Ughhhh nostalgia I used to run that shit 99 strength high stamina mid to low vigor and swing that shit for days would catch so many people thinking couldn’t swing it a 6th time and I’d only wear that one brown cloth ugh good times
@@mattmediaplays honestly it's a long list in ds2 lmao Out of Stamina Low HP Locked on In Menu Neutral (Light/Med load) Left/Right handed great weapons Encumbered (Heavy load) Full Encumbered (Overloaded) And all of these combine together if you meet the criteria for both, you can be exhausted, over encumbered, and holding a left hand great weapon and all of that shows, iirc only out of stamina prevents in menu and ofc you can't lock on and menu at the same time
@@arsenii_yavorskyithat’s a crazy observation I never would have experienced myself because of the order I played the games(and how quickly the soldier get stomped or exploded by artillery fire)
@@freddogrosso9835 it didn’t. What it had was a shitty stat in ADP. The hit boxes aren’t a problem it’s that not only does *every fucking class** start with low ADP, but most ignore the stat. Once you get it to level 21-28 (depends if you use light or heavy armor) you most likely never need to put another level into it.
there's a lot of weird little things that they just nonsensically went back on from 2. of animations: in dks2 it used to be that using all of your stamina caused your character to be visibly out of breath. i loved that! why'd they take it away!?
Yeah Dark souls 2 was like it’s own universe. It was so different from dark souls 1, meanwhile dark souls 3 is just a modern version of dark souls 1. I used to love in dark souls 2 that you could have a red or blue Smokey aura when you invade players. Sadly the PvP was garbage.
i think since overall DS2 wasn't well received they just tried to stray away as much as possible, not realizing that there's still improvements in DS2 no matter if you like it or don't
As a beginner in Fiore, I have an anecdote that supports this point. When I passed from nylon wasters to steel practice sword, I started taking the bad habit, as I wasn't used to the weight of the sword, to keep my Posta di Donna lower. I made that error unconsciously, letting my arms rest a little bit more. I realized, while making my cuts, that I started telegraphing my cuts by raising my hands before doing the cut, as my gard was too low to start a cut from. The very simple corrective to apply in that case was to go back to a higher stance.
This makes me so glad that my old club didn’t use plastic feders after the intro class… I don’t really see the point of them. Especially if you are just doing (solo) drills… plastic isn’t some how safer than steel.
Honestly, I feel it was just to prevent clipping. If you want a character to me able to move anywhere than their sword being far out from the body demands one of two things. A) It has a physical space it takes up and therefore will bump into walls and not allow you to stand next to a wall on that side, or B) It constantly clips inside of walls. Anything that's out to the sides or front are more likely to look weird in these situations. It sticking out from behind is less odd due to the player rarely backing into a wall.
What really disappoints me is that I didn’t make a sale, but it doesn’t make a difference because I will stab him with the two handed sword and he won’t need a car anyway. Hope he didn’t reject my brother the life insurance salesman yesterday.
@@arosbastion7052 if you honestly think ds2 was nothing more than a “dogshit” game then I know for certain that you didn’t play it and you’re just taking other people’s opinions as your own. Go but the game. It’s cheap and you will have a good time if you do two things. 1: play the game without comparing it to any souls experiences you had before. 2: level adaptability!
@@filo3816 you're asking to not compare ds2 to it's predecessor or the sequel? Bro if it's part of the trilogy you going to compare it in any case lol
@@emceemikey ds2 was the best in the series. SOTFS and the shitty new enemy placements was the only problem with it. Anybody who blindly jumps on the bandwagon of saying ds2 sucks just because the internet says so isn't informed enough to have an opinion on it.
they know what they are doing, most hema youtubers who analyze dark souls come to the conclusion that the player character is really bad at using the sword, which fits the theme that the player has to compensate by being good at moving the character
I preferred it in that game partly because it looked better when running. DS2 character running was awkward and robotic especially if you had differing weights on both hands which was cool, but it was still awkward as hell
As a person that fights in armour holding the sword in that position becomes second nature when you're trying to recover energy while still fighting. It gets hard to bring up your guard to protect your head when you're exhausted.
Which brings up a good point. All these people are going off of instruction manuals and not considering the only people who actually still fight like this
yeah i was thinking that that looks like a pretty natural, comfortable, low fatigue grip that you would carry the weapon in while walking around, which, lets not forget, you're doing 90% of the time in a dark souls game.
@@bigirononmyhip3812 In DS2 some of the backstab animations had your character kick the back of an enemy’s leg so the player character could actually reach the back of an enemy. Looked pretty great tbh
Which was such a cool detail, but they also changed the parry into an animation of the target falling back and looking perplexed for long enough for you to come back in NG+ to get your riposte in. It makes you wonder how they could let great details through but also terrible ones in as well.
There was a lot of really great design choices for Dark Souls 2 which I wish the rest of the series retained. Unique crit animations for different weapon classes, better swing patterns and stances (which were partially preserved through the unique greatsword moveset), overall these are three things which are just flat out upgrades, and it's a shame they didn't go with this.
Not to mention complete 360* rolling directions and powerstancing. The game never deserved the hate it got, its just the hur dur worldbuilding fans that want to fight big stupid monsters.
@@caxe7 DS2 lore doesn't make any sense as a sequel to DS, it contains a lot of errors and nonsense stuff that contradict the story and lore of the first game. You really have no idea what the real story of DS2 is.
What? I completely disagree, I think ds2's gs animation is moronic, at least the 2handed one. What he does is basically do a swing and instead of fluidly doing another swing, he stops all the momentum with the blade, then starts all over again from 0 momentum. I know ds1 and ds3 have the other kind of moronic animation where they slam the weapon on the ground, but that's obvoiusly stupid and can be forgiven, but in ds2 they wanted it to be realistic, but fked up with the momentum lol.
@@Kevin-zz9du Some people write "DaS" and "DeS" to make a distinction between dark souls and demon's souls, but I agree it's not needed for ds2 cuz only dark souls has a zwei.
It’s still probably overrated. Yes, many of the small improvements were overlooked or discarded because the devs and many players wanted future games to stay as far away from DS2 as possible. But when you look at every problem with DS2, it quickly becomes clear that the small improvements are 1 to 1000 with large negative changes
@@aaronmueller1560yeah I can’t stomach it. Honestly I struggle with 3 too. 2 seems like a straight pc game to me. 3 seems to be more smoothed out, more clean. But ds1 remastered is just somehow so much better. I don’t get it. Sekiro is stunning but odd. Bloodborne is fantastic but the gameplay is way off. Thought I was playing silent hill for a minute.
