I have some fundemental disagreements about whether or not something is "bad", but rather than writing it all let me just say every single time that dark souls moan played I giggled like a child.
ds2 is a great game that never was, it's like waking up from a wet dream, all you remember is being wet, not the climax that made it so, where is the fun in that !#!?
12:03 There's this mechanic called "counter damage" where you deal extra damage if you hit an enemy while it's performing it's attack animation. Each weapon has a different counter damage value. 22:20 you can either go to the Forest of Fallen Giants or Heide's tower, as the other paths are blocked by needing items for it. Either of the 2 first paths get you into Lost Bastille with Heide's having stronger enemies in lower quantities. If Dark Souls teaches you one thing is to go back if you think you're underpowered, I never got a problem in finding the Forest of Fallen Giants as I saw Heide's enemies towering over me and just turned back.
@@joegella It appears on the weapon's stats page with the symbol of a arrow turning back. It works by multiplying the base damage by the counter damage value. For example, the Uchigatana has a counter damage of 150, so each hit landed during an enemy's attack will be base damage x 1.5. The Greatsword has 130 counter damage, so it's multiplied by 1.3 and so on.
Im pretty sure the hollow infantry with shield variant has higher defense than the other hollow infantry I consistently notice less damage when attacking those guys
yeah you can go down either path, Dark Souls 1 has a similar thing letting you go to 3 areas right from Firelink but two of those areas are incredibly hard and not meant to be tackled that direction. Dark Souls 2 is more freeing in that regard and with a fragrant branch there's even another path you can go down to the shaded woods and Heide's tower splits into two paths also.
Yep, eye of ephemeral souls. As well as having the cling ring to keep your health at like 65% after you die and return. Ds2 is almost identical in both respects.
3:40 minor correction here. Firekeeper souls can only be used to increase the potency of flasks while humanity is sacrificed at bonfires to increase flask charges at a specific bonfire while having the rite to kindle.
@@joegellaFire Keeper Souls are useful. Flask upgrades are a big deal. Look at how much more a +3 Flask heals compared to base. And if you kill certain Fire keepers for their Souls you can go as high as +5. In NG+ cycles though they're basically just 5 Humanity though.
You can sacrifice humanity without the rite of kindling to go from 5 flask to 10. Rite lets you go to 15 and 20. You can do this at every bonfire in the game, not specific ones. Firelink shrine just starts at 10, it may be the case that all bonfires with a fire keeper start kindled, I forget if the pale lady is kindled by default or not. But the point remains, all bonfires can be increased to 10 flasks, rite lets you kindle two additional times for 15 and 20
Noone talking abt how when you get to shrine of amana you dont need to use the human effigy or ring of binding anymore Theres a tower with fire in it that unhollows you for free
@@ZirixStrarstrider I ended my first save with 99😭😭 I kept thinking I had to save them for smth important and then kept saying that till the final boss
Vanilla DS2 was my first souls game. I played countless hours without event dlc. Then came scollar and was an improvement for me. Its most replayable souls game too. I like this game.
Ds3 was my first dark souls. After playing ds1 I can clearly see how ds3 took all those same concepts and reskined them. Some parts of ds1 felt like a weird deja vu to me. I still think ds3 stands on its own though because the pacing is way different and the bosses are so intense by comparison. Might be a bit too roll spammy though
12:00 the "hidden multiplier you missed was "counter damage". In ds2 ALL weapons do better damage if you use it while your opponent is on an attack animation (grabs excluded). The first you one shotted it because the soldier was already trying to punch you. The second one didnt even turn on you so you didnt do counter damage. Thats literally it. Could also be partially your "reach damage" issue. Since with the tip of your blade you could outspace enemies, preventing yourself from using counter damage. In the other games they gave this property to thrusting weapons only, which feels lame. In this game thrusting was still a bit better in this regard, and then a lot better with the leo ring.
14:55 About the lock on free aiming. Actually, DS3 and Elden Ring give you the option to turn this on manually. It's called "Manual Attack Aiming" in the settings.
I love Dark Souls 2. It was obnoxious at some points, but if you take it slow it's not that bad. It was the first game in the series that made me think about how to approach each area.
i played both, and i enjoyed darksouls 1 and 2 the same, i wasnt autistic with the stats or compairing it to dark souls 1, i just knew that dark souls games are hard, and i wanted to overcome the challenge, people didn't like having a stat for s, but it made me get better at dodging throughout the entirety of souls games, sure there was alot of deaths, but eventually you just get good at it.
@@michaelcarroll5801 What fanboy nonsense, DS1 doesn't make you think about the areas? Sen's Fortress? Blighttown? Anor Londo? New Londo? Duke's Archives? Tomb of the Giants? The only thing worse than DS2 are the delusional and braindead DS2 fanboys.
@@omarcomming722 the ideal strategy in all of those zones is to run through. It's okay on the first playthrough, but on subsequent runs the enemy placements are too forgiving. DS1 zones are pretty good though. You're a bit aggressive, it's just a video game. Sorry for offending your supreme taste and sensibilities, king.
Oh, c'mon the Madjula starting point thing is very disingenuous. Even in the "perfect level design" DS1 a whole lot of people quit because they think the catacombs are the first level. It's not like Firelink Shrine is any clearer.
That's a think i call "ds2 haters when the Game has a problem that's is part of the other games but somehow ds2 is the bad one" and I don't know english
There's two directions you go from firelink - you walk like 20 metres to the skeletons and they are too difficult so you go the other way and the undead are easy to kill voila, really bad comparison. Majula gives you about 6 paths and you have to go pretty deep in them to work out wtf they lead to. Try again
I absolutely loved enemy de-spawning. I’m built so different mentally from most people. The first time I played DS2 I intentionally despawned all the enemies on my way to a boss before even fighting them, I didn’t mind it at all because I would learn the area and would get tons of souls and items and eventually wouldn’t have to worry about any of the enemies and I could go back through the areas after and really appreciate them.
i did that too honestly. i loved every enemy no longer being there, I cleared out the sir alonne runback, iron keep, heide tower of flame, the spiders before frejya, and a couple others. Definitely took way longer to complete my first playthrough but i still had a good time
Yeah, I really don't like doing long runbacks for bosses I'm struggling on, so when I first played DS2 (which was my first Dark Souls game), I did the same thing. It was something I definitely appreciated.
Yo, same here! It really helped me feel like I had conquered an area and thru time-dedication, made it safe, CHANGED the world, not just by removing bosses, but removing ALL threats. I wish this despawn 12x mechanic had been included in later games as a covenant or something, just as an OPTION, the way DS2 has Covenant of Champions to make the enemies perma-spawn just like DS1.
Powerstancing isn't the same thing as dual wielding. Powerstancing involves using 2 weapons from DIFFERENT weapon categories together and getting a unique moveset rather than just access to the L1 button. An example would be a Spear and either a Halberd or Lance being used together and getting cool new moveset
6:48 You're greatly exaggerating how much investment in ADP is required to bring the roll on par with the other games. It requires several levels in the early game and that's it. "It requires so many souls to get it to a decent level" no dude it doesn't, that's just blatantly incorrect. "Sucks you dry" isn't even remotely true with how you get tons of souls and levels in DS2 compared to other souls games, reaching level 200 lategame with a bit of grinding is fast and rather trivial. You'll easily get over level 150 just by playing normally when you reach the lategame.
Game changer mechanic you forgot: small soapstones and level clearance coop. The online player is just so much more flexible because of this. You can be summoned to do about anything and then go back no problem. In elden ring, for example, they only send you back when you beat an area boss. So helping defeat a field boss, tough as they can be, gives you no reward. Ds3 also has this issue, but due to the areas being long and hard. If they summon you and it turns out no shortcuts are open, yoy may now be on a quest to open them, and after several minjtes an tough battles, the host will likely kick you out to be able to rest in the bonfire. This also enables phantoms to just let the host "duke it out" with invaders, because good coop sessions are not as hard to come by. Another layer is the small soapstone gives weapon upgrade materials, so its actually apealing for most players to join on short sessions. From your comments it seems you playes offline. And thats OK. Because the game is OK on pve, but absolutely on another level for online.
I loved ds2 but it was my introduction to the series so I didn’t have anything to base it off of at the time. Even after playing the other games I still love it. It had some awesome environments in it.
The thing about Shrine of Amana, is that the previous area has a room with stone soldiers that drop the Llewellyn shield which can be infused with magic and block like 96% of the damage from these magic spammer spells. Combined with an un upgraded lightning infused grand Lance to poke the water enemies while you block the spells and the area is very manageable.
U can even parry deflect those spells with the cleric Parma (i think Is the name in english?) that u should have at that point of the game, which Is Just funny to do but u can litrally walk on the right/left to avoid those spells, dont even Need to roll
This is a broad pattern that arises in DS2. DS2, much like the other games, hands you mountains upon mountains of gear and options. DS2, unlike the other games, then expects you to actually use them. Yeah, this area sucks if you're doing a naked Greatsword build. Maybe try not doing that. There's like four armor sets you've stumbled into, a half dozen shields, a few spells, and even some consumables that can all help with this area if you're having a hard time with it. Just like. The people who adamantly refuse to touch ANY of the ranged options in the game. There's a bow that has negligible requirements and weighs a goddamn half pound that is almost assuredly going to fall into your pocket at some point. Please try using it.
While the shield can get your magic defense that high through infusion, the whole point of Amana is to learn to either a) pick things off at a distance, or b) keep moving. Standing in place with a low-stability shield sounds good on paper until you get guard broken. Best to plod through, the game gives plenty of time to pick off the mages one by one, which I'm sure you know.
@@Kamawan0 what a fun and engaging way to play a game, now I really understand this mass delusion that's gripping the DS2 Defence Squad in recent years
@@atonofspiders So you have to grind a enemy drop in a game that has limited enemy spawns and hope you get lucky enough to get the thing that makes the next area playable? No wonder people hate DS2 for being tedious and unenjoyable. Imagine if the Skull Lantern and Sunlight Maggot were both rare drops you had limited opportunities to grind for and if you don't get them, well too bad have fun playing Tomb of the Giants in the dark or buy the DLC to fix a problem the devs intentionally put in the game.
12:07 this is counter damage taking affect, when you attack an enemy during an attack animation it does extra damage based off your weapon’s counter damage modifier. Rapier, dagger and other thrusting weapons have amazing counter damage that can do 1.50x more damage if you hit an enemy during its attack.
11:52 it's just the effect of counter damage, a mechanic present in every souls game. Funny how instead of trying to figure out why you did different amounts of damage you just instantly assume out of pure speculation that the damage must be reduced by the number of enemies hit at the same time... the definition of a bad faith argument.
Bro trying tu justify a mechanic bad implemented. And is hilarious how you talk about "bad faith argument" when you literally mentioned one point of a really deep list of reasons why this game sucks
@@emmelinesupremacy You really don't know what you're talking about do you?... counter damage is a mechanic present in every souls game, even Elden Ring. It's a good mechanic because you are rewarded with more damage when you manage to attack an enemy during his attack animation. The ring of Ornstain literally boosts the damage of counter hits since Dark Souls 1 and you are here saying it's a DS2 mechanic only.... come on man try a little bit harder at least
@@simonenot5839 Alrighty, then how is this supposed to prove the game is not a bad one? I mean, you are talking as a superior one, the Player who knows everything and is up of us. Cmon, does this explain why lock on system sucks? Why enemies'animation sucks too? I'm ready for reading
@@emmelinesupremacy Sorry man but you are just deviating from your previous comment, you said counter damage is a bad feature and I just proven how little you know about the souls trilogy since that mechanic is present in every game. I didn't say anything about hitboxes or anything else.
not bad faith tho, the uploader didn't know about the mechanic, i didn't knew about it either in all honesty, not like the game bothers to ever explain it either, and it's not like is such a notable issue in the rest of the souls games for people to complain, even if you are able to get the best of this counter damage making it a positive, the fact that not a lot of people know about it despite all these years just makes it a bad mechanic.
That's the problem actually. You have to level it even if you don't roll at all, because it also affects healing item usage speed. I cleared the game by only blocking at 1 ADP and it was painful. The healing speed difference only seems small but in a bossfight it easily gets you killed, because you raised the bottle a couple of frames too slow
@@ashketchup8392, why would you have it at 1 in question it's a game mechanic for the game in specific level it to basic 20 and your set get used to it and live with it
Role Playing Game, states it plus it's not a bad mechanic but it's hard to get past if your used to the sweet 30 eye frames of DS1, its a learning curve and well your playing Dark souls
6:10 if i'm not wrong every stats increases health, not only endurance - and nobody know cuz ppl don't have eyes, attunment raises agility ( 20 ADP u have ds1 fast rolls s, 40 ATN u have ds1 fast rolls s, this is why mages don't need adp )
While I don't like the existence of adp, I do admit that the stat system works well around it. You're right. Other stats give you health as well, which definitely helps. But the big thing i noticed is that your typical "damage stats" (at least for melee) like str and dex didn't need to be leveled nearly as much as the other games. Like you basically leveled str and dex till you get your weapon's min requirements, and then from that point, you can safely ignore those stats while focusing on adp and health. The real way to increase damage is by upgrading weapons
@@joegella maybe if u r using a santier spear or any weapon that has no scaling, but idk man, i play this game since day1 vanilla and i always reach lvl 50 in str or dex depend from the build. so i can't speak for that. learning about counter dmg would let u understand about the damage modifier that i don't think u understand, if u see more dmg while the enemy is attacking (or any special animation) is because of the counter dmg, so yeah u do more dmg even with low str / dex
@@joegellayou’re kind of right… it’s that there are multiple soft caps for each stat, every stat gets huge benefits up to the first soft cap of 20. You can really do well with something like a mace and only 20 STR, but you still get benefits for going all the way to 50 and then 99.
Are you dumb? Did you watch the video? The dark souls 2 system takes humanity to increase the flask PER BONFIRE, DS2 introduced it increasing the flask count PERMENETLY, otherwise you'd have 1 flask, One item to increase the amount, and another the charge, this was carried over to Elden ring and dark souls 3, NOT the bonfire flask system
@@ZirixStrarstrider you can go to 10 without the rite of kindling which is easily attained from the start of the game so you can have 20 before even fighting Taurus demon. Also you can kindle any and every bonfire. To adjust the difficulty of an area. So it’s a players choice to have 5, 10, 15 or 20 estus. Not just a specific bonfire.
