The nitpicking of sound effects had me laughing almost as hard as the part were he runs into a group of enemies without kiting them one by one followed by him complaining about ganking
That No-Man's Wharf footage is honestly hilarious. To just manage to run around and gather that many sailors to chase you is an achievement in an of itself, tbh
I actually tried that when i was trying to avoid attacking anyone (minimum souls run i think), and the varangians ruined it for me because those drunken sailors keep falling off the pier if more than one of them are crossing. Like its actually tricky to get that many to follow you and not drown.
>collects every enemy in lost bastille's hallway >deliberately breaks every jar to release prisoners >run away forward, collecting even more enemies "Game is ganky" I begin to believe that Mauler was paid to smear DS2.
@@adradox well when you think about it... youtubers get paid based on the performance of their videos, and the unfortunate general consensusis that ds2 is bad (it's not), soooo...
People like Mauler or a lot of DS1 bros forget that you restored weapon durability in DS1 through blacksmiths OR bonfires with the repair box item. Dark Souls 2 simply removed the middleman by having it restored automatically at bonfires.
@@solanumlycopersicum5594 Elden Ring did just that. But again, durability is just a Dark Souls 2 problem. Remember the unrepairable Crystal Infusion weapons of Dark Souls 1?
@@D-Havoc DS1 had massive amounts of experimentation. You see it in the weirder covenants and how they work exactly with their weird netcode, and the weapon stuff is another example. Both were stripped for Bloodborne, basically, and both returned dialed down in DS3.
@@abdalln8554He should quit yapping about video games and worry about his country becoming an alien infested hell hole. Soon he'll be living in No Mans Wharf. That'd be the sweetest instance of irony.
I honestly think it's because of his accent and the speed of which he speaks. You sort of just knod your head in agreement and if you aren't familiar with the game their gameplay seems fine. But when you mute the audio and watch the movements you question their decision making. I've never seen so many complaints levied at the beginning area of a video game. You don't have to wake all the enemies...
@@markmartin2819 But like... what does he get from this? Nah, its not. Mauler is just a dimwit, he doesnt know much about anything, but sure can talk a lot
MauLer talks about “measurable functionality” as if it’s an objective standard that exists outside of time, space, feelings and thoughts. It’s not, and it never will be because it *cannot* be. Video games, like all artistic mediums, are experienced subjectively. There is no way to experience or critique a game according to a standard that wasn’t formulated by opinions. MauLer is one of those insecure, disingenuous critics who cannot stand having a “wrong” opinion of a video game, so he uses the misbegotten strategy of calling his opinions “facts”. He’s an authority on video games (and movies/tv shows) after all. Big Ups Domo! I dig that you’re tackling the “objective” angle MauLer uses. This is fantastic work that addresses ideas not often talked about.
@larrywalker1371 Compelling comment. I dig what you’re saying here. “Any objective standard would have to be something that most of us can agree to.” I agree, but objectivity is not determined by consensus. It is either a truth or it’s not. And nothing in art is truth. There are no rules by which we create or experience art. I too dig music criticism (Robert Christgau, hell yeah). I see where you’re coming from with what you want criticism to be or to mean, but, really, it is a case of, “I like this because…” Criticism of art can never be anything else, at least when it comes to an objective standard, because there is no standard. I view criticism as a medium to enlighten aficionados/haters/whomever of different aspects/themes/motifs/etc. present in whatever art. It can be an exuberant celebration, or it can be a calamitous takedown. I go with the most creative writers who are also the most captivating thinkers. All things considered, criticism is just an extension of the art it is analyzing: Entertainment that can make you think.
@larrywalker1371”the critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. … Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.” Oscar Wilde. There really isn’t objectivity. It’s just comparing and contrasting what people at large refer to as good elements and bad elements of art, games in this case. Nothing is innate about a given element except when it is given a reference point, like a similar element in another game. A critic is just someone who articulates more than “I like/dislike this”, but ultimately, a person who says they like a game and doesn’t elaborate and a critic who says they like the same game and writes about it, are doing the same exact thing. You’re right about it being wild for someone to try and compare their thoughts to an objective standard.
@larrywalker1371 I think this is kind of a solved issue tbh. There doesn't need to really be an "objective" standard that games need measured to, as much as there needs to be a consistent and agreed upon standard. Think of it like this - I am, in this hypothetical, a book critic. I believe that in order to have a good book, characters need to be faced with a core conflict that they overcome. This is a standard I've set - one that is ultimately subjective, but agreed upon enough that it still holds value. Further, it's also a standard that can be more or less objectively applied. Does this story have a conflict that the characters overcome is in most cases a straightforwards yes/no. Thus, even though there isn't such a thing as objective artistic quality, I can absolutely set out a series of standards and in many cases test to see if something objectively meets them or not. I mean, think of something as basic as a game being broken or not. There are broken games that people think are good despite being broken, broken games that are intentionally broken, broken games that people value because of their broken features. You can absolutely say objectively "The developers did not intend for this," but weather or not that's a bad thing is down to a lot of other context, and the player in question. The benefit of doing any sort of criticism this way is that it gives you an easy and straightforwards way to talk about more subjective things, or things others might disagree with you on. Rather than saying "enemy placement is objectively bad" and just trying to argue that for example, one could say (in more quality writing likely) "The game features areas full of enemies that can swarm the player if they aren't careful, which I see as a bad thing because of my expectation of souls games allowing players to run through after initial explorations." This way, not only are you giving your framework of judgement and solid reasoning, you're also pushed into more neutrally portraying game qualities that another person (one who prefers planning, environmental gameplay or strategizing) might actually see as a good thing. You know, rather than saying "this pie tastes like garbage," you can say "this pie is raspberry flavor which I dislike" allowing a raspberry fiend to know just where to look. The whole world could hate raspberry and I still think this would be a better system tbh In short, I really don't think you need an objective standard to measure up to, you just need a well thought out consistent standard that most people find agreeable.
Its kind of a fools errand to really try and apply objectivity to games, and other artwork ofc. For all the qualitative aspects what can we do? User reviews? That's just an aggregation of subjective views. And it assumes everyone is working in good faith. One of the only quantitative things i can think if is revenue, and that leads to a hell dimension where Genshin Impact is "objectively" better than Elden Ring and i don't want to live in that world lol.
That footage at 21:45 is so funny when you slow it down. He's like, "STOP SPAMMING ME" and the footage he shows as evidence is his buddy running ALL OVER the place to get a few items and waking up EVERY dude in the area.
@@zedoctor3724 The point isn't that the game is too hard, it's that fighting 14 of the same guy in one room is boring and lazy. That specific room is just a good visual example of dark souls 2's general design philosophy.
@@saysalla He directly relays that he thinks these encounters are unfair because of what he says at 22:45 and even before that at 19:43, which makes sense in his case if you look at the way him and his buddy play in the footage lol. He says shit at 22:45 like, "THE GAME FORCES YOU INTO SITUATIONS TO FIGHT A HUNDRED DUDES" and he rolls footage of himself sprinting around and alerting enemies to put himself in that situation. And it's even more perplexing because the game SETS YOU UP by putting a sleeping enemy right before that area. By waking that dude up, this SHOULD give you a reminder in the next area of "oh, there's a bunch of sleeping dudes just like the one dude I woke up before I got here. maybe I can be careful and wake them up individually by moving carefully or by using a ranged projectile using whatever I have. or maybe I can wake up a bunch of them and funnel them down the ladder." But nah. He chose to approach these situations with little caution, got punished, and cried foul.
I’m dying at the nitpick of the sound design for combustion 😂 pretty much encapsulates most of the dude’s complaints of DS2. “X thing functions just like in the other games, but when I loaded *this* game it said ‘Dark Souls 2’ so it is actually broken”
Even better was the complaint about connection loss. "X thing functions much better than in the other games, but it's Dark Souls 2 so it's actually broken"
Personally, I count Iron keep as the “noob filter” of ds2. Despite the fact that the area is probably the best in the base game since it rewards you for paying attention to the games style of play - that I call the three Ps (Perception: noticing dynamic opportunities, Patience: knowing to or not to rush, and Position: look where you(r) are/going). Plus the enemies in the area drop 400-1k+ souls per kill, which depending on how far you are in game isn’t a amount to scoff at. It is the go to fight club area for a reason. Simply put, if you complain about Iron keep than you failed the exam that ds2 gave you. Making it clear you don’t know how to play properly. Oh and to add to what you said - ds2 max hp is about double that of ds3 (~3,800 to ~1,900), the bar is just visibly smaller. And I personally don’t know any ds2 “vet” who uses the binding ring past early game when you have no other rings to put on. Since it’s ability is quickly outshined due to the abundance of humanities you can acquire + other rings simply being better.
OMG I just realized that it probably is the fight club spot because of the fact that if you beat it it means you’re actually good (the dragon covenant doesn’t hurt)
Funnily enough, DS2 was my second Souls game after DS3 in like 2017-2019. I ended up rage quitting on Iron Keep… 1 year later two of my friends were doing a coop run through DS2 and asked if I would join. It was some of the best multiplayer I had played right up there with DS3. Wouldn’t you know it 2 weeks ago I played DS1 for the first time and decided to replay the other two. I haven’t gotten to DS3 yet because I started working on 100%ing DS2 while having a blast! I even first tried Iron Keep with no sweat due to it being so ingrained in my mind of how to deal with the area. This might be a hot take, but I really like DS2 :)
@@vanilla.icescream and to add to this, not for any of the reasons stated in the OP post. It was chosen because it was literally a bridge with little to no enemies you could fight on lmao. OP also seems to forget the sheer amount of enemies that are placed awkwardly outside of the players viewpoint with greatbows within the area (same as Amana, some will fire before they are even within draw distance to the player) If kiting each enemy with a bow shot back to the starting door of the area instead of interacting with the area is the intended method of play for Iron Keep, then DS2 failed the exam of what makes an area engaging at all. The enemies are simple, to put it mildly. They are just positioned and numbered to try and make them seem competent when they have no poise and die in three hits. There is a grand total of 3 different enemy varieties on the whole stages main path and excluding the turtle shell knights, are littered with abandon throughout the area. I can't even say this is a DS2 fault because the problem was introduced with SOTFS, which did fix one major problem with the area in the fact that the infusion stone was just off a random jump instead of being where it is now in a much earlier path allowing experimentation with infusion much sooner than vanilla.
Who walks into an area, get's attacked, and then goes FURTHER into the area!? You retreat, you roll back, you go into the area you know, that you probably JUST cleared! This is painful to watch really.
The whole discussion of Dark souls 2 having bad enemy placement in comparison to Dark souls 1 gets IMMEDIATLEY thrown out the window if you bring up anywhere with bone wheels, Tomb of the Giants, and Dragon-ass Lost Izaleth. The only place I remember that was super annoying at worst was the Shrine of Amana, but no one ever decides to try and use cover when dealing with the projectiles lol.
Anyone who throws around that shitty take is either just parroting it from someone else blindly, or just got lazy and tried to skip mobs and got punished.
LoL, really? The Bonewheels in the Catacombs do not aggro on you all at once, unlike all the aggro-linked ganks in DS2. And the Bounding Demons in Lost Izalith had their aggro-range greatly reduced in one of the first patches way back in 2012, so you are parroting a complaint that has been out-of-date for over a decade. Meanwhile, the gankery in DS2 was made worse by SotFS edition which added more enemies where there had previously been less. Hey, tell my why the Blue Cathedral needs a fire-spewing wyvern right in front of it when there was none in vanilla? Tell me how that improves gameplay.
@@shiroamakusa8075if you look through my Vanilla vs Scholar videos you will see that Scholar reduced the number of ganks and made several runbacks easier. I also don't understand the complaints about Heide's Tower. The main path is still the same and after defeating the Dragonrider the area turns into a mid-game area. It's now a lot more interesting than the empty feeling the optional half had in Vanilla.
I remember listening to his series and thinking often: "that doesn't sound right" I ended up playing the game again afterwards and i came back with completely different criticisms
Welp respect to your opinions but ive played the game and thought most if not all his criticism was valid lol you can like the game and admit its not good bro
It's really funny when the fans coming in and spout this nonsense to defend the videos. I really don't like DSII I think it's really bad but not for the reasons he provides.
@@akashthadani22 the big lines are: I think the game is tedious more than anything else. Theres of course many things sprinkled around. I tried my first power stance run recently. The "recovery" animation between each strikes was so long it completely ruined its potential for me. The enemies are not especially deadly except for a few, and they just take too long to kill. The bosses are the same issue. Note that I never finished the DLCs, but from my experience they were just not really fun and didn't even have memorable music. I can't really comment on my impression of the areas. It was my first dark souls, so they're all pretty well etched in my mind. Yet, I don't think any are as striking as some that were in the original
@@Freeseraphim There is no world where enemies in ds2 take "too long to kill", especially not in relation to other games in the series and genre. It sounds like you used large, slow powerstance weapons and based your opinions of the entire system off that.
Doing god's work. I actually never watched Maulers "critique" because I ain't watching a 12 hour display of crying about how "it's the game's fault actually". Doing this in parts is perfect
the full 360 degree movement plane they had in ds1 came back in ds3 and its actually kinda annoying how it never seems like you can run in a perfectly straight line.
So basically sweaty wannabe hardcore gamers tried to look more sophisticated than they were by dumping ds2 for years while completely ignoring ds1's faults.
"yeah i play souls games i'm super hardcore, they're so difficult but i beat them" ds2: "wtf this game is too hard it's the game's fault not mine" also lmao at mauler complaining about health lowering after deaths. nobody tell him about demon's souls.
@@AtreyusNinjaand in Demon Souls you lose 50% after one death, there's no bonfires either. One at the start and one at the end of a level. Limited healing, barely get any humanity through playing the game normally. DeS has its cheese, it isn't that hard if you play smart. But compared to DS3 it is very much more unforgiving.