I believe that the reason they went back to and have kept the stance is because it is center Mass and neutral positioning as a starting point for animation purposes. It can rise drop and rotate into the starting point of any of the rather varied animations of the different unique weapon sets or specific unique weapon animation set. Makes their job animating a lot easier with a middle ground starting point for most weapons.
Yeah, I'd agree. I think the position is largely chosen by technical consideration. Plus, the DS2 position makes the player take up a lot of space and that leads to the sword clipping scenery regularly.
I always end up going back to dark souls 2. The animations just felt the best all of them had such a nice flow to them. The flamberge was my favorite weapon because of its animations
The backstab and parry animations were my favorite in ds2, and the halberd was my favorite weapon. DS3 just felt meh, Still enjoy ds3 but 2 keeps me coming back.
@@dirk1998 respectable but is ds2 that good? I've only played 1 and 3 along with all the other souls games (besides demon souls) I don't Really know much about ds2, just wanted someones opinion.
@@desdae69 yea it's good, some of the levels can seem bland in comparison to the other games but it is by no means a bad game. Some will bash it for it's storyline which I really don't understand it felt fine to me, felt mysterious and intriguing. Some will bash it for soul memory, which does suck to an extent but you get over it fairly quick when you don't focus on it 24/7. Then people love whining about ADP, it really isn't that bad, get it to 25 and you'll be fine. I enjoyed it, and I prefer it's pvp compared to the rest. Really it's up to you if you want to bite the bullet, it is a game afterall.
one of the main reasons people didn't like ds2 was that they didn't understand adaptability. the ign guide literally tells you not to level it up. with 40 adp you had hilarious Invincibility frame's against most enemies. and I loved landing parries and watching them fall on their ass just to have them stand up and do it again. the buckler was super cheesy
There was a notion of historical accuracy in how these weapons were used in demons souls- it's been mostly absent from dark souls save for 2. I forgot about it until this video but I remember the devs highlighting it as part of the challenge factor (weapons bouncing off walls etc)
Yup, you had to consider your environment and enemy. Now everything goes through walls like nothing and it makes no difference using whatever. Took a lot of charm away.
DS2 was my first DS game so will always be my fav. It was also the first game I ever saw a speed run video for. So many new things for me evolved from DS2.
I started with DS1 last year, then moved onto DS2, and then DS3. I started playing Demons Souls only about a week ago. So much of Demons Souls is reused, or slightly reimagined in all of the Dark Souls games. DS2 remains my favourite for its creativity and variety. Would have been great if they remastered it so that it handled like DS3.
@@buttsagonton101 Would be nice if they re-made it, can't see it ever happening though. Would rather see Bloodborne ported to pc, but I doubt that will ever happen either.
@@echoptic775 Historical European Martial Arts, various fighting schools from medieval Europe covering all the weapons of the times such as spears, all kinds of swords and their combinations with other things, polearms, and whatnot; different kinds of armour (chainmail, platemail) may also be a factor
Why shouldn't he? If his job dictates them to sit and manage the library, a bit of exercise would be good. Might as well make it interestint, no? Bugger me, now i want to make it a reality.
I remember people complained incessantly about DS2 when it came out because it wasn't a carbon copy of DS1, but there were a ton of great mechanics and systems in the game that people are now realizing they actually preferred.
The problem with ds2 was it had a lot of great ideas but they were executed poorly for example powerstancing was cool in ds 2 but the insane stat requirement to power stance made it a pain to be able to power stance and the stamina usage made it less affective then just using one weapon
@@andonmartin4142After how OP Elden Ring powerstance was I understood why DS2 had such a requirement, also if you dual wielding light weapons the stat investment isn't that big. I personally love the heavy stamina use, because I like the harder stamina management in general in DS2. But I understand why people wouldn't like it.
@@ZepTheGamer There isn't even Power Stance in Dark Souls 3, just some specific weapons have an extra weapon as part of the mechanic, and in Elden Ring it's exactly the same thing it just doesn't ask for extra stats to carry the second weapon 💀
@@johnny8363 It's not the same at all. It's a lot more limited in Elden Ring. In ds2 you can powerstance different weapon classes and there are lots of weapons that have unique interactions when powerstanced. And you can also toggle powerstance in ds2.
Dark Souls 2 did a lot of things I liked best. Especially animations, variety and style of weapons and armor, and how armor actually functioned as armor in a useful capacity without being busted OP like Dark Souls 1. Also for the love of God bring back upgradable armor. One of the biggest reasons why armor is so useless in DS3 and Elden Ring beyond poise is that they're going for static unupgradable armor that functions the same throughout the entire game which means armor will either be overpowered early game to be useful mid-late game or useful early game but useless by mid-late game and it's always been the former.
It will never be overpowered if they don't want it to be because it provides a percentage damage reduction. The starting ones are like 20% at most and the heaviest ones are like 40%. All in all a joke mechanic to make sure you always die fast if you take hits.
@@Leonhart_93 that's the exact point of what I said mate. The point is when you decide to use a flat reduction system in a game without upgradable armor you either have to decide to make armor OP early to make it useful in the end game or make it useful early and useless in the end game. From Soft has made it very apparent the direction they chose because armor is by and large useless by the time you meet Morgott let alone anyone after him. Not helped by the colossal damage spike of late game bosses to hammer home the uselessness of defense unless you stack an ungodly amount of buffs which isn't fun.
@@Meoidn I'm not struggling mate (I've beaten the game three times and have no intention on picking it up again till the DLC drops), I like tank builds and that requires a good and functional armor system. Which the series hasn't had since Dark Souls 2. I want to be able to invest in my character's durability, which is only possible through an absurd amount of annoying to farm items and short lived buffs. Stacking buffs is boring and they don't last worth a damn and I hate farming. Ironjar aromatics are by far one of the worst offenders.
In defence of dark souls, it often feels like your undead isn't a master swordsman. They're an undead with a little bit of training, but their swings are cumbersome and unwieldy and I think the point is that they don't know how to use that greatsword.
