one thing this game taught me is to never rush, never run ahead carelessly most of the time you can avoid stupid deaths if you simply back out to fight in a safe area and look around
That's true, but baiting them out one at a time is boring and repetitive. It's playing whack a mole, no variety just grinding thru the level slowly to attempt a fun boss again
@@MrBritishNinja that's how souls was always meant to be. It's bloodborne (Still a good game) that skewed the formula and started allowing players to very easily rush through levels and ignore enemies. DS2 and Demon's souls were always about slow and methodical level progression to stay alive, Dark souls 1 as well, but to a slightly lesser extent. whether you like that or not is personal preference. but it's undeniable that DS2 was just being a souls game.
I have been cancelling/shortening door animations by rolling, but for some reason it never even occurred to me that you can roll during the fog gate animation
If there is one thing that I learned from this area (or ds2 in general) is to always play with aggro lines and pick your targets and it was surely a helpful tip moving forward I really like when sometimes you are encouraged to apply a more methodical aproach to your encounters
All the encounters that people typically use as evidence that the game has unfair enemy placements can be trivialized by being strategic instead of rushing. But somehow the community listened to the biggest casuals that just try to speedrun through new areas instead of telling them to get good.
That's the entire design philosophy of demon's souls and DS2. If people could just stop for 2 seconds and consider "Hey, maybe if i take my time and don't rush blindly into new rooms, i won't get ganked all the time" It's such a simple concept yet so few people seem capable of comprehending it... And don't even get me started on those people that complain because they can't rush an area and skip all the enemies...
The beginning part of Iron Keep is probably the only part of Scholar I really don't like. The fact that Alonne Knights just seem to magically know my exact location and crawl out of the woodwork makes the beginning area feel like a clown car. It's a blessing that Smelter Demon isn't really that difficult if you prepare.
They rush you with enough delay that you’re usually fighting one at a time, as long as you don’t rush them. And a Mace +6 can deal with them rather easily.
@@Domo3000 I was thinking of people who have heard the overexaggerated horror stories about Iron Keep and might feel intimidated. Having a Mace +6 be good enough to deal with them brings the threat level down a bit, you know?
It's also worth mention that people who say that this area is bad just talk about the smelter demon runback like it's the hole area, they ignore the shortcuts, secrets, the various ways of dealing with enemies (throwing them on lava, killing the turtle on the corridor with the guillotine, guiding the enemies to the fire throwing statues, activating the rotating flame thrower to kill the invader on ng+). DS2 haters love to use cherry picking to make the entire game look worse, and this area is the best example of that.
Yeah people really love to accuse the game of having unfair enemy placement, even when their own footage shows that they are just blindly running through new areas without paying any attention to all the traps they could use to deal with the enemies. It's always a shame when they use the second half of Iron Keep to show how unfair DS2 is, even though that is one of the most fun areas in the whole series if you just engage with the level.
If there is one area where i can definitely say the enemies need to be reduced in numbers, it is the Smelter Area. It's basically the one W i would give DS2 haters, but even then it's not the massive flaw they pretend it is. The are is just way too small for the number of knights you fight, and as you keep approaching the bridge, it can feel like you are barely moving, as they keep coming at you. I would personally substitute some of the knights with patrolling turtle knights, that don't just bum rush you as soon as they see you from the other side of the map.
@domo3000 it's really hard in a first playthrough to "engage with the area" because u just die even if u play careful, and even if u don't die in the beginning of the area u might at the end and it's really annoying to have to do it again
@@Luekirt2 So then... it's hard to engage with literally every level in every single souls borne game that has enemies in it? Dying is a normal part of the game. it's a normal part of all the games. the only difference is that you actually have to use your brain and eyes when playing through a DS2 area, instead of only on the bosses.
@@Rosy_bun alright mate it's okay to take criticism. This area ain't perfect, to begin with. Such as certain heavy movement weapons being poor on the bridge etc. scholar adding more archers made careful planning worse let alone the 3 invaders alone is just kinda tedious vs good. Something I don't see brought enough is those invaders, like oh boi the first part has less alone knights in more open areas with lots of room to see their moveset. The smelter area effectively harms your ability to fight them by providing cover fire etc along with more. Just like how he uses blams bad faith critics for using the area for scummy tactics. I noticed he downplays archers and how a single headshot from any one of them could mean a death. With more archers that chance increases, And I'm not certain how 3 invasions vs the zero is considered the same thing becouse 3 more alone knights of which you don't even really need to fight 2 of them by taking the side paths would matter. Especially when dennis can one shot an early level character if they aren't prepared for it. I also find it unlikely that most people who haven't sunk several hundreds of hours replaying dks2 (i have only a less than 5 playthroughs) wouldn't find the scholar one more harder, sure with a careful scalpule 100 hours and the right weapon etc the areas are pretty darn comparable. Except I can in vannila go to one end of the bridge fight off the alone knights and than agress, using the pillars to protect from archer fire from the back. In scholar that same tactic nets me with 5 alone knights and an additional archer all on a narrow passage. Take that vs the 3 knights in a large room or the duos in also large rooms. The fact they come in those numbers in vanilla makes you think when there is one there is another. In scholar you get jumped by three invaders and than after killing 3 guys have to go through the intense process of navigating an area where you are at a huge disadvantage. In vanilla it was also hard, easily top 3 hardest in the game on my first relatively blind playthrough which was only a year ago. In scholar it's easily the harder. And while I feel defending dks2 is a noble cause and one I fully support I really enjoyed time and feel dks1 gets away with more shit than is deserved. (Toxic blowdart on the ladder) And a terrible estus progression. Etc just to name a few. I feel this one in scholar has more rings of truth than falsehood. Does that make the area bad by no means no it's just difficult and that's fine. Shrine of amana is difficult yet it was my favorite area of the game along with huntsmen copse and the pirate bay each usually considered harder areas for different reasons. I feel it's odd when some people say a boss is difficult as a positive yet when we talk areas it's somehow a negative.
Whenever I hear people complain about the agro range on the knights, I'm like, "well what did you expect? You are basically invading their castle. Did you expect them to let you waltz in?"
@@Yarivenrayou forgot about the gamedesign. That aggro rage is extremely annoying and kills immersion, since you get 2-4 enemies ganging on you as you see their weapons come through them to attack you instead of doing friendly fire (immersive AF, right) >realism Explain the volcano over a wooden windmill then
I just did Iron Keep and, while I wasn't smart enough to use most of the traps against enemies, I reached the Old Iron King easily. Also, wtf, there's another bonfire very close to him. The Iron Keep complaints are blown out of proportion.
I agree that the changes to this area get overstated a lot to try to score an easy dunk on scholar, but I don't think this video tells the whole story. I think it's specifically the changes in the outdoor area that makes it feel so overwhelming, rather than the overall population. In vanilla you fight 3 knights one by one, two of whom only aggro when you get close. Meanwhile in scholar there are 3 knights who will charge at you all at once as soon as you step outside, and then another 4 once you step on the bridge. Sure it's only 3 extra knights in total, and you can take them out one at a time if you're quick, but the way they aggro in groups increases the pressure a lot. The runback isn't the whole story, but I again think it's somewhat worse than you make out. The fact that most of the knights are concentrated in the one room means that if you try to run past only to get staggered in the fog door, you're done for. You could escape from or even fight the group of 3 in vanilla, but scholar's 7 at once is usually a death sentence. Also, and I think more importantly, the vanilla knights start much farther away from smelter's door. This can give you time to backstab the captain or bait him into an attack, especially if you did the skip, which makes it much easier to get through first try. If you try that in scholar, you'll get swarmed by the little guys before you can reach the door.
One particular problem that bothers me with the run up to smelter, is the aggro range, now most of ds2 scholar version aggro ranges are pretty reasonable, but the alonne knights in this area i swear, there is one, one particular one that is in the room past smelter. There is no way that enemy can see you on entering the outdoor area, and you cannot possibly see it either. Yet it aggros at atleast 2 seconds later when your unaware of it it will catch you off guard when you try to engage the others, now of course i can just wait for it to arrive, but I don't think its unreasonable to say normally I have no way of knowing that enemy was coming because there is no way, its in another room entirely, it shouldn't be able to hear or see you, tell me is this an unreasonable complaint? Ive come to accept and like alot of enemy encounters in DS2 and have learned you need to simply approach this game differently but i take exception to the run up to Smelter.
Kill the enemies instead of just rushing to the door? Like that's how dark souls 2 often is. This isn't Dark souls 3. the game actually wants you to interact with the levels. not being able to rush the fog door is not a game problem. it's a you problem. and if you don't try and rush the door, every encounter with the alonne knights is completely manageable.
