-bit program.
@MysteriousAeon It's a possibility. I have had a friend get banned for (in theory) just using this but I have not. There are rumors people have been soft banned for using graphic injectors (SweetFX and ReShade, for example), x360ce (Xbox 360 Controller Emulator, used to play the game with controllers other than an actual Xbox 360 one), and/or the DSFix/DSFix64.
Same I didn’t know it existed but I felt something fishy was going on with the movement but I couldn’t tell why and now it’s confirmed I am awestruck that they changed something that the first game in the series had so they didn’t even need to put in the work they actively did this whyyyyy
That whole part about you attacking in the wrong direction instead of where you're locked on to is unbelievably prominent in the Aava & Lud & Zallen fights for some reason.
The amount of times I tried to swing my great sword and missed was nuts. I originally thought my focus was massing up because I fiddled with the camera while focus was on. It wasn't the case, just poor focus mechanics with bigger weapons.
You all 3 need to know that even if locked on, large weapons in dark souls 2 *must* be manually aimed. Any control stick input during the attack and it will go that direction, locked on or not
@OX XY because it's not a flaw, it *is* intentional
Lud and Zallen might be the worst designed battle in the series, even worse than Bed of Chaos because Bed of Chaos at least saves your progress
@OX XY Then plant your feet and it will go exactly where the enemy was at the time you pressed the attack button.
The editing of this piece is great, but the script? Impeccable. Every sentence has a great rhythymn to it, and the complaints are presented very coherently. Great job!
could you imagine in blighttown im dark souls 1, the poison dart spitters managed to hit you through the walls because the walls werent considered as a mesh?
Yeah that would be..fun...💀
Yeah, but virtually all of Earth population agree Blighttown is shit. Fortunatly for us, you can skip the whole area without losing anything.
@@dearcastiel4667 through the Valley of Drakes? You do lose quite a few souls and items and honestly, um, it's not that bad of a place if you have the right gear!
@@brocolyrics4331 the only thing you're missing is Power Within and eventually the iaito, both of which can be grabbed in a single suicide run before leaving the area for the Valley. Also at that point you normally don't have access to poison-resistant gear (the only aviable is Dusk's set but then you have no poise, and the poison-bite ring costs so much no normal player have it at this point.
I generally go through the area for power within because that spell is absolutly OP in NG, but if somehow I don't need the spell I clearly don't bother doing blighttown, and even skip gaping dragon as well.
@@dearcastiel4667 I guess it's just my personal desire to not skip any part of games that just pushes me to go through these kinds of areas!
Am I the only one annoyed by how long some animations are? Like opening a chest and going through fog in ds1 were so much faster...
No! Every time I turn in an estus shard and my character sits there running through the hand folding prayer animation, I wonder how many more shards I picked up and just how long I will have to sit there just to finish turning them in.
They probably wanted to make opening chest better by making the animation longer to create more anticipation, like zeldas do. It's not a bad thing on itself, except for the fact that several times in the game you find 3 or more chests in the same room. Opening them becomes a chore instead of a reward, specially when some of them contain just some random consumable.
To be fair, DS1 did that too in archives and in havel's room, but there were actually reasons for it. In archives, one of the chests was a mimic, and in havel's room i'm pretty sure the point was to convey how massive havel's set is, that it doesn't fit in 1 chest (and there was also a mimic).
Admittedly, DS2 sometimes tries to slip a mimic surrounded by chests too, but most of the time, it just looks like they wanted to waist your time instead of putting a corpse with the item on it.
@@StephanuSneed That's not why they did it. They did it so you can't rush in and snag something and run away from enemies, you are forced to fight what is in the room.
@@FirstLast-yc9lq That might be right, but a lot of the times you find multiple chests there are 1 or no enemies around, so my point stands that it's just obnoxious.
Also, the fact they kept mimics, made wooden chests breakable and added metal unbreakable chests and trap chests supports my point they wanted to make opening a chest more interesting.
Yes facts I have to always fight the enemies because I get knocked out of the fog
"The point of it is to provide a genuine defense of Dark Souls 2... without focusing on any negatives."
Proceeds to completely bury the game and piss on the grave.
Awesome review, he focuses on every part, exemplifying the good and shitting on it where it deserved to be shat on.
Christian Noah he spends 5 minutes on the good, and an hour and a half on the bad. The game is flawed, but the bad is nowhere near that overwhelming
Zachary Stolte i agree its goods outweigh the bad for me
@@MHMega Completely disagreed, there's way more bad than there is good objectively speaking, to just go "durr there's more good than bad" after MauLer went from top to bottom to be as detailed as possible in showing the bad of the game is pretty stupid.
@@wordsoflove8787 you're just being disingenuous, I've never experienced any of the problems mentioned in this video solely in ds2, in fact I've experienced more of these issues in ds1. The one that really bugged me was the upgrade materials section, comparing it to bloodborne that has like 25 weapons to ds2 which has at least 100. Hoe tf am I supposed to know what weapon I'll want to use my 1 blood rock on when I'm a new player. "Oops I dont like this weapon, now I have to go to ng+ just to get the one I want"
Watched all of this for the seventh time as a New Year present to myself. Good shit.