I really wish I lived in a parallel universe in which the true vision the developers had for that game was achieved. Time travel, cooler and more consistent areas, the torch actually being extremely important and graphics not being too terrible in many areas. We actually got extremely nerfed versions of all those things but if we had the full game with the multiplayer it had. It may have been one of the best games of the franchise.
It’s always lovable to see someone spreading love for DS2, the game is under appreciated so much it actually gets hate. Also, this is pretty cool information, as someone that studies poses from time to time to draw, I never actually thought of how awkward most poses are when holding a sword (I mean in drawings). Obviously taking the handle into account, you can’t disjoint and do a huge movement to wherever you want :0
If I could give you one piece of advice from fencer to artist: Varying grip pressure. My hands are often very loose on the sword most of the time. You can't do a lot of the things you need to with a vice grip.
ds2 did quite a few things right . . . . . with that being said ds2 did ALOT more wrong. revisited it a last year, I didn't hate it like I did on launch I still thought it was painfully mid
@@thikdikriky1559 ds2 is so underrated, it had the best pvp and weapons. Every weapon is viable and all magics are useful. They had a lot of cool mechanics such as powerstancing, Ultra parrying, bonfire aescetic, door of pharros. Some of which only came back in Eldenring.
@@Ledbottom86 which is cool and all, but they also had rolling and animation speed tied to a stat you had to lvl, hit boxes were all over the place from being tight to enemies becoming intangible, and even the sheer amount of healing items they throw at you. Balance was out the door, and as the other side said, they did mess up a lot of stuff that either broke people from playing it, or people had to overcome the jank and enjoy what it did right.
@@Ledbottom86 The best weapons? Whatever do you mean with that? You can beat any Souls with any weapon you want. Same with magics. How is this different in DS2 specifically? Powerstancing is nice and bonfire aescetics are good ideas, and I suppose the parries are cool, but that being cool doesn't excuse the rest of design choices that fuck the game up at its core. And PVP? PVP has always been shit in Dark Souls. All Dark Souls 2 did was making it easier for people to engage with it, as opposed to DS1's shit online. Having a better netcode doesn't really fix how broken the game itself is. Like it as much as you want, I had my fun with it too, but don't lie yourself into this delusion that "DS2 was actually quite good" that seemns to have popped up these last few years. It is Dark Souls 1, with a few neat things and a shit ton of gamebreaking choices added to it.
I really like these videos. Also, if I had to guess, I’d probably say that the DS2 stance was abandoned so the sword didn’t clip walls when the player walked through corridors and such, despite being a more accurate stance.
Pretty weird reason, spears and halberds do that all the time just by existing and they didn't give those weapon an over the shoulder stance to fix that...
The reason it was abandoned was because the attack speed was almost as slow as the ultra great swords and actually slower on the 2nd hit. (The animation would also lock you in so you couldn't attack after that swing for awhile) To be fair though a lot of the UGs that slam down and up are faster than most medium size weapons.
there's a combat animation mod for skyrim called elder souls that uses this stance for two handed swords. it's a massive improvement considering skyrims vanilla combat animations look like they took inspiration from a kid swinging a stick at the air
I think this might have been an issue where general audiences saw the stances in DS2 and thought "why is my character not holding his weapon up, he's so vulnerable". The DS1 stance LOOKS like he's more ready, when DS2 actually is.
Dark Souls 2 did so many little things like that better and more realistically, much like the rolling, whereas in the rest of the games, even Demon's Souls (the first fromsoft game to use that stance) your fast roll is essentially a frontflip
@@andryuu_2000 Not to me. Even when they brought back the beloved powerstance, in ER they did it lazily and now PS is the meta since it has no stat requirement. Also DS2 had good pvp, which ER doesn’t. I still love ER though.
Exactly. Maybe it is a proper _combat_ pose, but there is no way a trained swordsman is going to carry a heavy weapon for hours on end while running across the countryside with his wrists twisted like that and not have major injuries.
Dark souls 2 gets a lot of unjust hate for being the red headed stepchild of the Soulsborne series but it's plethora of details and nuances in it's combat easily make it one of my favorites~
Dark souls 2 introduced the vertical, thrust, and up moveset for Big Greatswords... The perfect moveset for swords like the Dragonslayer reference... Which they kept in Ds3... But ditched it for Elden ring. Still mad at that.
There's like an awesome sensation of weight and power when a character kinda drags their weapon below their waist, it was also featured with two handed weapons on Lineage 2
DS2 Was my favourite and my entry point to the series since as a PC gamer i didn't have access to DS1 til later on. DS3 is probably my favourite in terms of gameplay as i really like the weapon arts, but DS2 will always hold a special place in my heart, and i really liked the animations in it. The falchion was an amazing weapon in that game with a great set of moves.
dark souls 2 has the best weapon animations and stances. you hold shortswords, hand axes and maces facing downwards in one hand like they have actual weight, instead of just straight forward. this was atleast brought back a little in elden ring
@@robinswords I love the 2 handed moveset of the hand axe in elden ring, might not be super realistic but it's really fun. would be interesting to hear your take on it, it looks pretty barbaric
a lot of the ds2 animations were sweeter in general maybe because kf the mocap, the character doesn't snap their wrist when thrusting with a rapier lol, they werent perfect and felt really weightless but i liked how you'd shift your weight around while standing still and all the little touches
Something I love is that how you stand is directly influenced by how heavy what you're holding with either hand is. You lean a bit one way or the other to balance yourself.
I play sticks with my kid a bunch and have found the Dark Souls 2 stance to be the most natural feeling way to hold a sword-like object for prolonged periods of time
![YoungBoy Never Broke Again - Sneaking [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ILUps2zDFU/mqdefault.jpg)
Dark Souls 2 also had dual-wielded giant chicken wings which is obviously the most ideal way to arm yourself
Good times
I particularly enjoyed swinging the giant grape popsicle
@@colbyboucher6391 man grape popsicle roll catching was fun. Thanks praise the sun for the cool tutorials RIP
Amen
Ughhhh nostalgia I used to run that shit 99 strength high stamina mid to low vigor and swing that shit for days would catch so many people thinking couldn’t swing it a 6th time and I’d only wear that one brown cloth ugh good times
I also love that in Dark Souls 2, when you lock on to an enemy, your character will take a deeper combat stance.
Whaaaat? Never noticed that.