The best things about Dark souls 2 in my opinion: - performance - dual wielding, even the crossbow and you hold both heavy weapon on your shoulder, not just holding by the left hand like ER - fashion soul - unique weapon (I love bone fist) - hex - life gem - NG+ - bonfire ascetic - best hub in all FS games (Majula) - best pvp - best dragon form appearance - best greatsword moveset (mirrah greatsword, loyce greatsword) ....
Great video, but a few corrections: Pharros lockstones are technically infinite, as they can be acquired from the rat covenant invasions The reason that END and VIT are split is likely because the amount of souls you'll have amassed by the end of the game, so it's really a non-issue at the end of the day, and they dont want you being OP halfway through the game as for the health "debuff" every game except from DS1 has this, Demons souls, DS2, DS3 too, you might think "oh if i go human i get a health buff!" but isnt it literally the same? you dont get your full health when hollowed, same in elden ring as for the dodge using a lot of stamina, i think this is a great change, as it prevents roll spamming. if you only play PvE it might be annoying, but imagine PvP if rolling didnt consume that much, you have to remember that everything has to be balanced for both, and PvP in DS2 has widely been regarded as the best in the series as for the soft lock, iirc this only applies when using some larger weapons, its annoying at first, but adds some great potential when fighting groups of enemies or players the animation not having infinite s is a great addition in my opinion, as it forces you to make sure its safe instead of running through i like the illusory walls, but i do agree that the bonfires being hidden sucks in the second clip showing the hitbox, thats actually a great example of conditional damage, you got hit by the very tip of the hitbox. the hitboxes for enemies and the player actually conform to the same rules, which i think is great, it might not be fair but it quite literally is balanced by definition hahaha, as for the first clip, you got invaded by an online player, i think there was just lag between you two, he hit you first but it took time for the damage to register for you, which is why you had time to hit him as for the game being vague about what to do and where to go, ds2 sadly had to change teams despite being halfway through development, as the first team kind of went "haha dark souls hard right fuck you" then luckily yui tanimura took over, he worked on Kings field 4, which is regarded as an amazing game (for real, play it, the vibes go hard) and later codirected elden ring of course. he really saved whatever was left of DS2, but the kings field inspirations are obvious I'm currently playing through vanilla DS2, and i can tell you that the annoying ambush shit is WAY better in that game, SOTFS really said "fuck it we back to game hard guys you like game hard right?". they did ds2 so dirty with that, its like night and day its funny you mentioned mytha, as its actually kind of set up to go like this: you get to mytha and you die, you get mad and summon an NPC from the bonfire right next to the burnable windmill as you're having trouble, the NPC will tell you to burn it, you burn it and kill the boss. of course it doesnt always go like this and someone probably told you about the bonfire closer to the boss, but it ended up making it worse for you. as for the maps feeling disconnected, this is again a problem coming from the messed up development, as tanimura's team basically had to deduce where maps had to go, as they were all already done and starting over would be impossible, they quite literally had to just sherlock holmes come up with theories as to where the maps were supposed to go because they couldnt get a clear answer from the old team, it works in a lot of places but this one elevator is a bit odd yeah the game telling you to be slow but also give you a torch timer is genius actually, you have to decide whether to run out of torches (never happened to me in like 2000+ hours) or start throwing the careful play out the window in favor of getting through in time, yknow, as you'd do in real life as well. you have to compromise. this isnt that big of an issue in vanilla ds2 either as its a LOT less dark, which in and of itself is a problem i have with it but cant win em all i guess 🤷♂️
The soft lock thing was actually turned into a setting in the later games, and I always turn it on. Only thing I disagree with is ambushes being better in Vanilla. I guess this is a preference thing and there are some things improved and some that got worse with SOTFS, for me at least the changes to enemy placements were an improvement, but that really depends on which encounters you personally had issues with. SOTFS also added environmental things here and there that actually help a lot with some of the ambushes/gank squad stuff if utilized. I know the narrative is that SOTFS is somehow the "oh lets make it more difficult" version but afaik, the devs haven't claimed that, and the numerous nerfs to bosses and encounters seem to contradict that narrative.
The enemy additions going from vanilla to sotfs felt like a direct reply to speedrunners. You could watch vanilla speedruns and how easily they moved through areas, techniques to make it through fog gates, etc., and see how the devs added enemies specifically to block paths or gum up fog gates. Of course, runners came up with new techniques to deal with the new enemy placements.
I started playing dark souls 1 back in 2012 and got dark souls 2 as soon as it launched on the 360. I'm one of those weirdos who thoroughly enjoyed dark souls 2 and still play it occasionally to this day. I had no f****** clue that they treated negative stamina like that at all 🤯🤯
LOL and I've always wondered about how all the challenge runners fight the throne watcher and defender and then Nashandra separately. I've literally only ever done a double boss fight with all three of them...
Try Domo3000 with and the visual hitbox and runback comparisons. He is currently debunking a fuckton of DS2 criticism. He has 9 parts on Mauler's videos already.
the things that drag it down are ones that ultimatelly drag other souls entries as well. 1) the excess of repeat bosses (also seen in DS1 & Elden Ring) 2) areas w/inflated enemy placement These are reasonable critiques to make about the game, but that people often diminish or pretend as not applicable to the series as a whole. The game actually introduced mechanics that were formidably compelling. The bonfire ascetics, pharros lockstones (which came back as stonesword keys in a way), NG+ encounters, power stancing, etc. And the quality of life changes you mention like teleporting between bonfires. The aesthetics are also hardly even spoken of. DS2 just screams high-fantasy. It's an extreme apart from the dready desolation we experience in DS3. Bright, tinted hues, dynamic lighting, and a whimsical feel to it. Majula remains the coziest hub area they've ever concocted. Ultimately, I feel the reason the game is badly look at is because it isn't bloodborne. But, let's be honest, 60% of the bloodborne base game is dog water edit: to add to your point of conditional damage, there are some weapons that make trivially easy boss fights a nightmare to get through. Prowling magus and congregation is infamous due to how difficult it is to make halberds and spears hit the enemies on the floor. which, speaking of... Prowling Magus & Congregation
@@djinnxx7050 consistency? There’s like 3 good bosses in the base game, and 2 good areas. Its quality honestly is just bad, and is hard carried by its setting.
DS2 has 1 repeat boss: Smelter Demon. Elden Ring has 9 night's cavalries, 6 erdtree avatars, 6 burial tree watchdogs, Godrick and Godfrey reskins, 4 reused Godskin fights...do I need to go on? There's a lot more. Check fextra, it's jawdropping how much reused content Elden Ring gets praised for!
@@Kamawan0 yet it still has infinitely more unique enemies, and those enemies have way more complex movesets. random shit mobs in elden ring like the knights could be bosses in ds2. its also an open world game and has to fill 30x + the space, ever played an open world game with purely unique encounters?
> ADP stat initially nerfed rolling so players won't abuse it. DS2 combat is slower to enforce turn-based timing - therefore rolling needed to be nerfed initially. - it also eventually enables normal i-frames with heavier load since s are no longer tied to equip load. > Heavy weapons can be aimed manually. It's useful in pvp when people roll behind you, you can then just point the left analog at them and attack again. - smaller weapons lock on and track normally. > DS2 punishes reckless use of stamina, estus, and reckless exploration. That's why stamina is this way in ds2, in return, combat is slower to emphasize turn-based timing. > Running past enemies is also a bad habit that the games punishes, in return, bosses are easier. > Torches has other uses. Spiders won't attack you when you have a torch up. Very useful in Brightstone Cove Tseldora. It also helps you lock on in dark places. Torches also helps you see the ground in the shrine of amana. Torches also scare the dark dwellers in no man's wharf. > An NPC summon will point at the windmill in earthen peak to hint that you should burn it. > Slow and methodical exploration makes the games easier. That was the point, the game is hard when played wrong, it's easy then played right. - people hate how hard the game is when played wrong, people also hate how easy it is when played right - but that was the point! ...but there is a weird gaming phenomena in souls games were people deliberately avoid and stigmatize things that makes things easier, they play it the hard way and blame the game for it.
not only the npc that point at the windmill, but these games have an online message system to communicate to each other, most of the time messages r trolls indeed, but how many time u can find a "hidden wall ahead" or "torch required ahead". i also think the medusa boss is calculated to be fight with the poison, a single lifegem counter poison, 2 lifegems heals u, she stares at u for 5 long seconds sometime, she IS NOT THAT AGGRESSIVE, with a decent dps the fight is much better with the poison.
I agree with everything although I don't think the general sentiment isn't just that the game is hard, but that it is tedious for players who don't enjoy that style.
@@michaelcarroll5801 That's a respectable point of view. I don't need DS2 to be like elden ring, but it's good that ds2 is a game that balanced itself without abandoning it's core concept of slow and methodical.
@@francissebastiansamson8561 you are absolutely right, the only thing I kinda disagree with is how obscure the windmill thing is. That’s still like a “how the fuck did they expect us to know” deal, even with the Scholar changes. Then again it’s not like the souls series is a stranger to archaic secrets that are next to impossible to find on a blind run through like Kaathe, the Archdragon Peak, Ash Lake, or the asylum return,etc. granted those examples feel more like “actual” secrets than the windmill which feels like it was meant to be a puzzle to be solved
People also forget that in DS2 is EASIER to level up, in 6 hours of game you could already be in level 150, with 23 points on adaptability, just the little bit to don't have barely any problems with the hit box. While in others souls in 6 hours you can be in level 60 as much. What I do is get the bonfire ascetic as gift and kill the dragon rider at the beginning 2 times with the trick of making him fall, and that's all, you got your adaptability
About the weapon reach thing, it's more about using the full weight of your weapon. If you want to just brush the enemy with the tip of your sword, you do less damage. Get in there and land your hits nice and strong. About ADP, it's only necessary if you want more s. Which isn't really necessary when this game has the best shields in the series. Also because you can outspace a TON of things. No one ever brings up Simpleton's and Skeptic's Spices. That's one of the best things DS2 did
Yes and no: spices do lower requirements but also dmg, so many spells and miracles become just utility without the usual specific stat investment, which then would render the spices themselves pointless... Still a great idea, more options are usually a good thing.
he also said that the player starts with 5 s, wich is a false information only the bandit class starts with 5 s the other classes start with 7 or 8 s, and with like 5 levels or less you can get 10 s wich are completely fine.
@jakeislavic3024 you are right that the starting s are dependant on class. However, you're dead wrong about how many levels jt takes to get to 10 s. Best case scenario for starting point is 8 s. You have to level up 17 times to get to 10 s which, again, is still less than dark souls 1. It's a huge problem you're trying to downplay
That is one thing I was gonna mention. Conditional damage in certain situations just makes sense. You hit someone whos armored with just the tip of your sword vs a properly aligned slice you're gonna be doing less damage. Same with environment lowering damage. Yes, it takes momentum away from the swing.
Ds2 hate videos when the game requires you to do anything but roll and r1 spam, then praise the others for being very vague but you can spam rolls and r1
You literally gave 1 reason why you think it's better yet complain about vagueness. This is a 40 minute video breaking everything down. At least show it the respect it deserves by doing the same instead of saying, "NUH-UH! GAME IS GOOD!"
@@christopherbrown2640 So you mean to say that you feel nobody can comment on the quality of the game unless they're willing to do a 40 minute breakdown? Where's yours then?
Youre right, dark souls 2 requires you to stay away from the walls and not clip through them, it requires you to not use the full reach of your weapon, it requires you to not die or face the 50% health consequence, it requires you to repeatedly kill an entire area each time you fail a boss. The list goes on and it's objectively bad
@@joegellaIt is your opinion that it is bad. You are not being objective, you are expressing an opinion. If you want to know what objectively bad is, look no further than everything after Anor Londo in DS1. And teleporting dogs.
It's not exactly the same at all. Dark souls 2 takes away your health as you repeatedly die. It's a debuff. Embers in dark souls 3 give you a boost to your health. One system is punishing you for failing while the other is rewarding you for succeeding. Ds3 also only gives you the ember effect when you kill a boss, it's literally a temporary bonus for beating the boss. And rune arcs from elden ring are completely different and not even something to compare here. How can you not get why people don't like their health being cut to 50% for dying in a game that you die alot in? Like that's a very understandable complaint
@@joegella I mean this is just semantics. In all cases they are stats lost upon dying, and arguably in Ds3 you lose 25% in one death while in Ds2 it is gradual. Furthermore they are also builds centered around being hollow and having lower life.
No that's just a cope, you can fight every boss in DS3 without ever being embered and your health does not get punished for every death. You just lose any ember bonus (if you even used an ember) DS2 just punishes you every time you die, simple as
@@rezibabe5210 Plus ds2 enemies hit so SO much less of your actual health bar so playing at 50% is compeletly fine. Human effegies are probably the most available "kindling/reverse hollowing" item in entire trilogy, you get so many of them and can farm them easily.
Speaking of bad hitboxes... You should try using the DS hitbox tool to see DS1, 2, and 3 hitboxes. Man you'd be surprised. One of the things you'd realize is that the hitboxes are all bigger than the actual model (IN ALL THREE GAMES!). So those odd "wtf how did I get hit" moments in DS2 is because of that. Plus it happens on DS1 and 3 too since, you know, all of them have the same bigger than the model thing. People just don't talk about it, unlike with DS2 for some reason *wink wink*.
@@ashketchup8392 At least one person does in the form of Mauler's video. He mentioned something like "flawless" or some shit like that when talking about DS3 and praised DS1's hit boxes as accurate too.
Good Video. Some of the criticism is good but it was a little bit weird, that you mentioned at the beginning, that you know most things about the game, while there were a lot of things you didn’t knew about. Many people already mentioned the counterdamage and the sweepspot damage. But I wanted to talk about the torch mechanic because there are so much more usages for the torches. What you didn’t mention you can use the torch in Tseldora so the spiders wont attack you. There are 4 torches in Aldias Keep you can lit to get Aldias Key (You have to defeat 4 forlorn invaders too). And if you lit the light in the undead crypt even after the NPC told you to not do it, there will happen something. And there are way more mechanics with the torch I didn’t mentioned like invisible Hollows.