Whoever this guy is, I hate him. I never consciously made the connection between the themes of Drangleic's mind eating nature and the way levels are put together. Now that you brought it up, I see it clear as day. The way from Earthen Peak to Iron Keep is the greatest example. Standing outside as soon as you leave the Copse, you see the blasted off top, jutting out prominently. After the boss fight, if I had been paying more attention, Id have gone "wtf? Why is there an elevator???". The passage narrowing before spitting you out reminds me of what it's like to lose conciousness, your vision narrowing to a point, just like the cramped hallway, only for you to come back in an entirely new place (the ER), just like walking out and seeing the lava lake and scorched skies. This is no different than Demons' Souls' or Elden Ring's opening which has your character just walk through a foggy void to enter their respective realms cut off from the outside world.
I don't say ds2 is perfect, but dear God, how many people will take any complaint for granted just because it's ds2, and if the same thing happened in ds1 it's just a funny moment. Keep up your great work Domo, and I hope you will get more famous than ds2 haters are, because you are clearly putting more effort than them🖤
Gawd, that measurable functionality comment is one of the most obnoxious and smug things I've heard uttered in a long time. Makes my skin crawl. He posted that video publicly? And people watched it...
He clearly has no idea how the vast majority of mechanics he complains about work nor that the vast majority of issues he claims to be unique to DS2 work the same in every Souls game, but he is still narcissistic enough to think that he's an expert on Souls games and that his personal opinions are objective facts.
It is weirdly self-sabotaging for DS fans to convince themselves that using fewer tactics means they are a better Souls player. The whole “no magic, no ranged, no items, no shield” that is possible in DS1 and almost encouraged in DS3 makes players oblivious to many intended solutions.
Well, more than that, those other strategies aren't even necessary in DS2. I've played through the game sl1 melee only and never felt that I needed any of those things. You can do just fine without it People really overblow how "hard" it is to play melee only without a shield, it's not that much harder if you're smart about it
@larrywalker1371 imagine disliking one different game for not following the design principles of another different game, especially a game that came AFTER ds2 and was in production along side it.
@@frazfrazfrazfraz those things aren’t necessary in other DS games, either. The problem is when it assumed to be the default first time experience. It isn’t that these challenges are “the wrong way to play”, either. It is that assuming these limits show skill is an entitlement to no game after the first having a different learning curve or any new complications.
@larrywalker1371Oh it's even worse than that. Hbomberguy also made the claim that not using shields and being more aggressive like Bloodborne is "objectively more fun". The Bloodborne video had influence on why Mauler responded to him, although the response was specifically for the DS2 video. Hbomb of course backpeddled on that statement in his DS2 video because of backlash.
Sections in DS1 that MauLer is supposed to hate by his own logic and his own way of playing: Firelink Shrine skeletons, all of Catacombs, Large Divine Ember room, Pinwheels area before Nito, Hollow Warriors and Soldier before Undead Burg bonfire, Hollow Soldiers with the Armored Tusk, the Mystery Key room, the Hollows before the Bell Gargoyles, almost everywhere where Demonic Foliages are at, the Frog-Ray ambush, Torch Hollows in Lower Undead Burg, Dogs too, Rats are spammed a lot in the Depths but some packs actively stay away so yeah, Basilisk pack, Blighttown is extremely hard to not trigger multiple enemies due to its structure, the swamp area will more than likely have some bugs fly at you while you're busy fighting, Basilisks in Great Hollow, Burrowing Worms guarding an Ember in Demon Ruins, infamous Anor Londo Archers + Demon Bats combo, Crystal Hollows are activated separately but are rather relentless, the room below Ingward which i like to dub The Haunted House, an area by the first lift also triggers 3-4 ghosts, a Scarecrow tries to lure you into spam but at least it's predictable, before the thin bridge in Oolacile Township, the big room right after, the horde of Humanity Phantoms in Chasm of the Abyss.
But you see, DS1 lazily putting 5 Taurus Demons in an open space with lava is a masterful design choice, unlike DS2, which places around weak enemies who don't wake up until you go near them that is just lazy B team design
Also DS1 not having had enough time to finish the game and just spamming hordes of Taurus Demons, Capra Demons and Dragon Legs in the Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith is something we can look past. Two areas that were rushed with a recycled boss and the worst boss in the series are acceptable. But DS2 not having had enough time to implement a longer tunnel after Mytha's boss fight is inexcusable because the tunnel up to Iron Keep is a bad transition, even though most people do not even notice it. This small non-issue obviously much worse than several unfinished areas in DS1.
@DarkSouls2_Enjoyer it's not even that immersion breaking, behind the windmill is a rock face, you also don't go up the windmill but go through it from which you get to the elevator. The only reason it "feels" like the transition doesn't make sense is because the devs didn't want to have it take an hour of elevator riding to reach iron keep for "realism"
If there's anyone here genuinely thinking about starting back up a DS2 save to give it another chance, I'm going to try to offer some genuine good advice for a new playthrough DS2 is largely defined by disparity and variety. (Both in gameplay and story, which I find funny) DS1 and DS3 rely a lot more on the player settling into a niche of weapons or builds and allowing you upgrades for that path along the way. DS2 will constantly be handing you weapons that all sorts of different builds can use, with far more apparent unique attributes or contextual uses. You won't be able to use anything, but you'll find a staggering amount of variety that remains perfectly viable within your selected build/archetype. (Caster, Shield/Sword, Colossal Weapons, ect) You can absolutely beat the game sword and boarding it, but being open to occasionally using bows, spells, consumables or different weapons will make your journey so much more engaging and exciting. Dying to the same area isn't an invitation for you to just learn it now - you can do that of course, but experiment, look around, take a bit of time to try something new to save so much time on follow up attempts. It'll be worth it, I promise. (Just as an example of what I'm talking about, my first DS2 playthrough had me bouncing between hexer, pyromancer and massive weapon powerfister. Or as a hypothetical, if you're going straight sword/shield you can still mix it up by equipping the puzzling stone sword which doubles as a whip, as well as the spirit tree shield for spell parry. You'll have the resources, and there will be times that a big sword or a bit of range will make the area so much easier. Being open to trying something new will genuinely make your playthrough easier, I promise you.) Also, just general advice - try to get your "agility" stat to either 99 or 105 as early as possible. You don't need it, but it'll make the game more friendly to new players, and it should only take the first boss or two to get enough souls to reach that. If you're a melee build, level ADP. If you're more of a caster, you'll get some agility from attunement, so you can split your points between that and ADP. Good luck!
Agree with everything except pumping ADP early. The early game of DaS2 is very friendly to avoiding damage via strafing, positioning, and evasive rolling (i.e. to move yourself out of harms way) so having i-frames out the ass is very much overkill, and that's on top of the fact that you're impeding your learning experience with a crutch AND reducing the amount of spells, armor, and weapons you can use. ADP is a very low priority stat unless you've been conditioned into linear "press B to win" problem solving from Dark Souls 3, or something.
"DS2 is largely defined by disparity and variety." Thats one of the main reasons I love it (both mechanically and in its narrative), and just a perfect way to put it.
@@roguetwice469 I see your point but given that this was my attempt at giving some “new playthrough basics” I do think it’s fair to give out newbie advice for newbie players who are probably used to the other games.
Dark souls 2 is basically what happens when you have a cool, amazing, talented child but it’s the forgotten unloved middle child and not the younger child like the parents want. So they try to find excuses for why the middle child is bad whilst try to make the youngest look more amazing when he’s good and talented in its own way
@IvyDoll-jf3gm Ds3s biggest problem on repeats is that sprinting through areas is too easy, I guess many players run through a difficult area they were frustrated with and then feel like they've finally nailed it, while in ds2 the way to deal with a difficult area is to take it slower. If you kill enemies as they attack you in iron keep and lure them backwards to areas you've cleared out, it's so easy that you can do it without dying with no trouble
The no mans warf clip of all those enemies floored me he had to run past so many guys and guys in houses just to get to that starting area and is surprised he dragged all those guys with him
I'm going through this playlist, and then most likely the rest of your videos You've done a phenomenal job disputing just about everything in those 10 hour "critiques" My only actual complain about Ds2 was the movement I don't think its bad cuz different I simply think it sucks Personally, i thought the gameplay of these games left a lot to be desired It was the lore and world that always made me say "give it another chance" I gave Ds2 another chance and dropped it Mostly because i really do think it feels awful And I'm not some souls fanboy what so ever If anything, i can name more that i dislike than i like about the gameplay aspect of these games But you've convinced me to try once more Luckily, there's a mod that gives you circular movement, so i plan on going back and giving this game a "fair" shot (i just cant do the movement being so stiff yet so touchy)
@@sophieprime4669 That’s alright with me, I don’t really watch his videos anyway. I have seen some of his Elden Ring clips and he acts like a moron lol
Asmongold is perfect example of using souls games for views. Dude is hilariously bad at these games and still hasn't learned anything from playing them
You're doing a great job domo, in a month or two there will be a lot of video essays and posts on reddit called "Dark Souls II is better than you think" or "Dark Souls II is a hidden gem"
DS2 has an hidden gameplay, cancels, jumped attacks tracking, even backstep dodges are not enough used by players as intended. Proof : ruclips.net/video/i4U_Q-buu2A/видео.htmlsi=tnmYAYhARGmOHF0I 🙃
@@IvyDoll-jf3gmI mean Backstep dodges work as intended, but peeps don’t use them and continue to dodge with roll even if it’s slow, the don’t have the intended DkS2 experience IMO. ruclips.net/video/i4U_Q-buu2A/видео.htmlsi=w-nnOPLvu7knEvQU
19:04 Holy shit you just blew my mind, that's really damn clever level design! I always wondered why the door was there and never even connected the dots with the ledge... I was already in the camp of DS2 being a hidden gem (I'd even argue better than DS1 but I don't want to start ww3 in the comment section) and these videos have helped affirm that, as well as recognize the actual downfalls of the game. Keep up the good work, you're one in a million here.
I liked the durability mechanic. In the early game my terrible weapon tends to break since it does no damage and I have to hit enemies 4 or 5 times to kill them, so I only get through 10 or 20 enemies before it breaks, then I'm forced to use some other weapon I picked up off a corpse until I can fix my other weapon. I liked it because it made me use other weapons I wasn't used to, and provided a nice challenge, and I starting liking other weapons that I initially disregarded, but I can see how some people might dislike this since "I just wanna use my straight sword, I don't like the other weapons, just let me use my straight sword like in DS1, stop breaking my straight sword." Early game and DLCs tend to be the most durability heavy areas, and by the time you're at a DLC you should have multiple weapons maxed out, so it gives you an excuse to use all of them. I actually enjoyed how the PC port of DS2 made durability degrade twice as fast, but I get how some people dislike it. Seeing the response towards durability in Zelda, for example, you find a cool weapon, try it on 3 dudes, and then it breaks. Kinda sucks in that regard, but at least in DS2 you can just rest, or use repair powder, or spend a few souls at a blacksmith. Actually, I invested in magic solely so I could use the repair spell, since repair powder costed money and I had to go back to buy some every now and then, whereas the repair spell is just always there. Even using bracing knuckle +2 I still have to use repair every once in a while. And for my no-death no-bonfire ng+ run it got even harder, since I really had to pay attention to durability or else I might lose an important weapon or ring in the middle of a fight.
Honestly I liked it as well! Early game doing a "deprived" character (idk what it's called off the top of my head for ds2) I played through the game and so much of the opening hours was just using every weapon I picked up, really being able to see the difference in movesets and damage right off the bat instead of going out of my way to experiment with potentially inferior options. Even by the time I got to a late game build, durability was still something worth building around as I was going with the old smeter-demon powerstance route. It's one of those mechanics that can feel a bit annoying, but adds enough to big sections of the game that I think it's worth it.
I just finished Scholar for the first time yesterday, having not played since my Xbox 360 died back in the day, and I have to say... The WHOLE time, I kept wondering where the "bad game" that I had heard so much about was. There really aren't that many situations where the game puts you in a seemingly impossible situation against whole armies of enemies, everything can be dealt with if you're methodical and don't rush in. The game certainly encourages caution and actually keeping an eye out for potential trouble. By endgame I was going with 23 vigor, and even then, I didn't find things to be too much of an issue even without Ring of Binding, Sinh went down when my health was down to 65% or so because I didn't want to spend a human effigy until I hit 50% hp. Besides, the game is already pretty generous with health granting you at least 1 bonus point with each level even in unrelated stats as it is. And guess what? I didn't even have human effigy issues. The only time I went under 10 during the endgame was when I was getting impatient trying to get Benhart's quest done with bonfire ascetics and I kept having to use them to summon him because I died due to mistakes that I made BECAUSE I was being impatient, that was entirely on me. I died to Prowling Magus and Congregation once because of that rush to get it done, that should say everything. But again. Entirely on me, and I was consuming them specifically to finish sidequests.
Fun fact! Dark Souls 3 calculates fall damage as if you are always Embered. If a fall would take away 99% of your HP, it will kill you if you're not Embered, but will not kill you if you are Embered. At least in the regard of fall damage, Embers act in the way of restoring your Max HP from 70% to 100%, rather than boosting your Max HP from 100% to 130%.
Thank you for your videos. Dark Souls 2 has always been my favorite. Seeing Ds2 in a new light now. Yea some fights may be gank, but as you point out, there is strategy to every one. Ds2 GENUINELY made you think about the map your going in and way to circumnavigate, wether it be via torches lighting up the map makinfmg certain enemies cower, or explosions that bkew open walls for shortcuts. THAT is whats missing from modren souls, especially Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring. My main problem in souls was that i want to rush to the boss and level as quickly as humanly possible, which then in turn leads to the classic dark soul rage. Remembered this isnt made by Miyazaki so this self harmjng formula just doesnt work in this game. Replaying ds2 after watching and analyzing your criticisms, these videos brings a newfound joy on an already awesome game. These videos point out bothe the pros AND the cons in a light ive never seen. Actual demonstrations and repeat examples comparative to the others in series. Not just "ds2 bad, therefore ds2 bad" type arguments that been around for years. Thank you for that. Realizing now that Dark Souls 2 looks and plays like a classic RPG, much like the classic Zeldas, rather than your typical "soulsbourne" formula. I think in the coming years people will slowly realize this gem.
36:40 The most damage done in these clips were to his own arguments. I haven't played much of ds2, so I have no dog in this fight, but he's complaining about being swarmed while showing himself getting enemies stuck in a doorway for long enough for him to both heal and use a spell.