Pausing/being in your inventory does the opposite as well, you stand up straighter and in less of a combat stance, not being focused on combat.
And when the character has low HP their stance also changes.
@@mattmediaplays honestly it's a long list in ds2 lmao
Out of Stamina
Low HP
Locked on
In Menu
Neutral (Light/Med load)
Left/Right handed great weapons
Encumbered (Heavy load)
Full Encumbered (Overloaded)
And all of these combine together if you meet the criteria for both, you can be exhausted, over encumbered, and holding a left hand great weapon and all of that shows, iirc only out of stamina prevents in menu and ofc you can't lock on and menu at the same time
@@lilygoatgruffgreat game.
My guy came straight out of the office to sword classes
Average dark souls player
I imagine someone in the office made an off-hand comment about their Dark Souls build and my guy was like CAR PARK RIGHT NOW, YOU'RE GONNA _LEARN_
IM NOT THE ONLY ONE
GAMER swords classes
@@mohnomoosik I see this as a complete win ✅
Demon's souls two hand grip is the same as the ds2 grip so thats cool
also, the soldiers in the giants' memories have the same voices as Boletarian soldiers.
@@arsenii_yavorskyithat’s a crazy observation I never would have experienced myself because of the order I played the games(and how quickly the soldier get stomped or exploded by artillery fire)
Isn't it confirmed that the B-team was largely responsible for Demon's Souls' development?
Waiting for the dude to loose his clothes and show he’s actually Superman
BRUH FR
Take the glasses off
Loose 🤡
Nahhh he has the glasses. Totally different guy
I'm waiting for niggas to understand the difference between lose and loose
A wild Clark Kent enjoying his swordsmanship hobby on the weekends
Hey every normal man got to have a hobby
Beat me to it
Yeah ain't gonna lie he looks handsome
😅
that's why it was so hard
lets not forget that DS2 is the only souls game that has animations to let others know your are in a menu
Wait it did????
@@loganhebert7475 yup! You would have a different idle pose whenever you were in the menu, even the emote menu!
DS2 the goat. only casuals hate DS2
Ds2 was a wild time. IMO game isn't great but it had some of the funnest pvp in all the souls games.
Dark souls 3 had that reused aswell
Ds2 two handed swings also followed through with momentum and looped back around, instead of just slashing into the ground or stopping midair
So basically, dark souls 2 had surprisingly accurate weapon motions
Yep. Crappy hitboxes, tho.
@@freddogrosso9835 it didn’t. What it had was a shitty stat in ADP. The hit boxes aren’t a problem it’s that not only does *every fucking class** start with low ADP, but most ignore the stat. Once you get it to level 21-28 (depends if you use light or heavy armor) you most likely never need to put another level into it.
@@MrLimboRL nah man i want that shit maxed, give me the ds1 cartwheel roll
@@MrLimboRL smelter demon, sir alonne, zulva, ivory ling, veldstat, snd pretty much every boss has a shitty hitbox at least in one attack
@@ridleyrickmanreduz2196 what was your ADP?
there's a lot of weird little things that they just nonsensically went back on from 2. of animations: in dks2 it used to be that using all of your stamina caused your character to be visibly out of breath. i loved that! why'd they take it away!?
Computing power limitations probably
Also how your character would stand differently when you opened the menu
prob the backlash honestly. 3 was just amped up 1 if you think about it.
Yeah Dark souls 2 was like it’s own universe. It was so different from dark souls 1, meanwhile dark souls 3 is just a modern version of dark souls 1.
I used to love in dark souls 2 that you could have a red or blue Smokey aura when you invade players. Sadly the PvP was garbage.
i think since overall DS2 wasn't well received they just tried to stray away as much as possible, not realizing that there's still improvements in DS2 no matter if you like it or don't
As a beginner in Fiore, I have an anecdote that supports this point.
When I passed from nylon wasters to steel practice sword, I started taking the bad habit, as I wasn't used to the weight of the sword, to keep my Posta di Donna lower. I made that error unconsciously, letting my arms rest a little bit more.
I realized, while making my cuts, that I started telegraphing my cuts by raising my hands before doing the cut, as my gard was too low to start a cut from.
The very simple corrective to apply in that case was to go back to a higher stance.
This makes me so glad that my old club didn’t use plastic feders after the intro class…
I don’t really see the point of them. Especially if you are just doing (solo) drills… plastic isn’t some how safer than steel.
@@tainicon4639 In my case, the point was my budget when I started hahaha
@@maaderllin ahhhh fair enough
My club had a few steel loaners you could use during practice until you wanted to buy your own.
Fellow beginner Fiorist here! I'm also working on my cuts from Posta di Donna
@@tainicon4639 I'm creating a club with a few people (We're 4 right now). It's been a long and lonely way up until now ^^"
Honestly, I feel it was just to prevent clipping. If you want a character to me able to move anywhere than their sword being far out from the body demands one of two things. A) It has a physical space it takes up and therefore will bump into walls and not allow you to stand next to a wall on that side, or B) It constantly clips inside of walls. Anything that's out to the sides or front are more likely to look weird in these situations. It sticking out from behind is less odd due to the player rarely backing into a wall.
Good point as well
The fact that Clark Kent got REALLY into medieval weaponry is so flippin wholesome =)
Haha literally thought the same thing. My man looks like superman
@@jasonlee148what do you mean? He looks nothing like Superman??
@@CHAAAAAOTICYeahh...
They are totally a Different person.
@@CHAAAAAOTICikr Superman doesn't wear glasses
wholesome chungus 100
Your Car insurance salesman when you turn them away:
*Edit: I know some folks didn't get it, but it's a reference to the Mississippi Queen Meme
What really disappoints me is that I didn’t make a sale, but it doesn’t make a difference because I will stab him with the two handed sword and he won’t need a car anyway. Hope he didn’t reject my brother the life insurance salesman yesterday.
"You're gonna need life insurance now, fucko"
Underated
This man has no business looking so clean while teaching me how to efficiently hold a sharp metal stick.
*mississippi queen guitar riff *
Dark Souls 2 has so many genius details and ideas it’s so good to see people talking about them
too bad none of that genius went in to making the game not dogshit
@@arosbastion7052 ds2 is the best of the series tho 👍
@@min_chofi4787 That's a very funny way of spelling 'Bloodbourne'
@@arosbastion7052 if you honestly think ds2 was nothing more than a “dogshit” game then I know for certain that you didn’t play it and you’re just taking other people’s opinions as your own. Go but the game. It’s cheap and you will have a good time if you do two things. 1: play the game without comparing it to any souls experiences you had before. 2: level adaptability!