@@Rosy_bun I don't rush, ive been doing a new playthrough recently and haven't rushed at all, i didnt have much trouble with the area, but thats not my point I still think its unreasonable. On my first playthrough when I did the runback after dying the furst few times, i killed the first few enemies that rush you the got onto the bridge to face the others only to get attacked by an enemy i didn't realize i had aggroed because there is no possible way to see them and ther eis no way they should hear or see me they are in a completely different room and through most of this game enemies in different rooms unless your in line of sight will not aggro. It took me several attempts before I realized where the enemy was coming from after that it was a tedious wait for the enemy to arrive lest I get attacked from behind by just progressing at a normal reasonable pace, not rushing. It doesnt matter that I no longer have trouble, it isnt fun to deal with and at the end of the day fun is what matters. And for the most part i think ds2 is very fine, just not the run up to smelter.
@@loftwingheropon2743 i was mostly responding to the OP. In regards to you though, everyone has a different experience with how they handle areas. However, i have to disagree fundamentally about the aggro thing. Every single enemy in iron keep sees you before they aggro you. If you pay attention to where they're coming from, you'll realise that a lot of them have height advantage, so they can see you coming. The ones inside the first room are in the middle platform, at the top of the stairs and in an outcropping in the wall. Then, once you get out into the place with the movable bridge, the first on can see you from on the bridge, and two more see you from where they're placed on top of platforms. And once you drop the bridge, there's one by the lever that sees you as you approach it, the one at the very end of the bridge that has seen you the entire time but can now reach you, and the two on top of the platform with the broken stairs who again, can see you. And, of course the two captain archers. They all have direct line of sight on you. You juat have to keep an eye out for them. Not a single one aggros until it sees you. I've spent over 2000 hours in ds2 so i know the exact placement and aggro radius over almost every enemy in the game. While some do aggro without line of sight, they are in a position where they could hear you. But the alonne knights in pre-smelter can all 100% see you. And besides, even if we play the devil's advocate here... they would 100% hear you beating up their fully metal armored fellows and come rushing from that sound.
@@Rosy_bun Listen I get it, and I love DS2 don't get me wrong, but if you're a first time player and you're having to take 10+ attempts on a boss, having a really long return trip with no way to shortcut it gets frustrating. Like yeah it's great that DS2 makes you engage with its levels, but for 95% of bosses, running back is not that hard once you know the level. Smelter really stands out for how difficult it can be to get back to quickly.
I didn't know about the shortcut, thanks! For me personally this area was always a pain, and in vanilla I managed to find a way to drop back down from Belfry Sol bonfire and used that one to run back to Smelter Demon. However in Scholar that path appeared to have been blocked, so having learned this I just summoned the npc outright and had them basically deal with the demon for me. The shortcut would've made this much more straightforward, but oh well.
Aside from the three scripted invasions, I really enjoyed Iron Keep on my first blind playthrough. Between Fencer Sharon and Armorer Denis, it felt like this was just going to be a super frequent invasion area, then Forlorn shows up. Being a blind playthrough, I had no idea what else was coming, and was kind of just waiting for that invasion text to show up after pulling more knights.
I've gotten to the DLC part of my first journey through DS2 and honestly watching these videos has helped me enjoy this game alot more, I mean some bits I still struggled on and at times the run backs are harder than the boss. This one I particularly found annoying 😂 but through patience I got though I mainly died by falling Into the Lava 😂 by making stupid mistakes
I... Genuinely didn't know you could cancel the fog wall animation... There is so much about DS 2 I never learned or felt like it wasn't worth my time learning because I didn't really like the game itself, and felt like it wasn't worth learning more about. I don't think it's a "bad" game like I used to, I think it is just *different* and I just didn't jive with it the way I did other Souls games. Either way, I am genuinely enjoying your content. I always love seeing other people's opinions on things, and don't mind being wrong! Keep it up!
Wow. You honestly gave an awesome point of view. You didn't enjoy it, but you didn't hate it. It simply wasn't your style so you moved on from it, which is very respectable. Showing that you're open to newer interpretations instead of just walking away from it is really cool. I'm a ds2 fanboy at heart but there's many reasons I can see why the game is avoided. It can be a lot for people unfamiliar, especially those who try to play it like the other.
1:03 “You can bait them out one at a time.” Hell yeah, this is my mantra for Iron Keep in general. You don’t have to pull a FeebleKing clown car and aggro everything if you are methodical. I’m so glad you did this comparison. This whole series is badass. I still have the ability to play my OG DS2 on disc but I haven’t hooked up my XBOX 360 in about nine years. I was in the group that was gaslit into thinking SotFS was so much worse, even though I knew its critics were disingenuous about some things and that SotFS isn’t very ganky anyway (because I play it). But the comparisons I did were in my mind and relied on an ostensibly sketchy memory. You are doing a service with these videos. Big Ups! I wish you the absolute best.
It takes only a couple hits to defeat the enemies, but players prefer to not waste additional 2 seconds on every knight and risk wasting a lot more time on failed runbacks. What is Dark Souls about? Running away from enemies? Avoiding enemies? Is it a stealth game? Is it a game about sprinting with obstacles? If players don't enjoy fighting same enemies over and over, then why are they playing Dark Souls? Am I wrong? Am I weird if I like to engage in fight with enemies?
no, you're 100% right. there was someone else in this very comment section complaining that they couldn't run to the smelter fog and it's genuinely sad to read. They're just sat there criticizing the design because they can't just ignore all the enemies. Some people...
Great level. A lot of times it feels like the Knights are walking into your ambush instead of the other way around. If the optional boss is too difficult then you can always get the Belfry bonfire and teleport out of there to get one of the other three boss souls or keep pushing and just skip the optional boss. I feel the only way the level isnt fun is if you just do boss runbacks over and over without changing things up.
Funfact. If you have a UGS or GA, you can instantly poise break the alonne knight captains and then riposte them to 1 shot 'em. Very helpful in NG+ too for the red phantom versions.
The awful part about SotFS Iron Keep is the obscene agro ranges on the enemies. They will agro from 500 ft away through a wall without any sort of warning or way to avoid them. And Alonne Knights are way too fast to be manegable in a gank scenario, you have to lure them out one at a time. But the only way to do that is to just trial and error your way into memorizing all the unseeable agro ranges. Perhaps I'm just biased though, the time I spent trying to get past the Smelter Demon runback on my first playthrough was the most miserable experience I've had in a Soulsborne game.
One thing I've noticed throughout the many years of hearing people complaining about dark souls and Elden Ring is that it all boils down to skill issue. Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to sound elitist is just that I've seen countless times the story about how one used to hate certain game/area in the game but after putting some effort comes to enjoy or at least don't mind it anymore because they got good. Which might also explains why DS2 gets more hate than the other entries: cuz it demands more from the player.
While I know it's a "lame" option, I think it's worth noting how little stamina damage the alonne knights do to either of the early full block shields. Both the drangleic shield and I believe it's called the knight's shield? It's the one you can buy from the blacksmith this is basically the drangleic shield but with less stability but also a little lighter. I believe with one of the chloranthy rings, a single alonne knight can be blocked almost forever. In sotfs you can just kinda hold block in the smelter runback, and typically kill while they're stunned from their thrust attack with 2-3 r1s and repeat for the next knight, so killing them is never really a problem.
That isn't lame in the slightest! Shields are a 100% viable strategy and in DS2, they're even more encouraged because all shields in DS2 are completely viable! I mean, it all comes back to the existence of ADP. Dodging isn't the only choice. if you find a shield makes an encounter easier, use it! Don't let these dumb "Purists" Tell you otherwise!!
@@Rosy_bunencouraged? I love shields ,but they dont feel encouraged at all. Only one class gets a shield, and it doesnt even block all physical damage. Speaking on the Iron keep, you cant block the Alonne Knight Captains,they will shoot you from behind while you are fighting another one. I wish shields were encouraged, but you get overwhelmed so quickly that your guard breaks.
@@josephbulkin9222 you can buy a 100% guard shield in majula for 1500 souls and it's available immediately. As for the whole "getting overwhelmed" thing, that's not a problem with shields. That's a problem with how one plays the game. If someone runs into an area without paying mind to enemy placement, they'll get swarmed whether or not they have a shield. Blocking and dodging both require conscious gameplay. The only difference is that unlike the other souls games, every single medium and heavy shield is viable for defence. And something that's important to note is that while most shields in ds2 don't have 100% physical defense, they have much, much higher status and element resistance on average than the other games. The watchdragon parma, which is available in one of the first areas in the game, actually has one of the highest total defense values in the game, with pretty respectable stability. If you want a video to display all this, just watch a blind playthrough of ds2. The majority of players end up using a shield because they didn't investigate the functionality of ADP and their playthrough goes pretty darn well. Speaking for myself, as well, I've previously done a playthrough in ds2 where i didn't dodge a single attack other than grabs (not counting just walking out of range of an attack) and otherwise blocking, and it was no harder than a no shield run.
@@Rosy_bun I have never seen a single.lets play using a shield. Point me to one, they all seem too focused on rolling onrushing a massive greatsword.They probably heard the poison that using a shield is.stupid or some other nonsense. I checked, though. You cannot get a 100% shield in Majula. The Silver Eagle Kite Shield you can buy from Maughlin blocks 90% physical damage, not 100. trust me, you feel the difference.