Thanks for watching! I dont know what you mean about me saying i know most things, i went into the game nearly blind. And for the torch, I tried to focus specifically on the torch based levels. Like you said there was plenty of spots you could whip out the torch and light something, but those things could have easily been a switch or lever. The two areas no man's wharf and the gutter are clearly "torch areas" and the fact that you're supposed to play them slow and strategically while also worrying about a timer I'd contradictory
@@joegella I would call Tseldora a torch area too because there are a lot of lights you can lit and its even helpful to use the torch in the bossfight. And I think you don’t have to worry that much because you can lit your torch everywhere you already lit a fire. Another hidden mechanic is that the torch increases you lock on range.
29:50 DS2 has some questionable areas but I never get why people struggle here. The first time around you can use the torch and just clearly see the path.
No, people insufferably shit on it all the time as well. And comments like this still suck to hear all the time, because it’s not really defending something you ‘love’. One type says DS2 is the worst of the three, one type says DS2 is the third best out of three. The people who endlessly crap on the game bring up the exact same things as the ‘third best’ people, and it’s incredibly tiring. If the game is ‘third best’ and ‘still loved’, then perhaps searching the game on youtube or google would have videos on the great aspects of DS2? But instead it’s 30,000 videos about how awful Dark Souls 2 is, every single thing it does wrong. And this video is a part of that group, right beside the multi-hour video essays about how garbage and worrhless DS2 is. Same points, same idea.
@@NeuroVyrus I did my first PvP Dex build in DS2 with Ricard's Rapier and because of its low stamina use and short hitting time I could just stunlock every invader after 3 hits. It frigging hilarious! Definitely recommend. Amazing troll build
i love when people say "I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS GAME" but then show how little they actually know or how it works and then complain that it does not work how they though it works... it just makes me have so much faith that their criticism of the game is valid
Where did I say I know everything about this game? Whether I got every minute detail accurate or not, I explained the experience of the game. And theres no argument for most of what i said. These mechanics are in the game. For example, you most certainly have a damage debuff for clipping through walls, and most certainly dont have s for the first half of fog gate animations. I admittedly got the counter damage psrt wrong and mistook that situation for a debuff when it was really a lack of a buff, but the way its handled in ds2 is still different. I never noticed my damage going up or down in the other games. People don't go around testing every little detail when they play the game. They just play and everything I put in this video is why the experience is not as good as the others
@@joegella is saying "I know this game like a back of my nut sack " not close enough to "i know every thing about this game" ? 1:44 and yes saying that: game worse then other games cause of X when X is in other games makes you look not credible in my eyes
@joegella IDK, man. It seems like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the game and blame the game for it, and some of the things you complain about make no sense, like the non-infinite I-frames at fog gates and such. That's a plus for PvP and PvE. It makes it so you can't just run past all the enemies without being careful, and so you can't just boss fog invaders if they're right next to you. Same with the stamina system. This game has a much more slow and technical combat system from the other games and that obviously would affect the stamina system. Same with the manual attack aiming. That's just a you issue and it's there so you can still fight multiple enemies while locked on.
@thedrunkensunbro I definitely don't have a fundamental misunderstanding of the game, thats a whack thing to say. I've played 100s of hours across the soulsborne games, and throughout that time, I've become extremely familiar with how they work. Sure, I don't have encyclopedic knowledge and no I don't test every single detail like I'm a fextralife wiki developer, but I certainly spend more time and effort and pay way more attention to the details than any average player. Everything I've included in this video has been a comparison to the entirety of this genre, but I tried to mostly look at the game as if it just came out, which is why it was compared to ds1 so much. Every criticism I've made in this video has been based on how it feels to play relative to the other games. I may have gotten some nuances wrong, but again, it's not about stopping in the moment and analyzing wtf is currently going on. It's about how it feels. Ill give an example which is related to a point you made: i play an area of the game two or three times as I rest/die. I explore the entire thing and slay all enemies. Then I get to a boss and fail. So I decide I'm gona skip killing all these guys again and just go for the boss. Not only is it difficult to walk past these guys, but then when I get to the fog gate, I'm stuck and cant move, yet I'm allowed to be attacked. That doesn't feel good. Idc what the reasoning is, it doesn't feel good. Now I understand, the game doesn't want you to sprint past everything. But does the game want you to rekill every enemy every time you fail a boss? What happens if youre stuck (which happens a lot in these games)? It doesn't feel good to spend time rekilling enemies just so you can go retry the boss. The games not even allowing me to get the experience on the boss I need to succeed. Then factor in that you lose health upon deaths, now the game is punishing me both by increasing the challenge and by requiring me to rekill enemies. Okay sure thr enemies stpp respawning after 12 desths. So does that mean that when i get stuck on the boss i gotta kill the whole area 12 times just to get that annoyance out of the way? Again, this does not feel good to play. Elden ring introduced statues of Marika. If the next souls game doesn't include this mechanic, ill be pretty bummed because run backs to bosses are annoying af period. No matter which game it is. That's one of my criticisms for the entire genre and I was very happy to see elden ring introduce that mechanic. Don't say I have a fundamental misunderstanding of the game when really what's going on is you're unable to accept the criticism. I tried defending the game where i could in this video, stating Dark Souls 2 is not a bad game, and pointing out all the ways that it changed the genre for the better. Its gotten overhated to the point where know one actuslly knows wtf is going on and they just hop on the bandwagon. That's what this video is about
Getting +1 stamina past 20 was a crazy decision among many others and don't even get me started on the lizards that are impossible to kill before they run off or dissapear and you cant even quit out the game to reset them. That being said I still enjoyed the game and will play again for sure. Also that Shrine area is the most toxic area of the game and you are forced to clear it out because trying running through all that and you're gone.
32:00 it is crazy that they expect you to burn the windmill but there is an npc summon that will try to get you to follow it to the windmill and they will point at it.
Yeah I think if it was more centrally placed then it wouldn't be so easy to miss. But it's off on a ledge on some random window. I never found it and actually killed that boss twice with the poison present. It wasn't till my 3rd playthorugh that I looked up if this poison could be removed
I completed the game years ago in my brother's account. Been playing DS1 recently, makes me wanna play DS2 again. But after you reminding me of all the crap especially the keys part, I'm not so sure I wanna go through that again. Only fond memory I had of it is that it allows me to roleplay as Guts. Pretty cool.
Damn I didn't think of that possibility. Thanks! Critical hits are pretty common im videogames but it's never been in any of the other souls games. Still was annoying that I never knew if a guy would be a 1 or 2 hit kill
@@joegella critical hits and counter hits exist in all the souls games dude. DS3 even explicitly telegraphs critical / counter hits by having a unique damage sound
DS2 is my fav from the series! I like this video, I would like to discuss some of the topics mentioned and give my insight. Lockstones - When you talk about Lockstones and having too many doors / not knowing if you're wasing a key: There are 2 specific zones of the Rat King covenant that incorperate lockstones. Upon entering the Grave of Saints or Doors of Pharros, players have a chance to be teleported into the world of a covenant member who is in one of those locations. Covenant members can use the lockstones to set traps for players who have invaded. It's a neat idea for a PVP covenant IMO. You are loyal to the Rat King and protect his turf from tresspassers. Also the water ones in Iron Keep are used to give fire resistance to the player to aquire the items on the magma stones. ADP - I actually quite like this mechanic. In DS1 and 2, the game wasn't designed with the idea that players will basically only be using the roll to dodge. There are a few different methods of evasion that are viable in both games. 1: Dodge rolling / backstepping. 2: Shielding attacks / parrying. 3: staying back and using ranged attacks, and moving out of the way of incoming attacks. I think that the addition of ADP really brings out the RPG aspect of the levelling system. If I want to have my character be up close and fast then levelling ADP is a good choice. If I want my character to utilize a tower shield and heavy armor, rolling isn't a necessity so I don't have to level ADP as much. If I want my character to utilize spells or bows, I can spend my levels on INT or DEX instead of ADP and focus on moving out of the way of attacks. It's way more engaging than having the most advantagous evasion tactic be maxed out from the very beginning for any type of character. Being able to roll spam at lvl 1 in DS3 and ER makes tanky shield builds feel pointless and unimmersive. My second thought is also that I love how underpowered you feel when you're level 1 compared to later entries. It gives the player incentive to take it slow and explore to get more souls and level up. I think this is a major flaw of Elden Ring. You can decide to only level up Vigor and the game will be maybe 5% more difficult than if you could level up every stat. You already start out with infinite stamina, scaling is very negligable compared to weapon upgrades, and they removed VIT, ADP and ATN, so levelling up doesn't feel like you really get any more powerful. It's a real shame considering how large the game is, you'd think they would reward taking your time going through the huge open world. I don't understand your point of saying it feels like "wasting souls" upgrading ADP when you're literally putting them to such good use giving you a better dodge. Wasting souls would be putting them into someting that doesn't vastly improve your character, like ER stats. When I level up in a game, I want to feel more powerful and I want my exploration to feel worth it, and I think this is done the best in DS2 and done the worst in ER. Hollowing - I'm fine with this tbh. You get an abundance of human effigies, and I think it's good to use them when you want an extra boost. I think there should be a punishment for dying in video games, however I do understand this being frustrating. Stamina - I agree with you about the full stamina drain debuff, I don't think it's a necessary mechanic and I think it detracts from the game and doesn't really add anything. I do like how little stamina you get though, I think it rewards having a reserved playstyle instead of like in Elden Ring where you have basically infinite stamina and instant regen which allows you to basically always be doing an action with no consequences. This is why I think DS2 doesn't have a roll-spamming issue while DS3 and ER do. Conditional Weapon Damage - This is something I partially agree with. A lot of the mechanics feel needless, however I am very fond of CERTAIN weapons having a spot that deals more damage. For instance: Halberds and Reapers have much more damage at the very end of the weapon which promotes good spacing and makes it a fun challenge to be dodging and attacking while maintaining maximum distance to increase damage. Enemy aggro range & fog gates - I like this feature. In all the other games, it feels almost incentivized to run past everything. In DS2 you either have to fight enemies, or have a strategic plan of how you will escape from them. if you can just run past everything, fighting the enemy will feel almost pointless. In Elden Ring, if enemies don't care if I run past them, and getting souls from them will barely benefit me at all when I level up, why even bother? And I think the points about not having i-frames on fog gates, chests and doors is weird. Why are you opening a chest if you know the enemy is right there? Why are you opening a door if the enemy is about to hit you? This logic only makes sense if you come from playing the previous games that reward you with invulnerability for performing actions that shouldn't protect you in combat. Why should I be invincible if I am opening a chest? Why am I being rewarded for ignoring the enemies and blasting through the game without paying attention? If I enter a room full of enemies and decide to open a chest without dealing with the enemies, it makes sense to suffer the consequences. Illusory Walls - The ones in ruin sentinels are quite unfair, HOWEVER, there are hints. There is an inaccessible ledge with an item and no door, so that will alert the player that there might be a fake wall. There is also an enemy rattling a chain behind a fake wall. I think if there were also subtle hints as to WHERE the walls were, it would be perfectly fine. The rest are usually not nearly as bad, although the Aldia's keep one is also too hidden IMO. My favorite one was in Drangleic Castle, where there is a beam around a pillar except for one spot where there isn't the beam, and that section is about the size of a door. Hitboxes - I don't have specific examples, but I never found them to be obnoxious. IMO, they improved with each entry to the series. Estus flask drinking time - I think this makes more sense when you think about how the player also has life gems. There is a more committal heal (estus) that gives you a better bonus, or a less committal heal (life gems) that give you a smaller bonus. The player can address which one is correct for how much health they have and how risky it is to heal in that moment. Enemies not respawning - I think this is fine tbh. If you are really struggling with a run-up to a boss, the enemies will despawn so it gives an advantage to a struggling player. I think it also discourages farming which is good because it's some of the least engaging gameplay you can have in these games so I'm glad that it will make players less inclined to do it. Large scale level design - I mostly agree with you on this. I feel like the first half of DS1 and DS2 have a good amount of connectivity, but I think DS1 is a little more smooth. Levels having traps - I actually like how the player is ambushed. There are a ton of moments where if you are perceptive you will see these things and can address the situation. Like in Earthen Peak - you can look up and see enemies hanging off the balcony from the lower level and snipe them down before going up and being ambushed. There are a lot of moments where there are explosive barrels that can be used to take care of a threat from far away with fire arrows. In Wharf, there's a ton of enemies hanging from ledges that you can hit into the water if you catch them early. I like having to look around and address the situation, and if I die then I like wondering how to handle it differently and what I can look out for. Shrine of Amana - I think this part is quite overwhelming and could use some hiding places to protect from the casters, but I don't think it's horrible. The worst part is just the hammer wielders being so agile, I think if they were more reserved then you could deal with them while dodging the magic. There are a lot of stone paths that make traversing less difficult, and the lizard men only really aggro when you go into the water where you shouldn't be. It's a big mess but there is a method to a lot of it, it's not all chaos. Earthen Peak - I think there's a lot of hints for the windmill. There's an enemy guarding it who won't notice you until you go right up in its face, and if you have the NPC summon, he will use the point gesture towards the place where you burn it. That coupled with the fact that it's a dead end being guarded, and you'll most likely read messages guiding you there, I don't think it's a very cryptic puzzle. I do empathize with how frustrating it would be to not get it on your first go though. I think having the secret bonfire actually makes it less easy to understand because you won't run past the area you need to burn it in every time. Drangleic Castle - I actually agree with everything you said in here. The area was dissappointing. Torch Mechanic - Torches were originally supposed to play a bigger role in the game, however the lighting engine was changed during development making dark areas a lot brighter which makes the torch almost obsolete. It's just unfortunate. Edit: corrected some spelling errors
I always thought the negative stamina and all the ways weapons lose damage were really cool and made sense. Also, why would you be invulnerable during chests and doors? Adds to the immersion instead of just cheesing i-franes and progressing. I always thought hitting a weapon with it’s max range and it does less damage makes a lot of sense and makes the weapon feel more tangible. Direct hits almost always give you the “consistent” number.
The way weapons lose damage may make sense in terms of real life, but they don't make sense in the game. When a game punishes you for an action, it's telling you to avoid doing that. So the game is telling you to avoid clipping through walls which is impossible. Iframes during animations make sense because you don't have control over your character, ao why should yoy get hit fir that. If there's no s on animations, then why do enemies get s after riposte? Hitting an enemy with the weapon tip is an advantage you get for using a long weapon. The tip debuff is telling you that you shouldn't be using the weapons reache. So what's the point if carrying around a massive weapon with high damage and long reach just to have constant debuffs all day? It's already balanced by being slow af
@@joegellayou do have control over your character during animations though, as you can press dodge to cancel the animation or dodge out of the animation as well.