@@filo3816 you're asking to not compare ds2 to it's predecessor or the sequel? Bro if it's part of the trilogy you going to compare it in any case lol
Guarantee you this was a manager going "yeah, but it doesn't _look_ cool."
Doesent look cool? Take that back!
Yeah, it looks cooler than standing there holding it awkwardly like its the first sword your character has ever seen
Y'all are arguing with me for my comment mocking a theoretical manager for being a theoretical dumbass.
I think it's more that ds2 was a very bad game and you don't want to touch anything from the failure even if it is a good concept
@@emceemikey ds2 was the best in the series. SOTFS and the shitty new enemy placements was the only problem with it. Anybody who blindly jumps on the bandwagon of saying ds2 sucks just because the internet says so isn't informed enough to have an opinion on it.
Hearing the wind being cut with the swings is just 👌
They had that grip in the original Demon's Souls as well. I really wish they had kept it
So essentially they alternated each iteration of the souls games 😂
they know what they are doing, most hema youtubers who analyze dark souls come to the conclusion that the player character is really bad at using the sword, which fits the theme that the player has to compensate by being good at moving the character
I preferred it in that game partly because it looked better when running. DS2 character running was awkward and robotic especially if you had differing weights on both hands which was cool, but it was still awkward as hell
@@derpi3438 agreed. And I think most attack animations in DeS are also nicer than DS2.
@@tacokoneko but you can choose to be a mercenary or a literal knight. They would know how to use swords
As a person that fights in armour holding the sword in that position becomes second nature when you're trying to recover energy while still fighting. It gets hard to bring up your guard to protect your head when you're exhausted.
Which brings up a good point. All these people are going off of instruction manuals and not considering the only people who actually still fight like this
yeah i was thinking that that looks like a pretty natural, comfortable, low fatigue grip that you would carry the weapon in while walking around, which, lets not forget, you're doing 90% of the time in a dark souls game.
My guy is a medival knight
Yes, I loved that dark souls 2 stance as well, thanks for bringing attention to it! Dark souls 2 deserves the love!
kick-the-knee backstab animation on larger enemies was the best
kick the knee?
@@bigirononmyhip3812 Well, you kick the knee. It's pretty simple really.
@@bigirononmyhip3812 In DS2 some of the backstab animations had your character kick the back of an enemy’s leg so the player character could actually reach the back of an enemy. Looked pretty great tbh
@@zachmercer1065I think on some weapons it’s actually a cut to the back of the knee instead of a kick, which is pretty brutal.
Which was such a cool detail, but they also changed the parry into an animation of the target falling back and looking perplexed for long enough for you to come back in NG+ to get your riposte in. It makes you wonder how they could let great details through but also terrible ones in as well.
There was a lot of really great design choices for Dark Souls 2 which I wish the rest of the series retained. Unique crit animations for different weapon classes, better swing patterns and stances (which were partially preserved through the unique greatsword moveset), overall these are three things which are just flat out upgrades, and it's a shame they didn't go with this.
Not to mention complete 360* rolling directions and powerstancing.
The game never deserved the hate it got,
its just the hur dur worldbuilding fans that want to fight big stupid monsters.
@@Hebdrik 2 had the best world building and story too, the hate it gets really is crazy
@@caxe7 DS2 lore doesn't make any sense as a sequel to DS, it contains a lot of errors and nonsense stuff that contradict the story and lore of the first game. You really have no idea what the real story of DS2 is.
Bad hit boxes, ADP, life gems, no 360 degree movement (bro, how do you fuck up movement?) awful levels, boring bosses. Need I go on?
@@vincenzobulla113 I think you mean a direct sequel
The DaS2 greatsword moveset is also my favorite of the series. A lot more fluid than just swinging the weapon wildly.
What? I completely disagree, I think ds2's gs animation is moronic, at least the 2handed one.
What he does is basically do a swing and instead of fluidly doing another swing, he stops all the momentum with the blade, then starts all over again from 0 momentum.
I know ds1 and ds3 have the other kind of moronic animation where they slam the weapon on the ground, but that's obvoiusly stupid and can be forgiven, but in ds2 they wanted it to be realistic, but fked up with the momentum lol.
@@meyes1098 fr?
*DS2
@@Kevin-zz9du
Some people write "DaS" and "DeS" to make a distinction between dark souls and demon's souls, but I agree it's not needed for ds2 cuz only dark souls has a zwei.
Its also the worst moveset out of the games for greatswords lol
DS2 never got the love it deserves. I appreciate your input.
Yet a other example of how DS2 is very underrated
It’s still probably overrated. Yes, many of the small improvements were overlooked or discarded because the devs and many players wanted future games to stay as far away from DS2 as possible. But when you look at every problem with DS2, it quickly becomes clear that the small improvements are 1 to 1000 with large negative changes
@@aaronmueller1560 "small improvements" cope and seethe
@@aaronmueller1560yeah I can’t stomach it.
Honestly I struggle with 3 too. 2 seems like a straight pc game to me. 3 seems to be more smoothed out, more clean.
But ds1 remastered is just somehow so much better. I don’t get it. Sekiro is stunning but odd. Bloodborne is fantastic but the gameplay is way off. Thought I was playing silent hill for a minute.
@@aaronmueller1560 none of this is factually correct, it's just hyperbole and conjecture lmao DS2 haters get off on confirmation bias
ds2 is the variety king, so much content
Supes decided to settle and enjoy his swords hobby.
the one superhero where giving them a weapon adds absolutely nothing to their effectiveness in battle gets a weapon studying hobby.
I believe that the reason they went back to and have kept the stance is because it is center Mass and neutral positioning as a starting point for animation purposes. It can rise drop and rotate into the starting point of any of the rather varied animations of the different unique weapon sets or specific unique weapon animation set. Makes their job animating a lot easier with a middle ground starting point for most weapons.
Yeah, I'd agree. I think the position is largely chosen by technical consideration. Plus, the DS2 position makes the player take up a lot of space and that leads to the sword clipping scenery regularly.
Probably, videogames and reality have some hard times between them
@@robinswords o
yep animations armatures don't care where it started it'll just jump to whatever state.