And UGS make NPC encounters MUCH easier in ds2 sotfs. Because unlike ds3 and elden ring, they swing at the same speed if not faster AND instantly knock down enemies with the 2h heavy attack or 2h running attack. Thats on top of their immense stagger. And these NPC's cannot move around very fast or attack extremely fast either. UGS jump attacks can go quite far and have pretty good tracking. And all this also applies to GA's and GH's. Infact, the fume ugs is the perfect anti NPC weapon on account of its blockattack. The only downside is the massive stamina cost. The swing speed is slower but its still the fastest in the series. So a colossal weapon will make YOU the boss.
Weird question: does NG+/Ascetic increase group aggression values? I feel like ive noticed it in Shrine of Amana when i farm it for twinkling titanite. The hammer guys attack in groups more aggressively and dont back off as much i feel like idk
I also think it does. Even during the game it feels like it. I always thought that the Royal Swordsmen in Lost Bastille fight less aggressively and less strategically than those in Drangleic Castle.
@@Domo3000 it would be interesting to know if they have different AI or values or something. The Bastille ones are much closer to becoming forlorn hollows giving up it seems
I’ve gone through this place both in vanilla and scholar and don’t really have any issues with it. I also almost never do the smelter demon skip or the jump to the broken stairway to get to him on a first playthrough of a character. Now this place in NG+ is actually hard as hell. There are Seven (7) red phantoms in NG+ in scholar 😢😢😢😢😢😢 6 captains, one in the entry way hallway, one in the lava pit ladder, one where the zweihandler is, two in the furnace you turn off, one in the lava walkway after smelter demon, and the red phantom turtle cosplayer guarding the last bonfire before old iron king. 😩😩😩
This and the run to the chariot are the only areas where I'm like "what were they thinking" Iron keep feels somewhat inconsistent for me, sometimes I will aggro more knights despite feeling like I'm not doing anything different And I simply hate the chariot run, it's the one time I get tired of slowly pulling every enemy By the way any tips to deal with the undead crypt and never ending hollows ringing bells?
For the Chariot you can just run through and jump to the platform at the end of the bridge and then watch the enemies fall down when they walk back. Or just running straight through by running a small loop before the fog gate: ruclips.net/video/hBO0-9krp0k/видео.htmlsi=qoOAXAal4Qmn52C- For Undead Crypt there's a limited amount of bell ringing Hollows. The first one spawns next to the bell, then another one outside that small room to the left and then a third one close to the bell again.
@@JellyJman honestly it felt like whack a mole, I didn't even know they were limited cause they kept popping up I thought I was doing somethig wrong so it turns out I just have to keep killing them?
Scholar is worse in this location because of wider enemies agro. In original, you can pick estus safety near the second bridge, and you don't need to be quick with this. In Scholar, enemies start to run towards you, so it's harder to renegerate health.
It's wild to see that final Smelter Skip run (which i'd argue is the alternate path, not the main one, due to how far apart bonfires are if you don't have access to Smelter's one) looking as chill as it did I've played only scholar and don't think I had a good time in Iron Keep in any of my playthroughs. What I remember being infuriating was the aggro range of the knights in the open furnace area before smelter. There's a handful of archers so that in most places you had one or, often, two shooting at you and knights would come running from different spots in a way that was hard to control. Even if they come at you staggered, they start coming really quick so that really early on you're already "opted in" to like, half the room's enemies
There are less enemies on the path to the next bonfire than for the path to Smelter Demon, and it's easier to skip them. Which is why I'd argue that it's the main path and that struggling players should come back later for the Smelter Demon.
@@Domo3000 IMO the problem is more that after smelter you have a whole lot more before you can get to the next bonfire. The one for the belfry is easy enough but then you need to run the belfry to get back on the Iron Keep path. The big lava platform room is one that, while fun with all the contraptions, can get messy in a hurry pretty easily and the tiny corridors with the guillotines and iron warriors can also be tricky to deal with. it's not always easy to bait them into the traps, weapons bouncing off the sides, etc... So while I agree that, yeah, it's easier to get to the platform just after Smelter than going to the boss itself, the stretch from the first bonfire under the bridge all the way to the one on the bull's head is quite the trip to take which is why to me that'd more of an alternate path instead (also, is it really standard if you're missing out on Ring of Blades +1? =P )
@@VileLasagna running through the Belfry is easy and then you are back in the lava platform room which you would also need to get past from the Smelter Demon bonfire, so it's pretty much the same in my opinion.
@@Domo3000 definitely not too bad a run after you cleared the non respawning phantoms, even if it is quite annoying, yeah All my memories may or may not be tainted by not liking either Iron Keep or Brume Tower, lol
If you really, really suck at DS2, the ultimate method is just to grind out the path to Smelter until the Alonne Knights stop respawning. Yes, this takes quite a while, but you're probably gonna die to the Smelter Demon over and over again (since you really, really suck at DS2 in this scenario), and this makes the runback actually literally free, plus you'll have gotten enough souls for a ton of levels and a full set of the best phys+fire defense armor in the game
So, how did you skip Smelter Demon? As I remember it is impossible at the first playtrough, cause to open the iron door near the second bridge you need to turn off the fire near the Eygil's Idol bonfire. Or you told about this just for NG+?
1:20 you don't have to go so much to the right to aggro this guy, you can go to the corner between the fence and the pillar, I've always done it like that the only time the second one aggros too is if you then go right instead of back out to a safe distance, the middle of this bridge for example
Lol 😊 What helped me was to visualize the active s: ruclips.net/video/0DC8cUnPClE/видео.htmlsi=zUbfol4DuWmasjwj Rolling s start as soon as the animation starts, but for backsteps you are doing a small step backwards first and only then when you jump back you gain s. So you have to dodge a bit earlier than you are used to.
I've always kinda hated going through Iron keep in both versions. Something about the way Alonne knights attack always throws me off and that area near the smelter demon in scholar could be really miserable.
Aggroing only one knight at the Threshold Bridge is really easy. You literally have to try to aggro them both for it to happen. If you constantly aggro both without knowing why that's just skill issue.
It's the same Forlorn that invaded me in the large open space. He's a rare invader and if you defeated him in an area he won't show up again. So I'm not actually 100% sure if there are two distinct Forlorns in this area, but to me it always felt like defeating him in the first spawn point stops him from showing up in the second one. So I assume that it's just one Forlorn in the Iron Keep, but I also could just have been lucky.
I've played DX9 and DX11, and honestly... I don't particularly care for Iron Keep in either version. If given the choice, I'd rather skip Iron Keep for as long as I can and do literally any other Old Soul. Black Gulch is terrible, but it has plenty of cheesy farming spots for titanite if you're willing to roll around the oil pits with a torch (thanks ymfah). I'm quite fond of Lost Bastille / Sinner's Rise, though I detest Scholar's choice of including a lesser Flexile Sentry in an area with knee-deep water leading up to Sinner herself. Every leg toward Duke's Dear Freja is (relatively) easy to clear and generally a net positive in terms of loot, and Freja herself is a (relatively) easy boss if you have a torch. I used to hate DS2 so much when I first played it back in 2015 on my PS4. After almost 10 years, my feelings have softened dramatically. DS2 has replay value where DS1/DS3/Bloodborne have limited or otherwise none. However, all these years of watching people discuss DS2 have solidified one feeling more than any other within me: it's a painful experience, there's a ton of jank, and it requires a fair bit of acclimatisation on the player's part. ONCE YOU GET PAST THOSE HURDLES, it's a rewarding game that has a surprising amount of shit to do. Before parrywalking was discovered, the DS2 speedrun relied heavily on parkour skips. The fall damage is punishing, the movement is ass, but great rewards await the player with patience and skill to make DS2's jank work for them. I could go on, but you probably already get where I'm going with the rest of this ramble. Some people, unfortunately, don't want to git gud. I think that's the one bit of Cranky's advice that every Souls player ultimately forgets to heed until it's a touch too late.
@@JellyJman I'm not denying that, but if I had to make my point clearer: Demon's Souls is a less painful self-imposed torture simulator than Dark Souls 2 is.
Vanilla's Iron Keep is all about aggro enemies 1 by 1 and how are you good at it. Aggro 2 Knights at the first bridge is much easier that it seems. You need only to make very-very short steps, and when you see the first Knight is going to you, then you must walk back to not agro the second Knight while you are fighting the first. It is similar as Huntsman's Copse 5 Executioners. And it is similar to all the location. In Scholar it is very hard, cause Knights have a bigger agro range, so near the second bridge in Vanilla you can easily defeat just 2 Knights 1 by 1. And in Scholar you need to defeat a bigger amount of enemies together.