Weapon sweet and sour spots always felt cool to me. It's part of the process of learning how to use a particular weapon, and finding cases where a weapon works well. Weapons are usually relatively light in DS2, and it added that third arm slot, and more immediately pressing durability for a reason. You're SUPPOSED to have several weapons with different preferred use cases. You're SUPPOSED to try and use new things.
The "reach penalty" was actually just counter damage. He used a weapon so Big he attacked before the enemy could enter an attack animation. The weapons that do have different hitboxes at different lenghts are polearms, whick make the most damage when you use the end of their reach.
i heavily agree with you about teleporting between bonfires, but i dont get it why people say thats a bad thing, like having to walk 5 minutes doing absolutely nothing just running and ignoring enemies was fun and engaging lol... i see most people say that is better to not teleport because the world feels more alive (?). i dont really get it, but its the first time i see someone agree with teleporting between bonfires is good (also sorry for bad english i barely my native language xd)
Yeah teleporting is absolutely a good change to the formula. Fromsoftware kept it for all future games because it's great. I think no teleport works fine in ds1 because they eventually give it to you halfway in. But the first time I played thst game, I ended up going all the way down through blighttown and then couldn't kill that fire spider boss at the bottom because I wasn't properly equipped. But then I had to painfully fight my way back up just to get to the blacksmith
I loved DS1’s interconnected level design. It’s probably my favorite part of the game. But the other souls games aren’t as interconnected, because warping between bonfires made that unnecessary. Warping is cool, but if the cost of warping is that the level design getting worse, then it’s not worth it. Warping made the games slightly better, but the lack of inter-connectivity made the level design WAY worse. Overall, it’s a net negative imo.
This is a great point too. The no warp in ds1 works because it was designed for that. I can totally get behind it if they decide to revisit this in the future. But I do still think that it limits your options. You sort of have to tackle what's in front of you rather than going back to another location and trying that, because it takes time to get there
I’m a little disappointed you didn’t mention that powers stancing began in this game. Because he didn’t come back until Elden Ring. It’s one of the sole combat mechanics that everyone agrees is good. Even people who hate DS2 praise, power stancing, which says a lot.
@@saysalla tell that to everyone who used it, myself included, to cleave people in half with the push of a single button. Also, it was obvious influential if it made it into Elden Ring
@@joegellaoh, my bad then! I must’ve missed it. Sorry about that. Edit: you called it dual wielding, and I, for some reason, didn’t connect that to power stancing
Yeah, power stance in DS2 is so well done. It adds another layer of stat management that I thoroughly enjoy, not to mention the new tactics it unlocks.
About the ring of binding: its easy to keep it most of the game, but you are not forced to. You get about 4 deaths until you start to "need it" after using an effigy. But 1/4 is way better than the 1/2 of its predecessor, there "ring of favor and protection" is not only best in slot, but also destroyed if you remove it (an actual severe punishment)
What happened to git gud? If I remember correctly when this game came out it was praised universally and everyone loved it,then some internet weebs started talking trash when ds3 came out and now it's trashed, with the same points being parroted around the internet. I even saw a review of the elden ring dlc, wherein it said it was bad but not as bad as the Ds2 dlc. The Ds2 dlcs are masterpieces and can stand with even the artorias dlc. Stop schmeat riding
@@45noop they are actually cause the levels are actually cool and have more more than a glorified boss rush. Name a single other level in the franchise which actually has you use a bow or arena traps to solve puzzles like shulva or brume tower
@@45noop Did you even play the dlcs? I highly encourage you to, and judge it yourself. The lore and theme of longing gets deepened in it. Oh and your character is the only person who gets the cure to hollowing in the entire series, from the dlc.
11:51 392 dmg because counter damage and sweet spot, that one was NOT in attack/special animation, the other 2 were attacking u, maybe learn what is counter dmg, i believe u know what is the sweet spot alrdy. ( if not learn about it )
It's amazing how someone is willing to make a whole video about Dark Souls 2 without even trying to understand it fully... and counter damage is something that is present in every souls game....
@@simonenot5839 this guy played ds2 till Ng+2 with the intention of making a video, Imagine playing a game to have fun, and even worst, he probably followed a fooking guide while playing, that's a even bigger no-no
@@AtreyusNinja Lmao, DS2 is not a game you play blind. It tells you nothing, so you'll miss out on most of the game's mechanic. Hidden walls, adp, powerstancing, the windmill...
@@ssssimmons8736 oh because Mytha is not calculated to be fight with the poison, she don't stare at u for 5 minute before attacking u, r u fooking blind? do u know there are lifegems in this game? 1 lifegem counter the poison effect, 2 lifegems heals u, with a DECENT dps u kill her with the poison, i don't expect u to understand sh1t tho.
I got this platinum as well, several times. I can see why people complain but I feel the level designs and the bosses were great. The Chariot boss is my favorite. Thanks for the great video.
Everybody "hates "DS2 and yet if you ask a Dark soul fan which one is the funniest Parody they can even quote from the franchise there's a high change this person will say something from "Happy souls".
So me and my friend decided to but the darksouls games since they had gone on sale while neither of us actually interacting with souls content so after jolly cooperating thru ds1 while I watched happy souls again and never have I had such a "I finally get it" moment in my life
Glad you touched on the biggest issues I have with the game that no one elses talks about namely the soft lock/8 direction mechanic. Also everyone complains about adaptability but you are the first to mention vitality which i find more agreegious.
@@emmelinesupremacy yeah... I loved ds3 alot and used to talk to her about it alot. She would listen even if she didn't understand any of it with her big shiny eyes. Idk dude, it's been tough lately
@@mr.potato3759 Feel you. I bought trilogy in March of this year When I started DS1 I used to talked with her about the world, the relevance of souls in gaming, why Miyazaki is a genius. Then when I get in Blightown for first time, I was alone, we broke up. Maybe thats why I loved Gwyn's boss fight so much, his piano theme was perfect to finish this sad journey for me It was a mutual decision, we had our differences and Im glad to say there is no hatred between us, but hey, nowadays I finished the trology and DS1 is my favourite honestly Try DS3 again someday, maybe your experience will be different
16:00 getting interrupted is not 100% a bad thing. Running through a level instead of clearing it goes against the "overcoming obstacles against all odds" that the community preaches. I frames through gates just enables rushibg as THE MOST VIABLE strat to a boss, trivializing the levels (most of the content of the game)
The philosophy I have taken with souls games is: It has an HP bar? So I can kill it? bet! That is to say, unless I am hopelessly outclassed by a monster on the path, my way has always been to take it on/kill it. I honestly do not fear runebears in eldenring. DS2 actually made me quit though, I recently came back to it after beating the DLC in ER... I played the souls games in order btw, this may have helped me a bit since I played DS2 immediately after DS1 and now having recently revisited DS2 I did finally beat it/clearing 100% of the bosses... Ironically what made me quit was combination run up to the trio boss "The Graverobber, Varg, and Cerah" in the cave of the dead from the crown of the sunken king DLC... Me and my best friend were playing through the souls games together and we both collectively got finally/fully fed up with trying to take on this particular boss/path to... Anyways, I enjoyed playing DS2 this time around, but it was my least favorite experience of the 4 souls games I have played (ds1-3 and ER)
@@lucasmek2 I can't think of any fog door that requires you to kill every enemy. Its usually just the last guys, and you don't need to kill them, just kite them a bit to trigger their attack a bit further. The game just requires a bit of kiting, lol, is this that hard? Even the door to Velstadt with 5 guys right before it is perfectly passable.
small nit-pick: in DS1 you can use the firekeeper souls to strengthen estus. you can use a humanity (dark soul) to have a select bonfire increase its limit to 10 estus, and to 15 estus once you get the rite of kindling
I feel like you miss understood the flasks in DS1, or you didn't word it right. The main upgrade increased the potency of your flasks, but you can farm a recourse that lets you have the current maximum flasks, then killing a boss gives you the current maximum flasks of that NG+ cycle and when you upgrade a bonfire to the maximum flasks currently, it carries over to the next NG+ cycle. Also with ADP, it also increased how fast you drink flasks but it is still a dumb mehcanic. The lowering of health after death, yes they took that from Demon's Souls, yes you have to have a ring slot to keep your health at 75% but that was the same as Demon's Souls as there was a ring to keep your hewlth at 75% when in soul form also. Now with the final boss, there is also a 3rd final boss. By going through the other giant memories you get giant souls and there's a hidden one in Black Gultch, but once you get 4 of them, or 5 if you kill the Ancient dragon, you then fight Vendric, collecting and keeping the gaint souls lowers vendrics defense because if you don't have them, you won't hurt him much. But killing him triggers a 3rd boss after Nashandra
@@joegellait was implemented into DS3 also. Also one mechanic that you probably didn't know about is with Fume Knight in Iron King DLC. He has 2 unique mechanics only to him You can go through the full fight without triggering his 2nd phase, but you have to constantly drink your flasks under 12 seconds on each other, it keeps his sword glowing which stops him from going into phase 2. Speaking of phase 2, if you went into his boss fight with Velstaad's armour, he instantly goes into phase 2 as soon as you walk into the boss room
as someone who started with DS2 as their first entry in the series, I feel like I appreciated the game more bc a lot of these points are just comparing it to the other games.
scholar is my favorite souls game, after beating dark souls 1, being very new to souls, i decided to get scholar and play through that bad boy, and what a journey it was! now, is the game perfect? yes skill issue
Another case of loud minority, DS2 was always loved ever since it's release by most people, you can also tell by the very high ratings all around. What makes me sad is the people who love to shit on this game do not give it any fair view or acknowledgement especially for all the cool and unique mechanics and details it offered, DS1 had alot of flaws (if not worse) yet for some reason all i see is praise for it, It's just plain unfair imo. I just which people were more fair with their criticism towards the whole series.
I tried to give this game a fair view by presenting all the good along with the bad. This game literally changed the game for the better so it deserves all the praise for that
@@joegella yeah, although i wish more of it's cool aspects were implemented in ER, like NG+ changes, or unique puzzles and interractions etc... the more charming things that you randomly find in the game
I wish elden ring took the ng+ enhancements and bonfire ascetics from dark souls 2. Seems like a no brainer to me. Ds2 has the best ng+ of any of the games
So, what you are lighting on fire with the windmill is the lubricant, which is poison. You don't actually burn the windmill. You burn the lubricant, which causes it to jam.
I feel like I keep getting gaslit. Everything people complain about I really enjoy. Am I just a contrarian? I doubt it. Why should we complain that you're not invincible when opening doors or that enemies don't give up chasing you arbitrarily?
@@michaelcarroll5801nah. Its just the ds1 crowd was too brain dead to Accept a different Game. And they always decide to double down instead of actually adapting to playing a different game
The random modifier on enemy damage you mentioned is likely counter hits. The counter hit window in DS2 is very big, it's very easy to regularly hit counter hits, they can be done with any damage type, and the damage differs depending on the counter damage stat listed on the weapon.
DS2 is different from the other games in the series, so I think most people get annoyed when they encounter this "different" gameplay structure. Bad bosses, adp and hitboxes are my problems in this game. However, I have to give credit where the bad bosses in DS2 were worse than the bad bosses in DS1, I agree. However, the good bosses in DS2 were better than the good bosses in DS1. People forget this. If we include DLCs then I have Sir Alonne>Artorias, Fume Knight>Kalameet, Ivory King>Manus. In my opinion, people are too hyped about DS1, so they spew unnecessary hate on DS2 because it is not like DS1. Now they might kill me for what I'm about to say, but I'll say it anyway: I think DS2 is better than DS1, despite its problems. DS1 is a game that is impossible to go back to and play after playing it a few times, it has very lumbering gameplay. But I see people playing DS2 and coming back even in 2024. DS2 is still playable. (DS3 is better than both)
I personally think ds1 was better then ds2 but ds2 is better then ds3, I liked how ds2 had a different story that wasn’t about linking the flame again and in my opinion ds3 was unnecessarily hard to level up compared to the rest of the games and ds2 has the best art style and they need to bring it back lol. but out of the soulsborne games I’d have to say bloodbornes the best and my favorite lol.
how can Linear-Souls-3 / no-Build-Variety-3 Souls have a better replayability than ds2 ? if it is for its linearity i won't answer anymore, that's the thing i can't stand about ds3.
@@AtreyusNinja Why do you disparage linear game design? This means you can finish the game much faster and do boss runs more easily. Your direction is clear, it is not complicated and you will not waste any free time. Note that this design pleases many players. This is why DS3 is still played today.
This entire video feels like 1) you didn't pay attention to any of the characters dialogue, 2) didn't read item descriptions, 3) didn't pay attention to the map, 4) didn't watch cutscenes, 5) didn't explore the game organically, 6) didn't read the descriptions of the abilities when leveling up, and 7) didn't think about your playstyle. I have over a thousand hours in the game, multiple characters with over 200 hours each, have played as a mage, a dark mage, a cleric, a paladin, a tank, a swordsman, using only knives, using only axes, using only fencing swords, only dual weilding, using no rings, using no armor, and I'm sure other ways that I dont recall right now. I have never had half the issues you ran into. The emerald herald literally tells you to find the 4 old ones, get their souls, then tells you to go to drangleic castle when you have all 4 souls, then tells you to go find the memories once you have the kings ring, then tells you to go back to drangleic castle to finish the game and become the next monarch. It feels like you never heard her dialogue beyond "seek, seek, lest" when leveling up. The dragon tells you to explore the memories. I dont know how you had so many issues in this game. DS2 is the only soulsbourne game I've played where I never had to look up where to go next or what to do. I definetly looked up where items are (fuck finding keys for shit, especially accessing the DLC's), but I dont think I've ever needed a guide to progress to the next path in this game. I need to be reminded how to get to archdragon peak literally every playthrough.
im a large ds2 enjoyer but i think stonesword keys are much better implemented because they're never mandatory, whereas multiple key moments in progression rely on fboys and pls
theres if I remember only 1 required fragbranch being the one with the stoned lady, the rest are either, unlocking a bonus area or a bonus bonfire or some extra loot edit: even if you loose all of the branches you can still progress by having 1milion soul memory, in DS1 if you go the catacombs you can legit soft locked yourself if you dont have the Lord Vessel
"You kinda just never do it because theres such a big down side and its just never worth it. So youre basically never gunna be doing this, youre always gunna be making sure your stamina bar stays in the positive which means youre never using the stamina to its full potential. Its kind of wasteful." My dude. I have well over a thousand hours in dark souls 2, and multiple characters with over 200 hours each. I *constantly* go into negative stamina. Its a trade off that I learned how and when to use, and i do it all the fuckin time.