@@DrunkedOwly To put it more eloquently: video game development is already difficult enough. Realism only gets in the way
DS2 seriously has really good weapon animations
“I bet he’s cheating on me”
Him & the boys:
When Clark Kent takes his disguise to the next level
I really don't know why, but these sword channels always make me happy
It's intertwined in our ancestral DNA and memory.
@@Anon1gh3dawg, u might be right
@@Anon1gh3 I was just about to say. There's probably Warrior blood in some of our DNAs. I know there is some in mine. I've seen the trees.
It's a lost art form. They usually have a unique draw
swords are cool
I always preferred this grip. Demon’s Souls had it too. It just looked more natural than the other.
And this is how nobody recognizes Superman when he's Clark Kent
I always end up going back to dark souls 2. The animations just felt the best all of them had such a nice flow to them. The flamberge was my favorite weapon because of its animations
The backstab and parry animations were my favorite in ds2, and the halberd was my favorite weapon. DS3 just felt meh, Still enjoy ds3 but 2 keeps me coming back.
Spear backstab all ya knoe
@@dirk1998 respectable but is ds2 that good? I've only played 1 and 3 along with all the other souls games (besides demon souls) I don't Really know much about ds2, just wanted someones opinion.
@@desdae69 yea it's good, some of the levels can seem bland in comparison to the other games but it is by no means a bad game. Some will bash it for it's storyline which I really don't understand it felt fine to me, felt mysterious and intriguing. Some will bash it for soul memory, which does suck to an extent but you get over it fairly quick when you don't focus on it 24/7. Then people love whining about ADP, it really isn't that bad, get it to 25 and you'll be fine.
I enjoyed it, and I prefer it's pvp compared to the rest. Really it's up to you if you want to bite the bullet, it is a game afterall.
one of the main reasons people didn't like ds2 was that they didn't understand adaptability. the ign guide literally tells you not to level it up. with 40 adp you had hilarious Invincibility frame's against most enemies. and I loved landing parries and watching them fall on their ass just to have them stand up and do it again. the buckler was super cheesy
When you cant take your sword to The Daily Planet.
There was a notion of historical accuracy in how these weapons were used in demons souls- it's been mostly absent from dark souls save for 2.
I forgot about it until this video but I remember the devs highlighting it as part of the challenge factor (weapons bouncing off walls etc)
Yup, you had to consider your environment and enemy. Now everything goes through walls like nothing and it makes no difference using whatever. Took a lot of charm away.
i love how it cuts off prematurely, implying he hit you on that last swing and killed you
*YOU DIED*
YOU DIED
DS2 was my first DS game so will always be my fav. It was also the first game I ever saw a speed run video for. So many new things for me evolved from DS2.
I started with DS1 last year, then moved onto DS2, and then DS3. I started playing Demons Souls only about a week ago. So much of Demons Souls is reused, or slightly reimagined in all of the Dark Souls games. DS2 remains my favourite for its creativity and variety. Would have been great if they remastered it so that it handled like DS3.
@@-opusif they ever remade ds2 I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
@@buttsagonton101 Would be nice if they re-made it, can't see it ever happening though. Would rather see Bloodborne ported to pc, but I doubt that will ever happen either.
Ah yes I believe that’s the “I’m just fkin holdin the sword bro like chill” stance
Thats a weird ass position to hold a sword with two hands to be a coincidence, I think it was intentional.
@@martincastillo6743 how would you hold a sword while running/jumping/solving puzzles?
@@virtueofabsolution7641 he is still, he has the pose while fighting. Definitely intentional.
@@martincastillo6743 that pose just showing that you holding it with two hand.
Dark Souls 2 was a gem, cant convince me otherwise
If filthy frank did HEMA and got his life together
Did what?
@@echoptic775 Historical European Martial Arts, various fighting schools from medieval Europe covering all the weapons of the times such as spears, all kinds of swords and their combinations with other things, polearms, and whatnot; different kinds of armour (chainmail, platemail) may also be a factor
*TOGETHAAAAAAAAA..-*
He did get his life together, hes a popular musician now(joji)
@@grb-ek3ltHis life was together. Now he split our hearts
Why is my local librarian teaching me swordsmanship
Why shouldn't he? If his job dictates them to sit and manage the library, a bit of exercise would be good. Might as well make it interestint, no?
Bugger me, now i want to make it a reality.
I remember people complained incessantly about DS2 when it came out because it wasn't a carbon copy of DS1, but there were a ton of great mechanics and systems in the game that people are now realizing they actually preferred.
The problem with ds2 was it had a lot of great ideas but they were executed poorly for example powerstancing was cool in ds 2 but the insane stat requirement to power stance made it a pain to be able to power stance and the stamina usage made it less affective then just using one weapon
@@andonmartin4142After how OP Elden Ring powerstance was I understood why DS2 had such a requirement, also if you dual wielding light weapons the stat investment isn't that big.
I personally love the heavy stamina use, because I like the harder stamina management in general in DS2. But I understand why people wouldn't like it.
DS2 was way ahead of its time. The cut content is a whole other game in itself.
It had a lot of interesting mechanics and animations that were tied to a dogshit game.
@@dekufiremage7808that's DS3 mate, DS2 is pretty good
Loyce Greatsword interestingly gets this stance instead of the typical over the shoulder stance
Yea it's a unique weapon.
Ds2 has the best equipment out of the entire series
Dark Souls 2 had some underrated mechanics I won’t lie.
It’s just an animation tho
More like 1; power stancing. And that was done better in both Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring.
@@ZepTheGamer There isn't even Power Stance in Dark Souls 3, just some specific weapons have an extra weapon as part of the mechanic, and in Elden Ring it's exactly the same thing it just doesn't ask for extra stats to carry the second weapon 💀
@@ZepTheGamer powerstancing was not a thing is DS3
@@johnny8363 It's not the same at all. It's a lot more limited in Elden Ring. In ds2 you can powerstance different weapon classes and there are lots of weapons that have unique interactions when powerstanced. And you can also toggle powerstance in ds2.
Dark Souls 2 did a lot of things I liked best. Especially animations, variety and style of weapons and armor, and how armor actually functioned as armor in a useful capacity without being busted OP like Dark Souls 1. Also for the love of God bring back upgradable armor. One of the biggest reasons why armor is so useless in DS3 and Elden Ring beyond poise is that they're going for static unupgradable armor that functions the same throughout the entire game which means armor will either be overpowered early game to be useful mid-late game or useful early game but useless by mid-late game and it's always been the former.