Yesterday I just replayed this zone after having played vanilla and I was fuming xDD IMO the aggro reach its wich makes it unplayable or annoying to play, I dont think its harder in scholar just more annoying to clear
We've really reached a point where we're defending Iron Keep of all things... What's next, arguing that Frigid Outskirts is good? Maybe you can find fun in having to deal with 10 knights per attempt at a boss, 10 knights you have to deal with slowly and methodically every single time while keeping in mind that stepping over brick number 73 will aggro the knight from beyond the next room without any line of sight or even believable sound because this is one of the few places where aggro range decided to massively screw you over (and then screw itself over if you backtrack which is just the juiciest immersion breaking moment). Good for you if you can find fun in that, I don't. I sigh when I have to do it more than once and since it's likely that I'll get clobbered at least once by Smelty, I expect pure frustration ahead. And I don't want to hear "skill issue", I have over 2000h of play on these god forsaken games, 300h on scholar alone, I've beaten the shit out of this game with every crappy build I could think of, even on CoC. Iron Keep will never not be a chore to me. Now please stop showing in my RUclips feed, I'm sick and tired of this neverending conversation, DS2/Scholar is a shit game I enjoyed despite the ocean of issues it had, you won't convince me ever that these issues were not exactly that, issues. Have a good day and do the community a favor, stop this cycle at last, it's been 12 years, we're never going to agree on DS2, the best you can do is lay the controversy to rest so that people can enjoy it (or not) in peace.
@officeimpact6377 I like ds2. I used to deny it and swear it off before I played it, but iron keep just feels enemy spammy even when I play slow and fight evreything one on one
Tbh i never liked this place but it has more to do with the map structure it doesnt really feel like a real keep not to mention it doesnt feel like a souls game map. Other areas has better map shape.
Throughout this series, i feel you've had great points and you've dealt with the comparisons between the two versions objectively and meticulously. But i think you lessening the importance of enemy agro ranges, something that you've talked about before on how it makes scholar easier in certain areas, is a bit intellectually dishonest. In the lost Bastille, the agro ranges of the royal swordsmen were a good example for scholar actually being easier on purpose and providing a more reasonable enemy placement, but all of a sudden, Alonne knights agro-ing from half way into the next room, is suddenly seen as a fair thing? It's not "on theme" because it's a fortress as you've implied in the comments. A literal prison full of Royal swordsmen should, by this logic, maintain similar levels of agro. Also, that one Knight with the seemingly broken agro also is somehow aware of your presence and runs after you when you're on the platform with the bonfire that you unlock after the smelter demon is defeated. He doesn't actually get to you but the fsct that no other knights agro at the same time which shows that it, at the very least, wasn't intended to be that alert. Then there's the fact that there's another extra archer making the runback more difficult along with the extra enemies in the area. Two or three extra enemies isn't a big deal when they're just hollows. It's definitely a big deal when they're high-damage alonne knights chasing you to the end of the earth. All this, along with having to possibly deal with three invaders if the player dies, definitely makes scholar a lot more than "much harder" than vanilla.
>"Alonne knights agro-ing from half way into the next room, is suddenly seen as a fair thing?" Me at 6:26: "this part is one of the few areas that are actually harder in the Scholar version"
@@Domo3000 you do say it's harder, but the way you say it is not representative of how hard it actually is, especially for a first playthrough. You do admit scholar is harder but your wording in a lot of the video makes it sound like the complaints about the sholar version are played up or unwarranted, while you almost ignore or downplay the terrible agro range of many of the enemies in the outdoor area. Your conclusion is also worded in this manner.
@@sociallyawkwardweeabootras1450 i dont see the terrible aggro range. the only sus aggro i can think of is when you open the door after defeating the invader,but that made a lot of noise so it makes sense.
@@sociallyawkwardweeabootras1450 also your argument in itself isnt a fair comparison,youre comparing a very small section of a map,with the first half of iron keep. it wouldnt make sense for all royal swordsman soldiers to aggro on you at once,since youre in a small space it wouldnt be fair at all. whereas in iron keep you have much more space to fight,and you can either skip it to reach the boss fog,or unlock the shortcut and go straight the next area,if you dont rush the area you will get aggroed by one alonne soldier at a time,iron keep is fair as long as you dont rush the area. and if you do so,deal with the consequences of your actions.
@@sociallyawkwardweeabootras1450 btw the example you gave,defeats your own argument the royal swordsmen soldiers were put there exclusively to guard prisioners,as lost bastille itself is a giant prison,therefore makes sense they all dont aggro at once on you,theyre guarding the prison cells,so prisoners dont escape.
I think for me, it’s mostly gameplay decisions of 2 specifically. A combination of adaptation being an unnecessary and honestly bad mechanic, and no fog invincibility.
I don't get what the problem is anyway. It's dark souls. The difficulty is why it's popular. It wish it was twice as hard. The more difficult the better
Many people just want the satisfaction of having beaten a hard game without actually putting in the effort. So when there's an optional hard side challenge like the Smelter Demon they get mad that they actually have to get good now.
@@Domo3000 dark souls is based around being hard the creator said so himself. It's difficulty just seemed fitting for the world he created. The reason people don't like the difficulty of ds2 is that it both hampers roleplaying and makes areas a slog to get through.
How is it a optional challenge you have to deal with the alone knights anyways if you want to progress to the next room. You have to deal with almost all of them to shut down the fires.
There are many ways things can be difficult, and not all of them are necessarily fun to deal with. I feel like the Iron Keep is pretty OK in this regard: while difficult, you can still get through it relatively easily and quickly if you are smart and careful enough to pick enemies 1v1, separate them, use terrain as cover from the archers (or staying on the move to avoid arrows), etc. It punishes you for being hasty and careless and rewards being being patient and crafty. For contrast, look at areas like the Iron Passage or Frigid Outskirts. They are definitely hard, but they are also pretty much universally considered some of the worst zones in the series. The former throws loads of enemies and debuffs at you in a boring cramped space while the latter is just a very long run with unavoidable OP encounters. and neither gives you any particularly interesting ways to approach it besides slogging through it or cheesing enemies in unintended ways. While difficult, both end up feeling like chore instead, with the only clear solution being just throwing more bodies at it (since these are supposed to be "co-op areas"). You can also look at the Bed of Chaos from DS1, which can instakill you by dropping you into a pit - it can be hard, but it's also considred to be one the worst bosses in the series since its difficulty mostly comes from DS1's janky jumping mechanics. Besides, Dark Souls really isn't all about difficulty either. I've been playing since DS1 and I no longer find the games all too difficult, but I still play them regularly due to the satisfying exploration, level design, combat, lore, etc.. If Souls games were only known as "difficult rage games," they would've been pretty quickly forgotten like Flappy Bird or something.
one thing this game taught me is to never rush, never run ahead carelessly
most of the time you can avoid stupid deaths if you simply back out to fight in a safe area and look around
@@mon0light based ds2 player detected
when ds1 tries to teach you this lesson everyone calls it good design
That's true, but baiting them out one at a time is boring and repetitive. It's playing whack a mole, no variety just grinding thru the level slowly to attempt a fun boss again
@@MrBritishNinja I have to agree. Maybe I don't see it this way for the whole game, but there certainly are moments where it gets tedious
@@MrBritishNinja that's how souls was always meant to be. It's bloodborne (Still a good game) that skewed the formula and started allowing players to very easily rush through levels and ignore enemies. DS2 and Demon's souls were always about slow and methodical level progression to stay alive, Dark souls 1 as well, but to a slightly lesser extent. whether you like that or not is personal preference. but it's undeniable that DS2 was just being a souls game.
I didn't know that Alonne captain can backstab you, now i know
Backpunch
I have been cancelling/shortening door animations by rolling, but for some reason it never even occurred to me that you can roll during the fog gate animation
Still mad the Alonne captain sword was never put in the game.
If there is one thing that I learned from this area (or ds2 in general) is to always play with aggro lines and pick your targets and it was surely a helpful tip moving forward
I really like when sometimes you are encouraged to apply a more methodical aproach to your encounters
All the encounters that people typically use as evidence that the game has unfair enemy placements can be trivialized by being strategic instead of rushing.
But somehow the community listened to the biggest casuals that just try to speedrun through new areas instead of telling them to get good.
Honestly Demon’s Souls had this the most. There’s a lot of black phantom enemies that spawn only when you walk a few steps and can bait the rest
That's the entire design philosophy of demon's souls and DS2. If people could just stop for 2 seconds and consider "Hey, maybe if i take my time and don't rush blindly into new rooms, i won't get ganked all the time" It's such a simple concept yet so few people seem capable of comprehending it... And don't even get me started on those people that complain because they can't rush an area and skip all the enemies...
The beginning part of Iron Keep is probably the only part of Scholar I really don't like. The fact that Alonne Knights just seem to magically know my exact location and crawl out of the woodwork makes the beginning area feel like a clown car. It's a blessing that Smelter Demon isn't really that difficult if you prepare.
So you are upset that you are invading their keep and they dont act passive?
They rush you with enough delay that you’re usually fighting one at a time, as long as you don’t rush them. And a Mace +6 can deal with them rather easily.
@@pessolano461 at that point you can easily have a +10 Mace or a +4 Craftmans Hammer
@domo3000 yeah but on a first playthrough you're most likely not gonna have an op weapon like those
@@Domo3000 I was thinking of people who have heard the overexaggerated horror stories about Iron Keep and might feel intimidated. Having a Mace +6 be good enough to deal with them brings the threat level down a bit, you know?