27:04 Dude, he didn’t even need to fight enemies in Shrine of Amana: he just needed to at least *try* to avoid the oncoming projectiles. The actual amount of copium one needs to be huffing to think an encounter is solely luck based when they just avoid any semblance of strategy is insane.
24:40 please please please address the internet connection comment!!! In DS2, if you disconnect, you get a pop up that tells you and pressing the relevant button removes it. can be a bit annoying in the middle of combat, but it's just one button press. What mauler is disingenuously and abhorrently failing to mention though... In Demon's souls, Dark souls 1, Bloodborne, Dark souls 3 and Elden Ring, if you get disconnected for the internet, you will get booted back to the main menu outright. not a massive issue in general play, since it saves your position, and in those games, it even resets enemy positions so that feature could actually save your life if you decided to get yourself into a MauLer type gank. But if you're fighting a boss. In DS2, if you're fighting a boss and lose connection, clear the pop up and keep fighting. In the other games though, the other games... If you lose connection during a boss fight, you will be booted back to the menu. when you load back in, your estus will be at the same number as when you disconnected, (This is especially egregious in demon's souls and BB since healing items are a finite resource in those games, as well as bullets being finite in BB and mana spice being finite in Demon's) Your health will be where it was, your spell uses/FP/Mana will be where it was when you disconnected, any consumables you used with be permanently lost and so, so many other things. And to make it even worse, You will be outside the boss fog and the boss will be at full HP. Disconnecting during a boss in Not DS2 is like dying. you've lost any finite items you used permanently, such as knives, arrows, bombs, herbs, Etc. And then you're forced to choose: Run back to the bonfire and reset your character's state or try the boss again with reduces resources. Personally, it's happened many, many times where, in my genuinely extensive soulsborne playtime (600-2200 hours PER game), I've been forced to restart an entire boss because my internet crapped out for 2 seconds. Except for in DS2 where i've died may 1 or 2 times total because of that pop up, which is essentially the same thing as being booted out, when in a boss fight
About human effigies, when I was playing DS2 I regularly used them when my health fell to -20/-25%, also used bunch of them trying to complete dark chasm and kill dark lurker and still ended up with around 40 or 30 at the end of the game, meanwhile in DS3 I've used ember sparingly (mostly on bosses second phase and when I've run out of estus and didn't wanted to go back) and had less than 20 by the time I've fought Gael. Not saying that it's a bad thing in DS3 that there's less of embers since it's a lot stronger (fully heals you) and the game's balanced mostly around being unembered. But people overestimate how much DS2 is punishing death.
@renatoramos8834 after demon of song, effigies are no longer an issue as you can pray at the fire and restore humanity for free unlimited amount of times if you have no effigies left.
@@renatoramos8834 It's not limited. You can easily farm it in infinite amounts in many locations. Also you can just help someone to defeat a boss and instantly regain your human form. If your skill issue is too high for even those 2 variants, you can regain your human form in the Rise of the Dead for free at any time (it works if you have 0 effigies in your inventory). Cope.
How a thinker would handle Shrine of Amana: "Okay, there's lots of Soul Arrows being shot at me. If i replace my fashion souls with these high Magic resistance armor pieces, i can tank lots of hits before needing to heal!" How MauLer handles SoA: *walks, aggros, doesn't fight, walks, aggros, doesn't fight, walks, aggros, doesn't fight, gets staggered, gets hit, gets hit, gets hit, dies* "DS2 bad"
Or maybe dont spam multiple mages that can shoot you across the map while having enmies that can see you across the map and come to melee you while your slow in the water shrine of amana is bad like blighttown was bad stop excusing bad game design
I didn't even need to change my equipment in my recent replay. The area provides plenty of cover, and you don't even need to be sprinting or rolling to dodge most of the attacks, running slightly diagonally alone can make a dodge easy, and the projectiles are surprisingly slow. My main ranged option was pyromancy, and because of the water it was not very viable here, but getting close to them wasn't a major problem. So long as you don't just run straight up towards them you're honestly fine, I died more times to falling into bottomless pits of water trying to dodge the Archdrake Pilgrims because I forgot where my footing was.
@@coolguychapman6685 Holy cope, Blighttown is a god tier zone and so is Shrine of Amana. I cleared both without using any ranged and enjoyed every second of it. "Bad game design" is codeword for "please put bright yellow paint on the pillars and tutorial message popups on how to line of sight spells".
Craziest thing ever about souls players is if something doesn’t work they keep brute forcing their way instead of just changing how they play. It truly baffles me that people do this and then complain the game is bad because it doesn’t let them play only one way optimally.
Mauler's channel had a couple thousand subs when he published his 11 hour response to Hbomberguy's video, and exploded shortly after that. Might the same thing happen with this channel? Interesting watch.
He's been making response to mauler for over a year now, and there is absolutely no increase in this guy's sub count. That is never going to happen because dark souls 2 is a very bad game and almost no one in the souls community agrees ds2 is secretly good, so this channel will never grow.
I know someone personally who actually played like that. They told me that they looked up on the wiki on how to get the sunset staff, claimed that they were trying to get it and never bothered to level faith in order to get it. I also found them grinding souls in Iron Keep so they could get more damage out of the katana they had. Despite having more DEX than INT, they kept using sorcery to kill the knights until I mentioned that using the katana could do more damage. Once they beat the game, beating Nashandra on the first try, they complained that they "felt underleveld". After beating the game there main complaint was that "Nothing I tried to do worked" and thought it was the games fault the they constantly made choices that weren't just bad but just plain counterintuitive, constantly.
@@nameofhearo1370 I think the Soulsborne fandom is the only fandom that I have ever seen doing these things to itself constantly lol. It just doesn’t make any sense why they keep being stubborn about not using certain items or weapons
@@RavenGamingOverLordit's not the only one, but it's pretty pronounced with Souls games. Sometimes it's just people being noobs and not understanding. But very often you have players that use self restrictions as a cope. It's easier to claim a game is unbalanced or broken than to admit that it's your own fault for not engaging with certain mechanics or trying different tactics.
@@ReelBigFan Yeah I see ton of players act like it’s the game fault and not their own fault for not using the crafting system in Elden Ring or magic. I think I have done it too many times in fighting games where I blame the internet connection for not working properly instead of putting the blame on my skills
i love when people complain about Lifegems and how 99 lifegems make the game too easy. meanwhile humanity in ds1. id argue it has around the same animation lenght. but unlike lifegems slowly healing over time, humanity is full and instant
@@YEY0806Actually it's even MORE. You get 20 estus total. I love ds1, it's my favorite one, but people really blow the idea of limited healing out of the water. There's plenty of healing. I feel like a lot of people start with ds1, play through like the first 30% of the game and then just blackout and forget the rest of the game. Sure, the first 30% is super good. So is the rest of the game. But it leaves a lasting impression so that's all they remember. Teaching them and having that eurika moment is what you remember, so they hold the first areas of the game in extreme high regard. They just casually forget how the rest of the game played. I personally think the "2nd half downfall" is way way blown out of proportion. I think it's fine, really. It's just the first areas are so well designed the other areas don't feel as polished. DS3 easily is the most rushed, unfair, and buggy one. I still enjoy it, but man people really really overlook the problems with that game.
@@jokemon9547 im pretty sure his exact quote was "you can use them for healing but there so rare, unless your some souls veteran who knows the games in and out your not going to use them that way" but nice try lol. This is what i find hilarious about having watched both videos, is seeing peopls blatently misrepresent either side tbh, allthough mauler is objectivly wrong about alot of things.
@@ZombieKitty321 He stated "Because it burns such a rare resource, I wouldn't regard it as healing, unless you are one of those good at Dark Souls people I've been hearing so much about". Humanities aren't a finite resource or a one off extremely rare item that can never be regained and apparently if you're not a "souls veteran", humanities as healing are off limits. The main point is he doesn't consider them as healing based on a not-so solid reasoning.
About my comment on the hollowing mechanic, I found the ring of binding. When I went through the area at first, I was scared of the Heide Knight and didn’t want to aggro it. I called the game bad because of the natural consequences of my cowardice and I apologize for doing that. And yeah, ds2 is my favorite game of all time now lol.
I absolutely lost it when you showcased a literal audio wave of the different explosion sound effects. It's not even incompetence on the Mauler's part at this point, it's just pure embarrassment. But who am I to talk, I wouldn't know an "objective fact" if it hit me in the face
You can see that sconce at 40:40 But based on how dark most of his No Man's Wharf and the Gutter footage looks I guess he never really utilized this basic gameplay mechanic
12:20 Bro.... Mauler just flat out lied and misrepresented the looping of a soundtrack. This is hilarious. One of the reasons why I detest the super long form video essays is because the author tends to obsess over minor details which in the case of Mauler leads to misrepresentation of core mechanics.
I hate how people that suck at video games are framing these souls discussions. When I first played Dark Souls 1 and got to the hollow gank at the bell tower my reaction was "wow, this is tricky" and not "OMG ITS SO BAD", but because Dark Souls 2 haters do the latter with Dark Souls 2 we regretfully have to point out Dark Souls 1 also does these things... but it's not bad in either game? These noobs have everyone convinced any form of adversity they face is a game design flaw.
Someone else said it well: the discourse around DS2 allows streamers to get away with poor gameplay If they just ran into a group of enemies in DS1 they would get told to get good. But if they do it in DS2 they can just complain how unfair that game is and no one will call them out for being bad. If they roll too early and get hit they can just blame the hitboxes for being broken. And that then causes a feedback loop where more and more people get convinced that the game is bad instead of paying attention to the fact that the critics are just blaming the game for their own mistakes, which would not work if people applied the same standards they have for the other games.
I like how ds 2 is my first souls game ever and it's my favorite so far. I still replay it with different strategy every time like I killed the last giant before the giant lord like I literally defeated the first boss in the end game I still like how open ds2 is and I got disappointed when they made ds3 more linear then it should be. And still till this day from 2019 I still discovering something new in a while in ds2.
Speaking of rings, what are all of ya reading this default rings? Mine are (sorry for not knowing the names) -Stamina Ring (not going to try to spell it) -Ring Of Blades -Bracing Knuckle -Whatever I need for my build (usually extra xp until I'm mostly set in stats)
Mine usually were Damage, Stone and Stamina. Dragon Ring made me sloppy most of the time, but made Twinblades and other stamina-focused weapons far better. I was the Twinblade God. As in Base Twinblade. I can guarantee there was no one better with it. Nobody ever bothered to use the poor thing. It has such low stamina consumption that allowed far too many mix-ups and combos that last far too long for their own good. I thought the only hurdle was parry fishers, but once I learned proper dead-angling and how to work around it they were easy as hell to beat. Then one of them went nuts and started to wear full havels and ring of giants with the Grand Lance. Then with that, there came to be the godforsaken duo of the Twinblade and the Offhand Grand Lance. True Horror to everybody else.
Flynns, one of clutch rings(mostly lightning), ring of blades+1 , old leo if my weapon does thrust if not cholarnty ring swappable with RTSR or silver serpent ring depending on the situation
Flynns, one of clutch rings(mostly lightning), ring of blades+1 , old leo if my weapon does thrust if not cholarnty ring swappable with RTSR or silver serpent ring depending on the situation
The way I dealt with effigies is this... Don't use any at all until I was confident I knew were all the ambush/ganks were, and how the bosses attacked. Early on just using them immediately after dying I realised it was a huge waste of the npc services, and just in general. By the end I had saved up a fair few and on NG+ cycles I had 99 pretty much all the time. Admittedly using the Cling Ring helped because I had more than 50% hp. However later on when I had vigor at 50 and life ring +3 it was overkill and I could use the ritual band to lower health and still not feel like I was that hampered lol
So should matthewmattosis and his hot air of garbage collection. Most game channels have no clue what they're talking about (game toolkit, writing on games or whatever). People are easily swayed if you have an accent. It's the lab coat problem. The air of authority makes people believe even if there is no sense or substance.
@@normalguycap What's wrong with GMTK and architect of games? Unlike mauler, they mostly talk about things they think games do well and offer constructive ideas about how games systems can be used in interesting ways. I've found their content insightful.
Was watching a Matt Colville video and something he said really ties into the Healthbar segment of the video. He was talking about chance to hit in DND and to avoid anything below a 65-70% chance or something along those lines. Point is that he was making the point as a games designer that even if mathematically a 55% chance to hit means an objectively higher chance to hit then miss, it still means missing a lot and that feels bad. And player feelings trump mechanical facts. And the healthbar is such a great example of that because the entire reason for preferring ds3's method over ds2's is just that feeling of it being a bonus extra health and not the behind the scenes health decrease it is. Its also a much higher jump in HP loss per death. I think having reduced health presented as your "default" does work better tho, encourages the player to train with weights on so to speak, rather then trying to shift blame onto the game penalizing them.
Oh wow, who would have guessed that when a game offers you a plethora of upgrade materials, that you should only use a weapon with the lowest durability without having any backups? Couldn't be Mauler, nope That aside, I loved that very much. I do tend to use only 1 weapon with high durability, and it is never a problem for me, that and, those weapons tend to look so clean in design too! (Ex: Grand Lance, Drangleic sword, Uchigatana, etc.)
In recent playthroughs the only time I had a weapon break was when I was using the Foot Soldier Sword on my SL1 run, but that has only 20 durability. Seriously, I don't see how it is a problem if you use any regular weapon with 60+ durability.
@@Domo3000many times my weapons (dragon tooth, rapier, red iron twinblade) went very close to be broken but never 2 of them at the same time. I'm a "kill all things in one go in an area at least once" so yeah if you don't care about that this will never happen, but it can But since I always had a second weapon of choice it was never an issue
I had that issue in sunken city DLC, due to last boss unique abillity, which is to break weapons faster. And frigid outskirts. But tbh, unless you use some cheeky rapier/katana your weapon won't be breaking that much XD
Simple. Cognitive dissonance. Mauler considers himself a hardcore gamer when in reality he's on par with an IGN reporter or the likes of seed swallowers like angry Joe 💀 All these "pro" RUclips yappers are trash.