I just keep coming back to his series. It’s so good, anyway Happy New Years 🎉
@@moose_goose To you as well! 🎊
get a fucking life loser
Man, I can't help but laugh every time I hear that fart sound effect when a Dragonrider falls off a ledge. Thanks for this series, it's been a fantastic ride. Looking forward to watching the rest of your current stuff as well as your future work. Good shit.
I watched this series like a pod cast, running in the background most of the time, and hearing that sound cued me into the fact that his video just showed a Dragon rider, killing himself XD It was great!
Is it weird that i love the Dragonriders specifically because they're such hilarious failures? They're like a sitcom character who tries to be cool but always ends up looking stupider the harder they try.
27:34
"What is he doing?"
"He's beginning to believe."
That hitbox was gorgeous. That kind of thing could never happen in DS2.
@@TheSlammurai 29:44 Is even tighter. And people say DS3 has bad hitboxes... What the actual fuck?
Regarding the failed backstab attempts against Jester Thomas, the bonus effect of the Jester's top is actually backstab nullification.
Domo3000 is showing how wrong is Mauler about DS2, and he is doing an amazing job. uwu
Ds2 was my first ds game and I legitimately didn't know that back stabbing was a mechanic till i played the other games and went back and tried in ds2.
When I played ds2 in 2017 or so I thought it was a much older game. I genuinely thought it came out in like 2007 bc of how janky it felt. Can't explain my suprise when I found out how new it was.
With it being my first game I think it set a weird precedent for the other games. They felt.... weird. I just assumed the other games were meant to feel the same. Not in a sense of mechanics or broken ai, but in a way that they didn't make me as angry. Ds2 often felt like it was intentionally trying to piss me off rather than try and teach me a mechanic or a way to approach a situation and I think this goes back to the 'tough but fair' sentiment from early in the video. And I honestly think it made me enjoy the other games more. So at least one good thing came of it.
I know this is an old video so if you're reading this, hello and thanks for reading. I should really be asleep lol
2 definitely feels like a beta test of a AA title, like something from Eastern Europe, especially when compared to the other titles. Playing it before any of the other ga mes is probably the only way to truly enjoy it for most fans of the series, you don't go in with a bunch of expectations for how things "should" behave or work.
Domo3000 is showing how wrong is Mauler about DS2, and he is doing an amazing job. uwu
I often feel like I am in a wierd fever dream any time I play this game. There is something about the controls never being fast enough and the constant illogical things happening that is very nightmarish. The flotiness of combat makes this even worse, because you can't feel the impact.
Still better combat than the first one and the roll only in 4 directions
@@mytotim8978 -Having to aim your swings even with lock-on
-8-Directional movement
-I-frames tied to stat
-Some weapons being unable to target enemies from the floor
-Lock-on targeting enemies that are far away
-Enemies having an insane tracking
Sure
@@mytotim8978 Keep repeating this lie to you. One day, you'll eventually believe it.
I have replayed all 3 games recently and there is something very uncomfortable i've found during that time.
DS1 is very slow but you're just as slow as the enemies, in DS3 you're pretty fast but so are the enemies too. There's consistency in speeds and reaction times for both of you.
In DS2 however, I felt something was off. My attacks and some enemy attacks can come out really fast, but the speed of the game is completely botched by other, unnaturally slow animations. This is especially true for enemies. They tend to have ridiculously long recovery animations which, tied with DS2's habit to have a fuck ton of enemies doing a 3 part combo, makes it really boring to look at. They will also have huge windows of doing absolutely nothing and looking at you before doing a fast attack that contradicts such a long wait time. The player is also plagued by this inconsistent speed. You can swing your weapons very fast, yet you will chug estus at the speed of a snail. You can spam roll almost as fast as DS3 but if you try to roll after attacking you will be locked by long recovery frames before you can actually start doing it. This is not a problem in DS1 because everything is equally slow as fuck, and it's not a problem in 3 because you can skip the recovery frames, you can roll as soon as your attack landed.
Overall DS2 displays a lack of consistency in its speed, which tends to make everyone look as fast puppets locked behind a one time action before needing to reload a gigantic battery.
I recently heard someone say DS2 feels like everything is underwater and yeah that just about captures it.
Late to the party on finding this video, but as a professional AI programmer for video games this video makes me cry inside because I understand why a lot of the AI bugs are happening, especially the pathing the ones. Assuming they used nav mesh, which is commonly used for pathing, the "square of torture" happens because they painted that area as somewhere the ai can't go. The ai perceive that square as a hole, there is nothing there they can walk on to them. They did that because at some point the square will open. However you can turn the pianter on and off so that way the ai will walk over it when it is closed and not mistakingly fall into to it when it is open.
the game has a lot of problems but I find the movement to be the worst one. The horrible dead zones and the wonky animations for everything is just a direct downgrade from DS1. Worst thing by far is the roll; in DS1, DS3 and BB the roll/dodge will always keep you faced towards the locked-on enemy. There is a different roll animation depending on if you roll left, right, forwards or back. The attack directly after rolling will always be towards the target. In DS2, there is only 1 roll animation and it's directly forward, so if your attack is timed to come out the moment the roll ends your character will not have enough time to rotate and correct itself towards the enemy before the attack plays out (as seen at 1:03:24). On top of that they decided to only allow about 20° of freedom to pivot most attacks. All that does is take away player control and make everything feel way more stiff.