7:31 losing 5% of hp when u die ONE TIME is worst than demon's souls when u lose 50% of your max hp when u die once? why not mentioning DS3? u die one time and u lose 33% of your max hp. u think human effigy r rare in pve? hmh, interesting. do u even know how u can farm them? ascetic bonfire, forest of fallen giant first bonfire, u open a chest and u will get 5 human effegy, u repeat the process > ascetic bonfire > 5 human effigy > ascetic bonfire > 5 human effigy > ascetic bonfire > 5 human effigy (u don't have to beat any boss to do so) or just ascetic majula and kill the skelly in the house, but u have to kill something so the first strategy is better.
This is why I have always said that most of the clowns that rag on Ds2 aren't honest. They just like to use the legitimate problems the game has, as an excuse/smokescreen to slurp down miyazakis baby gravy and act like he can do no wrong. They excuse problems all the time in the other's but somehow Ds2 is an exception and they nitpick relentlessly? totally not because miyazaki didn't direct Ds2. The hp buff/debuff is semantics clear as day. I can understand how one treats them like A reward/punishment and how that works psycologically, there is SOME merit to the haters argument there, but the debuff is so minor and will almost never be an issue (unless you die A ton without restoring) it's almost entirely cope on their part with A dash of truth sprinkled in.
DS2 was my first experience with the souls series. tbh, it was the best game for me out of the trilogy. maybe because it was the first one. i still love DS2 and replay it sometimes.
Man... being a ds2 fan is hard; seeing so many people hate what you love. (Btw I'm only missing the Cristal soul spear to 100% this headache of a "masterpiece") I also just wanted to mention that at this moment, the hollow you one-shoted was in the middle of a swing, so you probably did counter damage while the latter one wasn't 12:00 Also, the lock-on issue only applies to colossal weapons (so I avoid those in many cases cause it can get frustrating)
I tried DS2 couple of years ago, couldn’t stand it more than couple of hours. Bought SOTFS edition on Steam this summer, finished it in about 20h (not including the DLCs), and I have to say that it isn’t “the worst game ever made”, as some people say, but it genuinely is the worst DS game. Difficulty isn’t the problem, it is the lack of; B-team that made DS2 clearly didn’t know how to implement rewarding difficulty, so they went with couple of weird designs; gem stones, abundance of souls, enemy galore etc. I found the story to be quite good, with Majula being the best hub out of all DS games. However, the game (for me) lacked in difficulty to an extreme; if you play extremely slow and pick your targets, it is a breeze. Secondly, bosses were extremely underwhelming, to the point where I had to try to die. Thirdly, hitboxes are atrocious. Finally, level design was also a bit weird, and connection between locations made 0 sense. Other than that, it was a fine game, but certainly not worth FS signature in my opinion. There are some additional problems with the game, but they are tied to some weird decisions that b-team made (ADP, life decreasing after death, enemy despawning etc.)
honestly, I hated my first ds2 playthrough. I played it right after ds1 (I played the whole series in order). Then I revisited it after elden ring and I appreciate it a lot more for some reason; maybe it's because of how out there it is. It still grinds my gears on some sections (snow field, cough cough) @VREMEPLOV1
3:05 I think that unlocking teleporting in the middle of the game is better. The world is designed around the fact that in the first half of the game you walk everywhere and locations are better connected. Blighttown wouldn't be that scary if you could just teleport out. When you defeat queelag you have to go through the blighttown, depths, lower undead burg and undead burg if you don't know the shortcut. I think that the feeling of being stuck somewere and the way the world is designed is very important in ds1, especially on the first playthrough.
Honestly DS2 fans are pretty ride or die. It's a great game and deserves a lot of praise while the negatives are very subjective. Some people actually enjoy the "bad" you talked about because it adds depth. DS2 haters make a lot of noise but most people just played it, enjoyed it, and moved on. Edit: Is it such a bad thing that you had to rethink your approach to certain mechanics and unlearn some habits?
11:53 the damage drops are meant to add an element of greater realism into the game, if you cut through someone then the impact is gonna be less on the second guy because the first guy absorbs the force from the attacks. Everyone learns this in school, at least I think they still teach it.
The most puzzling design decision IMO is replacing the occurrence of mimic chests with chests that punish you for hitting them by destroying their contents. Even enemy swings can accidentally destroy them!
Not really. Chests can survive a single swing even with the FUGS. The only instance where the enemy destroy a chest is in after the Ruin sentinels in the Lost Bastille where a rupturing hollow can destroy a chest that contains a rouge water.
@@ashketchup8392 yeah, not for UGSes but Halberds had them, it also makes more sense. Which would hurt more the tip of a sword, or the entire middle bit.
@@brickwitti if it's not the very tip, but the top part of the blade should pretty much do the same damage, because it's still a large chunk of metal with it's center of mass in the whole blade, not the handle
First of all, pardon my english. Second of all, great editing and animations! Also the structure was pretty well paced. But I must say that not only I disagree with most of your points, I'd say that your mostly wrong in your perception of the game. I think most people that dislike DS2 are just not willing to learn how to play the game. You said that the torch, one of the ONLY things that gets consistently praised, is usefull for only 2 levels, wich is kinda of wrong. You could have used in black gulch to set fire to the oil spills to burn the mobs. You could have used in shrine of amana to see the border of the level. Just to name a few. Also, one of the good things about the small level design, is that there are traps and enviromental hazards that you can use to dispose of enemies, like in Iron Keep and Earthen Peak (plus the DLCs). Honestly, its the ONLY souls to try to make you do BIG BRAIN moves using not only the enviroment, but all tools in your disposal, like maybe using some itens on shrine of amana to easy things out? And I'm sorry but I think your bad game mechanics are mostly "skill issue". Brrr feels bad to use this term, but most things you citaded to be BAD are manageble enogh. What I mean is: someone new to DS1 or Demon Souls could say the same thing about those games. Anyway, I just like this game. And if I took my time to write you this it's because I care. Keep up the good work man!
Thanks for watching and great feedback! I also really like this game and can talk about it forever. I wanted to make this video about why people generally don't like it. But because that would be too negative, I included the good as well, but only the biggest parts of the good. I agree with you pointing out all the ways you can use the environment to your advantage, and the additional moments you can use the torch. I feel like overall, the game mechanics I talked about in the negative section made the biggest impact. I don't see the devs reasoning behind giving you a damage debuff for clipping through walls or using the weapon tip. I feel like they're telling you not to use larger weapons which is against the whole identity of RPGs. Overall it's not a bad game but I still think it's not as good as the others. Thanks for the comment!
I dont think the limited enemy spawn was a bad thing. When I first got to the slemter demon I was getting ganked every single time and the few times I was able to enter the boss room and survive, I had already used half of my heals. Ever since I figured out enemies arent infinite, I take some extra time to clear them out so I can have a combat free runback.
Simple answer: Controls. The player controls determine what the gameplay loop is like, what the pacing of it is, how it flows, how one approaches each situation and how they act in them, what sort of approach is safe and what is risky, etc. These controls also determine how enemies will be designed, how their behaviour will work, how recoveries, attack chains and tracking will function. And because DS2 has imprecise character movement with loads of unnecessary recovery animations on everything, weird momentum on most attacks, weird rules about input queue's, freaking pause animation before sprinting, the lock on state making all movement slower, odd weapon tracking and reaiming, and a slow dodge roll with rather low i-frames by default because it is tied to a stat... Yeah it's a mess. It results with a very clunky dungeon crawler type of game where exploration is fun and there's loads of weapon and build variety, but the combat gameplay is slow, tedious and discourages a whole lot so you're not left with much enjoyment overall. Or at least I really don't like the overall gameplay loop and how the mechanics are designed because it results with not that fun gameplay most of the time. This isn't helped by enemy placements and designs that further dictate how the player should act with these limited questionable controls.
I think for me, the bad mechanics also include the way they made invasions work. Particularly how hollow players were open to invasions. Yes, you could burn a human effigy to cut off the invasions, but this also cut summoning off if you became human again. And with the addition of Shades (temporary summons), I feel like there's no reason they couldn't have let hollow players summon Shades as a tradeoff to hollow invasions. At least they made being hollow somewhat viable with the addition of the Forlorn set in Scholar of the First Sin. I remember when I brought my issue up, someone explained it was implemented to punish those that were "gaming the mechanics of the first game by remaining hollow to avoid invasions." To which I respond with "Okay, but I think 1 had a fair compromise. Yes, you could avoid invasions by remaining hollow, but this left you on your own against the world and bosses. You had to be willing to take the risk by going back to a bonfire, restoring humanity and risking an invasion if you wanted to summon backup. It was a fair compromise, not system gaming."
I love having my weapon break after 20 hits, my i-frame stat, enemies hitting me while walking through fog walls. And not to mention the amazing boss design, I just can't wait to fight 20 men at once using the same hp bar.
7:25 There is an item in Demon's Souls that makes you "human" again just like in Dark Souls 2 so you do not need to kill a boss for that. I would say the reason why DS2 handles the death penalty better is because it gradually lowers your health unlike Demon's Souls which just instantly halves your hp (unless you use the Cling Ring which works just like the Ring of Binding).
@@khashygeld9776 Or maybe it's because the game fails miserably at everything it tries to do? You fanboys are just bots who aren't capable at formulating a coherent thought to save yalls life.
I think we forget that judging something objectively is separate from our own opinions and preferences. Dark Souls 2 objectively isn't as well made and refined as the other 2 games, it introduced issues that the other 2 games didn't have. On the other hand, it's a different person's interpretation of Dark Souls, it's incredibly difficult to pick up someone else's art and produce a "next edition." In the trilogy, I recognise that Dark Souls 2 is objectively the lowest in quality overall. However, if you were to ask me which game is my favorite, 9/10 times I'm gonna say Dark Souls 2 and the reasons for that are far more complex than objective quality. I am reminded every time I watch low budget movies that quality doesn't have to effect enjoyment. I think with entertainment, enjoyment is the only necessary metric.
@@joegella I appreciate that. I think this is a great video. One thing I'd add, (if it was mentioned and I missed it I apologise) is Dark Souls 2 offers a more powerful co op system. I had such a fun time playing through it with a friend, the small soapstone allows 15 minutes of co op practically anywhere, even if the area boss is dead. Dark Souls 3 felt more limited, "oh well, can't go any further, guess i'll leave, run to the same place in my world, and you can summon me back on the other side of this arbitrary fog wall." This may well have been an issue with all the games but I noticed it more in Dark Souls 3.
just wanted to say REALLY good video, and i learned some new things. around 12:00 the enemies without shields have different defense values (regardless whether they are blocking or not)! thats not really obvious that they're not the same type of enemy as the ones with a shield and weapon 13:30 free-aim when locked on only applies to great and ultra weapons, i think. it's supposed to be helpful in PvP
I dislike Dark Souls 2 for a few reasons, but the biggest one by far is that the bosses provided far less challenge for me than any of the other souls games. The vast majority were a first try and the most difficult boss took only 4 attempts. Most of the bosses seemingly only had 3 attacks, and they were generally slow and heavily telegraphed. I don't say all this to flex. It simply made things uninteresting for me. I enjoy a fight that takes me 20 tries and by the end I feel like I've learned something and increased my skill. It is unquestionably the easiest Souls/Soulslike, and, for me, its difficulty doesn't even kind of compare to its many competitors. I think it has fair few other problems beyond this, but this is what bothered me the most in my recent playthrough. All this being said, I do not think it's a bad game, just bad in the sense that it offered little challenge in a genre that I play almost exclusively for the well crafted challenge. To give it some credit, I think Majula is the best central hub area, the levels are well designed (enemy placement was very iffy at times, though), there are tons of interesting weapons and some cool mechanics (power stancing), and there's solid enemy variety.
Honestly the "Bad Game Mechanics section" Is jack full of misinformation and just echoing all the points that people have over and over refuted. It's sad that such points are still being made when there's tons of resources online to help you look into why things happen instead of writing them off as "Random" or "Unique" to DS2 when they're not
Its not jackfull of misinformation. You're watching it happening on screen. Everything in that section is something I've personally noticed while playing. Whether the details of why something happens is completely accurate or not is irrelevant because it's still something that happens. Just because I can't pinpoint exactly why I'm getting a damage debuff doesn't mean it isn't happening and isn't annoying as hell to deal with. Also, the fact that it's hard to pinpoint those details just shows how theres too many reasons for it to happen
@@joegella i never said they're not happening. I said they're not random nor unique. This game is not DS1 and if you come in expecting to play the exact same game with a slightly different story and mechanics (like what ds3 eventually was) then you're coming in with the wrong expectations. Here's my rebuttal to your bad game mechanic points: 1. Your point on s is literally incorrect check domo's video on s for a detailed rebuttal 2. saying leveling adaptability sucks you dry ignores the fact that levels are cheaper in this game and you got a ton of souls from bosses 3. having vitality as a separate stat is crucial as equip load is not tied to s anymore and can actually be part of the build to have low vit but high end (Flynn's ring) 4. health declining gradually is actually less punishing than ds3 where you instantly lose 25% of your hp when you die embered 5. negative stamina penalty is not unique and is asking you to be more attentive of your stamina instead of roll+r1 spamming like ds1 and ds3 6. rolling costing so much stamina plays in hand to the fact that many other options are also available to avoid damage (blocking, strafing, ...) 7. conditional weapon damage is not random but rather a mechanic where all weapons have "sweet spots" (again not necessarily better just different, learn and work with it) 8. movement being locked to 8 cardinal directions is actually something they stuck with in all the following titles up to and including elden ring 9. soft locking is the game giving you more freedom in aiming and was perfect for pvp, if you want a hard lock simply let go of your movement (l-stick), e 10. Enemies following you and having long aggro after is the game discouraging running past enemies (again different, not necessarily better) and the game compensates for that by despawning enemies if you're stuck on a boss with CoC available for those who want to farm (something you put as a negative point?) 11. same goes for no animation s, hidden walls requiring a different button to discover is deliberate to you know HIDE THE WALLS from ds1 veterans (discovering these was very rewarding on launch) 12. hit boxes are not perfect yes but saying constantly scummed is blatantly a lie as ds2 has many samples of great hitboxes (fume knight, ruin sentinels, lost sinner to name a few) 13. healing being different is also the game telling you to think harder before healing (you know just like elden ring did, except it's not with animation reading but the heal being a more deliberate choice) again not necessarily better just different 14. durability now actually means something as opposed to ds3 and the game gives you the bracing knuckle ring and infinite repair powders if you're good (I and many others have completed the whole game no bonfire) 15. no heavy infusion is valid but it wasn't a thing in ds1 either so it's unfair to hold it against ds2 16. camera control being awkward is completely valid but it's a constant pain point in ALL souls games all the way up to elden ring now. Happy to address any points i may have missed.