It's also worth mention that people who say that this area is bad just talk about the smelter demon runback like it's the hole area, they ignore the shortcuts, secrets, the various ways of dealing
with enemies (throwing them on lava, killing the turtle on the corridor with the guillotine, guiding the enemies to the fire throwing statues, activating the rotating flame thrower to kill the invader on ng+). DS2 haters love to use cherry picking to make the entire game look worse, and this area is the best example of that.
Yeah people really love to accuse the game of having unfair enemy placement, even when their own footage shows that they are just blindly running through new areas without paying any attention to all the traps they could use to deal with the enemies.
It's always a shame when they use the second half of Iron Keep to show how unfair DS2 is, even though that is one of the most fun areas in the whole series if you just engage with the level.
If there is one area where i can definitely say the enemies need to be reduced in numbers, it is the Smelter Area. It's basically the one W i would give DS2 haters, but even then it's not the massive flaw they pretend it is. The are is just way too small for the number of knights you fight, and as you keep approaching the bridge, it can feel like you are barely moving, as they keep coming at you. I would personally substitute some of the knights with patrolling turtle knights, that don't just bum rush you as soon as they see you from the other side of the map.
@domo3000 it's really hard in a first playthrough to "engage with the area" because u just die even if u play careful, and even if u don't die in the beginning of the area u might at the end and it's really annoying to have to do it again
@@Luekirt2 So then... it's hard to engage with literally every level in every single souls borne game that has enemies in it? Dying is a normal part of the game. it's a normal part of all the games. the only difference is that you actually have to use your brain and eyes when playing through a DS2 area, instead of only on the bosses.
@@Rosy_bun alright mate it's okay to take criticism. This area ain't perfect, to begin with. Such as certain heavy movement weapons being poor on the bridge etc. scholar adding more archers made careful planning worse let alone the 3 invaders alone is just kinda tedious vs good. Something I don't see brought enough is those invaders, like oh boi the first part has less alone knights in more open areas with lots of room to see their moveset. The smelter area effectively harms your ability to fight them by providing cover fire etc along with more.
Just like how he uses blams bad faith critics for using the area for scummy tactics. I noticed he downplays archers and how a single headshot from any one of them could mean a death. With more archers that chance increases,
And I'm not certain how 3 invasions vs the zero is considered the same thing becouse 3 more alone knights of which you don't even really need to fight 2 of them by taking the side paths would matter. Especially when dennis can one shot an early level character if they aren't prepared for it.
I also find it unlikely that most people who haven't sunk several hundreds of hours replaying dks2 (i have only a less than 5 playthroughs) wouldn't find the scholar one more harder, sure with a careful scalpule 100 hours and the right weapon etc the areas are pretty darn comparable.
Except I can in vannila go to one end of the bridge fight off the alone knights and than agress, using the pillars to protect from archer fire from the back. In scholar that same tactic nets me with 5 alone knights and an additional archer all on a narrow passage. Take that vs the 3 knights in a large room or the duos in also large rooms. The fact they come in those numbers in vanilla makes you think when there is one there is another.
In scholar you get jumped by three invaders and than after killing 3 guys have to go through the intense process of navigating an area where you are at a huge disadvantage.
In vanilla it was also hard, easily top 3 hardest in the game on my first relatively blind playthrough which was only a year ago. In scholar it's easily the harder. And while I feel defending dks2 is a noble cause and one I fully support I really enjoyed time and feel dks1 gets away with more shit than is deserved. (Toxic blowdart on the ladder) And a terrible estus progression. Etc just to name a few. I feel this one in scholar has more rings of truth than falsehood. Does that make the area bad by no means no it's just difficult and that's fine.
Shrine of amana is difficult yet it was my favorite area of the game along with huntsmen copse and the pirate bay each usually considered harder areas for different reasons. I feel it's odd when some people say a boss is difficult as a positive yet when we talk areas it's somehow a negative.
Whenever I hear people complain about the agro range on the knights, I'm like, "well what did you expect? You are basically invading their castle. Did you expect them to let you waltz in?"
It's on theme. It's a heavily defended Fortress.
It's a Keep. It's designed to keep you out.
That's kinda a stupid argument to make, it's a game, it doesn't need to be realistic.
@@Yarivenra ah yes. The realism of a volcano on top of a windmill
@@Yarivenragameplay > realism
@@Yarivenrayou forgot about the gamedesign.
That aggro rage is extremely annoying and kills immersion, since you get 2-4 enemies ganging on you as you see their weapons come through them to attack you instead of doing friendly fire (immersive AF, right)
>realism
Explain the volcano over a wooden windmill then
Ich sehe einen Mann von Kultur: Jemand der DARK SOULS 2 mag, ich tippe meinen Hut für die Legende
I just did Iron Keep and, while I wasn't smart enough to use most of the traps against enemies, I reached the Old Iron King easily. Also, wtf, there's another bonfire very close to him. The Iron Keep complaints are blown out of proportion.
I agree that the changes to this area get overstated a lot to try to score an easy dunk on scholar, but I don't think this video tells the whole story. I think it's specifically the changes in the outdoor area that makes it feel so overwhelming, rather than the overall population. In vanilla you fight 3 knights one by one, two of whom only aggro when you get close. Meanwhile in scholar there are 3 knights who will charge at you all at once as soon as you step outside, and then another 4 once you step on the bridge. Sure it's only 3 extra knights in total, and you can take them out one at a time if you're quick, but the way they aggro in groups increases the pressure a lot.
The runback isn't the whole story, but I again think it's somewhat worse than you make out. The fact that most of the knights are concentrated in the one room means that if you try to run past only to get staggered in the fog door, you're done for. You could escape from or even fight the group of 3 in vanilla, but scholar's 7 at once is usually a death sentence. Also, and I think more importantly, the vanilla knights start much farther away from smelter's door. This can give you time to backstab the captain or bait him into an attack, especially if you did the skip, which makes it much easier to get through first try. If you try that in scholar, you'll get swarmed by the little guys before you can reach the door.
One particular problem that bothers me with the run up to smelter, is the aggro range, now most of ds2 scholar version aggro ranges are pretty reasonable, but the alonne knights in this area i swear, there is one, one particular one that is in the room past smelter. There is no way that enemy can see you on entering the outdoor area, and you cannot possibly see it either. Yet it aggros at atleast 2 seconds later when your unaware of it it will catch you off guard when you try to engage the others, now of course i can just wait for it to arrive, but I don't think its unreasonable to say normally I have no way of knowing that enemy was coming because there is no way, its in another room entirely, it shouldn't be able to hear or see you, tell me is this an unreasonable complaint? Ive come to accept and like alot of enemy encounters in DS2 and have learned you need to simply approach this game differently but i take exception to the run up to Smelter.
Kill the enemies instead of just rushing to the door? Like that's how dark souls 2 often is. This isn't Dark souls 3. the game actually wants you to interact with the levels. not being able to rush the fog door is not a game problem. it's a you problem. and if you don't try and rush the door, every encounter with the alonne knights is completely manageable.
@@Rosy_bun I don't rush, ive been doing a new playthrough recently and haven't rushed at all, i didnt have much trouble with the area, but thats not my point I still think its unreasonable. On my first playthrough when I did the runback after dying the furst few times, i killed the first few enemies that rush you the got onto the bridge to face the others only to get attacked by an enemy i didn't realize i had aggroed because there is no possible way to see them and ther eis no way they should hear or see me they are in a completely different room and through most of this game enemies in different rooms unless your in line of sight will not aggro. It took me several attempts before I realized where the enemy was coming from after that it was a tedious wait for the enemy to arrive lest I get attacked from behind by just progressing at a normal reasonable pace, not rushing. It doesnt matter that I no longer have trouble, it isnt fun to deal with and at the end of the day fun is what matters. And for the most part i think ds2 is very fine, just not the run up to smelter.
@@loftwingheropon2743 i was mostly responding to the OP. In regards to you though, everyone has a different experience with how they handle areas. However, i have to disagree fundamentally about the aggro thing. Every single enemy in iron keep sees you before they aggro you. If you pay attention to where they're coming from, you'll realise that a lot of them have height advantage, so they can see you coming. The ones inside the first room are in the middle platform, at the top of the stairs and in an outcropping in the wall. Then, once you get out into the place with the movable bridge, the first on can see you from on the bridge, and two more see you from where they're placed on top of platforms. And once you drop the bridge, there's one by the lever that sees you as you approach it, the one at the very end of the bridge that has seen you the entire time but can now reach you, and the two on top of the platform with the broken stairs who again, can see you. And, of course the two captain archers. They all have direct line of sight on you. You juat have to keep an eye out for them. Not a single one aggros until it sees you. I've spent over 2000 hours in ds2 so i know the exact placement and aggro radius over almost every enemy in the game. While some do aggro without line of sight, they are in a position where they could hear you. But the alonne knights in pre-smelter can all 100% see you. And besides, even if we play the devil's advocate here... they would 100% hear you beating up their fully metal armored fellows and come rushing from that sound.