Mauler is off base about the ember mechanic in Dark Souls 3. It's not a "bonus" health. They really ripped a portion of the HP you would have had in other entries of the series just to offer it as an item that you lose upon death. In Dark Souls 3, 40 Vigor would give you 1213 base HP. In Dark Souls 1, 40 Vitality would give you 1325 base HP. In Demon Souls, 40 Vitality would give you 1325 base HP. In Bloodborne, 40 Vitality would give you 1325 base HP. In Elden Ring, 40 Vigor would give you 1450 base HP. Lastly, 40 Vigor with the "Deprived" starting class in Dark Souls 2 would give you 1596 base HP. I used the Deprived starting class because in unique to Dark Souls 2, points in any stat gave you a few points in HP, so the fairest measurement to use is the starting vlass with the lowest base stats across the board. Dark Souls 3 gives you the lowest amount of HP by design to make you want to use an ember.
Comparing the HP values of different games rings hollow when you realise that the enemies of such deal different amounts of damage overall, and have different ways of dealing it. In case I didnt explain myself well enough: A character with 10 HP in a game where enemies deal 1hp from slow attacks will be tankier than a character with 100 hp that faces enemies that deal 25 hp with fast attacks.
@@D-Havoc I guess you should also compare the amount of HP provided in souls games to Diablo or WoW since "you die when your HP reached 0" in those games as well.
@@josephbulkin9222 If durability were the reason he decided to kite every enemy in a whole area at once to complain about ganks, I'd imagine he'd bring it up as a factor. Besides, the mechanic has plenty of ways to work around it that don't involve self sabotage.
7:07 >veteran players Lmao I found this ring extremely early on my first playthrough and I bet most people did I mean it's literally before 2nd boss normally
He really said that veteran players are the ones using this ring. NO veteran player touches this ring, it's made specifically for new players learning the game.
Did the guy really made a complaint about spontaneus combastion sounding like...spontaneus combustion? On a personal note, I always found barrel explosion sound in ds2 almost earrapy, like a file that got compressed too much, I gues its becouse usually a group of them goes boom and they overlap.
No, the clip was disingenuously taken out of context. Mauler talks about how inconsistent some of the sound mixing in DS2 is, and shows examples of similar, or even in some circumstances, the exact same sound effect has its volume changed anywhere from barely audible to "are your eardrums still working?".
@@exeledusprince9165what is missing from the context? Mauler did not realize that Combustion sounds differently when it hits an enemy and he falsely accused that intended behavior of being a bug
@@RavenGamingOverLord he isnt conpmaining about it. Like the clip in question, the entire video is taken out of context. He uses this example of abhorrent sound design to punch holes in HBomberguy's point about good sound design.
I would mention that durability loss was tied to framerate. Before Scholar of the First Sin, the PC version equipment was taking ~2x damage at 60 fps. Pretty gnarly oversight that didn't get corrected until it affected the PS4/Xbone version.
@AppleIndianFTW most game critics: "how dare you say I'm wrong! I got background music that loops 5 songs, 10 hours of length, thousands of subscribers and a sexy voice, without those your evidence means NOTHING!"
I find it very funny when people who hate group fights in games are always the ones who rush in without a care for enemy priority or who they’re even aggroing in the first place.
41:23 "he doesn't acknowledge that people that know how to play the sousl games wouldn't have gotten ganked in the same way" no, even someone who had never played as souls game before would still have self preservation and common sense. MAYBE someone who had NEVER played ANY video game before would fall for these traps or run while triggering every ennemies without dispatching of them first.. but anyway, after watching a couple of your response videos i'm AMAZED and stunned that this guy seriously said all that publicly.. And i'm also amazed by how much you keep your calm and stay very very kind to him despite him so blatantly lying, manipulating and basically cheating his argument. You always give him the benefit of the doubt.. But dude he played every other souls, he finished DS2 many times, he knows EXACTLY how rto play it, there is zero doubt he does it on purpose, he is nefariously lying and manipulating the audience, that is absolutely despicable :/
I saw someone complaining about "boring movesets" in DS2. I played DSR, and the Halberd and Gargoyle Tail Axe have one attack. One. And your character stumbles while attacking.
@@AtreyusNinja the only interesting moveset I can think of in DS1 is Priscilla's Dagger. But the cool moveset was wasted on a mid weapon with no remarkable features. Then you have the Majestic Greatsword powerstancing moveset in DS2, and it's awesome.
@@Choomba-j8uThe whip straight sword on the DLC, Santier spear having a combine moveset of a halberd, a dual sword and somehow curved sword (the 1 handed running attack), bone fist, power stance bone fist, the heavy spears, power stances as a whole
Okay, i've had this about the movement, in DS1 you can't run straight. You can't. It doesn't let you run straight at all, you're barely controlling your character, and i knew as soon as i saw this, it will get to me. And it did, in Sena's Castle, where you had to roll between hanging axes, i rolled SLIGHTLY to the side (becasue you can't make your character run straight, it's alwasy some degreee left/right) and i fell, and had to start over, fearing for my souls in RECENT playthrought (meaning i am experienced at these games, but nevertheless controlls in DS1 are absurd), unlike DS2, that has perfect controlls, faster and better. I know what i'm talking about. Yeas, rushed. That is everything that he is doing about DS2. It is rushed, didn't look there, didn't spot obvious thing here, why? Because he is hating the game, and when you hate you're biased and look at everythig through vision og hate. I'm not talking about being sceptical, i'm talking about blind rage that people have subjectievly towards something, doesn't allow them to think straight. Why DS2 deserved it? DS1 also had rough threatment by DeS followers, it is expected, but it is not as near as much. May be becasue they are wrong and DS2 is good, and admitting that they were wrong only further enrages them.
@@Domo3000 Aha, and the movement in general. People call it cluncky, i sort of understand what they mean, but i disagree, in DS2 you can move stick in circle and circle around an arrow, nor DS3 nor DS1 are able to do that. That's defienely upgrade, and then downgrade with DS3.
I swear to God, most of ganking problems DS2 haters claim the game has, actually DS3 suffers from. So many unavoidable gank encounters in that game where basically the only counter is "somehow tank through and pray you don't get staggered to death" or "run to boss and ignore enemies" which I personally don't find fun in a RPG COMBAT ACTION GAME to AVOID FIGHTING.
So you could jokingly say that in DS2 you get punished for running through new areas, while in DS3 you get punished for fighting your way through areas.
Yeah, or even ELDEN RING where walking down a corridor has a trigger that makes an enemy attack you blind around a corner. It really felt like most of that games dungeon design was blind ambushes as opposed to DS2's encounters where you can see an ambush coming.
demon souls halving your health and making the game harder upon death, with the only counter being to play the game in its entirety in soul form taking up a ring slot: Good design Ds2 doing the same thing but heavily nerfed and molded into an interesting mechanic that incentivises trade offs, thinking and decision making with multiple solutions: Bad design It really just shows how people blindly hate on ds2 for being different. I would argue alot of the ds2 hate stems from the fact you cant play it like ds3, mashing roll, spamming estus to just brainlessly tank over and over. It actually requires thinking power now that everything isn't so spammable.
It is so nice seeing someone deconstruct the abysmal attempt at criticism that Mauler's """review""" was. I wish that reviews like his didn't cause as much damage to the game that they did. Trying to get friends to even try the game is so hard sometimes.
@@exeledusprince9165 I would advise that you watch the series you are currently commenting under for a deconstruction of why Mauler's attempts at criticism are almost all horribly flawed and biased
It really is not that big of a difference imo, the reason people don't like it in DS2 is because it's immediate punishment vs delayed. Just because you get door and lever s instantly in DS3 doesn't mean enemies won't pile up on you and gank you after you get out of the animation, it's delayed punishment. I think the only reason people complain about being ganked 1 way over the other is because it works 1:1 in Demon's, DS1, and DS3, with DS2 being the odd one out. It sets an expectation that is not met, but honestly I think after it happens the first time you should be aware of it and start to adjust your gameplay to accommodate for such. It's kind of a nothing complaint either way.
@@Cr00ked_Cat Well the difference is that in ds 3 you can open up the doors etc and after you die you just skip them and progress. In Ds1 it wasn't such a huge thing because your movement was a lot more limited and in general the exploration was slow paced. And with how op dodge rolls were in ds 3 you could often just roll thru literal packs of enemies so you didnt get punished as you should.
@@Cr00ked_Cat Excuse me, that one irythill knight in church basement can't punish you, after you go into the next area... But you can safely kill him with the bow afterwards. Where's the punishment?
@@Happy_Sailor639 "I abused an anti-aggro barrier at a door the enemy gets stuck trying to go through to cheese it, why wasn't I punished? This is clearly only possible in DS3." Yeah idk why you didn't get punished, maybe it had something to do with intentionally abusing a dev oversight to cheese the enemy. I dunno man, LOL.
21:26 i was one of those that didn't get that the enemies on the floor could wake up, i got thrown of the ladder and had to fight 4 undead. did not blame the game once.
![Ice On My Teeth - ATEEZ エイティーズ 에이티즈 [Music Bank] | KBS WORLD TV 241115](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/c-n92OgbbwA/mqdefault.jpg)
The nitpicking of sound effects had me laughing almost as hard as the part were he runs into a group of enemies without kiting them one by one followed by him complaining about ganking
Well, you need all you can get for 2 hours footage
That No-Man's Wharf footage is honestly hilarious. To just manage to run around and gather that many sailors to chase you is an achievement in an of itself, tbh
Mauler is legit a male Karen 😂
seriously i kinda want to do it myself for how funny it looks. cant say ive ever aggrod so many at once on purpose 😂
I actually tried that when i was trying to avoid attacking anyone (minimum souls run i think), and the varangians ruined it for me because those drunken sailors keep falling off the pier if more than one of them are crossing. Like its actually tricky to get that many to follow you and not drown.
>collects every enemy in lost bastille's hallway
>deliberately breaks every jar to release prisoners
>run away forward, collecting even more enemies
"Game is ganky"
I begin to believe that Mauler was paid to smear DS2.
@@adradox well when you think about it... youtubers get paid based on the performance of their videos, and the unfortunate general consensusis that ds2 is bad (it's not), soooo...
@@Rosy_bunyou can simply decline to sell out your soul for money. there are more ways than one to make a living.
@@Crit-Multiplier"If you don't like a video game I like it's because you sold your soul"
The mind of a dark souls 2 fan
It's more that being bad at DS2 resulted in him getting paid, and there's a small cottage industry around it now.
@@Crit-Multiplier well that's my entire point. Mauler sold his soul into making hate content for a living
People like Mauler or a lot of DS1 bros forget that you restored weapon durability in DS1 through blacksmiths OR bonfires with the repair box item. Dark Souls 2 simply removed the middleman by having it restored automatically at bonfires.
It also greatly reduced durability too though, which is often tedious.
I'd say drop the mechanic as a whole^^
@@solanumlycopersicum5594get good.
@@solanumlycopersicum5594 Elden Ring did just that. But again, durability is just a Dark Souls 2 problem. Remember the unrepairable Crystal Infusion weapons of Dark Souls 1?
@@D-Havoc
DS1 had massive amounts of experimentation.
You see it in the weirder covenants and how they work exactly with their weird netcode, and the weapon stuff is another example.
Both were stripped for Bloodborne, basically,
and both returned dialed down in DS3.
@@solanumlycopersicum5594what are you talking about
"I said simply, basically, and fundamentally. Its Objective now."
"Also, i'm british, which means if i talk confidently you'll just kind of believe me."
@@abdalln8554 the correlation with shitty critiques and British accents honestly deserves a video of its own to be analysed
@@abdalln8554He should quit yapping about video games and worry about his country becoming an alien infested hell hole. Soon he'll be living in No Mans Wharf. That'd be the sweetest instance of irony.
21:46 gave me physical pain to watch HOW DOES HE NOT REALIZE THEY'RE WAKING UP AS HE'S WALKING NEAR THEM WHAT KIND OF GAME JOURNALIST BEHAVIOR IS THIS
"Please stop spamming me" while he aggroes every enemy at the same time is just peak comedy
@@Domo3000mauler is such an interesting specimen of the Dunning Kruger effect
I honestly think it's because of his accent and the speed of which he speaks. You sort of just knod your head in agreement and if you aren't familiar with the game their gameplay seems fine. But when you mute the audio and watch the movements you question their decision making. I've never seen so many complaints levied at the beginning area of a video game. You don't have to wake all the enemies...
Bad faith propaganda. He knows what he is doing.
@@markmartin2819 But like... what does he get from this? Nah, its not. Mauler is just a dimwit, he doesnt know much about anything, but sure can talk a lot
I'm starting to wonder why I ever believed that fool...
MauLer talks about “measurable functionality” as if it’s an objective standard that exists outside of time, space, feelings and thoughts. It’s not, and it never will be because it *cannot* be. Video games, like all artistic mediums, are experienced subjectively. There is no way to experience or critique a game according to a standard that wasn’t formulated by opinions.
MauLer is one of those insecure, disingenuous critics who cannot stand having a “wrong” opinion of a video game, so he uses the misbegotten strategy of calling his opinions “facts”. He’s an authority on video games (and movies/tv shows) after all.
Big Ups Domo! I dig that you’re tackling the “objective” angle MauLer uses. This is fantastic work that addresses ideas not often talked about.
@larrywalker1371 Compelling comment. I dig what you’re saying here.
“Any objective standard would have to be something that most of us can agree to.” I agree, but objectivity is not determined by consensus. It is either a truth or it’s not. And nothing in art is truth. There are no rules by which we create or experience art.
I too dig music criticism (Robert Christgau, hell yeah). I see where you’re coming from with what you want criticism to be or to mean, but, really, it is a case of, “I like this because…” Criticism of art can never be anything else, at least when it comes to an objective standard, because there is no standard.
I view criticism as a medium to enlighten aficionados/haters/whomever of different aspects/themes/motifs/etc. present in whatever art. It can be an exuberant celebration, or it can be a calamitous takedown. I go with the most creative writers who are also the most captivating thinkers. All things considered, criticism is just an extension of the art it is analyzing: Entertainment that can make you think.
@larrywalker1371”the critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
…
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.” Oscar Wilde.