I think only UGSs miss the hits while locked on, the rest of the weapons all attack towards the enemy locked on. What's infuriating however, is that the lock on most of the time targets the far enemy rather than the close one.
i still prefer ds2 to ds3. at least ds2 did some interesting stuff with its lore instead of lazily rehashing ds1. and more than anythingi despise ds3s gameplay....that weird mix between bloodborne and souls combat just didnt work for me at all. genuinely love ds2
DS3 is so overrated. IMO DS2 is the best of the 3. And a lot of the things that was said in this video just made me laugh. Seemed more like whining than actual criticism.
I was someone who went into DS2 immediately after DS1 with no outside influence on how good or bad it supposedly was. I like the game now, but one thing that really annoyed me at first was the way your character moves. It feels completely different from DS1, and I can’t really say why they changed it. The only good thing about it is you can roll in 8 directions instead of 4, but even that doesn’t feel like an improvement when strafing in DS1 felt so much better. Again, this was mostly just a case of something I had to get used to, but it’s still my #1 reason why DS2 is my least favorite Soulsborne. The way your character feels when they move is something I don’t hear a lot of people talk about in these types of videos, but in a game where getting into the flow of the movement and combat is a large part of what makes the game fun instead of just playable.
7:03 wasting souls? hard to level up adp? ds2 haters even complain cuz the game toss u too many souls, seems to be too ez in ds2 to become high lvl, how is lvling adp bad when u just need 20 levels to have the same amount of s of ds1 FAST roll ? u kill 2 boss and u gucci. ( and u can respec remember )
something that has never made sense is the bashing on having to allocate points to ADP, when the level costs are significantly cheaper, bonfire aesthetics and there are much more boss encounters that give you more souls. Even the soft caps are lower at 40, people clearly just know fuck all about the game.
@@joegella Was it not understandable to you that you don’t need to farm shit and the lower costs of levels + more bosses is natural progression? Bonfire aesthetic farming takes minutes and breaks the game anyway, and is a last resort, not a necessity. You also didn’t comprehend the fact I opened what I said about the ALLOCATION of points, not the existence of it to begin with. No shit ADP shouldn’t exist to begin with, I didn’t dispute that. My point was, people who complain you have to level to 30 like it’s some hurdle when it’s not even remotely a problem if you just have common sense
@@vryyyx yeah it's insane to me, it's so f easy to lvl it up, even 92 agility is alrdy a decent spot, but ofc if u can reach 96 agility u can't complain at all.
@@joegella its that you said you get suficient adp "mid to late game" when actually you can get sufficient adp after the first 2 bosses and still upgrade hp and stamina etc (offcourse, if you know what you are doing)
Something big your good list was missing is the community from 2014/2015. DS2 has the best drip of the franchise so meta builds like Giant Dad disappeared and "Fashion Souls" took off. The Iron Keep Bridge became the first true spot for the new way to PVP, fight clubs. Challenge runs started to become a really popular thing with ladle runs and other shenanigans. Arena play was great and it was always busy. Arena even had special rewards for ranking up to different milestones. Covenants were a ton of fun to interact with and provided unique multiplayer experiences with their own special rewards to unlock. The ring that changes your appearance to look like a friendly phantom would also change the color of your red summoning signs on the ground that were used for dueling, lol. If a host disconnected from an invasion they would be placed in time out from all multiplayer gameplay. The game mechanics might have been a bit jank at times but the experience playing this game when it came out is irreplaceable. It was so much fun
I have some fundemental disagreements about whether or not something is "bad", but rather than writing it all let me just say every single time that dark souls moan played I giggled like a child.
Æough, ah, ahghhhhh, ahhhhah
ds2 is bad just accept it already
ds2 is a great game that never was, it's like waking up from a wet dream, all you remember is being wet, not the climax that made it so, where is the fun in that !#!?
@@samueldawkinsstill a good arpg, just a bad souls like
one i find even funnier is in ds3, the fall death sound where it sounds like he is literally being dragged to the deepest depths of hell
12:03 There's this mechanic called "counter damage" where you deal extra damage if you hit an enemy while it's performing it's attack animation. Each weapon has a different counter damage value.
22:20 you can either go to the Forest of Fallen Giants or Heide's tower, as the other paths are blocked by needing items for it. Either of the 2 first paths get you into Lost Bastille with Heide's having stronger enemies in lower quantities.
If Dark Souls teaches you one thing is to go back if you think you're underpowered, I never got a problem in finding the Forest of Fallen Giants as I saw Heide's enemies towering over me and just turned back.
Another commenter brought this up and it makes complete sense. I never noticed this in any of the other games so this buff must be pretty hefty in ds2
@@joegella It appears on the weapon's stats page with the symbol of a arrow turning back. It works by multiplying the base damage by the counter damage value.
For example, the Uchigatana has a counter damage of 150, so each hit landed during an enemy's attack will be base damage x 1.5. The Greatsword has 130 counter damage, so it's multiplied by 1.3 and so on.
Counter damage is also a mechanic in every good fighting game
Im pretty sure the hollow infantry with shield variant has higher defense than the other hollow infantry
I consistently notice less damage when attacking those guys
yeah you can go down either path, Dark Souls 1 has a similar thing letting you go to 3 areas right from Firelink but two of those areas are incredibly hard and not meant to be tackled that direction. Dark Souls 2 is more freeing in that regard and with a fragrant branch there's even another path you can go down to the shaded woods and Heide's tower splits into two paths also.
Demon's Souls also had an item to get human form/health back. Killing boss was just second option not the only option
Yep, eye of ephemeral souls. As well as having the cling ring to keep your health at like 65% after you die and return. Ds2 is almost identical in both respects.
3:40 minor correction here. Firekeeper souls can only be used to increase the potency of flasks while humanity is sacrificed at bonfires to increase flask charges at a specific bonfire while having the rite to kindle.
Dang you right I forgot about that. Thanks for the correction. I guess that makes fire keeper souls even less useful
@@joegellaThey become useful in ng+ as just free 5 soft humanity
@@joegellaFire Keeper Souls are useful. Flask upgrades are a big deal. Look at how much more a +3 Flask heals compared to base. And if you kill certain Fire keepers for their Souls you can go as high as +5.
In NG+ cycles though they're basically just 5 Humanity though.
You can sacrifice humanity without the rite of kindling to go from 5 flask to 10. Rite lets you go to 15 and 20. You can do this at every bonfire in the game, not specific ones. Firelink shrine just starts at 10, it may be the case that all bonfires with a fire keeper start kindled, I forget if the pale lady is kindled by default or not. But the point remains, all bonfires can be increased to 10 flasks, rite lets you kindle two additional times for 15 and 20
Noone talking abt how when you get to shrine of amana you dont need to use the human effigy or ring of binding anymore
Theres a tower with fire in it that unhollows you for free
Only if you don't have any effigy on your inventory. Also, i never understand how people run out of effigy. The game lets you farm them a lot.
@@ZirixStrarstriderTrue, but vanilla DS2 had less effigies (or lower drop rates) that SOTFS. Still plenty for a first playthrough.
@@ZirixStrarstrider I ended my first save with 99😭😭 I kept thinking I had to save them for smth important and then kept saying that till the final boss
Vanilla DS2 was my first souls game. I played countless hours without event dlc. Then came scollar and was an improvement for me. Its most replayable souls game too. I like this game.
I agree. NG+ is amazing in DS2 and they really killed NG+ after DS2 :(
@@xXLunatikxXlul not only ng+, even just the best build variety ( hexes, mundane, POISON IS ACTUALLY GOOD LOL DS3 )
@@AtreyusNinja I agree.. DS3 felt like a Steph back when it came to mechanics and build variety.
Ds3 was my first dark souls. After playing ds1 I can clearly see how ds3 took all those same concepts and reskined them. Some parts of ds1 felt like a weird deja vu to me. I still think ds3 stands on its own though because the pacing is way different and the bosses are so intense by comparison. Might be a bit too roll spammy though
I've replayed ds2 more times than 1 or 3
12:00 the "hidden multiplier you missed was "counter damage". In ds2 ALL weapons do better damage if you use it while your opponent is on an attack animation (grabs excluded). The first you one shotted it because the soldier was already trying to punch you. The second one didnt even turn on you so you didnt do counter damage.
Thats literally it. Could also be partially your "reach damage" issue. Since with the tip of your blade you could outspace enemies, preventing yourself from using counter damage.
In the other games they gave this property to thrusting weapons only, which feels lame. In this game thrusting was still a bit better in this regard, and then a lot better with the leo ring.
14:55 About the lock on free aiming. Actually, DS3 and Elden Ring give you the option to turn this on manually. It's called "Manual Attack Aiming" in the settings.
Yes. And IS a very powerful tool on Big weapons pvp
In ER it only applies to the Finger hammer's Ash of War, hilariously enough.
@@asdergold1not true
@@alessandrobaggi6129 it is true, the feature is bugged in ER since release Fromsoftware never fixed
@@asdergold1 the setting doesnt work in elden ring at all
I love Dark Souls 2. It was obnoxious at some points, but if you take it slow it's not that bad. It was the first game in the series that made me think about how to approach each area.
First game that makes you think about the areas and only.
i played both, and i enjoyed darksouls 1 and 2 the same, i wasnt autistic with the stats or compairing it to dark souls 1, i just knew that dark souls games are hard, and i wanted to overcome the challenge, people didn't like having a stat for s, but it made me get better at dodging throughout the entirety of souls games, sure there was alot of deaths, but eventually you just get good at it.
@@michaelcarroll5801 The haters need to understand that you can't enjoy dark souls 2 if you're not thinking about and only.
@@michaelcarroll5801 What fanboy nonsense, DS1 doesn't make you think about the areas? Sen's Fortress? Blighttown? Anor Londo? New Londo? Duke's Archives? Tomb of the Giants?
The only thing worse than DS2 are the delusional and braindead DS2 fanboys.
@@omarcomming722 the ideal strategy in all of those zones is to run through. It's okay on the first playthrough, but on subsequent runs the enemy placements are too forgiving. DS1 zones are pretty good though.
You're a bit aggressive, it's just a video game. Sorry for offending your supreme taste and sensibilities, king.
Oh, c'mon the Madjula starting point thing is very disingenuous. Even in the "perfect level design" DS1 a whole lot of people quit because they think the catacombs are the first level. It's not like Firelink Shrine is any clearer.
@@QuellAle and you can only exist firelink shrine through teleporting, which goes against the whole "interconnectedness" people cried so hard about.
@@vittocrazi I was referring to DS1 Firelink Shrine but you are right in regard to DS3 version as well.
@@QuellAle true. Sorry. I got the names mixed
That's a think i call "ds2 haters when the Game has a problem that's is part of the other games but somehow ds2 is the bad one" and I don't know english
There's two directions you go from firelink - you walk like 20 metres to the skeletons and they are too difficult so you go the other way and the undead are easy to kill voila, really bad comparison. Majula gives you about 6 paths and you have to go pretty deep in them to work out wtf they lead to. Try again
I absolutely loved enemy de-spawning. I’m built so different mentally from most people. The first time I played DS2 I intentionally despawned all the enemies on my way to a boss before even fighting them, I didn’t mind it at all because I would learn the area and would get tons of souls and items and eventually wouldn’t have to worry about any of the enemies and I could go back through the areas after and really appreciate them.
imagine an EMPTY Drangleic
i did that too honestly. i loved every enemy no longer being there, I cleared out the sir alonne runback, iron keep, heide tower of flame, the spiders before frejya, and a couple others. Definitely took way longer to complete my first playthrough but i still had a good time
Yeah, I really don't like doing long runbacks for bosses I'm struggling on, so when I first played DS2 (which was my first Dark Souls game), I did the same thing. It was something I definitely appreciated.
Yo, same here! It really helped me feel like I had conquered an area and thru time-dedication, made it safe, CHANGED the world, not just by removing bosses, but removing ALL threats. I wish this despawn 12x mechanic had been included in later games as a covenant or something, just as an OPTION, the way DS2 has Covenant of Champions to make the enemies perma-spawn just like DS1.
@@AtreyusNinjathat has been done by someone in some video.
Powerstancing isn't the same thing as dual wielding. Powerstancing involves using 2 weapons from DIFFERENT weapon categories together and getting a unique moveset rather than just access to the L1 button. An example would be a Spear and either a Halberd or Lance being used together and getting cool new moveset
6:48 You're greatly exaggerating how much investment in ADP is required to bring the roll on par with the other games. It requires several levels in the early game and that's it. "It requires so many souls to get it to a decent level" no dude it doesn't, that's just blatantly incorrect. "Sucks you dry" isn't even remotely true with how you get tons of souls and levels in DS2 compared to other souls games, reaching level 200 lategame with a bit of grinding is fast and rather trivial. You'll easily get over level 150 just by playing normally when you reach the lategame.
Domo’s video on this is gone be a banger 🤤
Yeah I just made a comment about it lmao
@@asdergold1 lol same went and posted this video before finding you guys were already on it :D
Always fun when the Domo Circle Jerk Brigade outs themselves in public.
Why is it such a crime to like dark souls 2 online 😂
I mean, I didn't say you can't like Dark Souls 2. Not sure where you got that from 🤣
Game changer mechanic you forgot: small soapstones and level clearance coop. The online player is just so much more flexible because of this. You can be summoned to do about anything and then go back no problem. In elden ring, for example, they only send you back when you beat an area boss. So helping defeat a field boss, tough as they can be, gives you no reward. Ds3 also has this issue, but due to the areas being long and hard. If they summon you and it turns out no shortcuts are open, yoy may now be on a quest to open them, and after several minjtes an tough battles, the host will likely kick you out to be able to rest in the bonfire.
This also enables phantoms to just let the host "duke it out" with invaders, because good coop sessions are not as hard to come by.