@@Rosy_bun Listen I get it, and I love DS2 don't get me wrong, but if you're a first time player and you're having to take 10+ attempts on a boss, having a really long return trip with no way to shortcut it gets frustrating. Like yeah it's great that DS2 makes you engage with its levels, but for 95% of bosses, running back is not that hard once you know the level. Smelter really stands out for how difficult it can be to get back to quickly.
And the best part is that you can always retreat and try to separate them.
Which will make any runback even longer.
Key word is "try"
I didn't know about the shortcut, thanks!
For me personally this area was always a pain, and in vanilla I managed to find a way to drop back down from Belfry Sol bonfire and used that one to run back to Smelter Demon. However in Scholar that path appeared to have been blocked, so having learned this I just summoned the npc outright and had them basically deal with the demon for me. The shortcut would've made this much more straightforward, but oh well.
Ngl I don't think I ever got invaded by Forlorn in Iron Keep XD
I'm always looking forward to it. Love the equipment you can buy after you've defeated a couple of them
How fortunate. When he first mentioned 2, I was thinking, "What about the third one" as I always get him if I die before Smelter.
@@Domo3000 Yeah I like their invasions, I think I more often get invaded at Huntsman Corps rather than Iron Keep.
@@safeforworkgaming6211 fun fact: forlorn is a woman!!! :3
I only got invaded by Dennis or Sharron once at a time, never happened that they invaded me in the same runback
That"s the scariest video to watch before sleep
Im good at the game, this is why iron keep is my favorite place. I have no problems in iron keep
Yeah it's honestly a fun area. It just keeps you on your toes
Used to kinda hate it but I enjoy it now. I do think it's pretty bland outside of the fighting
Aside from the three scripted invasions, I really enjoyed Iron Keep on my first blind playthrough. Between Fencer Sharon and Armorer Denis, it felt like this was just going to be a super frequent invasion area, then Forlorn shows up. Being a blind playthrough, I had no idea what else was coming, and was kind of just waiting for that invasion text to show up after pulling more knights.
I've gotten to the DLC part of my first journey through DS2 and honestly watching these videos has helped me enjoy this game alot more, I mean some bits I still struggled on and at times the run backs are harder than the boss.
This one I particularly found annoying 😂 but through patience I got though I mainly died by falling Into the Lava 😂 by making stupid mistakes
I... Genuinely didn't know you could cancel the fog wall animation... There is so much about DS 2 I never learned or felt like it wasn't worth my time learning because I didn't really like the game itself, and felt like it wasn't worth learning more about. I don't think it's a "bad" game like I used to, I think it is just *different* and I just didn't jive with it the way I did other Souls games. Either way, I am genuinely enjoying your content. I always love seeing other people's opinions on things, and don't mind being wrong! Keep it up!
Wow. You honestly gave an awesome point of view. You didn't enjoy it, but you didn't hate it. It simply wasn't your style so you moved on from it, which is very respectable. Showing that you're open to newer interpretations instead of just walking away from it is really cool. I'm a ds2 fanboy at heart but there's many reasons I can see why the game is avoided. It can be a lot for people unfamiliar, especially those who try to play it like the other.
1:03 “You can bait them out one at a time.” Hell yeah, this is my mantra for Iron Keep in general. You don’t have to pull a FeebleKing clown car and aggro everything if you are methodical.
I’m so glad you did this comparison. This whole series is badass. I still have the ability to play my OG DS2 on disc but I haven’t hooked up my XBOX 360 in about nine years. I was in the group that was gaslit into thinking SotFS was so much worse, even though I knew its critics were disingenuous about some things and that SotFS isn’t very ganky anyway (because I play it). But the comparisons I did were in my mind and relied on an ostensibly sketchy memory.
You are doing a service with these videos. Big Ups! I wish you the absolute best.
Thank you very much!
Thank you for defending my beloved ds2, i'm really grateful towards that and happy to discover your channel
Is very hard to avoid combat in the OG DS2. Thanks SOFTS
It takes only a couple hits to defeat the enemies, but players prefer to not waste additional 2 seconds on every knight and risk wasting a lot more time on failed runbacks.
What is Dark Souls about? Running away from enemies? Avoiding enemies? Is it a stealth game? Is it a game about sprinting with obstacles?
If players don't enjoy fighting same enemies over and over, then why are they playing Dark Souls? Am I wrong? Am I weird if I like to engage in fight with enemies?
no, you're 100% right. there was someone else in this very comment section complaining that they couldn't run to the smelter fog and it's genuinely sad to read. They're just sat there criticizing the design because they can't just ignore all the enemies. Some people...
@@Rosy_bun
People for some reason believe these are boss rush games
Great level. A lot of times it feels like the Knights are walking into your ambush instead of the other way around. If the optional boss is too difficult then you can always get the Belfry bonfire and teleport out of there to get one of the other three boss souls or keep pushing and just skip the optional boss. I feel the only way the level isnt fun is if you just do boss runbacks over and over without changing things up.
Funfact. If you have a UGS or GA, you can instantly poise break the alonne knight captains and then riposte them to 1 shot 'em. Very helpful in NG+ too for the red phantom versions.
But I'm no good with big weapons.
The awful part about SotFS Iron Keep is the obscene agro ranges on the enemies. They will agro from 500 ft away through a wall without any sort of warning or way to avoid them. And Alonne Knights are way too fast to be manegable in a gank scenario, you have to lure them out one at a time. But the only way to do that is to just trial and error your way into memorizing all the unseeable agro ranges.
Perhaps I'm just biased though, the time I spent trying to get past the Smelter Demon runback on my first playthrough was the most miserable experience I've had in a Soulsborne game.
One thing I've noticed throughout the many years of hearing people complaining about dark souls and Elden Ring is that it all boils down to skill issue. Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to sound elitist is just that I've seen countless times the story about how one used to hate certain game/area in the game but after putting some effort comes to enjoy or at least don't mind it anymore because they got good.
Which might also explains why DS2 gets more hate than the other entries: cuz it demands more from the player.
Yeah, but you don't need more skill, you just need to put in more time, that's why it's less fun than the other games
While I know it's a "lame" option, I think it's worth noting how little stamina damage the alonne knights do to either of the early full block shields. Both the drangleic shield and I believe it's called the knight's shield? It's the one you can buy from the blacksmith this is basically the drangleic shield but with less stability but also a little lighter. I believe with one of the chloranthy rings, a single alonne knight can be blocked almost forever.
In sotfs you can just kinda hold block in the smelter runback, and typically kill while they're stunned from their thrust attack with 2-3 r1s and repeat for the next knight, so killing them is never really a problem.
That isn't lame in the slightest! Shields are a 100% viable strategy and in DS2, they're even more encouraged because all shields in DS2 are completely viable! I mean, it all comes back to the existence of ADP. Dodging isn't the only choice. if you find a shield makes an encounter easier, use it! Don't let these dumb "Purists" Tell you otherwise!!
@@Rosy_bunencouraged? I love shields ,but they dont feel encouraged at all. Only one class gets a shield, and it doesnt even block all physical damage.
Speaking on the Iron keep, you cant block the Alonne Knight Captains,they will shoot you from behind while you are fighting another one.
I wish shields were encouraged, but you get overwhelmed so quickly that your guard breaks.
Are there any ds2 let's plays that use a shield? I want to know how well they work in normal game play.
@@josephbulkin9222 you can buy a 100% guard shield in majula for 1500 souls and it's available immediately.
As for the whole "getting overwhelmed" thing, that's not a problem with shields. That's a problem with how one plays the game.
If someone runs into an area without paying mind to enemy placement, they'll get swarmed whether or not they have a shield. Blocking and dodging both require conscious gameplay. The only difference is that unlike the other souls games, every single medium and heavy shield is viable for defence.
And something that's important to note is that while most shields in ds2 don't have 100% physical defense, they have much, much higher status and element resistance on average than the other games.
The watchdragon parma, which is available in one of the first areas in the game, actually has one of the highest total defense values in the game, with pretty respectable stability.
If you want a video to display all this, just watch a blind playthrough of ds2. The majority of players end up using a shield because they didn't investigate the functionality of ADP and their playthrough goes pretty darn well.
Speaking for myself, as well, I've previously done a playthrough in ds2 where i didn't dodge a single attack other than grabs (not counting just walking out of range of an attack) and otherwise blocking, and it was no harder than a no shield run.
@@Rosy_bun I have never seen a single.lets play using a shield. Point me to one, they all seem too focused on rolling onrushing a massive greatsword.They probably heard the poison that using a shield is.stupid or some other nonsense.
I checked, though. You cannot get a 100% shield in Majula. The Silver Eagle Kite Shield you can buy from Maughlin blocks 90% physical damage, not 100. trust me, you feel the difference.
What software do you use to view player and enemy stats at 11:58?
DebugManager by LordRadai. It's also what I use for the hitbox visualization videos
@@Domo3000 thank you!