Also I'm sure someone has told you already but the manual aiming of large weapons like great hammers and ultra greatswords using the left stick is actually a feature, not a bug. I agree it takes the whole point of locking-on away but someone developing the game decided that was a good idea. It is even included in DS3 as a lock-on option. I've only known 1 person who actually preferred it, he said it was useful for PVP.
Hi dusty
Dongo
Come on now, I hate ds2 as much as the next guy but to say that DS1 had better rolls is dumb. In ds2 you can atleast roll in more than 4 directions while in lock on.
@@crim1188 Ds1 has better movement over all. I've played the shit out of both and I never get tired of Ds1. I got second hand rage at seeing the dogshit hitboxes and gay movement system montage. Brought back a flood of memories. Ds2 was the only one in the whole series that made me actually mad. Ds1 is way better than the floaty bullshit.
@@marvelousdex9678 me personally I get bored of ds1 and ds3 way to easly because ds1 and ds3 new game+ don't feel new and improved
I'm aware I'm late and I bet someone has already explained this but at 29:20, you're correct that this game has a lingering hitbox issue.
I've farmed the Giant Lord for quite some time and I've noticed that all his attacks have lingering hitboxes, to the point where I'll strafe a stomp, go back to hit him, and then be flung back as if the stomp had landed. This has happened multiple times and even happened a couple times with his sword. It's to the point where I wondered why no one brought it up when mentioning the poor hitboxes.
How much of the ai walking to their deaths do you think might be caused by them being tied to the same 8-directional movement that you have, while lacking player sensibilities?
I think Dragonrider is just suicidal.
@@SorowFame *fart noise*
I think that 8-directional movement is limited on the pc port. Never experenced any problems on the ps4.
@@erenemre9461 I can confirm it's present on Xbox 360 and Xbox One Scholar edition, but I also never noticed that was specifically what was happening while playing the game until I watched the video and it was pointed out, and now I can't un-see it
@@snowboundwhale6860 Hmmm interesting. That sounds like lazy programing.
This was an amazing end to an amazing series. Thank you so much for putting in all that work! I love Dark Souls II but I agree with about everything you said.
I've watched this series in only two days, it's been enjoyable all the way through.
You have earned yourself another sub.
Edit: forgot to tell you that I found the little poop sounds at dumb boss behaviours way too funny
I feel like the most backwards thing about ADP hasn't been mentioned yet:
It makes the game easier not because the player is getting good, but because of a stat increase. In all other souls games, the difficulty of the game increases over time to compensate for the stats you get by leveling up. Because of this, the game stays challenging from start to finish on a normal playthrough. Enemies you encounter later in game have more HP, absorb more damage, hit harder etc than enemies you encountered earlier. To compensate having more i-frames in later stages of the game, enemies would have to hit for LONGER with each attack. This is obviously not the case.
Even a player that doesn't learn from his mistakes, a player that doesn't get good, will have an objectively easier time towards the end of the game than in the beginning, thanks to this one stat. I feel like this is completely contrary to the design philosophy of the combat and therefore a massive shame.
piai55 good point I beat one a little bit ago and just finished all of fire fade edition of 3, bloodborne and am trying to get into this game and it feels so much more clunky but I guess I’ll push through and figure it out
This stat was a total fail. Invest in it and things can become a cakewalk, don't invest in it and some parts will be pure hell.
Yes. And Dark Souls 1 even acknowledges that with the Gargoyles by putting it with the SAME stats later in the game.
You are dealing more damage by this point and you should also be able to take more. Yet, by any mean, there's a good chance you won't even need it. Because the Gargoyles can't touch you anymore because you've internalized game mechanics and you know how to dodge every thing the simplistic Gargoyle pattern can throw at you.
On my first play through the game, I did something I am very proud of while seeing the Gargoyle when you meet another one. I ran back to the fire, put on ALL the gears that I had used to beat the Gargoyles on the church and I beat this one easily while having the same equipement as the first encounter.
I wanted to see if I was getting better at the game or if my equipement/stats were.
Turn out, it was me, I was getting better at this. And it showed. It also showed when I started a new character.
Pitty the second game never give you that.
like I think DS2 is complete shit but your point is just wrong you also got a lot stronger by increasing stats in the other games
I think I 4 hit the last boss in DS1 he could not even stagger me and I just crushed him with the dark knight great axe
and the enemies in DS2 also get stronger
@@peddazz2365 Evidently you did not really read or understand what I posted. Let me explain it again: In DS1 and DS3, no matter what stats you level up, there is a way for enemies to counteract it to a certain extent. You have basically 2 types of stats: you can either take more damage, or deal more damage. Which gets counteracted by the enemies dealing more damage or being able to take more damage. This is what you call standard, good game design. If you grind the shit out of the game of course you are going to break the balance the devs implemented into the game. Off the top of my head I cant even think of a single game implementing a similar system where this isn't true. You purposefully breaking the decently balanced ingame system is not bad game design. I doubt you would call Skyrim's, Borderlandses or Diablo's leveling system bad JUST BECAUSE you can out-level the enemies, just to name a few well known ones.
What IS bad game design is a system like the one in DS2: where you gain stats that enemies CAN NOT counteract. ADP can not be counterbalanced by the game, because enemies would have to hit LONGER.