It will never be overpowered if they don't want it to be because it provides a percentage damage reduction. The starting ones are like 20% at most and the heaviest ones are like 40%.
All in all a joke mechanic to make sure you always die fast if you take hits.
@@Leonhart_93 that's the exact point of what I said mate. The point is when you decide to use a flat reduction system in a game without upgradable armor you either have to decide to make armor OP early to make it useful in the end game or make it useful early and useless in the end game. From Soft has made it very apparent the direction they chose because armor is by and large useless by the time you meet Morgott let alone anyone after him. Not helped by the colossal damage spike of late game bosses to hammer home the uselessness of defense unless you stack an ungodly amount of buffs which isn't fun.
Sad that ds2 has so many bland bosses, their head were in the right place
@@ThatGuyOrby Just summon mimic tear or tiche if you're struggling. 0 reason to make you invincible just because you upgraded your armor..
@@Meoidn I'm not struggling mate (I've beaten the game three times and have no intention on picking it up again till the DLC drops), I like tank builds and that requires a good and functional armor system. Which the series hasn't had since Dark Souls 2. I want to be able to invest in my character's durability, which is only possible through an absurd amount of annoying to farm items and short lived buffs. Stacking buffs is boring and they don't last worth a damn and I hate farming. Ironjar aromatics are by far one of the worst offenders.
If my memory serves me correctly, I believe Link uses that stance with his larger weapons in Breath of the Wild.
I was thinking the same thing!
Yup, which does an astounding job at telling you "Link knows his shit"
Another reason to love DS2 even more
I think that’s the only reason. Majula was pretty I guess.
In defence of dark souls, it often feels like your undead isn't a master swordsman. They're an undead with a little bit of training, but their swings are cumbersome and unwieldy and I think the point is that they don't know how to use that greatsword.
The DS2 2 handed grip is my favorite. From my favorite one in the series.
Headache inducing mess
@Aidan Callaghan Ds2 is my favorite but not because its the best because its the most fun
@Aidan Callaghan thats ok dont like dont play
@Aidan Callaghan why? because they like a game you don't? that's incredibly distasteful...
@Aidan Callaghan childish
Ds2 did A LOT of things better than the other games. It should have had more impact on the later games.
Dark souls 2's combat is the best tbh, You always feel like you are truly in control of everything.
Dlc also has some of the best environments in the whole series.
I really wish I lived in a parallel universe in which the true vision the developers had for that game was achieved. Time travel, cooler and more consistent areas, the torch actually being extremely important and graphics not being too terrible in many areas. We actually got extremely nerfed versions of all those things but if we had the full game with the multiplayer it had. It may have been one of the best games of the franchise.
Big cap😂😂😂Yall lost...😢
Not true. Too many instances of enemy attacks gliding over my head but still dealing damage to me for some reason.
@@gadellomagnollo1810git gud
It’s always lovable to see someone spreading love for DS2, the game is under appreciated so much it actually gets hate.
Also, this is pretty cool information, as someone that studies poses from time to time to draw, I never actually thought of how awkward most poses are when holding a sword (I mean in drawings). Obviously taking the handle into account, you can’t disjoint and do a huge movement to wherever you want :0
If I could give you one piece of advice from fencer to artist: Varying grip pressure. My hands are often very loose on the sword most of the time. You can't do a lot of the things you need to with a vice grip.
ds2 did quite a few things right
.
.
.
.
.
with that being said ds2 did ALOT more wrong. revisited it a last year, I didn't hate it like I did on launch I still thought it was painfully mid
@@thikdikriky1559 ds2 is so underrated, it had the best pvp and weapons. Every weapon is viable and all magics are useful. They had a lot of cool mechanics such as powerstancing, Ultra parrying, bonfire aescetic, door of pharros. Some of which only came back in Eldenring.
@@Ledbottom86 which is cool and all, but they also had rolling and animation speed tied to a stat you had to lvl, hit boxes were all over the place from being tight to enemies becoming intangible, and even the sheer amount of healing items they throw at you.
Balance was out the door, and as the other side said, they did mess up a lot of stuff that either broke people from playing it, or people had to overcome the jank and enjoy what it did right.
@@Ledbottom86 The best weapons? Whatever do you mean with that? You can beat any Souls with any weapon you want. Same with magics. How is this different in DS2 specifically?
Powerstancing is nice and bonfire aescetics are good ideas, and I suppose the parries are cool, but that being cool doesn't excuse the rest of design choices that fuck the game up at its core.
And PVP? PVP has always been shit in Dark Souls. All Dark Souls 2 did was making it easier for people to engage with it, as opposed to DS1's shit online. Having a better netcode doesn't really fix how broken the game itself is.
Like it as much as you want, I had my fun with it too, but don't lie yourself into this delusion that "DS2 was actually quite good" that seemns to have popped up these last few years. It is Dark Souls 1, with a few neat things and a shit ton of gamebreaking choices added to it.
I really like these videos. Also, if I had to guess, I’d probably say that the DS2 stance was abandoned so the sword didn’t clip walls when the player walked through corridors and such, despite being a more accurate stance.
Pretty weird reason, spears and halberds do that all the time just by existing and they didn't give those weapon an over the shoulder stance to fix that...
It was abandoned so that From can reuse their shitty DS1 animations
The reason it was abandoned was because the attack speed was almost as slow as the ultra great swords and actually slower on the 2nd hit. (The animation would also lock you in so you couldn't attack after that swing for awhile)
To be fair though a lot of the UGs that slam down and up are faster than most medium size weapons.
Seems like over the shoulder would work better for games. Realism for the sake of realism isn't also ideal.
@@coryyoung7544 I mean to be fair ds2's 2 handed moveset for straight swords isn't that good but the 1 handed is faster than ds1's
there's a combat animation mod for skyrim called elder souls that uses this stance for two handed swords. it's a massive improvement considering skyrims vanilla combat animations look like they took inspiration from a kid swinging a stick at the air
Lol true
To be fair, we're in Skyrim. Nords don't strike me as folk that care about proper form.