There really isn’t objectivity. It’s just comparing and contrasting what people at large refer to as good elements and bad elements of art, games in this case. Nothing is innate about a given element except when it is given a reference point, like a similar element in another game. A critic is just someone who articulates more than “I like/dislike this”, but ultimately, a person who says they like a game and doesn’t elaborate and a critic who says they like the same game and writes about it, are doing the same exact thing.
You’re right about it being wild for someone to try and compare their thoughts to an objective standard.
@@Zythryl Those are awesome quotes. Hell yeah, what a thoughtful, eloquent discourse. I appreciate you both. @larrywalker1371
@larrywalker1371
I think this is kind of a solved issue tbh. There doesn't need to really be an "objective" standard that games need measured to, as much as there needs to be a consistent and agreed upon standard.
Think of it like this - I am, in this hypothetical, a book critic. I believe that in order to have a good book, characters need to be faced with a core conflict that they overcome. This is a standard I've set - one that is ultimately subjective, but agreed upon enough that it still holds value. Further, it's also a standard that can be more or less objectively applied. Does this story have a conflict that the characters overcome is in most cases a straightforwards yes/no. Thus, even though there isn't such a thing as objective artistic quality, I can absolutely set out a series of standards and in many cases test to see if something objectively meets them or not.
I mean, think of something as basic as a game being broken or not. There are broken games that people think are good despite being broken, broken games that are intentionally broken, broken games that people value because of their broken features. You can absolutely say objectively "The developers did not intend for this," but weather or not that's a bad thing is down to a lot of other context, and the player in question.
The benefit of doing any sort of criticism this way is that it gives you an easy and straightforwards way to talk about more subjective things, or things others might disagree with you on. Rather than saying "enemy placement is objectively bad" and just trying to argue that for example, one could say (in more quality writing likely) "The game features areas full of enemies that can swarm the player if they aren't careful, which I see as a bad thing because of my expectation of souls games allowing players to run through after initial explorations." This way, not only are you giving your framework of judgement and solid reasoning, you're also pushed into more neutrally portraying game qualities that another person (one who prefers planning, environmental gameplay or strategizing) might actually see as a good thing.
You know, rather than saying "this pie tastes like garbage," you can say "this pie is raspberry flavor which I dislike" allowing a raspberry fiend to know just where to look. The whole world could hate raspberry and I still think this would be a better system tbh
In short, I really don't think you need an objective standard to measure up to, you just need a well thought out consistent standard that most people find agreeable.
Its kind of a fools errand to really try and apply objectivity to games, and other artwork ofc. For all the qualitative aspects what can we do? User reviews? That's just an aggregation of subjective views. And it assumes everyone is working in good faith.
One of the only quantitative things i can think if is revenue, and that leads to a hell dimension where Genshin Impact is "objectively" better than Elden Ring and i don't want to live in that world lol.
That footage at 21:45 is so funny when you slow it down. He's like, "STOP SPAMMING ME" and the footage he shows as evidence is his buddy running ALL OVER the place to get a few items and waking up EVERY dude in the area.
@@zedoctor3724 The point isn't that the game is too hard, it's that fighting 14 of the same guy in one room is boring and lazy. That specific room is just a good visual example of dark souls 2's general design philosophy.
@@saysalla He directly relays that he thinks these encounters are unfair because of what he says at 22:45 and even before that at 19:43, which makes sense in his case if you look at the way him and his buddy play in the footage lol. He says shit at 22:45 like, "THE GAME FORCES YOU INTO SITUATIONS TO FIGHT A HUNDRED DUDES" and he rolls footage of himself sprinting around and alerting enemies to put himself in that situation.
And it's even more perplexing because the game SETS YOU UP by putting a sleeping enemy right before that area. By waking that dude up, this SHOULD give you a reminder in the next area of "oh, there's a bunch of sleeping dudes just like the one dude I woke up before I got here. maybe I can be careful and wake them up individually by moving carefully or by using a ranged projectile using whatever I have. or maybe I can wake up a bunch of them and funnel them down the ladder." But nah. He chose to approach these situations with little caution, got punished, and cried foul.
I’m dying at the nitpick of the sound design for combustion 😂 pretty much encapsulates most of the dude’s complaints of DS2.
“X thing functions just like in the other games, but when I loaded *this* game it said ‘Dark Souls 2’ so it is actually broken”
Even better was the complaint about connection loss.
"X thing functions much better than in the other games, but it's Dark Souls 2 so it's actually broken"
Personally, I count Iron keep as the “noob filter” of ds2. Despite the fact that the area is probably the best in the base game since it rewards you for paying attention to the games style of play - that I call the three Ps (Perception: noticing dynamic opportunities, Patience: knowing to or not to rush, and Position: look where you(r) are/going). Plus the enemies in the area drop 400-1k+ souls per kill, which depending on how far you are in game isn’t a amount to scoff at. It is the go to fight club area for a reason.
Simply put, if you complain about Iron keep than you failed the exam that ds2 gave you. Making it clear you don’t know how to play properly.
Oh and to add to what you said - ds2 max hp is about double that of ds3 (~3,800 to ~1,900), the bar is just visibly smaller. And I personally don’t know any ds2 “vet” who uses the binding ring past early game when you have no other rings to put on. Since it’s ability is quickly outshined due to the abundance of humanities you can acquire + other rings simply being better.
OMG I just realized that it probably is the fight club spot because of the fact that if you beat it it means you’re actually good (the dragon covenant doesn’t hurt)
@@JellyJman FYI, the Iron Keep bridge literally IS the fight club (good PvP spot) of DS2
Funnily enough, DS2 was my second Souls game after DS3 in like 2017-2019. I ended up rage quitting on Iron Keep…
1 year later two of my friends were doing a coop run through DS2 and asked if I would join. It was some of the best multiplayer I had played right up there with DS3.
Wouldn’t you know it 2 weeks ago I played DS1 for the first time and decided to replay the other two. I haven’t gotten to DS3 yet because I started working on 100%ing DS2 while having a blast!
I even first tried Iron Keep with no sweat due to it being so ingrained in my mind of how to deal with the area.
This might be a hot take, but I really like DS2 :)
@@vanilla.icescream and to add to this, not for any of the reasons stated in the OP post. It was chosen because it was literally a bridge with little to no enemies you could fight on lmao. OP also seems to forget the sheer amount of enemies that are placed awkwardly outside of the players viewpoint with greatbows within the area (same as Amana, some will fire before they are even within draw distance to the player)
If kiting each enemy with a bow shot back to the starting door of the area instead of interacting with the area is the intended method of play for Iron Keep, then DS2 failed the exam of what makes an area engaging at all. The enemies are simple, to put it mildly. They are just positioned and numbered to try and make them seem competent when they have no poise and die in three hits. There is a grand total of 3 different enemy varieties on the whole stages main path and excluding the turtle shell knights, are littered with abandon throughout the area. I can't even say this is a DS2 fault because the problem was introduced with SOTFS, which did fix one major problem with the area in the fact that the infusion stone was just off a random jump instead of being where it is now in a much earlier path allowing experimentation with infusion much sooner than vanilla.
I just hate the smelter demon runback. Put a shortcut to bypass those enemies once you've beaten 'em all.
Who walks into an area, get's attacked, and then goes FURTHER into the area!? You retreat, you roll back, you go into the area you know, that you probably JUST cleared! This is painful to watch really.
On that ruin sentinels runback I just turned left after opening the door. The hollows blow themselves up on the barrels lol
The boss music has a quiet bit.
Mauler: "Objectively buggy."
Its not like there some OPTIONS to wiggle to adjust your settings.
Hmm...
Dynamics are an objective flaw in music. The volume should be 100% all the time for maximum objectiveness.
/s
maximum objectiveness 🤣
The whole discussion of Dark souls 2 having bad enemy placement in comparison to Dark souls 1 gets IMMEDIATLEY thrown out the window if you bring up anywhere with bone wheels, Tomb of the Giants, and Dragon-ass Lost Izaleth. The only place I remember that was super annoying at worst was the Shrine of Amana, but no one ever decides to try and use cover when dealing with the projectiles lol.
Anyone who throws around that shitty take is either just parroting it from someone else blindly, or just got lazy and tried to skip mobs and got punished.
LoL, really? The Bonewheels in the Catacombs do not aggro on you all at once, unlike all the aggro-linked ganks in DS2. And the Bounding Demons in Lost Izalith had their aggro-range greatly reduced in one of the first patches way back in 2012, so you are parroting a complaint that has been out-of-date for over a decade.
Meanwhile, the gankery in DS2 was made worse by SotFS edition which added more enemies where there had previously been less. Hey, tell my why the Blue Cathedral needs a fire-spewing wyvern right in front of it when there was none in vanilla? Tell me how that improves gameplay.
@@shiroamakusa8075if you look through my Vanilla vs Scholar videos you will see that Scholar reduced the number of ganks and made several runbacks easier.
I also don't understand the complaints about Heide's Tower. The main path is still the same and after defeating the Dragonrider the area turns into a mid-game area. It's now a lot more interesting than the empty feeling the optional half had in Vanilla.
Or you could just use a spell-parry shield like Golden Eagle Kite and bitch slap their spells right outta the air.
@@shiroamakusa8075That's not the point. The bonewheels in general are trash enemies in ds1
your knowledge of the games is admirable. great work.
I remember listening to his series and thinking often: "that doesn't sound right"
I ended up playing the game again afterwards and i came back with completely different criticisms
Welp respect to your opinions but ive played the game and thought most if not all his criticism was valid lol you can like the game and admit its not good bro
It's really funny when the fans coming in and spout this nonsense to defend the videos. I really don't like DSII I think it's really bad but not for the reasons he provides.
@@Freeseraphim why you dont like it?, not trying to judge or anything, just wanted to know :)
@@akashthadani22 the big lines are: I think the game is tedious more than anything else.
Theres of course many things sprinkled around. I tried my first power stance run recently. The "recovery" animation between each strikes was so long it completely ruined its potential for me. The enemies are not especially deadly except for a few, and they just take too long to kill. The bosses are the same issue. Note that I never finished the DLCs, but from my experience they were just not really fun and didn't even have memorable music. I can't really comment on my impression of the areas. It was my first dark souls, so they're all pretty well etched in my mind. Yet, I don't think any are as striking as some that were in the original
@@Freeseraphim There is no world where enemies in ds2 take "too long to kill", especially not in relation to other games in the series and genre.
It sounds like you used large, slow powerstance weapons and based your opinions of the entire system off that.
Doing god's work. I actually never watched Maulers "critique" because I ain't watching a 12 hour display of crying about how
"it's the game's fault actually". Doing this in parts is perfect
the full 360 degree movement plane they had in ds1 came back in ds3 and its actually kinda annoying how it never seems like you can run in a perfectly straight line.
So basically sweaty wannabe hardcore gamers tried to look more sophisticated than they were by dumping ds2 for years while completely ignoring ds1's faults.
I wouldn't even call most of these faults. It's just the inconsistency that's the problem
@markmartin2819 i never understood the ds2 hate online. oh well! its just liek you said really.
Projecting much, you sound like a guy peeling oranges and sweating from it.
Dark souls 1 is such a trash game lmao i cant believe they even bothered to make a sequel
@@saysalla be less obvious with your rage-bait, no one is gonna bite this
"yeah i play souls games i'm super hardcore, they're so difficult but i beat them"
ds2: "wtf this game is too hard it's the game's fault not mine"
also lmao at mauler complaining about health lowering after deaths. nobody tell him about demon's souls.
in ds3 u lose 30% of your hp when u die once...
@@AtreyusNinja It's actually about 23%.
Utterly bizarre
@@AtreyusNinjaand in Demon Souls you lose 50% after one death, there's no bonfires either. One at the start and one at the end of a level.
Limited healing, barely get any humanity through playing the game normally. DeS has its cheese, it isn't that hard if you play smart. But compared to DS3 it is very much more unforgiving.
Whoever this guy is, I hate him. I never consciously made the connection between the themes of Drangleic's mind eating nature and the way levels are put together. Now that you brought it up, I see it clear as day. The way from Earthen Peak to Iron Keep is the greatest example.
Standing outside as soon as you leave the Copse, you see the blasted off top, jutting out prominently. After the boss fight, if I had been paying more attention, Id have gone "wtf? Why is there an elevator???". The passage narrowing before spitting you out reminds me of what it's like to lose conciousness, your vision narrowing to a point, just like the cramped hallway, only for you to come back in an entirely new place (the ER), just like walking out and seeing the lava lake and scorched skies. This is no different than Demons' Souls' or Elden Ring's opening which has your character just walk through a foggy void to enter their respective realms cut off from the outside world.
I don't say ds2 is perfect, but dear God, how many people will take any complaint for granted just because it's ds2, and if the same thing happened in ds1 it's just a funny moment.
Keep up your great work Domo, and I hope you will get more famous than ds2 haters are, because you are clearly putting more effort than them🖤
Gawd, that measurable functionality comment is one of the most obnoxious and smug things I've heard uttered in a long time. Makes my skin crawl. He posted that video publicly? And people watched it...
He clearly has no idea how the vast majority of mechanics he complains about work nor that the vast majority of issues he claims to be unique to DS2 work the same in every Souls game, but he is still narcissistic enough to think that he's an expert on Souls games and that his personal opinions are objective facts.
It is weirdly self-sabotaging for DS fans to convince themselves that using fewer tactics means they are a better Souls player. The whole “no magic, no ranged, no items, no shield” that is possible in DS1 and almost encouraged in DS3 makes players oblivious to many intended solutions.
Yeah it’s really weird seeing a fandom doing these things to themselves
Well, more than that, those other strategies aren't even necessary in DS2. I've played through the game sl1 melee only and never felt that I needed any of those things. You can do just fine without it
People really overblow how "hard" it is to play melee only without a shield, it's not that much harder if you're smart about it
@larrywalker1371 imagine disliking one different game for not following the design principles of another different game, especially a game that came AFTER ds2 and was in production along side it.
@@frazfrazfrazfraz those things aren’t necessary in other DS games, either. The problem is when it assumed to be the default first time experience.
It isn’t that these challenges are “the wrong way to play”, either. It is that assuming these limits show skill is an entitlement to no game after the first having a different learning curve or any new complications.