Let me give you my actual real world example:
In DS2 I knew that ADP was the stat to go for because I had to google why my dodges just weren't working. The internet told me to dump a bunch of points into it early on and to not focus on anything else. The result I got was a game that had a spike in difficulty early and was ruined after my ADP dump. If DS1 or DS3 get so easy that it spoils the fun, I just stopped leveling my HP or Strength and let the enemies catch up (which didn't even take too long to be honest). The souls I invested into items, armor and weapons. In DS2 once you dumped too many points into ADP the only way to increase the difficulty that was lost thanks to enemies not being balanced around long dodge times is to delete your save file and start over.
I really enjoy the story for DS2, its an interesting spin on retelling the original. Vendrick realized the cycle he was stuck in and made his best effort to escape it, unable to cure hollowing but found a way for our character to nullify it, and thus exist outside of the cycle. Would have been cool for Dark Souls 3 to have an npc like that, thats existed outside of time with all the knowledge they've garnered
I liked the curse of want angle. It's essentially the same spirit of the first game but without the fire metaphore.
It was also much better delivered. I feel ds2 is the only one that did the best at trying to explain the jist of things without Google necessary.
i mean ds3 did kinda have that with patches / lapp
Slave Knight Gael somewhat fits your description of said NPC. He's elderly but still on a quest to create a new world without this cycle. Many believe Gael is the player character from 2. I don't think that lines up logistically, since Gael has some backstory lore that conflicts with this game. Still, I love the theory and choose to believe it.
In Dark Souls 3, you end story mode by fighting the character from DS1. There's poetic pleasure in ending the final DLC by fighting the player character from DS2.
@@casketbase7750 That is my lore pipe dream, because it saddens how ds3 kinda ignores 2 and just keeps focusing on ds1 instead of progressing and exploring thing on the cycle and beyond
@@iago110DS3 has plenty of references to DS2. You can see the ruins of Earthen Peak in the Dreg Heap, there’s a massive variety of returning weapons, armor, and rings from DS2 as well. There’s also paintings of things like Nashandra or Eleum Loyce in the room with all the silver knights in Irithyll. Also the spell “Soul Stream” literally has a reference to Aldia in its item description.
1:12:10 I was muttering: " don't bother, those guys are immune to backsta..." WTF they can be backstabed! LOL!!!
This was the first Souls game I played. I platinumed the shit out of it.
im sorry for your loss
@@GoldieRinglets the 300+ hours required is indeed a heavy toll, one i cannot undertake
@@GoldieRinglets "iM sOrRY fOr yOuR lOsS" you say while invading at Pontiff and getting ganked by the whole population of Anor Londo, and after you die, everyone starts pointing down & throwing dung pies, then the hatemail starts coming in "You're trash" "You're a fucking idiot" "Racial slur". After that you hear a knock on your door - the gankers are coming for you irl. You try to run but they catch you. They start beating you up and when theyre done they spit on your unconcious body and set your apartament/house on fire.
@@_doop8257 the most accurate description of anor londo i have ever
Heard
Its my first too. I am enjoying it, dope game
Can’t wait for hbomber’s 10 part rebuttal series “In Defense of Dark Souls 2: A measured Response”
...wait
He will never reply. I think he learned his lesson on this topic. Not that his defense was wrong, but the way he attacked Mat Metosis was insulting a lot of times.
@@Illusive_Batman do you mean that he tried to defend it was not wrong? because with that I would agree but with what he actually used as a defense with that there was a lot wrong
@@peddazz2365 That he defended it was not wrong. But how he defended it was wrong.
Hbo bomber guy is toxic douche.
@@Illusive_Batman He didn't defend it lol. He just stated that he liked the game because feelings when it's objectively the worse of the three games because of various reasons denoted in this video.
A new fan here and this is the first Dark Souls game I play and finished. I sighed of relief when I find out the hitboxes, AI, and Health Reduction mechanic are actually real downsides and are not actually the main reasons of why the game is challenging. I thought DS2:SOTFS is already a masterclass in giving the whole Dark Souls experience.
After learning some objective flaws and also having experienced it myself, I'm kinda hyped for other installments in the series that will deliver what this game didn't.
When I played Dark Souls 2 for the first time, I noticed the dead zones on movement right away. I thought it was an issue with my controller or copy, so I looked online to see if it was a common issue. First thing I saw were people complaining about the deadzones before some dude responded by saying "There are no deadzones. Shut up, trolls."
That interaction might as well have set the stage right there for this game. Fanboys just blindly defending issues that are right under their noses. I don't understand that mentality. Harris' video was another example of this, where the flaws weren't flaws, they were actually genius!
user1point0 playing all three side by side I like this more than 1 still.
Ced von Lewyn I’m fine with people hating what they want but tbh I don’t understand some people’s complaints with this game or others like fallen order. Someone claimed that fallen order ran poorly on ps4 yet my ps4 is gen 1 and ran it perfectly, People complain about the dodging in dark souls 2 yet in 1 it takes about 1 second for my character to get up from a roll (who is wearing robes not armor). I don’t want people judging unfairly if you’re putting something on trial remember to make sure a problem you list or bug you find wasn’t also in the first one or better yet worse in the first one (unarmed builds).
will vermillion The problem people have with rolls in DS2 isn’t the length of the animation though, it’s the impact the stats of your character has on the duration of your invulnerability, and the impact it has on the gameplay (ie : it either makes it crappy because you didn’t level it enough and hence your rolls barely award you any invulnerability, or you leveled it but then the invulnerability window is so big it takes away much of the challenge).