And UGS make NPC encounters MUCH easier in ds2 sotfs. Because unlike ds3 and elden ring, they swing at the same speed if not faster AND instantly knock down enemies with the 2h heavy attack or 2h running attack. Thats on top of their immense stagger. And these NPC's cannot move around very fast or attack extremely fast either. UGS jump attacks can go quite far and have pretty good tracking. And all this also applies to GA's and GH's. Infact, the fume ugs is the perfect anti NPC weapon on account of its blockattack. The only downside is the massive stamina cost. The swing speed is slower but its still the fastest in the series.
So a colossal weapon will make YOU the boss.
just despawn every single enemy there and beat that smelter demon
Did that for my first playthrough farming for the armor and katana lol
Weird question: does NG+/Ascetic increase group aggression values? I feel like ive noticed it in Shrine of Amana when i farm it for twinkling titanite. The hammer guys attack in groups more aggressively and dont back off as much i feel like idk
I also think it does.
Even during the game it feels like it. I always thought that the Royal Swordsmen in Lost Bastille fight less aggressively and less strategically than those in Drangleic Castle.
@@Domo3000 it would be interesting to know if they have different AI or values or something. The Bastille ones are much closer to becoming forlorn hollows giving up it seems
I’ve gone through this place both in vanilla and scholar and don’t really have any issues with it. I also almost never do the smelter demon skip or the jump to the broken stairway to get to him on a first playthrough of a character.
Now this place in NG+ is actually hard as hell. There are Seven (7) red phantoms in NG+ in scholar 😢😢😢😢😢😢
6 captains, one in the entry way hallway, one in the lava pit ladder, one where the zweihandler is, two in the furnace you turn off, one in the lava walkway after smelter demon, and the red phantom turtle cosplayer guarding the last bonfire before old iron king. 😩😩😩
This and the run to the chariot are the only areas where I'm like "what were they thinking"
Iron keep feels somewhat inconsistent for me, sometimes I will aggro more knights despite feeling like I'm not doing anything different
And I simply hate the chariot run, it's the one time I get tired of slowly pulling every enemy
By the way any tips to deal with the undead crypt and never ending hollows ringing bells?
Just kill the hollows before they ring the bell? Scholar version of undead crypt is way easier than vanilla.
Also the undead chariot run back can be cheesed by just baiting out the guys in the trees one by one like it’s demons souls.
For the Chariot you can just run through and jump to the platform at the end of the bridge and then watch the enemies fall down when they walk back.
Or just running straight through by running a small loop before the fog gate: ruclips.net/video/hBO0-9krp0k/видео.htmlsi=qoOAXAal4Qmn52C-
For Undead Crypt there's a limited amount of bell ringing Hollows. The first one spawns next to the bell, then another one outside that small room to the left and then a third one close to the bell again.
@@JellyJman honestly it felt like whack a mole, I didn't even know they were limited cause they kept popping up I thought I was doing somethig wrong so it turns out I just have to keep killing them?
@@Domo3000 okke, thanks, I'll have to learn how to get that jump right cause I remember I'm terrible at it
Having the bridge up is easier because you can jump across from the left
Weee ❤
Scholar is worse in this location because of wider enemies agro. In original, you can pick estus safety near the second bridge, and you don't need to be quick with this. In Scholar, enemies start to run towards you, so it's harder to renegerate health.
u just w8 for them, u don't even have to pull your enemies, u just w 8
It's wild to see that final Smelter Skip run (which i'd argue is the alternate path, not the main one, due to how far apart bonfires are if you don't have access to Smelter's one) looking as chill as it did
I've played only scholar and don't think I had a good time in Iron Keep in any of my playthroughs. What I remember being infuriating was the aggro range of the knights in the open furnace area before smelter. There's a handful of archers so that in most places you had one or, often, two shooting at you and knights would come running from different spots in a way that was hard to control. Even if they come at you staggered, they start coming really quick so that really early on you're already "opted in" to like, half the room's enemies
There are less enemies on the path to the next bonfire than for the path to Smelter Demon, and it's easier to skip them. Which is why I'd argue that it's the main path and that struggling players should come back later for the Smelter Demon.
@@Domo3000 IMO the problem is more that after smelter you have a whole lot more before you can get to the next bonfire.
The one for the belfry is easy enough but then you need to run the belfry to get back on the Iron Keep path. The big lava platform room is one that, while fun with all the contraptions, can get messy in a hurry pretty easily and the tiny corridors with the guillotines and iron warriors can also be tricky to deal with. it's not always easy to bait them into the traps, weapons bouncing off the sides, etc...
So while I agree that, yeah, it's easier to get to the platform just after Smelter than going to the boss itself, the stretch from the first bonfire under the bridge all the way to the one on the bull's head is quite the trip to take which is why to me that'd more of an alternate path instead (also, is it really standard if you're missing out on Ring of Blades +1? =P )
@@VileLasagna running through the Belfry is easy and then you are back in the lava platform room which you would also need to get past from the Smelter Demon bonfire, so it's pretty much the same in my opinion.
@@Domo3000 definitely not too bad a run after you cleared the non respawning phantoms, even if it is quite annoying, yeah
All my memories may or may not be tainted by not liking either Iron Keep or Brume Tower, lol
I usually have a dragon's tooth by this point so i just pancake them all
Dennis the motherfucking Menace.
If you really, really suck at DS2, the ultimate method is just to grind out the path to Smelter until the Alonne Knights stop respawning. Yes, this takes quite a while, but you're probably gonna die to the Smelter Demon over and over again (since you really, really suck at DS2 in this scenario), and this makes the runback actually literally free, plus you'll have gotten enough souls for a ton of levels and a full set of the best phys+fire defense armor in the game
So, how did you skip Smelter Demon? As I remember it is impossible at the first playtrough, cause to open the iron door near the second bridge you need to turn off the fire near the Eygil's Idol bonfire. Or you told about this just for NG+?
The fire in that room isn't linked to Eygil's Idol. There's a wheel you can turn after lowering the first half of the bridge
1:20 you don't have to go so much to the right to aggro this guy, you can go to the corner between the fence and the pillar, I've always done it like that
the only time the second one aggros too is if you then go right instead of back out to a safe distance, the middle of this bridge for example
bro I need you to stop flexing your backstep skills, I don't think I've ever successfully used the s on a backstep
Lol 😊
What helped me was to visualize the active s: ruclips.net/video/0DC8cUnPClE/видео.htmlsi=zUbfol4DuWmasjwj
Rolling s start as soon as the animation starts, but for backsteps you are doing a small step backwards first and only then when you jump back you gain s.
So you have to dodge a bit earlier than you are used to.
I've always kinda hated going through Iron keep in both versions. Something about the way Alonne knights attack always throws me off and that area near the smelter demon in scholar could be really miserable.
"Sharron is not much of a problem"
*EXCUSE ME*
Aggroing only one knight at the Threshold Bridge is really easy. You literally have to try to aggro them both for it to happen. If you constantly aggro both without knowing why that's just skill issue.
Pretty late to the party but Scholar has bunch more black phantoms in NG+
I swear that there was an npc invader after the iron clad breaks the bridge in sotfs
It was Forlon that invaded you, it’s rng
It's the same Forlorn that invaded me in the large open space.
He's a rare invader and if you defeated him in an area he won't show up again.
So I'm not actually 100% sure if there are two distinct Forlorns in this area, but to me it always felt like defeating him in the first spawn point stops him from showing up in the second one.
So I assume that it's just one Forlorn in the Iron Keep, but I also could just have been lucky.
@Domo3000 I see, thank you for the insight!
This area is hell
get good.
Can you make it a little darker I can almost see what is going on
I've played DX9 and DX11, and honestly... I don't particularly care for Iron Keep in either version. If given the choice, I'd rather skip Iron Keep for as long as I can and do literally any other Old Soul. Black Gulch is terrible, but it has plenty of cheesy farming spots for titanite if you're willing to roll around the oil pits with a torch (thanks ymfah). I'm quite fond of Lost Bastille / Sinner's Rise, though I detest Scholar's choice of including a lesser Flexile Sentry in an area with knee-deep water leading up to Sinner herself. Every leg toward Duke's Dear Freja is (relatively) easy to clear and generally a net positive in terms of loot, and Freja herself is a (relatively) easy boss if you have a torch.
I used to hate DS2 so much when I first played it back in 2015 on my PS4. After almost 10 years, my feelings have softened dramatically. DS2 has replay value where DS1/DS3/Bloodborne have limited or otherwise none. However, all these years of watching people discuss DS2 have solidified one feeling more than any other within me: it's a painful experience, there's a ton of jank, and it requires a fair bit of acclimatisation on the player's part. ONCE YOU GET PAST THOSE HURDLES, it's a rewarding game that has a surprising amount of shit to do. Before parrywalking was discovered, the DS2 speedrun relied heavily on parkour skips. The fall damage is punishing, the movement is ass, but great rewards await the player with patience and skill to make DS2's jank work for them. I could go on, but you probably already get where I'm going with the rest of this ramble.