Another layer is the small soapstone gives weapon upgrade materials, so its actually apealing for most players to join on short sessions.
From your comments it seems you playes offline. And thats OK. Because the game is OK on pve, but absolutely on another level for online.
I loved ds2 but it was my introduction to the series so I didn’t have anything to base it off of at the time. Even after playing the other games I still love it. It had some awesome environments in it.
The thing about Shrine of Amana, is that the previous area has a room with stone soldiers that drop the Llewellyn shield which can be infused with magic and block like 96% of the damage from these magic spammer spells. Combined with an un upgraded lightning infused grand Lance to poke the water enemies while you block the spells and the area is very manageable.
U can even parry deflect those spells with the cleric Parma (i think Is the name in english?) that u should have at that point of the game, which Is Just funny to do but u can litrally walk on the right/left to avoid those spells, dont even Need to roll
This is a broad pattern that arises in DS2.
DS2, much like the other games, hands you mountains upon mountains of gear and options.
DS2, unlike the other games, then expects you to actually use them.
Yeah, this area sucks if you're doing a naked Greatsword build. Maybe try not doing that. There's like four armor sets you've stumbled into, a half dozen shields, a few spells, and even some consumables that can all help with this area if you're having a hard time with it.
Just like. The people who adamantly refuse to touch ANY of the ranged options in the game. There's a bow that has negligible requirements and weighs a goddamn half pound that is almost assuredly going to fall into your pocket at some point. Please try using it.
While the shield can get your magic defense that high through infusion, the whole point of Amana is to learn to either a) pick things off at a distance, or b) keep moving. Standing in place with a low-stability shield sounds good on paper until you get guard broken. Best to plod through, the game gives plenty of time to pick off the mages one by one, which I'm sure you know.
@@Kamawan0 what a fun and engaging way to play a game, now I really understand this mass delusion that's gripping the DS2 Defence Squad in recent years
@@atonofspiders So you have to grind a enemy drop in a game that has limited enemy spawns and hope you get lucky enough to get the thing that makes the next area playable? No wonder people hate DS2 for being tedious and unenjoyable. Imagine if the Skull Lantern and Sunlight Maggot were both rare drops you had limited opportunities to grind for and if you don't get them, well too bad have fun playing Tomb of the Giants in the dark or buy the DLC to fix a problem the devs intentionally put in the game.
12:07 this is counter damage taking affect, when you attack an enemy during an attack animation it does extra damage based off your weapon’s counter damage modifier. Rapier, dagger and other thrusting weapons have amazing counter damage that can do 1.50x more damage if you hit an enemy during its attack.
The drip is this game is crazy good.
Whenever I deacribe DS2 to someone I say "DS2 is a fucking piece of shit and I love it so much"
i always say its the worst souls game but also the best
@@ROBinJVILLE it’s not the worst in anything. Fundamentally doesn’t do anything worse than ds1 at least
Funny because I say, "Dark Souls 2 is a good game, you should play it. I don't like it, fuck Dark Souls 2, but it's a good game.
@@zzodysseuszz but I also called it the best
If I had to choose one souls game to play forever, it would have to be DS2. I started to explain why but it got too long for a comment section lol
11:52 it's just the effect of counter damage, a mechanic present in every souls game.
Funny how instead of trying to figure out why you did different amounts of damage you just instantly assume out of pure speculation that the damage must be reduced by the number of enemies hit at the same time... the definition of a bad faith argument.
Bro trying tu justify a mechanic bad implemented. And is hilarious how you talk about "bad faith argument" when you literally mentioned one point of a really deep list of reasons why this game sucks
@@emmelinesupremacy You really don't know what you're talking about do you?... counter damage is a mechanic present in every souls game, even Elden Ring. It's a good mechanic because you are rewarded with more damage when you manage to attack an enemy during his attack animation. The ring of Ornstain literally boosts the damage of counter hits since Dark Souls 1 and you are here saying it's a DS2 mechanic only.... come on man try a little bit harder at least
@@simonenot5839 Alrighty, then how is this supposed to prove the game is not a bad one? I mean, you are talking as a superior one, the Player who knows everything and is up of us. Cmon, does this explain why lock on system sucks? Why enemies'animation sucks too? I'm ready for reading
@@emmelinesupremacy Sorry man but you are just deviating from your previous comment, you said counter damage is a bad feature and I just proven how little you know about the souls trilogy since that mechanic is present in every game. I didn't say anything about hitboxes or anything else.
not bad faith tho, the uploader didn't know about the mechanic, i didn't knew about it either in all honesty, not like the game bothers to ever explain it either, and it's not like is such a notable issue in the rest of the souls games for people to complain, even if you are able to get the best of this counter damage making it a positive, the fact that not a lot of people know about it despite all these years just makes it a bad mechanic.
Level apt to 20 or more and your good
That's the problem actually. You have to level it even if you don't roll at all, because it also affects healing item usage speed. I cleared the game by only blocking at 1 ADP and it was painful. The healing speed difference only seems small but in a bossfight it easily gets you killed, because you raised the bottle a couple of frames too slow
@@ashketchup8392, why would you have it at 1 in question it's a game mechanic for the game in specific level it to basic 20 and your set get used to it and live with it
@@Frogs227 Yeah, but is it good RPG design if you kinda have to level the same stat for every character?
Role Playing Game, states it plus it's not a bad mechanic but it's hard to get past if your used to the sweet 30 eye frames of DS1, its a learning curve and well your playing Dark souls
6:10 if i'm not wrong every stats increases health, not only endurance - and nobody know cuz ppl don't have eyes, attunment raises agility ( 20 ADP u have ds1 fast rolls s, 40 ATN u have ds1 fast rolls s, this is why mages don't need adp )
While I don't like the existence of adp, I do admit that the stat system works well around it. You're right. Other stats give you health as well, which definitely helps.
But the big thing i noticed is that your typical "damage stats" (at least for melee) like str and dex didn't need to be leveled nearly as much as the other games. Like you basically leveled str and dex till you get your weapon's min requirements, and then from that point, you can safely ignore those stats while focusing on adp and health. The real way to increase damage is by upgrading weapons
@@joegella maybe if u r using a santier spear or any weapon that has no scaling, but idk man, i play this game since day1 vanilla and i always reach lvl 50 in str or dex depend from the build. so i can't speak for that.
learning about counter dmg would let u understand about the damage modifier that i don't think u understand, if u see more dmg while the enemy is attacking (or any special animation) is because of the counter dmg, so yeah u do more dmg even with low str / dex
@@joegellayou’re kind of right… it’s that there are multiple soft caps for each stat, every stat gets huge benefits up to the first soft cap of 20. You can really do well with something like a mace and only 20 STR, but you still get benefits for going all the way to 50 and then 99.
fire keeper souls upgraded the potency and humanity upgraded the flask use. Dual Upgrade mechanic existed in DS1.
Thx I noticed it too
@@emmelinesupremacy no prob 🤙
Are you dumb? Did you watch the video?
The dark souls 2 system takes humanity to increase the flask PER BONFIRE, DS2 introduced it increasing the flask count PERMENETLY, otherwise you'd have 1 flask,
One item to increase the amount, and another the charge, this was carried over to Elden ring and dark souls 3, NOT the bonfire flask system
Is not the same. You have to be in a specific bonfire with the rite of rekindling to get more uses. If not, you stuck with 5 if you are not human
@@ZirixStrarstrider you can go to 10 without the rite of kindling which is easily attained from the start of the game so you can have 20 before even fighting Taurus demon. Also you can kindle any and every bonfire. To adjust the difficulty of an area. So it’s a players choice to have 5, 10, 15 or 20 estus. Not just a specific bonfire.
It's ironic that everything you think is a good addition in DS2 are the same reasons why people don't like DS2.
Also many of the "bad" points are things people liked about it. xD
@@Wiseman108 he just sucks , cant deal with stamina mangamnet
The best things about Dark souls 2 in my opinion:
- performance
- dual wielding, even the crossbow and you hold both heavy weapon on your shoulder, not just holding by the left hand like ER
- fashion soul
- unique weapon (I love bone fist)
- hex
- life gem
- NG+
- bonfire ascetic
- best hub in all FS games (Majula)
- best pvp
- best dragon form appearance
- best greatsword moveset (mirrah greatsword, loyce greatsword)
....
Nailed it. I'd add company of champions covenant for the challenge, and most satisfying visceral crit animations.
+ it also has my poison infused manslayer.
Great video, but a few corrections:
Pharros lockstones are technically infinite, as they can be acquired from the rat covenant invasions
The reason that END and VIT are split is likely because the amount of souls you'll have amassed by the end of the game, so it's really a non-issue at the end of the day, and they dont want you being OP halfway through the game
as for the health "debuff" every game except from DS1 has this, Demons souls, DS2, DS3 too, you might think "oh if i go human i get a health buff!" but isnt it literally the same? you dont get your full health when hollowed, same in elden ring
as for the dodge using a lot of stamina, i think this is a great change, as it prevents roll spamming. if you only play PvE it might be annoying, but imagine PvP if rolling didnt consume that much, you have to remember that everything has to be balanced for both, and PvP in DS2 has widely been regarded as the best in the series
as for the soft lock, iirc this only applies when using some larger weapons, its annoying at first, but adds some great potential when fighting groups of enemies or players
the animation not having infinite s is a great addition in my opinion, as it forces you to make sure its safe instead of running through
i like the illusory walls, but i do agree that the bonfires being hidden sucks
in the second clip showing the hitbox, thats actually a great example of conditional damage, you got hit by the very tip of the hitbox. the hitboxes for enemies and the player actually conform to the same rules, which i think is great, it might not be fair but it quite literally is balanced by definition hahaha, as for the first clip, you got invaded by an online player, i think there was just lag between you two, he hit you first but it took time for the damage to register for you, which is why you had time to hit him
as for the game being vague about what to do and where to go, ds2 sadly had to change teams despite being halfway through development, as the first team kind of went "haha dark souls hard right fuck you" then luckily yui tanimura took over, he worked on Kings field 4, which is regarded as an amazing game (for real, play it, the vibes go hard) and later codirected elden ring of course. he really saved whatever was left of DS2, but the kings field inspirations are obvious
I'm currently playing through vanilla DS2, and i can tell you that the annoying ambush shit is WAY better in that game, SOTFS really said "fuck it we back to game hard guys you like game hard right?". they did ds2 so dirty with that, its like night and day
its funny you mentioned mytha, as its actually kind of set up to go like this: you get to mytha and you die, you get mad and summon an NPC from the bonfire right next to the burnable windmill as you're having trouble, the NPC will tell you to burn it, you burn it and kill the boss. of course it doesnt always go like this and someone probably told you about the bonfire closer to the boss, but it ended up making it worse for you.
as for the maps feeling disconnected, this is again a problem coming from the messed up development, as tanimura's team basically had to deduce where maps had to go, as they were all already done and starting over would be impossible, they quite literally had to just sherlock holmes come up with theories as to where the maps were supposed to go because they couldnt get a clear answer from the old team, it works in a lot of places but this one elevator is a bit odd yeah
the game telling you to be slow but also give you a torch timer is genius actually, you have to decide whether to run out of torches (never happened to me in like 2000+ hours) or start throwing the careful play out the window in favor of getting through in time, yknow, as you'd do in real life as well. you have to compromise. this isnt that big of an issue in vanilla ds2 either as its a LOT less dark, which in and of itself is a problem i have with it but cant win em all i guess 🤷♂️
A FEW!?!?
The soft lock thing was actually turned into a setting in the later games, and I always turn it on.
Only thing I disagree with is ambushes being better in Vanilla. I guess this is a preference thing and there are some things improved and some that got worse with SOTFS, for me at least the changes to enemy placements were an improvement, but that really depends on which encounters you personally had issues with. SOTFS also added environmental things here and there that actually help a lot with some of the ambushes/gank squad stuff if utilized. I know the narrative is that SOTFS is somehow the "oh lets make it more difficult" version but afaik, the devs haven't claimed that, and the numerous nerfs to bosses and encounters seem to contradict that narrative.
bro wrote a thesis and i’m so here for it
This is good i like DS2 fans, they know every little detail about the game because they really like it
The enemy additions going from vanilla to sotfs felt like a direct reply to speedrunners. You could watch vanilla speedruns and how easily they moved through areas, techniques to make it through fog gates, etc., and see how the devs added enemies specifically to block paths or gum up fog gates. Of course, runners came up with new techniques to deal with the new enemy placements.
I started playing dark souls 1 back in 2012 and got dark souls 2 as soon as it launched on the 360. I'm one of those weirdos who thoroughly enjoyed dark souls 2 and still play it occasionally to this day. I had no f****** clue that they treated negative stamina like that at all 🤯🤯
LOL and I've always wondered about how all the challenge runners fight the throne watcher and defender and then Nashandra separately. I've literally only ever done a double boss fight with all three of them...
Try Domo3000 with and the visual hitbox and runback comparisons. He is currently debunking a fuckton of DS2 criticism.
He has 9 parts on Mauler's videos already.
My FAVORITE Dark Souls game. There! I said it!
Everyone? EVERYONE??! No they don't!
Ds2 have an Amazing fan base, the problem Is that, the hate Will Always have a louder voice, is normal.
Haters gonna hate.
Mad cuz bad.
FUCK THIS STUPID RETARDED GAME
the things that drag it down are ones that ultimatelly drag other souls entries as well.
1) the excess of repeat bosses (also seen in DS1 & Elden Ring)
2) areas w/inflated enemy placement
These are reasonable critiques to make about the game, but that people often diminish or pretend as not applicable to the series as a whole.
The game actually introduced mechanics that were formidably compelling. The bonfire ascetics, pharros lockstones (which came back as stonesword keys in a way), NG+ encounters, power stancing, etc.
And the quality of life changes you mention like teleporting between bonfires.
The aesthetics are also hardly even spoken of.
DS2 just screams high-fantasy.
It's an extreme apart from the dready desolation we experience in DS3. Bright, tinted hues, dynamic lighting, and a whimsical feel to it.
Majula remains the coziest hub area they've ever concocted.