Also, DS2 works perfectly fine on my PS4 too, so maybe you were talking to PC players, or you were talking to people with a game or a console that had some sort of issue (or we’re both lucky).
And what’s the problem with unarmed builds in DS1 ? (Or demon’s soul, but I’m pretty sure you aren’t talking about that game ^^)
will vermillion If you are fast rolling it does not take a second to recover from a roll tho
Jacob Cardinal I used a light gear set with a pyro and I rolled at the speed of a cloud
Something that sticks out to me as DS2 being my favorite Souls game is that it was easier to play with a group of friends. My circle of friends played through this entire game together, area to area and through all of the DLC's and I think thats why I love it the most. We were all scattered about the world during that time because of the military and it was nice to experience the game together.
That's touching
You mean after DS1? I agree. But since DS3 came out, that one is easily the best when it comes to connecting with other players. Hell it made it almost too easy. The simple password matchmaking that isn't limited by wonky rings and soul memory made it so that glitching into unscaled was actually possible. There were few barriers keeping you from playing with friends.
@@TheStraightestWhitest The issue with DS3 is that our lives became too busy to play games together a while after DS2 came out. Some of us had kids, some of careers got in the way, etc. It was the last game we played cooperatively.
@@Mr.G69420Bro Ah I understand now. Thanks for the elaboration.
So uhhhh
Happy Souls?
Dark souls has to be one of the only series that has such a vast amount of videos that are over an hour long
This was my first Dark Souls game, and I loved every rage filled second of it.
This game is extremely janky and weird but it's still my favorite. It has the most build variety by far. Only in DkS2 can somebody beat your ass with a Dark-infused Ladle.
I agree with the build variety, its definitely very strong and is better than other games hugely in that department.
That's how I feel about DS1 remastered. DS2 feels better to play and less janky to me. To each his own
The only thing that would made me play this game again would be to try out different builds but at this point i already made every kind of build
This is what I love about it. I spent more time just PVPing in it on launch than I probably have playing the rest of the series all together, just because there was so many builds to try and experiment with. DS3 just had R1 spamming estocs and straight swords. Personally I thought it felt way better to control than either DS1 or DS3 but I will admit it took some getting used to coming off the first one.
@@SentientBratwurst I agree. I like the feel of the controls in DS2. Just finished 3 and something just didn't feel quite the same.
I can’t believe I didn’t recognize the whole snap points thing when playing. I knew the movement felt clunky and off. It just seems so dumb to have included this
I cry everytime I see Majula. It's just so beautiful to look at and the music also makes me sad. It also gives off a nostalgic feeling every time you return back to it.
53:55 idk why but this also makes me laugh so much
"SOMETIMES deflects spells"
I love how Metal's reaction to getting hit by Sir Alonne's grab is identical everytime it happens
It's such a relatable reaction too since we've all been there at some point or another.
I love how serious Mauler's voice is when he says "This shit can get you killed", as if it's Vietnam.
Lots of good points that I didn't realise though. I had really fond memories of DS2 for its variety of locations, numerous bosses and I really liked weird atmosphere of Drangleic and Majula. But I do remember getting really,, really frustrated with many points of the game, and I thought it was just because I was playing SOTFS edition and that clearly the enemy changes were really difficult. But now I see there were actually a bunch of really dumb design decisions in this game.
I adore both DS2 and DS3, they each do some cool things, but I'll continue to recommend DS1 to first time players. It's the quintessential experience IMO, and the sequels are variations on the theme (Haven't played Demon Souls).
Well said
Demon's Souls is very janky in its own way, but pretty good. There were a lot of improvements and changes that went into Dark Souls. For example, the soul form to hollow was a good change, and one that they did walk back slightly in DS2. That and getting rid of world tendency. World tendency was a good idea, but backwards for a game. A game should reward players for challenging themselves with better rewards and better challenges. Demon's Souls punished you for dying in an area by making things more difficult, and rewarded you for beating bosses by making things easier. However, at the worst world tendency, rare enemies would spawn that dropped items used in upgrades or crafting, can't remember which. Meaning that in order to get the best stuff, you either needed to die repeatedly, or just do things to make the world a worse place. Makes sense from a world standpoint, but not a gameplay standpoint. Basically, if you weren't very confident or just not good, it was better to die in the nexus and it led to the nexus being covered in bloodstains.
There were also people running dual ultra-great swords and the massive hammers. I'm not quite sure how that worked, I was never very good at Demon's Souls.
@@afarce4172 Here's hoping the remake is as promising as it looks
@@gasterblaster9817 bruh the maiden in black's feet are in 1080p
@@notinghere2190 p e r f e c t i o n
27:34 DAAAAMN that is tight! holy crap makes me appreciate Dark Souls 3 just a bit more
To be completely fair, every Dark Souls can pull off such feats, as it should be able to, but DS3 does it the most consistently because it has more fluid and just better animation overall. I love the dragon slayer armour fight thanks to these details, the way he swings his giant axe makes it that if you're crouched because of an animation, you won't get hit. Pontiff is also a great example with his sword flurries, because he's so tall compared to you, at certain angles his attacks will go overhead and not hit you. It's really satisfying to look at.