Some people, unfortunately, don't want to git gud. I think that's the one bit of Cranky's advice that every Souls player ultimately forgets to heed until it's a touch too late.
To be fair all the souls games are jank. Especially DS1 and Demon’s Souls lol. They did tone it done in Elden Ring.
@@JellyJman I'm not denying that, but if I had to make my point clearer: Demon's Souls is a less painful self-imposed torture simulator than Dark Souls 2 is.
Am I weird for not liking dark souls 1 but loving 2 and 3?
Vanilla's Iron Keep is all about aggro enemies 1 by 1 and how are you good at it. Aggro 2 Knights at the first bridge is much easier that it seems. You need only to make very-very short steps, and when you see the first Knight is going to you, then you must walk back to not agro the second Knight while you are fighting the first. It is similar as Huntsman's Copse 5 Executioners. And it is similar to all the location. In Scholar it is very hard, cause Knights have a bigger agro range, so near the second bridge in Vanilla you can easily defeat just 2 Knights 1 by 1. And in Scholar you need to defeat a bigger amount of enemies together.
Fighting 15 enemies for another chance at a boss is not fun.
10:36 really I thought that it does lol 😂
Yesterday I just replayed this zone after having played vanilla and I was fuming xDD
IMO the aggro reach its wich makes it unplayable or annoying to play, I dont think its harder in scholar just more annoying to clear
Bro the runback to Smelter Demon is the absolute worst you cant argue about that
ربنا
We've really reached a point where we're defending Iron Keep of all things... What's next, arguing that Frigid Outskirts is good?
Maybe you can find fun in having to deal with 10 knights per attempt at a boss, 10 knights you have to deal with slowly and methodically every single time while keeping in mind that stepping over brick number 73 will aggro the knight from beyond the next room without any line of sight or even believable sound because this is one of the few places where aggro range decided to massively screw you over (and then screw itself over if you backtrack which is just the juiciest immersion breaking moment). Good for you if you can find fun in that, I don't. I sigh when I have to do it more than once and since it's likely that I'll get clobbered at least once by Smelty, I expect pure frustration ahead.
And I don't want to hear "skill issue", I have over 2000h of play on these god forsaken games, 300h on scholar alone, I've beaten the shit out of this game with every crappy build I could think of, even on CoC. Iron Keep will never not be a chore to me. Now please stop showing in my RUclips feed, I'm sick and tired of this neverending conversation, DS2/Scholar is a shit game I enjoyed despite the ocean of issues it had, you won't convince me ever that these issues were not exactly that, issues. Have a good day and do the community a favor, stop this cycle at last, it's been 12 years, we're never going to agree on DS2, the best you can do is lay the controversy to rest so that people can enjoy it (or not) in peace.
*no "skill issue"*
Hmm...
Git gud.
Tbh iron keep in any version is just bad.
because u don't know how to play the game
@AtreyusNinja ah yes, clearly ds2 is a perfect game beyond any critism my bad for questioning the genius of the game
@@scorpiowarrior7841People like you give me hope. I thought these ds2 deniers would never wake up.
@officeimpact6377 I like ds2. I used to deny it and swear it off before I played it, but iron keep just feels enemy spammy even when I play slow and fight evreything one on one
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Tbh i never liked this place but it has more to do with the map structure it doesnt really feel like a real keep not to mention it doesnt feel like a souls game map. Other areas has better map shape.
Throughout this series, i feel you've had great points and you've dealt with the comparisons between the two versions objectively and meticulously.
But i think you lessening the importance of enemy agro ranges, something that you've talked about before on how it makes scholar easier in certain areas, is a bit intellectually dishonest.
In the lost Bastille, the agro ranges of the royal swordsmen were a good example for scholar actually being easier on purpose and providing a more reasonable enemy placement, but all of a sudden, Alonne knights agro-ing from half way into the next room, is suddenly seen as a fair thing?
It's not "on theme" because it's a fortress as you've implied in the comments. A literal prison full of Royal swordsmen should, by this logic, maintain similar levels of agro.
Also, that one Knight with the seemingly broken agro also is somehow aware of your presence and runs after you when you're on the platform with the bonfire that you unlock after the smelter demon is defeated. He doesn't actually get to you but the fsct that no other knights agro at the same time which shows that it, at the very least, wasn't intended to be that alert.
Then there's the fact that there's another extra archer making the runback more difficult along with the extra enemies in the area. Two or three extra enemies isn't a big deal when they're just hollows. It's definitely a big deal when they're high-damage alonne knights chasing you to the end of the earth.
All this, along with having to possibly deal with three invaders if the player dies, definitely makes scholar a lot more than "much harder" than vanilla.
>"Alonne knights agro-ing from half way into the next room, is suddenly seen as a fair thing?"
Me at 6:26: "this part is one of the few areas that are actually harder in the Scholar version"
@@Domo3000 you do say it's harder, but the way you say it is not representative of how hard it actually is, especially for a first playthrough.
You do admit scholar is harder but your wording in a lot of the video makes it sound like the complaints about the sholar version are played up or unwarranted, while you almost ignore or downplay the terrible agro range of many of the enemies in the outdoor area.
Your conclusion is also worded in this manner.
@@sociallyawkwardweeabootras1450 i dont see the terrible aggro range.
the only sus aggro i can think of is when you open the door after defeating the invader,but that made a lot of noise so it makes sense.
@@sociallyawkwardweeabootras1450 also your argument in itself isnt a fair comparison,youre comparing a very small section of a map,with the first half of iron keep.
it wouldnt make sense for all royal swordsman soldiers to aggro on you at once,since youre in a small space it wouldnt be fair at all.
whereas in iron keep you have much more space to fight,and you can either skip it to reach the boss fog,or unlock the shortcut and go straight the next area,if you dont rush the area you will get aggroed by one alonne soldier at a time,iron keep is fair as long as you dont rush the area.
and if you do so,deal with the consequences of your actions.
@@sociallyawkwardweeabootras1450 btw the example you gave,defeats your own argument
the royal swordsmen soldiers were put there exclusively to guard prisioners,as lost bastille itself is a giant prison,therefore makes sense they all dont aggro at once on you,theyre guarding the prison cells,so prisoners dont escape.
I think for me, it’s mostly gameplay decisions of 2 specifically. A combination of adaptation being an unnecessary and honestly bad mechanic, and no fog invincibility.
ctrl c + ctrl v
not defending ds2 in any way but just kill the enemies for christs sake lol running around and triggering every single enemy is never a good idea
I don't get what the problem is anyway. It's dark souls. The difficulty is why it's popular. It wish it was twice as hard. The more difficult the better
Many people just want the satisfaction of having beaten a hard game without actually putting in the effort.
So when there's an optional hard side challenge like the Smelter Demon they get mad that they actually have to get good now.
@@Domo3000 dark souls is based around being hard the creator said so himself. It's difficulty just seemed fitting for the world he created. The reason people don't like the difficulty of ds2 is that it both hampers roleplaying and makes areas a slog to get through.
How is it a optional challenge you have to deal with the alone knights anyways if you want to progress to the next room. You have to deal with almost all of them to shut down the fires.
There are many ways things can be difficult, and not all of them are necessarily fun to deal with.
I feel like the Iron Keep is pretty OK in this regard: while difficult, you can still get through it relatively easily and quickly if you are smart and careful enough to pick enemies 1v1, separate them, use terrain as cover from the archers (or staying on the move to avoid arrows), etc. It punishes you for being hasty and careless and rewards being being patient and crafty.
For contrast, look at areas like the Iron Passage or Frigid Outskirts. They are definitely hard, but they are also pretty much universally considered some of the worst zones in the series. The former throws loads of enemies and debuffs at you in a boring cramped space while the latter is just a very long run with unavoidable OP encounters. and neither gives you any particularly interesting ways to approach it besides slogging through it or cheesing enemies in unintended ways. While difficult, both end up feeling like chore instead, with the only clear solution being just throwing more bodies at it (since these are supposed to be "co-op areas").
You can also look at the Bed of Chaos from DS1, which can instakill you by dropping you into a pit - it can be hard, but it's also considred to be one the worst bosses in the series since its difficulty mostly comes from DS1's janky jumping mechanics.
Besides, Dark Souls really isn't all about difficulty either. I've been playing since DS1 and I no longer find the games all too difficult, but I still play them regularly due to the satisfying exploration, level design, combat, lore, etc.. If Souls games were only known as "difficult rage games," they would've been pretty quickly forgotten like Flappy Bird or something.
you can't ruin, what was always shit
describing dark souls 3?
what do you mean 'one of the few bosses' with a tricky runback? This game had godawful runbacks throughout
You must have bad memory as the vast majority of runbacks are short and easy.
Man, these videos are some next-level coping. The game just has a ton of flaws. There's nothing wrong with still liking it. I do.
I dont get what you mean. There are good points made in these videos.
Where’s the cope? These videos literally compare SotFS to Vanilla side-by-side and note changes, differences, etc.