@larrywalker1371Oh it's even worse than that. Hbomberguy also made the claim that not using shields and being more aggressive like Bloodborne is "objectively more fun". The Bloodborne video had influence on why Mauler responded to him, although the response was specifically for the DS2 video. Hbomb of course backpeddled on that statement in his DS2 video because of backlash.
Sections in DS1 that MauLer is supposed to hate by his own logic and his own way of playing: Firelink Shrine skeletons, all of Catacombs, Large Divine Ember room, Pinwheels area before Nito, Hollow Warriors and Soldier before Undead Burg bonfire, Hollow Soldiers with the Armored Tusk, the Mystery Key room, the Hollows before the Bell Gargoyles, almost everywhere where Demonic Foliages are at, the Frog-Ray ambush, Torch Hollows in Lower Undead Burg, Dogs too, Rats are spammed a lot in the Depths but some packs actively stay away so yeah, Basilisk pack, Blighttown is extremely hard to not trigger multiple enemies due to its structure, the swamp area will more than likely have some bugs fly at you while you're busy fighting, Basilisks in Great Hollow, Burrowing Worms guarding an Ember in Demon Ruins, infamous Anor Londo Archers + Demon Bats combo, Crystal Hollows are activated separately but are rather relentless, the room below Ingward which i like to dub The Haunted House, an area by the first lift also triggers 3-4 ghosts, a Scarecrow tries to lure you into spam but at least it's predictable, before the thin bridge in Oolacile Township, the big room right after, the horde of Humanity Phantoms in Chasm of the Abyss.
But you see, DS1 lazily putting 5 Taurus Demons in an open space with lava is a masterful design choice, unlike DS2, which places around weak enemies who don't wake up until you go near them that is just lazy B team design
Also DS1 not having had enough time to finish the game and just spamming hordes of Taurus Demons, Capra Demons and Dragon Legs in the Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith is something we can look past. Two areas that were rushed with a recycled boss and the worst boss in the series are acceptable.
But DS2 not having had enough time to implement a longer tunnel after Mytha's boss fight is inexcusable because the tunnel up to Iron Keep is a bad transition, even though most people do not even notice it. This small non-issue obviously much worse than several unfinished areas in DS1.
@@Domo3000i only noticed the dodgy Earthen - Iron Keep transition after it was pointed out by a RUclipsr I was watching
@DarkSouls2_Enjoyer it's not even that immersion breaking, behind the windmill is a rock face, you also don't go up the windmill but go through it from which you get to the elevator. The only reason it "feels" like the transition doesn't make sense is because the devs didn't want to have it take an hour of elevator riding to reach iron keep for "realism"
If there's anyone here genuinely thinking about starting back up a DS2 save to give it another chance, I'm going to try to offer some genuine good advice for a new playthrough
DS2 is largely defined by disparity and variety. (Both in gameplay and story, which I find funny) DS1 and DS3 rely a lot more on the player settling into a niche of weapons or builds and allowing you upgrades for that path along the way. DS2 will constantly be handing you weapons that all sorts of different builds can use, with far more apparent unique attributes or contextual uses. You won't be able to use anything, but you'll find a staggering amount of variety that remains perfectly viable within your selected build/archetype. (Caster, Shield/Sword, Colossal Weapons, ect)
You can absolutely beat the game sword and boarding it, but being open to occasionally using bows, spells, consumables or different weapons will make your journey so much more engaging and exciting. Dying to the same area isn't an invitation for you to just learn it now - you can do that of course, but experiment, look around, take a bit of time to try something new to save so much time on follow up attempts. It'll be worth it, I promise.
(Just as an example of what I'm talking about, my first DS2 playthrough had me bouncing between hexer, pyromancer and massive weapon powerfister. Or as a hypothetical, if you're going straight sword/shield you can still mix it up by equipping the puzzling stone sword which doubles as a whip, as well as the spirit tree shield for spell parry. You'll have the resources, and there will be times that a big sword or a bit of range will make the area so much easier. Being open to trying something new will genuinely make your playthrough easier, I promise you.)
Also, just general advice - try to get your "agility" stat to either 99 or 105 as early as possible. You don't need it, but it'll make the game more friendly to new players, and it should only take the first boss or two to get enough souls to reach that. If you're a melee build, level ADP. If you're more of a caster, you'll get some agility from attunement, so you can split your points between that and ADP.
Good luck!
Agree with everything except pumping ADP early. The early game of DaS2 is very friendly to avoiding damage via strafing, positioning, and evasive rolling (i.e. to move yourself out of harms way) so having i-frames out the ass is very much overkill, and that's on top of the fact that you're impeding your learning experience with a crutch AND reducing the amount of spells, armor, and weapons you can use.
ADP is a very low priority stat unless you've been conditioned into linear "press B to win" problem solving from Dark Souls 3, or something.
"DS2 is largely defined by disparity and variety." Thats one of the main reasons I love it (both mechanically and in its narrative), and just a perfect way to put it.
@@roguetwice469 I see your point but given that this was my attempt at giving some “new playthrough basics” I do think it’s fair to give out newbie advice for newbie players who are probably used to the other games.
Dark souls 2 is basically what happens when you have a cool, amazing, talented child but it’s the forgotten unloved middle child and not the younger child like the parents want. So they try to find excuses for why the middle child is bad whilst try to make the youngest look more amazing when he’s good and talented in its own way
Mauler has this idea of souls game should be speedrunned even in his first/blind playthrough. Did we really play the same Souls game?
But his friend played a loooooot of ds 1 and 3
@IvyDoll-jf3gm Ds3s biggest problem on repeats is that sprinting through areas is too easy, I guess many players run through a difficult area they were frustrated with and then feel like they've finally nailed it, while in ds2 the way to deal with a difficult area is to take it slower. If you kill enemies as they attack you in iron keep and lure them backwards to areas you've cleared out, it's so easy that you can do it without dying with no trouble
I like how you take time to dress up your player character to mach the thematic, boss or play style your talking abut, its a nice touch.
The no mans warf clip of all those enemies floored me he had to run past so many guys and guys in houses just to get to that starting area and is surprised he dragged all those guys with him
No veteran player would use the ring of binding because most veteran players don’t suck.
Nor would they need to level ADP
@@YEY0806veteran player here,i dont level adp at all.
Veteran player here, if you put points in a stat you're probably just a noob who sucks at video games
I'm going through this playlist, and then most likely the rest of your videos
You've done a phenomenal job disputing just about everything in those 10 hour "critiques"
My only actual complain about Ds2 was the movement
I don't think its bad cuz different
I simply think it sucks
Personally, i thought the gameplay of these games left a lot to be desired
It was the lore and world that always made me say "give it another chance"
I gave Ds2 another chance and dropped it
Mostly because i really do think it feels awful
And I'm not some souls fanboy what so ever
If anything, i can name more that i dislike than i like about the gameplay aspect of these games
But you've convinced me to try once more
Luckily, there's a mod that gives you circular movement, so i plan on going back and giving this game a "fair" shot (i just cant do the movement being so stiff yet so touchy)
40+ min Domo video? Heck yes, thank you for keep setting the record about DS2 straight.
I am soooo invested into this series. Keep up the good work man!
Also I’d love to see you destroy asmondgolds ds2 hate videos 😂
That would be cool
I would like to see that :)
Not because I hate that guy, I just think it would be amusing
I want it because of both! Its a two for one!@@RavenGamingOverLord
@@sophieprime4669 That’s alright with me, I don’t really watch his videos anyway.
I have seen some of his Elden Ring clips and he acts like a moron lol
Asmongold is perfect example of using souls games for views. Dude is hilariously bad at these games and still hasn't learned anything from playing them
Mauler literally just has a skill issue and doesn’t play smartly.
5:14 Glad to see I didnt dream up this grab attack and it can actually bug out
if you ever require something, do speak up. the love you show towards debunking stupid claims is admirable
You're doing a great job domo, in a month or two there will be a lot of video essays and posts on reddit called "Dark Souls II is better than you think" or "Dark Souls II is a hidden gem"
DS2 has an hidden gameplay, cancels, jumped attacks tracking, even backstep dodges are not enough used by players as intended.
Proof : ruclips.net/video/i4U_Q-buu2A/видео.htmlsi=tnmYAYhARGmOHF0I 🙃
@@zubroskadamien5883they are used as intended. Backstep s increase with agility like rolls do.
Proof: domos comparison video
@@IvyDoll-jf3gmI mean Backstep dodges work as intended, but peeps don’t use them and continue to dodge with roll even if it’s slow, the don’t have the intended DkS2 experience IMO.
ruclips.net/video/i4U_Q-buu2A/видео.htmlsi=w-nnOPLvu7knEvQU
I think the being able to take multiple hits from bosses even at lower hp is also what makes ds2 one of my fav
19:04 Holy shit you just blew my mind, that's really damn clever level design! I always wondered why the door was there and never even connected the dots with the ledge...
I was already in the camp of DS2 being a hidden gem (I'd even argue better than DS1 but I don't want to start ww3 in the comment section) and these videos have helped affirm that, as well as recognize the actual downfalls of the game. Keep up the good work, you're one in a million here.
I liked the durability mechanic. In the early game my terrible weapon tends to break since it does no damage and I have to hit enemies 4 or 5 times to kill them, so I only get through 10 or 20 enemies before it breaks, then I'm forced to use some other weapon I picked up off a corpse until I can fix my other weapon. I liked it because it made me use other weapons I wasn't used to, and provided a nice challenge, and I starting liking other weapons that I initially disregarded, but I can see how some people might dislike this since "I just wanna use my straight sword, I don't like the other weapons, just let me use my straight sword like in DS1, stop breaking my straight sword."
Early game and DLCs tend to be the most durability heavy areas, and by the time you're at a DLC you should have multiple weapons maxed out, so it gives you an excuse to use all of them. I actually enjoyed how the PC port of DS2 made durability degrade twice as fast, but I get how some people dislike it. Seeing the response towards durability in Zelda, for example, you find a cool weapon, try it on 3 dudes, and then it breaks. Kinda sucks in that regard, but at least in DS2 you can just rest, or use repair powder, or spend a few souls at a blacksmith. Actually, I invested in magic solely so I could use the repair spell, since repair powder costed money and I had to go back to buy some every now and then, whereas the repair spell is just always there. Even using bracing knuckle +2 I still have to use repair every once in a while. And for my no-death no-bonfire ng+ run it got even harder, since I really had to pay attention to durability or else I might lose an important weapon or ring in the middle of a fight.
Honestly I liked it as well! Early game doing a "deprived" character (idk what it's called off the top of my head for ds2) I played through the game and so much of the opening hours was just using every weapon I picked up, really being able to see the difference in movesets and damage right off the bat instead of going out of my way to experiment with potentially inferior options. Even by the time I got to a late game build, durability was still something worth building around as I was going with the old smeter-demon powerstance route. It's one of those mechanics that can feel a bit annoying, but adds enough to big sections of the game that I think it's worth it.
In my 50 hours of DS2, I have never had a weapon break on me anywhere outside of the dragon aerie (the exploding zombie things wreck your gear)
That Darklurker kill was so swaggy. I love it
I just finished Scholar for the first time yesterday, having not played since my Xbox 360 died back in the day, and I have to say... The WHOLE time, I kept wondering where the "bad game" that I had heard so much about was. There really aren't that many situations where the game puts you in a seemingly impossible situation against whole armies of enemies, everything can be dealt with if you're methodical and don't rush in. The game certainly encourages caution and actually keeping an eye out for potential trouble.
By endgame I was going with 23 vigor, and even then, I didn't find things to be too much of an issue even without Ring of Binding, Sinh went down when my health was down to 65% or so because I didn't want to spend a human effigy until I hit 50% hp. Besides, the game is already pretty generous with health granting you at least 1 bonus point with each level even in unrelated stats as it is.
And guess what? I didn't even have human effigy issues. The only time I went under 10 during the endgame was when I was getting impatient trying to get Benhart's quest done with bonfire ascetics and I kept having to use them to summon him because I died due to mistakes that I made BECAUSE I was being impatient, that was entirely on me. I died to Prowling Magus and Congregation once because of that rush to get it done, that should say everything. But again. Entirely on me, and I was consuming them specifically to finish sidequests.
you make some of the best souls videos that show the pros and cons of these games with confirmation and explanation of these aspects
You'd think they forgot if you roll you can completely dodge projectiles or something.
Fun fact!
Dark Souls 3 calculates fall damage as if you are always Embered. If a fall would take away 99% of your HP, it will kill you if you're not Embered, but will not kill you if you are Embered. At least in the regard of fall damage, Embers act in the way of restoring your Max HP from 70% to 100%, rather than boosting your Max HP from 100% to 130%.
Thank you for your videos. Dark Souls 2 has always been my favorite. Seeing Ds2 in a new light now. Yea some fights may be gank, but as you point out, there is strategy to every one. Ds2 GENUINELY made you think about the map your going in and way to circumnavigate, wether it be via torches lighting up the map makinfmg certain enemies cower, or explosions that bkew open walls for shortcuts. THAT is whats missing from modren souls, especially Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring.
My main problem in souls was that i want to rush to the boss and level as quickly as humanly possible, which then in turn leads to the classic dark soul rage. Remembered this isnt made by Miyazaki so this self harmjng formula just doesnt work in this game. Replaying ds2 after watching and analyzing your criticisms, these videos brings a newfound joy on an already awesome game.
These videos point out bothe the pros AND the cons in a light ive never seen. Actual demonstrations and repeat examples comparative to the others in series. Not just "ds2 bad, therefore ds2 bad" type arguments that been around for years. Thank you for that.
Realizing now that Dark Souls 2 looks and plays like a classic RPG, much like the classic Zeldas, rather than your typical "soulsbourne" formula. I think in the coming years people will slowly realize this gem.
Miyazaki is undoubtedly a genius in his ideas. But i believe the ds2 directors improved them
I have heard people say Dark Souls 2 is actually more closely related to the Kingsfield games.
36:40 The most damage done in these clips were to his own arguments. I haven't played much of ds2, so I have no dog in this fight, but he's complaining about being swarmed while showing himself getting enemies stuck in a doorway for long enough for him to both heal and use a spell.
27:04 Dude, he didn’t even need to fight enemies in Shrine of Amana: he just needed to at least *try* to avoid the oncoming projectiles. The actual amount of copium one needs to be huffing to think an encounter is solely luck based when they just avoid any semblance of strategy is insane.