@@markopusic8258 its cause there are a whole lot less weapons and armors in the game allowing each to have "better" hitboxes
@@Akakiryuushin that's not at all why. there's no rule saying that more weapons means less care is put into hitboxes. armor doesnt even contribute to hitbox anyways, player hitboxes are always the same size, unaffected by armor. the reason ds3 and ds1 have better hitboxes than ds2 is because more care was put into them. ds3 in particular is because of that, but also because it has smoother and more fluid animations, probably as a result of it being newer.
@@lexark uh never wore big armor so I didnt know that. But more weapons does mean less care unless you also had more time to work on them. What requires less work making accurate hitboxes on 30 weapons or 100?
@@Akakiryuushin that sort of thing only makes sense in theory. if the amount of weapons was the cause of the reduce hitbox quality, then the quality would drop off in the weapons they designed last, and theyd be great in the ones they designed first. of course, we wouldn't know the order in which they designed the weapons so we couldnt prove this, but ALL ds2 weapons are "consistently inconsistent." any individual weapon can be great sometimes, but also sometimes pretty shit.
there was no conscious decision made to half-ass the hitboxes as a result of there being a lot of weapons, because dev teams are divided up across the game, some people work on textures, some on models, some on hitboxes. they would've had the time, and they did have the time. they just did a terrible job, period.
If i'm remembering correctly, i looked into the issue with the hitboxes when the game was still in it's prime. The community came up with 2 possible answers: either the collisions are proximity based (they're close enough so a hit is registered), or the scripting decided whether the hit landed at the very beginning of most animations. The most notorious example is the mimic grab.
I still like to re-watch these. Mauler, you are a criminally underrated RUclipsr.
You should check out his brother, Mooler
@@john_squatson subbed already but good lookin out ;)
Good thing about packed, long videos is that you can rewatch so many times before they get boring.
@@xentiment6581 facts
@@john_squatson MooPer is better
Good job getting through the video, have a Titanite Slab.
And two more for reading this reply.
I'd rather get more fucking chunks, because DS2 doesn't provide any! I already have three slabs, GIVE ME FUCKING CHUNKS!
Nah you keep it, I've got loads. You want some?.
No thanks but can I have twinkling titanite?
@@TheStraightestWhitest those chunks are very hard to come by, the, I could only get enough of them through bonfire ascetic in black gulch
There's enough text in this comment section to put together a novel.
Fitting for a series that takes longer than cinematic trilogies to watch.
*Several Novels
rightfully so. IMO the worst video of Mauler. It seem he brought a lot of his own bias into this video
what sane person put words like IMO into their arguement?
I already work saturday
I finally played Scholar of the First Sin this year (I decided to go back and play through the whole series after finishing Elden Ring. I completed Scholar last week) and you are soooo spot on about all of this. Just the failing with the ADP system alone is enough to make the point this isn't a particularly good game, but then the wonky AI, the absolutely awful hitboxes (good luck hitting those rare lizards...) and just the sheer amount of overwhelming BS the game throws at you is icing on the proverbial crap cake.
I love these games (I've loved them since King's Field), but this is absolutely the worst game in the entire series. I'd replay all of these games...but not Dark Souls 2.
Great video.
35:45 around here, I know for a fact that the Dragonrider de-aggroed because they are all literally supposed to leave you alone the moment you step into that ring of light that Velstadt knelt it
classic it's not a bug it's a feature exuse from devs
@@helloScuffed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ whichever it is, it saved my life enough times for me not to care
I love DS2 with all my heart, but i agree with Mooler on almost every point he makes. Great work as always, thanks for the years of entertainment!
Yeah same. I do think it's the worst designed in the trilogy, but there are a lot of systems and ideas that I wished were carried over in fully working condition to the third game. Especially (viable) dual wielding and power stance.
I knew there was something wrong with the movement, but I never even considered Snap Points to be the problem. Thanks Mauler!
Also, really solid series. Will be watching for your content for sure.
Its been years since ive played DS2, one of the things i loved about this game more then the other 2 games was the way they handled dual wielding. Having a power stance system that let's you dual wield any weapon was very fun and i enjoyed it a lot
Powerstancing is probably DSII’s greatest legacy since both DSIII and Elden Ring used it.
@@Burusagi Not sure about Elden Ring, but Dark Souls 3 definitely did not have powerstancing. There's a couple weapons that are dual-weapons intrinsically, i.e. Gotthard Twin Swords, Brigand Twin Daggers, Farron Greatsword. When you two-hand these weapons they give you a dual-wielding moveset but there's no system where you equip weapons in both hands and you get a dual-wielding moveset
small detail: the enemies that attack the trees(dead giants) is because they used to fight giants before they became hollow.
OMG the movement control stuff i knew something fell crappy with the controls. i knew there was something that made it so hard but for a moment i thought that maybe it was me or something. thank you so much for that.
It was probably put in there so they could boast about the difficulty since the s are also tied to states so when the game came out players would die a lot since they would be dodging correctly but they’d still die because of this stupid movement bullshit
What the fuck how did you get here
@@tytsty5716 By "rolling correctly" you mean people just instinctively rolling into attacking frames because that's how it worked before?