Definition of you can’t please all the people all the time
Ah. Best Souls two, my beloved
I think this might have been an issue where general audiences saw the stances in DS2 and thought "why is my character not holding his weapon up, he's so vulnerable". The DS1 stance LOOKS like he's more ready, when DS2 actually is.
I appreciate ds2 love. Sure is the black sheep of souls series.
Reason 4657 why Dark Souls 2 is actually fantastic, but people ignore it.
Dark Souls 2 did so many little things like that better and more realistically, much like the rolling, whereas in the rest of the games, even Demon's Souls (the first fromsoft game to use that stance) your fast roll is essentially a frontflip
I had the same thought. It still drives me made the every game after still rejects the good DS2 did. Feature wise it was a fantastic sequel.
Elden Ring is DS2 2
@@andryuu_2000
Not to me. Even when they brought back the beloved powerstance, in ER they did it lazily and now PS is the meta since it has no stat requirement. Also DS2 had good pvp, which ER doesn’t. I still love ER though.
It's also a better resting position
Agreed. Nice, relaxed arms.
A lot of the best things from Dark Souls 2 were really small details, it was more immersive than previous and later From games.
Dark Souls 2, and this is one of the few things I adore about it, has great animation work
The walk and run cycle looks like it came from a PS1 era game. ?? You don't see that
@@piotr78 oh yeah the movement animations are terrible but some of the sword movesets ported to dark souls 3 are beautiful
@@TheCompleteMental it's almost time for me to replay it, I'll pay attention to em 👌🏻
Demon's Souls also has this idle position for two handing the average sized swords.
Always hated how they held the swords like that. It felt so uncomfortable looking at it, and I'm not even trained.
Exactly. Maybe it is a proper _combat_ pose, but there is no way a trained swordsman is going to carry a heavy weapon for hours on end while running across the countryside with his wrists twisted like that and not have major injuries.
Gets in the way when you’re running
adaptability is key son, adaptability is key
At least 20 🤣
I Agree! It looked so much more profesional than the one we have atm.
Dark Souls 2 had some of the best stances and emotes.
But Miyazaki is all about himself and his own work.
Elden Ring has Tanimura working on it, that's why it feels as a ds2 2
@@andryuu_2000 you have to be on some disgusting levels of meth to call elden ring anything like dark souls 2.
@Matt More of a culmination of all the games, the DS2 ideas to stand out a bit, such as powerstancing and Farum Azula.
The best is when you don’t have anything in your hands but you’re still dual wielding
Two-handed fist clasped-hands startreck fist fight moveset was not necessary but they went the extra mile and threw it in there anyway
DS2 is just the best souls game
Real
Dark souls 2 was so good in so many ways
Glad Ds2 is still getting love after all this time
Dark souls 2 gets a lot of unjust hate for being the red headed stepchild of the Soulsborne series but it's plethora of details and nuances in it's combat easily make it one of my favorites~
I love your eye for detail, thanks Robin
Dark souls 2 introduced the vertical, thrust, and up moveset for Big Greatswords... The perfect moveset for swords like the Dragonslayer reference... Which they kept in Ds3... But ditched it for Elden ring.
Still mad at that.
But Elden Ring has better animations than ds3
@@andryuu_2000 shitty ds1 animations drawn from ds1 about the greatswords.
There's like an awesome sensation of weight and power when a character kinda drags their weapon below their waist, it was also featured with two handed weapons on Lineage 2
Dark Souls 2 is too pure for this world
To me it looks like the most comfortable way to hold the sword without having it holstered
Dark souls 2 is underrated as hell
I'd like to hear more from Clark Kent about swords.
Subscribed!
Dudes neighbors watching him swing a sword around in a suit in the middle of the woods 💀
The more HEMA content I see in my feed, the better this shit algorithm feels
I love how Bloodbourne has the character rest the hammer and massive 2h on his shoulder
I believe that's something you see with real two-handed swords, possibly Dane axes as well?
Well, bf swords need to be carried somehow and definitely not on the waist.
DS2 Was my favourite and my entry point to the series since as a PC gamer i didn't have access to DS1 til later on. DS3 is probably my favourite in terms of gameplay as i really like the weapon arts, but DS2 will always hold a special place in my heart, and i really liked the animations in it. The falchion was an amazing weapon in that game with a great set of moves.
“and, youcanstillcastthepointout”
*YOU DIED*
Ds2 is King
Fr. Best soulsborne
@@YouLoseGoodDaySomeone of refined taste! It really is the best Fantasy Medieval souls, the rest are Dark Fantasy dont feel the same
dark souls 2 has the best weapon animations and stances. you hold shortswords, hand axes and maces facing downwards in one hand like they have actual weight, instead of just straight forward. this was atleast brought back a little in elden ring
The only game where I actually made extensive use of an axe. The Dragonslayer's Crescent Axe was delightfully graceful in use.
@@robinswords I love the 2 handed moveset of the hand axe in elden ring, might not be super realistic but it's really fun. would be interesting to hear your take on it, it looks pretty barbaric
Common DS2 w
I love it when fantasy games have some REAL researched details. It shows the developer’s love and care
a lot of the ds2 animations were sweeter in general maybe because kf the mocap, the character doesn't snap their wrist when thrusting with a rapier lol, they werent perfect and felt really weightless but i liked how you'd shift your weight around while standing still and all the little touches
I was noticing some of that when I reinstalled to get the screenshots. The Loyce Greatsword's thrust in particular had me giddy.
Something I love is that how you stand is directly influenced by how heavy what you're holding with either hand is. You lean a bit one way or the other to balance yourself.
ithink plenty of dark souls 2 has weight sometimes more than one but it does have a few things that feel light but i wouldnt say weightless
Why is my high school math teacher telling me how to properly use weapons
So bottom line it's because it's a videogame and it just looks more aesthetically pleasing facing upward than down and to the side
"This walking corpse isn't a practical enough swordsman for me"
I've said it before. Ds2 is criminally underrated and imo it's the best of the entire franchise.
Agreed
So much good stuff was forgotten from ds2 because of a RUclips smear campaign
nobody forgot they just dont care because it’s garbage
@@tylerwhite4557 it's a better game than ds3
Dark souls 2 was the best souls game
If we ignore DS2 and DS3, yes.
I play sticks with my kid a bunch and have found the Dark Souls 2 stance to be the most natural feeling way to hold a sword-like object for prolonged periods of time