Real Souls veterans don't step to the side to avoid projectiles. No armor, no magic, no shields, no tactics, running only, Final Destination
Spoke like someone who never played shrine of amana.
Lol
@@Domo3000 Sounds like Super Smash Bros Melee Fox only
I just here to see some very in-depth explanation of this franchise mechanics its really damn cool
24:40 please please please address the internet connection comment!!! In DS2, if you disconnect, you get a pop up that tells you and pressing the relevant button removes it. can be a bit annoying in the middle of combat, but it's just one button press.
What mauler is disingenuously and abhorrently failing to mention though... In Demon's souls, Dark souls 1, Bloodborne, Dark souls 3 and Elden Ring, if you get disconnected for the internet, you will get booted back to the main menu outright. not a massive issue in general play, since it saves your position, and in those games, it even resets enemy positions so that feature could actually save your life if you decided to get yourself into a MauLer type gank.
But if you're fighting a boss. In DS2, if you're fighting a boss and lose connection, clear the pop up and keep fighting. In the other games though, the other games... If you lose connection during a boss fight, you will be booted back to the menu. when you load back in, your estus will be at the same number as when you disconnected, (This is especially egregious in demon's souls and BB since healing items are a finite resource in those games, as well as bullets being finite in BB and mana spice being finite in Demon's) Your health will be where it was, your spell uses/FP/Mana will be where it was when you disconnected, any consumables you used with be permanently lost and so, so many other things. And to make it even worse, You will be outside the boss fog and the boss will be at full HP.
Disconnecting during a boss in Not DS2 is like dying. you've lost any finite items you used permanently, such as knives, arrows, bombs, herbs, Etc. And then you're forced to choose: Run back to the bonfire and reset your character's state or try the boss again with reduces resources.
Personally, it's happened many, many times where, in my genuinely extensive soulsborne playtime (600-2200 hours PER game), I've been forced to restart an entire boss because my internet crapped out for 2 seconds. Except for in DS2 where i've died may 1 or 2 times total because of that pop up, which is essentially the same thing as being booted out, when in a boss fight
Thanks for the suggestion! If I'm in the mood to create another part this will be the first argument I'll talk about.
About human effigies, when I was playing DS2 I regularly used them when my health fell to -20/-25%, also used bunch of them trying to complete dark chasm and kill dark lurker and still ended up with around 40 or 30 at the end of the game, meanwhile in DS3 I've used ember sparingly (mostly on bosses second phase and when I've run out of estus and didn't wanted to go back) and had less than 20 by the time I've fought Gael.
Not saying that it's a bad thing in DS3 that there's less of embers since it's a lot stronger (fully heals you) and the game's balanced mostly around being unembered. But people overestimate how much DS2 is punishing death.
It's still a limited resource that you may find yourself without, especially at a hard boss.
Scholar is much more generous with human effigies compared to ds2.
Same with ds1 on the latest patch.
Old versions of both games were pretty stingy.
@renatoramos8834 after demon of song, effigies are no longer an issue as you can pray at the fire and restore humanity for free unlimited amount of times if you have no effigies left.
@@Thornblooduser absolutely asanine.
@@renatoramos8834 It's not limited. You can easily farm it in infinite amounts in many locations. Also you can just help someone to defeat a boss and instantly regain your human form. If your skill issue is too high for even those 2 variants, you can regain your human form in the Rise of the Dead for free at any time (it works if you have 0 effigies in your inventory).
Cope.
You should place all these videos into a Playlist so I can watch them all while playing Scholar
Thanks for reminding me. Here's the playlist: ruclips.net/p/PLkei3Zc3mbYmcj_blebrY5rn7koclcYYs
Sick thank you so much
2:09 True… that rooftop DS1 jump was always a bit janky to me early game!
MauLer's 12 hour series of him talking out of his ass
How a thinker would handle Shrine of Amana: "Okay, there's lots of Soul Arrows being shot at me. If i replace my fashion souls with these high Magic resistance armor pieces, i can tank lots of hits before needing to heal!"
How MauLer handles SoA: *walks, aggros, doesn't fight, walks, aggros, doesn't fight, walks, aggros, doesn't fight, gets staggered, gets hit, gets hit, gets hit, dies* "DS2 bad"
this is why mauler is an toidi
Or maybe dont spam multiple mages that can shoot you across the map while having enmies that can see you across the map and come to melee you while your slow in the water shrine of amana is bad like blighttown was bad stop excusing bad game design
I didn't even need to change my equipment in my recent replay. The area provides plenty of cover, and you don't even need to be sprinting or rolling to dodge most of the attacks, running slightly diagonally alone can make a dodge easy, and the projectiles are surprisingly slow. My main ranged option was pyromancy, and because of the water it was not very viable here, but getting close to them wasn't a major problem.
So long as you don't just run straight up towards them you're honestly fine, I died more times to falling into bottomless pits of water trying to dodge the Archdrake Pilgrims because I forgot where my footing was.
@@coolguychapman6685 Holy cope, Blighttown is a god tier zone and so is Shrine of Amana. I cleared both without using any ranged and enjoyed every second of it. "Bad game design" is codeword for "please put bright yellow paint on the pillars and tutorial message popups on how to line of sight spells".
Craziest thing ever about souls players is if something doesn’t work they keep brute forcing their way instead of just changing how they play. It truly baffles me that people do this and then complain the game is bad because it doesn’t let them play only one way optimally.
Mauler's channel had a couple thousand subs when he published his 11 hour response to Hbomberguy's video, and exploded shortly after that.
Might the same thing happen with this channel?
Interesting watch.
He's been making response to mauler for over a year now, and there is absolutely no increase in this guy's sub count. That is never going to happen because dark souls 2 is a very bad game and almost no one in the souls community agrees ds2 is secretly good, so this channel will never grow.
@@Teiske"Almost no one thinks it's secretly good" that's funny there's many comments expressing it's good 😂 you yap like Mauler that's hilarious.
Domo is the DS2 GOAT
I can't believe someone freely chose to be bad and never improve when presented with player freedom.
Sounds exactly like what under the mayo guy would do
I know someone personally who actually played like that. They told me that they looked up on the wiki on how to get the sunset staff, claimed that they were trying to get it and never bothered to level faith in order to get it. I also found them grinding souls in Iron Keep so they could get more damage out of the katana they had. Despite having more DEX than INT, they kept using sorcery to kill the knights until I mentioned that using the katana could do more damage. Once they beat the game, beating Nashandra on the first try, they complained that they "felt underleveld".
After beating the game there main complaint was that "Nothing I tried to do worked" and thought it was the games fault the they constantly made choices that weren't just bad but just plain counterintuitive, constantly.
@@nameofhearo1370 I think the Soulsborne fandom is the only fandom that I have ever seen doing these things to itself constantly lol. It just doesn’t make any sense why they keep being stubborn about not using certain items or weapons
@@RavenGamingOverLordit's not the only one, but it's pretty pronounced with Souls games.
Sometimes it's just people being noobs and not understanding. But very often you have players that use self restrictions as a cope. It's easier to claim a game is unbalanced or broken than to admit that it's your own fault for not engaging with certain mechanics or trying different tactics.
@@ReelBigFan Yeah I see ton of players act like it’s the game fault and not their own fault for not using the crafting system in Elden Ring or magic.
I think I have done it too many times in fighting games where I blame the internet connection for not working properly instead of putting the blame on my skills
Holy shit i never knew about the trees in the shaded woods, im literally learning while watching lol.
i love when people complain about Lifegems and how 99 lifegems make the game too easy. meanwhile humanity in ds1. id argue it has around the same animation lenght. but unlike lifegems slowly healing over time, humanity is full and instant
And you can stack 99 humanities as well along with the 15 estus you can chug
Did you know Hbomberguy didn't consider humanity as a "healing item" in his DS2 video? Yeah...
@@YEY0806Actually it's even MORE. You get 20 estus total.
I love ds1, it's my favorite one, but people really blow the idea of limited healing out of the water. There's plenty of healing. I feel like a lot of people start with ds1, play through like the first 30% of the game and then just blackout and forget the rest of the game.
Sure, the first 30% is super good. So is the rest of the game. But it leaves a lasting impression so that's all they remember. Teaching them and having that eurika moment is what you remember, so they hold the first areas of the game in extreme high regard. They just casually forget how the rest of the game played.
I personally think the "2nd half downfall" is way way blown out of proportion. I think it's fine, really. It's just the first areas are so well designed the other areas don't feel as polished.
DS3 easily is the most rushed, unfair, and buggy one. I still enjoy it, but man people really really overlook the problems with that game.
@@jokemon9547 im pretty sure his exact quote was "you can use them for healing but there so rare, unless your some souls veteran who knows the games in and out your not going to use them that way" but nice try lol. This is what i find hilarious about having watched both videos, is seeing peopls blatently misrepresent either side tbh, allthough mauler is objectivly wrong about alot of things.
@@ZombieKitty321 He stated "Because it burns such a rare resource, I wouldn't regard it as healing, unless you are one of those good at Dark Souls people I've been hearing so much about". Humanities aren't a finite resource or a one off extremely rare item that can never be regained and apparently if you're not a "souls veteran", humanities as healing are off limits. The main point is he doesn't consider them as healing based on a not-so solid reasoning.
the sound of the knights dying in iron keep is the best
That first jump in ds3 to the coffin...lol don't think ive ever experienced that in any platforming games I played 😅
About my comment on the hollowing mechanic, I found the ring of binding. When I went through the area at first, I was scared of the Heide Knight and didn’t want to aggro it. I called the game bad because of the natural consequences of my cowardice and I apologize for doing that. And yeah, ds2 is my favorite game of all time now lol.
I absolutely lost it when you showcased a literal audio wave of the different explosion sound effects.
It's not even incompetence on the Mauler's part at this point, it's just pure embarrassment.
But who am I to talk, I wouldn't know an "objective fact" if it hit me in the face
Mauler: Look how my character moves his pinky finger. it's objectively worse than every other game where the character doesn't move their pinky finger
In defense of ds2 has show me so much things of my favorite ds (like the lost bastille boos door(i always kill those 2 soldiers))
40:20 IIrc there is a torch sconce you can light right before this room to remind you that you should be using a torch.
You can see that sconce at 40:40
But based on how dark most of his No Man's Wharf and the Gutter footage looks I guess he never really utilized this basic gameplay mechanic
12:20
Bro.... Mauler just flat out lied and misrepresented the looping of a soundtrack. This is hilarious.
One of the reasons why I detest the super long form video essays is because the author tends to obsess over minor details which in the case of Mauler leads to misrepresentation of core mechanics.
I hate how people that suck at video games are framing these souls discussions. When I first played Dark Souls 1 and got to the hollow gank at the bell tower my reaction was "wow, this is tricky" and not "OMG ITS SO BAD", but because Dark Souls 2 haters do the latter with Dark Souls 2 we regretfully have to point out Dark Souls 1 also does these things... but it's not bad in either game? These noobs have everyone convinced any form of adversity they face is a game design flaw.
Someone else said it well: the discourse around DS2 allows streamers to get away with poor gameplay
If they just ran into a group of enemies in DS1 they would get told to get good. But if they do it in DS2 they can just complain how unfair that game is and no one will call them out for being bad.
If they roll too early and get hit they can just blame the hitboxes for being broken.
And that then causes a feedback loop where more and more people get convinced that the game is bad instead of paying attention to the fact that the critics are just blaming the game for their own mistakes, which would not work if people applied the same standards they have for the other games.
I like how ds 2 is my first souls game ever and it's my favorite so far. I still replay it with different strategy every time like I killed the last giant before the giant lord like I literally defeated the first boss in the end game I still like how open ds2 is and I got disappointed when they made ds3 more linear then it should be. And still till this day from 2019 I still discovering something new in a while in ds2.
Speaking of rings, what are all of ya reading this default rings?
Mine are (sorry for not knowing the names)
-Stamina Ring (not going to try to spell it)
-Ring Of Blades
-Bracing Knuckle
-Whatever I need for my build (usually extra xp until I'm mostly set in stats)
Chloranthy Ring
Third Dragon Ring
Ring of Blades
Stone Ring
Mine usually were Damage, Stone and Stamina.
Dragon Ring made me sloppy most of the time, but made Twinblades and other stamina-focused weapons far better.
I was the Twinblade God. As in Base Twinblade. I can guarantee there was no one better with it. Nobody ever bothered to use the poor thing. It has such low stamina consumption that allowed far too many mix-ups and combos that last far too long for their own good. I thought the only hurdle was parry fishers, but once I learned proper dead-angling and how to work around it they were easy as hell to beat.
Then one of them went nuts and started to wear full havels and ring of giants with the Grand Lance.
Then with that, there came to be the godforsaken duo of the Twinblade and the Offhand Grand Lance. True Horror to everybody else.
Third dragon Ring, Flynn, RoB, Stone. Chloranthy ring swap with the stone ring against bosses.
Flynns, one of clutch rings(mostly lightning), ring of blades+1 , old leo if my weapon does thrust if not cholarnty ring swappable with RTSR or silver serpent ring depending on the situation
Flynns, one of clutch rings(mostly lightning), ring of blades+1 , old leo if my weapon does thrust if not cholarnty ring swappable with RTSR or silver serpent ring depending on the situation
I'm a simple man, I see the Domo3000 the CHAD video and click it. You are Based Man. Love Your content.
The way I dealt with effigies is this...
Don't use any at all until I was confident I knew were all the ambush/ganks were, and how the bosses attacked. Early on just using them immediately after dying I realised it was a huge waste of the npc services, and just in general. By the end I had saved up a fair few and on NG+ cycles I had 99 pretty much all the time.
Admittedly using the Cling Ring helped because I had more than 50% hp. However later on when I had vigor at 50 and life ring +3 it was overkill and I could use the ritual band to lower health and still not feel like I was that hampered lol
Mauler really should DELETE all his DS2 videos from utube
maybe himself :3
@user-kb1su7mg1g OK I know he's video is an absolute slander burger but deleting himself is a bit much
Deleting that Jupiter sized ego however....