@@D-Havoc yes since thats realistically the most instinctive way someone who played the game would react if they had experience from the last game
@@tytsty5716 Assuming a sequel game should have the exact same function mechanic as the predecessor with no changes. You don't even roll the same to dodge in DS3 as you did in DS1. At least, not without learning how much active frames are on an attack. The roll timings have ways differed. So, no. That's not a passing argument to make on its own. That seems to just be a failing on players' conditioning themselves off one game to play another game the same. This isn't a justification for the faulty movements of DS2 or tying s to a leveling stat itself. But to point out that you can't make the argument of "well that's how I did it in the previous game" as an excuse for doing what may have just been a flat out bad move at the time. Even when you take ADP out of the game, as what MauLer pointed out, the wonky hitboxes exist independently in DS2. Just rolling into a sword attack instinctively while not taking into account how long the attack frames are or when does your s start would get you killed regardless. What makes all this bad is the fact DS2 does not communicate this to the player at all as s and frames in general are "meta-knowledge".
To streamline my point, players have equally made their share of bad rolls too that no amount of ADP or proper hit detection would have fixed such as rolling into angular downward swings were always a gamble in learning if you timed it well or not. The Purser is a prime example of that. Most people roll into his sword before he's even finish initiating the swing for you to accurately tell were the sword is going. Therefore getting clipped if not flat out interrupted.
You show Jester Thomas as an example of bad backstabs even though the Jester Robes prevent backstabs.
Denovation also shows a handful of clips where they attempt a backstab while blocking which doesn’t work.
also
>standing behind the left shoulder of Vorgel
>"y no backstab? bad gaem"
another
>trying to backstab a MOVING Rampart Golem
>"y no backstab? bad gaem"
However, I believe that you CAN backstab while blocking, but only under specific circumstances - LimitBreakers made a video about it, check it out
Bence Gellért Bakos in ds2 you can backstab with the shield up, and he also showed clips with backstabs triggering when you're on the side or in front of enemies
There were also one or two examples where a player would start a backstab on one enemy, only to hit another as it got in the way, resulting in the "slap in the face" moments. Of course it wouldn't work. Maybe I'm biased, though, since I feel like I know the game enough to know when a backstab is "off" or not.
You are biased, or haven't played the game enough. I played the original through 4 times when it was first released and these backstab fails happened all the time, especially the "slap in the face" ones.
There are a few minor points of contention that don't diminish the overall points, but do render certain examples used inappropriate. The first is the FoFG mobs attacking trees. The trees are the giants they fought long ago, and their attacking them is completely intentional. Next, that hollow in Huntsman's Copse is meant to run from you and never attack. In the backstab section, Jester Thomas is wearing the Jester armor set, which prevents backstabs. As I said, this is pretty hyper specific context and doesn't affect the overall messages of the sections.
Just an FYI, since you didn't seem to mention it in the video for the greatsword the overhead swing is actually working as intended it swings in the directly that you are pressing the left stick in when you swing it. It's not a problem in those cases with the focus as much as it is with the game not communicating, for that specific weapon, that it reacts to your left stick's orientation. For the rest, the focus issues are completely valid as far as I have seen.
Question, I had noticed this "feature" when playing the game years ago, but I can't remember right now: was this a thing you could toggle off? If it was, then ok, it's a cool system to allow for precise aiming with slow weapons. If it wasn't, however, it's a glaring flaw. When I use focus, I want the attacks to respect my focus, not the direction I'm moving. If I still have to aim, what is focus for? And yes, I know focus works if you don't move the left stick while attacking, but it's still flawed, as circling and backpedaling are the two movement options focus is specifically good for, yet they would cause you to miss your attack.
@@nicosonico94 You can toggle this off in DS3 but not in DS2.
I understand they didn't wanted big slow weapons to just automatically track a target while swinging, but the problem is that controllers sucks at aiming, which is why we have target lock in the first place. It's too hard to move, aim and control the camera at the same time, unless maybe if you use an elite xbox controller with the buttons in the back of the controller.
@@patlefofort It is not that hard to move, aim, and control the camera. This is incredibly common with ultra greatsword use in pvp as the weapons are slow so people attack away from the center of the camera in hopes of predicting a roll in a specific direction making their roll timing bad. Not that complicated with a controller that lacks buttons on the back of it.
He also says lock on worked fine in the other games which is a blatant lie. The lock on system has been broken since Demon's souls and you have always had issues attacking out of a roll. It isn't DaS2 exclusive and it's one of the big complaints against the series stagnating. The combat speed increased but none of the flaws the combat has were addressed, not even fundamental ones like the lock on breaking or targeting the wrong enemies.
The greatsword is fucking amazing in 2, i'm honestly willing to justify that game simply because of how amazing it feels to sweep enemies with that massive Berserk sword. That, and there's just so much fucking weapons, shields, armor, rings, etc. It honestly feels like a collectathon sometimes, and i'm pretty okay with that.
*granted, its a subjective reason. If i were being more objective, i'd go on about how i think the amount of souls and health items the game gives you makes it a good entry point into the Souls series for beginners, but i'm just dicking around rn tbh.