He should delete his massive ego problem lol
So should matthewmattosis and his hot air of garbage collection. Most game channels have no clue what they're talking about (game toolkit, writing on games or whatever). People are easily swayed if you have an accent. It's the lab coat problem. The air of authority makes people believe even if there is no sense or substance.
@@normalguycap What's wrong with GMTK and architect of games? Unlike mauler, they mostly talk about things they think games do well and offer constructive ideas about how games systems can be used in interesting ways. I've found their content insightful.
Was watching a Matt Colville video and something he said really ties into the Healthbar segment of the video.
He was talking about chance to hit in DND and to avoid anything below a 65-70% chance or something along those lines.
Point is that he was making the point as a games designer that even if mathematically a 55% chance to hit means an objectively higher chance to hit then miss, it still means missing a lot and that feels bad. And player feelings trump mechanical facts.
And the healthbar is such a great example of that because the entire reason for preferring ds3's method over ds2's is just that feeling of it being a bonus extra health and not the behind the scenes health decrease it is. Its also a much higher jump in HP loss per death.
I think having reduced health presented as your "default" does work better tho, encourages the player to train with weights on so to speak, rather then trying to shift blame onto the game penalizing them.
Oh wow, who would have guessed that when a game offers you a plethora of upgrade materials, that you should only use a weapon with the lowest durability without having any backups? Couldn't be Mauler, nope
That aside, I loved that very much. I do tend to use only 1 weapon with high durability, and it is never a problem for me, that and, those weapons tend to look so clean in design too! (Ex: Grand Lance, Drangleic sword, Uchigatana, etc.)
In recent playthroughs the only time I had a weapon break was when I was using the Foot Soldier Sword on my SL1 run, but that has only 20 durability.
Seriously, I don't see how it is a problem if you use any regular weapon with 60+ durability.
@@Domo3000many times my weapons (dragon tooth, rapier, red iron twinblade) went very close to be broken but never 2 of them at the same time. I'm a "kill all things in one go in an area at least once" so yeah if you don't care about that this will never happen, but it can
But since I always had a second weapon of choice it was never an issue
I had that issue in sunken city DLC, due to last boss unique abillity, which is to break weapons faster. And frigid outskirts. But tbh, unless you use some cheeky rapier/katana your weapon won't be breaking that much XD
I just don't understand how someone could be so butt hurt by DS2 that they had to make videos about it. WTF? It's a GREAT game
Simple. Cognitive dissonance. Mauler considers himself a hardcore gamer when in reality he's on par with an IGN reporter or the likes of seed swallowers like angry Joe 💀
All these "pro" RUclips yappers are trash.
Mauler is off base about the ember mechanic in Dark Souls 3. It's not a "bonus" health. They really ripped a portion of the HP you would have had in other entries of the series just to offer it as an item that you lose upon death. In Dark Souls 3, 40 Vigor would give you 1213 base HP. In Dark Souls 1, 40 Vitality would give you 1325 base HP. In Demon Souls, 40 Vitality would give you 1325 base HP. In Bloodborne, 40 Vitality would give you 1325 base HP. In Elden Ring, 40 Vigor would give you 1450 base HP. Lastly, 40 Vigor with the "Deprived" starting class in Dark Souls 2 would give you 1596 base HP. I used the Deprived starting class because in unique to Dark Souls 2, points in any stat gave you a few points in HP, so the fairest measurement to use is the starting vlass with the lowest base stats across the board. Dark Souls 3 gives you the lowest amount of HP by design to make you want to use an ember.
Comparing the HP values of different games rings hollow when you realise that the enemies of such deal different amounts of damage overall, and have different ways of dealing it.
In case I didnt explain myself well enough:
A character with 10 HP in a game where enemies deal 1hp from slow attacks will be tankier than a character with 100 hp that faces enemies that deal 25 hp with fast attacks.
@markmartin2819 It's not really that hollow of a point because HP is a constant across all the games. You die when it hits 0.
@@D-Havoc
I guess you should also compare the amount of HP provided in souls games to Diablo or WoW since "you die when your HP reached 0" in those games as well.
@@markmartin2819 strawman, WoW and Diablo are not souls-like games all designed by the same studio- Diablo is a top-down hack&slash and WoW is an MMO.
@@ZafkielDoesStuff Yes. I used a strawman to illustrate my point, not to justify it.
I really hope that by the end of this series domo or anyone else does a super cut so we have a true "in defense of dark souls 2" movie.
Love these videos. Keep it up. Once you finish this series you should compile each part into one big video.
To be honest in the ballista room, if you were to run in you could use the objects in the room to single one and deal with them one by one in the room
Why does he play dark souls like one would play resident evil? You're not gonna run out of ammo if you take your time and fight the enemies.
But you do. The weapons break so quickly.
@@josephbulkin9222 If durability were the reason he decided to kite every enemy in a whole area at once to complain about ganks, I'd imagine he'd bring it up as a factor. Besides, the mechanic has plenty of ways to work around it that don't involve self sabotage.
7:07
>veteran players
Lmao I found this ring extremely early on my first playthrough and I bet most people did
I mean it's literally before 2nd boss normally
He really said that veteran players are the ones using this ring. NO veteran player touches this ring, it's made specifically for new players learning the game.
@@under1702lol exactly, vets just don’t die and if they do they just play around it or use humanity since they probably don’t die enough to waste it
Did the guy really made a complaint about spontaneus combastion sounding like...spontaneus combustion?
On a personal note, I always found barrel explosion sound in ds2 almost earrapy, like a file that got compressed too much, I gues its becouse usually a group of them goes boom and they overlap.
Yes he did
No, the clip was disingenuously taken out of context.
Mauler talks about how inconsistent some of the sound mixing in DS2 is, and shows examples of similar, or even in some circumstances, the exact same sound effect has its volume changed anywhere from barely audible to "are your eardrums still working?".
@@exeledusprince9165 It still doesn’t change how ridiculous it is to complain about it
@@exeledusprince9165what is missing from the context? Mauler did not realize that Combustion sounds differently when it hits an enemy and he falsely accused that intended behavior of being a bug
@@RavenGamingOverLord he isnt conpmaining about it. Like the clip in question, the entire video is taken out of context. He uses this example of abhorrent sound design to punch holes in HBomberguy's point about good sound design.
Domo always flexing his runbacks it's amazing to see
But the iron keep one is kinda nuts, i'd be nervous af to make the jump to the stairs lol
@larrywalker1371hot take! But I like the OG ember placement, it makes sense to find it in a lava pit rather than right next to the blacksmith
I would mention that durability loss was tied to framerate. Before Scholar of the First Sin, the PC version equipment was taking ~2x damage at 60 fps. Pretty gnarly oversight that didn't get corrected until it affected the PS4/Xbone version.
"When discussing objectivity, your feelings are not relevant; mine are."
Lmao
The problem with most game critics these days. And ever.
@AppleIndianFTW most game critics: "how dare you say I'm wrong! I got background music that loops 5 songs, 10 hours of length, thousands of subscribers and a sexy voice, without those your evidence means NOTHING!"
I find it very funny when people who hate group fights in games are always the ones who rush in without a care for enemy priority or who they’re even aggroing in the first place.
33:14 I swear to god, sometimes I just gotta ask myself why I haven't ever tried to do that
41:23 "he doesn't acknowledge that people that know how to play the sousl games wouldn't have gotten ganked in the same way" no, even someone who had never played as souls game before would still have self preservation and common sense. MAYBE someone who had NEVER played ANY video game before would fall for these traps or run while triggering every ennemies without dispatching of them first.. but anyway, after watching a couple of your response videos i'm AMAZED and stunned that this guy seriously said all that publicly.. And i'm also amazed by how much you keep your calm and stay very very kind to him despite him so blatantly lying, manipulating and basically cheating his argument. You always give him the benefit of the doubt.. But dude he played every other souls, he finished DS2 many times, he knows EXACTLY how rto play it, there is zero doubt he does it on purpose, he is nefariously lying and manipulating the audience, that is absolutely despicable :/
I saw someone complaining about "boring movesets" in DS2. I played DSR, and the Halberd and Gargoyle Tail Axe have one attack. One. And your character stumbles while attacking.
ds1 movesets r sh1t
@@AtreyusNinja the only interesting moveset I can think of in DS1 is Priscilla's Dagger. But the cool moveset was wasted on a mid weapon with no remarkable features. Then you have the Majestic Greatsword powerstancing moveset in DS2, and it's awesome.
@@Choomba-j8uThe whip straight sword on the DLC, Santier spear having a combine moveset of a halberd, a dual sword and somehow curved sword (the 1 handed running attack), bone fist, power stance bone fist, the heavy spears, power stances as a whole
Okay, i've had this about the movement, in DS1 you can't run straight. You can't. It doesn't let you run straight at all, you're barely controlling your character, and i knew as soon as i saw this, it will get to me. And it did, in Sena's Castle, where you had to roll between hanging axes, i rolled SLIGHTLY to the side (becasue you can't make your character run straight, it's alwasy some degreee left/right) and i fell, and had to start over, fearing for my souls in RECENT playthrought (meaning i am experienced at these games, but nevertheless controlls in DS1 are absurd), unlike DS2, that has perfect controlls, faster and better. I know what i'm talking about.
Yeas, rushed. That is everything that he is doing about DS2. It is rushed, didn't look there, didn't spot obvious thing here, why? Because he is hating the game, and when you hate you're biased and look at everythig through vision og hate. I'm not talking about being sceptical, i'm talking about blind rage that people have subjectievly towards something, doesn't allow them to think straight. Why DS2 deserved it? DS1 also had rough threatment by DeS followers, it is expected, but it is not as near as much. May be becasue they are wrong and DS2 is good, and admitting that they were wrong only further enrages them.
Good to hear that I'm not the only one that dislikes the shaky running in DS1. To me the straight running in DS2 immediately felt like an upgrade
@@Domo3000 Aha, and the movement in general. People call it cluncky, i sort of understand what they mean, but i disagree, in DS2 you can move stick in circle and circle around an arrow, nor DS3 nor DS1 are able to do that. That's defienely upgrade, and then downgrade with DS3.
I swear to God, most of ganking problems DS2 haters claim the game has, actually DS3 suffers from. So many unavoidable gank encounters in that game where basically the only counter is "somehow tank through and pray you don't get staggered to death" or "run to boss and ignore enemies" which I personally don't find fun in a RPG COMBAT ACTION GAME to AVOID FIGHTING.
So you could jokingly say that in DS2 you get punished for running through new areas, while in DS3 you get punished for fighting your way through areas.
Ds3 is a game where whoever gets in the first hit will win.
Yeah, or even ELDEN RING where walking down a corridor has a trigger that makes an enemy attack you blind around a corner.
It really felt like most of that games dungeon design was blind ambushes as opposed to DS2's encounters where you can see an ambush coming.
@@rettungsanker6157 there really is no point to fighting through the areas in ER because the enemies drop a minuscule amount of souls.
demon souls halving your health and making the game harder upon death, with the only counter being to play the game in its entirety in soul form taking up a ring slot: Good design
Ds2 doing the same thing but heavily nerfed and molded into an interesting mechanic that incentivises trade offs, thinking and decision making with multiple solutions: Bad design
It really just shows how people blindly hate on ds2 for being different. I would argue alot of the ds2 hate stems from the fact you cant play it like ds3, mashing roll, spamming estus to just brainlessly tank over and over. It actually requires thinking power now that everything isn't so spammable.
I've actually seen people praises that mechanic in demon's but bashes it in ds2
Ah yes, Dark souls player worse nightmare is using more than one half of their brain cells to play the game and not mindlessly spamming
@@vanilla.icescream Why lol?
so fricking true
@@RavenGamingOverLord DS fans when you take the RPG part of souls games seriously: 😱😱
It is so nice seeing someone deconstruct the abysmal attempt at criticism that Mauler's """review""" was.
I wish that reviews like his didn't cause as much damage to the game that they did. Trying to get friends to even try the game is so hard sometimes.
Again, mauler didnt review DS2, he used all the shit it does horribly to deconstruct HBomberguy's abhorrent analysis of the game.
@@exeledusprince9165 ...An extremely poor deconstruction thats full of misinformation.
@@Revision-Harrowed not really. He has the game open and does everything he talks about for every point he makes.
@@exeledusprince9165 I would advise that you watch the series you are currently commenting under for a deconstruction of why Mauler's attempts at criticism are almost all horribly flawed and biased
@@Revision-Harrowed this series doesnt talk about what Mauler is even getting at, it just goes over his evidence (which is mostly accurate, btw)
i didn't knew you could agro the whip guys from huntsman copse one by one lmao
NGL i hate how ds3 rewards you for running away from enemies and using immune doors and levers
The real reason the dogs can teleport
It really is not that big of a difference imo, the reason people don't like it in DS2 is because it's immediate punishment vs delayed. Just because you get door and lever s instantly in DS3 doesn't mean enemies won't pile up on you and gank you after you get out of the animation, it's delayed punishment.
I think the only reason people complain about being ganked 1 way over the other is because it works 1:1 in Demon's, DS1, and DS3, with DS2 being the odd one out. It sets an expectation that is not met, but honestly I think after it happens the first time you should be aware of it and start to adjust your gameplay to accommodate for such. It's kind of a nothing complaint either way.
@@Cr00ked_Cat Well the difference is that in ds 3 you can open up the doors etc and after you die you just skip them and progress. In Ds1 it wasn't such a huge thing because your movement was a lot more limited and in general the exploration was slow paced.
And with how op dodge rolls were in ds 3 you could often just roll thru literal packs of enemies so you didnt get punished as you should.
@@Cr00ked_Cat Excuse me, that one irythill knight in church basement can't punish you, after you go into the next area... But you can safely kill him with the bow afterwards. Where's the punishment?
@@Happy_Sailor639 "I abused an anti-aggro barrier at a door the enemy gets stuck trying to go through to cheese it, why wasn't I punished? This is clearly only possible in DS3." Yeah idk why you didn't get punished, maybe it had something to do with intentionally abusing a dev oversight to cheese the enemy. I dunno man, LOL.
21:26 i was one of those that didn't get that the enemies on the floor could wake up, i got thrown of the ladder and had to fight 4 undead. did not blame the game once.
domo3000 my goat own that fraud