Personal bookmarks:
30:27 The holy square of safety
41:44 Frank is like, "Oh no no no"
1:01:58 Thanks, Lock-on
1:03:13 Lock-on can get you killed
1:05:44 Backstabs don't work
1:09:11 Backstabs Shouldn't work there!
1:12:25 Smaller mistakes
1:14:14 Graphical messes
1:15:30 Ragdoll fisix
1:22:20 Time-Consuming annoyances
1:23:56 FromSoftware members not present in DS2
what a useless time stamp...
Fisix 😂
Physics dude
@@TommasoFirmini Pshh, you just need to brush up on your fonix.
i'll never forget how they put 20+ enemies right infront of the fogwall of a boss fight
41:30 I love that the ragdoll answers "no" with it's head to your question xD
LMAO didn't expect him to realize and zoom the ragdoll in, ROFL
This video is absolutely golden, I go to sleep to this.
I must imagine that the script of this video was several hundred pages long. This video was amazing. Thank you for working so hard on it.
Anybody else want to see more of the dude who was laughing at the Hollows running to and attacking the giant-tree? Seems like he'd be a lot of fun to watch.
This series has made me feel less bad about how I reacted to this game and the absolute disinterested exhaustion I had by the end.
I just finished getting the platinum trophy yesterday and I immediately deleted the game. I hate it so much but I really wanted to get all of the platinums for the souls games. Now I’m on ds3 and it’s soooo much better lol
I played Bloodborne a month ago and got really into it. Last week I finally got into, and beat, Dark Souls 1.
So I moved on to DS2 and... Honestly, I can't get past the starting areas. And the frustration I am feeling doesn't seem to be like it was with the previous games. I'm just annoyed. I don't want to go any farther.
@@BakaHoushi you might be burnt out something similar happened to me playing dark souls 3 the first time but ended up really appreciating that game. cant say the same for 2 though
@@BakaHoushi really just might be burnout like that other guy says
@@hollowulf6326 DS3 is garbage too
Also: Jester's Robes (what the pyro jester uses) removes the backstab window from you wearing it, same with the Turtle Knight Armor. Not very intuitively explained in the former case.
This has been my third watch through of this series and I'm happy to say I was never bored
Yeah, couldn't say the same about the game itself tho.
Love this vid, but i have some corrections to make. In forest of the fallen giants, the hollows attack the Giant Trees on purpose, since these are hollows of soldiers that fought on the Giant Invasion. The extremely quick hollow in Huntsmen Corpse is not a bug. It is just an unique enemy that runs from you and if you get to kill it you are rewarded with some interesting loot. Jester can't be backstabed because his breastplate nullifies critical hits, but backstabs are bad in this game anyhow haha. That's all my points i think, great vid.
The hollow attacking the trees mistake is pretty funny considering in his responses he accused the other dude for "not knowing the game" and here he is not knowing a fucking central point to the whole story (the war against the giants and how they became trees), lol.
@@rat9199 Not really, he isnt talking about the hollows that spawn in already close to the trees, he means a completely different one just fucking off mid fight
@@sw3654 that is clearly an intended interaction, happens every time and its designed to draw your attention to it
@@rat9199 I couldnt tell you if its intended since it has never happened to me or hasnt happened in some lets play series i have watched, i have seen it in videos, but i dont think its working correctly. It may be intended, but it seems kinda buggy
Hollows attacking giant trees isn't the issue, it's that the hollow soldiers who spawn next to the tree after the Pursuer bossfight will lock on to the tree in the courtyard (the one already being attacked by 2 other hollows) instead of the one he spawns right next to, and will proceed to make a beeline through half the stage to get there. This is because they spawn before their tree is loaded, but are programmed to lock-on to the closest tree and go attack it anyway.
The worst part is that casual players might not even know about it because half the time the hollows try to get down through the big hole where the Drangleic set is they will accidentally by flinging themselves into the ocean because of poor pathfinding.
It's a very minor issue, but people defending it with lore are completely missing the point of the criticism.
I was actually suprised at the first 6 minutes, but I have to admit it felt forced and was about to point it out. But then the real show began.
About the Human Effigies, there's a lot more on the "definitive" edition of the game (perhaps to push co-op?) when compared to Vanilla. I usually have 50 or so once I reach the end on SotFS, while on Vanilla (while only using a few) I only have 20 or so.
About the backstab at around 1:07:00, the NPC phantom is wearing an chest piece that prevents backstabs. Just felt like pointing that out.
Feel like dropping this on the Dark Souls 2 subreddit to get some attention going (maybe even r/gaming while we're at it), because I think this deserves it.
Someone beat me to it, but atleast the message is spread.
I fuckin dare you to post it on /r/darksouls2.
So many people there have similar blind adoration to Harris.
I may be blind, but the only thing I see *puts on sunglasses* are two terribly flawed games that people love for different reasons and can't help needing to justify their love of the flawed games because love is an irrational emotion and no one takes it seriously. So they'll fight till the end of the world trying to say which is better. Instead of admitting that the reason they love the games is because they're flawed.
But that's none of my business...
the first 6 minutes of the game made it sound like he has literally never played the game. his pros sound like marketing strategies. he is ignoring the actually good parts of the game even in that part of the review
hbomberguy is rarted tho lol