Ultimately, I feel the reason the game is badly look at is because it isn't bloodborne. But, let's be honest, 60% of the bloodborne base game is dog water
edit: to add to your point of conditional damage, there are some weapons that make trivially easy boss fights a nightmare to get through. Prowling magus and congregation is infamous due to how difficult it is to make halberds and spears hit the enemies on the floor. which, speaking of... Prowling Magus & Congregation
The Enemy Placement Doesnt Matter because you can Use Environment to your Advantage and Alluring Skull to Distract them
Such Bloodborne slander shall not be tolerated. It's actually only 30% shite, which still isn't great, but be fair. It just lacks overall consistency.
@@djinnxx7050 consistency? There’s like 3 good bosses in the base game, and 2 good areas. Its quality honestly is just bad, and is hard carried by its setting.
DS2 has 1 repeat boss: Smelter Demon. Elden Ring has 9 night's cavalries, 6 erdtree avatars, 6 burial tree watchdogs, Godrick and Godfrey reskins, 4 reused Godskin fights...do I need to go on? There's a lot more. Check fextra, it's jawdropping how much reused content Elden Ring gets praised for!
@@Kamawan0 yet it still has infinitely more unique enemies, and those enemies have way more complex movesets. random shit mobs in elden ring like the knights could be bosses in ds2. its also an open world game and has to fill 30x + the space, ever played an open world game with purely unique encounters?
> ADP stat initially nerfed rolling so players won't abuse it. DS2 combat is slower to enforce turn-based timing - therefore rolling needed to be nerfed initially.
- it also eventually enables normal i-frames with heavier load since s are no longer tied to equip load.
> Heavy weapons can be aimed manually. It's useful in pvp when people roll behind you, you can then just point the left analog at them and attack again.
- smaller weapons lock on and track normally.
> DS2 punishes reckless use of stamina, estus, and reckless exploration. That's why stamina is this way in ds2, in return, combat is slower to emphasize turn-based timing.
> Running past enemies is also a bad habit that the games punishes, in return, bosses are easier.
> Torches has other uses. Spiders won't attack you when you have a torch up. Very useful in Brightstone Cove Tseldora. It also helps you lock on in dark places.
Torches also helps you see the ground in the shrine of amana. Torches also scare the dark dwellers in no man's wharf.
> An NPC summon will point at the windmill in earthen peak to hint that you should burn it.
> Slow and methodical exploration makes the games easier. That was the point, the game is hard when played wrong, it's easy then played right.
- people hate how hard the game is when played wrong, people also hate how easy it is when played right - but that was the point! ...but there is a weird gaming phenomena in souls games were people deliberately avoid and stigmatize things that makes things easier, they play it the hard way and blame the game for it.
not only the npc that point at the windmill, but these games have an online message system to communicate to each other, most of the time messages r trolls indeed, but how many time u can find a "hidden wall ahead" or "torch required ahead".
i also think the medusa boss is calculated to be fight with the poison, a single lifegem counter poison, 2 lifegems heals u, she stares at u for 5 long seconds sometime, she IS NOT THAT AGGRESSIVE, with a decent dps the fight is much better with the poison.
I agree with everything although I don't think the general sentiment isn't just that the game is hard, but that it is tedious for players who don't enjoy that style.
@@michaelcarroll5801 That's a respectable point of view.
I don't need DS2 to be like elden ring, but it's good that ds2 is a game that balanced itself without abandoning it's core concept of slow and methodical.
@@francissebastiansamson8561 you are absolutely right, the only thing I kinda disagree with is how obscure the windmill thing is. That’s still like a “how the fuck did they expect us to know” deal, even with the Scholar changes. Then again it’s not like the souls series is a stranger to archaic secrets that are next to impossible to find on a blind run through like Kaathe, the Archdragon Peak, Ash Lake, or the asylum return,etc. granted those examples feel more like “actual” secrets than the windmill which feels like it was meant to be a puzzle to be solved
People also forget that in DS2 is EASIER to level up, in 6 hours of game you could already be in level 150, with 23 points on adaptability, just the little bit to don't have barely any problems with the hit box. While in others souls in 6 hours you can be in level 60 as much. What I do is get the bonfire ascetic as gift and kill the dragon rider at the beginning 2 times with the trick of making him fall, and that's all, you got your adaptability
About the weapon reach thing, it's more about using the full weight of your weapon. If you want to just brush the enemy with the tip of your sword, you do less damage. Get in there and land your hits nice and strong.
About ADP, it's only necessary if you want more s. Which isn't really necessary when this game has the best shields in the series. Also because you can outspace a TON of things.
No one ever brings up Simpleton's and Skeptic's Spices. That's one of the best things DS2 did
Yes and no: spices do lower requirements but also dmg, so many spells and miracles become just utility without the usual specific stat investment, which then would render the spices themselves pointless...
Still a great idea, more options are usually a good thing.
he also said that the player starts with 5 s, wich is a false information only the bandit class starts with 5 s the other classes start with 7 or 8 s, and with like 5 levels or less you can get 10 s wich are completely fine.
@jakeislavic3024 you are right that the starting s are dependant on class. However, you're dead wrong about how many levels jt takes to get to 10 s.
Best case scenario for starting point is 8 s. You have to level up 17 times to get to 10 s which, again, is still less than dark souls 1.
It's a huge problem you're trying to downplay
That is one thing I was gonna mention. Conditional damage in certain situations just makes sense. You hit someone whos armored with just the tip of your sword vs a properly aligned slice you're gonna be doing less damage. Same with environment lowering damage. Yes, it takes momentum away from the swing.
Ds2 hate videos when the game requires you to do anything but roll and r1 spam, then praise the others for being very vague but you can spam rolls and r1
Yes
You literally gave 1 reason why you think it's better yet complain about vagueness. This is a 40 minute video breaking everything down. At least show it the respect it deserves by doing the same instead of saying, "NUH-UH! GAME IS GOOD!"
@@christopherbrown2640 So you mean to say that you feel nobody can comment on the quality of the game unless they're willing to do a 40 minute breakdown? Where's yours then?
Youre right, dark souls 2 requires you to stay away from the walls and not clip through them, it requires you to not use the full reach of your weapon, it requires you to not die or face the 50% health consequence, it requires you to repeatedly kill an entire area each time you fail a boss. The list goes on and it's objectively bad
@@joegellaIt is your opinion that it is bad. You are not being objective, you are expressing an opinion.
If you want to know what objectively bad is, look no further than everything after Anor Londo in DS1. And teleporting dogs.
I dont get why ppl hate the health loss from hollowing. It exactly the same as the ember and the rune arc in later games.
It's not exactly the same at all.
Dark souls 2 takes away your health as you repeatedly die. It's a debuff. Embers in dark souls 3 give you a boost to your health.
One system is punishing you for failing while the other is rewarding you for succeeding. Ds3 also only gives you the ember effect when you kill a boss, it's literally a temporary bonus for beating the boss.
And rune arcs from elden ring are completely different and not even something to compare here.
How can you not get why people don't like their health being cut to 50% for dying in a game that you die alot in? Like that's a very understandable complaint
@@joegella I mean this is just semantics. In all cases they are stats lost upon dying, and arguably in Ds3 you lose 25% in one death while in Ds2 it is gradual. Furthermore they are also builds centered around being hollow and having lower life.
No that's just a cope, you can fight every boss in DS3 without ever being embered and your health does not get punished for every death. You just lose any ember bonus (if you even used an ember) DS2 just punishes you every time you die, simple as
@@Bigbadtyrant1 As i said this is just semantics it is still 25% less hp. You can play ds2 fully hollowed.
@@rezibabe5210 Plus ds2 enemies hit so SO much less of your actual health bar so playing at 50% is compeletly fine. Human effegies are probably the most available "kindling/reverse hollowing" item in entire trilogy, you get so many of them and can farm them easily.
Speaking of bad hitboxes... You should try using the DS hitbox tool to see DS1, 2, and 3 hitboxes. Man you'd be surprised.
One of the things you'd realize is that the hitboxes are all bigger than the actual model (IN ALL THREE GAMES!). So those odd "wtf how did I get hit" moments in DS2 is because of that. Plus it happens on DS1 and 3 too since, you know, all of them have the same bigger than the model thing. People just don't talk about it, unlike with DS2 for some reason *wink wink*.
All schmeat riders to me
All the spulsborne games have had the worst hitbox issues I've ever seen in video games
@@joegella Ever played Monster Hunter? Try some hitbox videos for that series.
No one ever said that the other games don't have bad hitboxes at all, they just have less and that are harder to encounter
@@ashketchup8392 At least one person does in the form of Mauler's video. He mentioned something like "flawless" or some shit like that when talking about DS3 and praised DS1's hit boxes as accurate too.
Good Video. Some of the criticism is good but it was a little bit weird, that you mentioned at the beginning, that you know most things about the game, while there were a lot of things you didn’t knew about. Many people already mentioned the counterdamage and the sweepspot damage.
But I wanted to talk about the torch mechanic because there are so much more usages for the torches. What you didn’t mention you can use the torch in Tseldora so the spiders wont attack you. There are 4 torches in Aldias Keep you can lit to get Aldias Key (You have to defeat 4 forlorn invaders too). And if you lit the light in the undead crypt even after the NPC told you to not do it, there will happen something.
And there are way more mechanics with the torch I didn’t mentioned like invisible Hollows.
Thanks for watching! I dont know what you mean about me saying i know most things, i went into the game nearly blind.
And for the torch, I tried to focus specifically on the torch based levels. Like you said there was plenty of spots you could whip out the torch and light something, but those things could have easily been a switch or lever. The two areas no man's wharf and the gutter are clearly "torch areas" and the fact that you're supposed to play them slow and strategically while also worrying about a timer I'd contradictory
@@joegella I would call Tseldora a torch area too because there are a lot of lights you can lit and its even helpful to use the torch in the bossfight. And I think you don’t have to worry that much because you can lit your torch everywhere you already lit a fire.
Another hidden mechanic is that the torch increases you lock on range.
@@joegella 1:35 - 1:48 why say something like this if you're going to act like you know nothing
DS2 is my introduction to this series and is one of my favorites of all time.
29:50 DS2 has some questionable areas but I never get why people struggle here. The first time around you can use the torch and just clearly see the path.
You can also spell parry them with the small cleric shield aswell.
To be frank, we don't think its bad at all. We all love it. We love it less, but we still love it :) And the PVP is the best :)
I enjoyed PvP in DS2 the most so far 😄
@@kakarikocucco130 I think its less of an infinite rolling contest like the others and way more a fair weapon fight !
no we all don't
No, people insufferably shit on it all the time as well. And comments like this still suck to hear all the time, because it’s not really defending something you ‘love’.
One type says DS2 is the worst of the three, one type says DS2 is the third best out of three. The people who endlessly crap on the game bring up the exact same things as the ‘third best’ people, and it’s incredibly tiring.
If the game is ‘third best’ and ‘still loved’, then perhaps searching the game on youtube or google would have videos on the great aspects of DS2?
But instead it’s 30,000 videos about how awful Dark Souls 2 is, every single thing it does wrong. And this video is a part of that group, right beside the multi-hour video essays about how garbage and worrhless DS2 is. Same points, same idea.
@@NeuroVyrus I did my first PvP Dex build in DS2 with Ricard's Rapier and because of its low stamina use and short hitting time I could just stunlock every invader after 3 hits. It frigging hilarious! Definitely recommend. Amazing troll build
i love when people say "I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS GAME"
but then show how little they actually know or how it works
and then complain that it does not work how they though it works...
it just makes me have so much faith that their criticism of the game is valid
Where did I say I know everything about this game? Whether I got every minute detail accurate or not, I explained the experience of the game. And theres no argument for most of what i said. These mechanics are in the game. For example, you most certainly have a damage debuff for clipping through walls, and most certainly dont have s for the first half of fog gate animations.
I admittedly got the counter damage psrt wrong and mistook that situation for a debuff when it was really a lack of a buff, but the way its handled in ds2 is still different. I never noticed my damage going up or down in the other games.
People don't go around testing every little detail when they play the game. They just play and everything I put in this video is why the experience is not as good as the others
@@joegella is saying "I know this game like a back of my nut sack " not close enough to "i know every thing about this game" ? 1:44
and yes saying that:
game worse then other games cause of X
when X is in other games
makes you look not credible in my eyes
You said y'know it like the back of your nuts, beginning of the vid
@joegella IDK, man. It seems like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the game and blame the game for it, and some of the things you complain about make no sense, like the non-infinite I-frames at fog gates and such. That's a plus for PvP and PvE. It makes it so you can't just run past all the enemies without being careful, and so you can't just boss fog invaders if they're right next to you. Same with the stamina system. This game has a much more slow and technical combat system from the other games and that obviously would affect the stamina system. Same with the manual attack aiming. That's just a you issue and it's there so you can still fight multiple enemies while locked on.
@thedrunkensunbro I definitely don't have a fundamental misunderstanding of the game, thats a whack thing to say.
I've played 100s of hours across the soulsborne games, and throughout that time, I've become extremely familiar with how they work. Sure, I don't have encyclopedic knowledge and no I don't test every single detail like I'm a fextralife wiki developer, but I certainly spend more time and effort and pay way more attention to the details than any average player.
Everything I've included in this video has been a comparison to the entirety of this genre, but I tried to mostly look at the game as if it just came out, which is why it was compared to ds1 so much. Every criticism I've made in this video has been based on how it feels to play relative to the other games. I may have gotten some nuances wrong, but again, it's not about stopping in the moment and analyzing wtf is currently going on. It's about how it feels.
Ill give an example which is related to a point you made: i play an area of the game two or three times as I rest/die. I explore the entire thing and slay all enemies. Then I get to a boss and fail. So I decide I'm gona skip killing all these guys again and just go for the boss. Not only is it difficult to walk past these guys, but then when I get to the fog gate, I'm stuck and cant move, yet I'm allowed to be attacked. That doesn't feel good. Idc what the reasoning is, it doesn't feel good. Now I understand, the game doesn't want you to sprint past everything. But does the game want you to rekill every enemy every time you fail a boss? What happens if youre stuck (which happens a lot in these games)? It doesn't feel good to spend time rekilling enemies just so you can go retry the boss. The games not even allowing me to get the experience on the boss I need to succeed. Then factor in that you lose health upon deaths, now the game is punishing me both by increasing the challenge and by requiring me to rekill enemies. Okay sure thr enemies stpp respawning after 12 desths. So does that mean that when i get stuck on the boss i gotta kill the whole area 12 times just to get that annoyance out of the way? Again, this does not feel good to play.
Elden ring introduced statues of Marika. If the next souls game doesn't include this mechanic, ill be pretty bummed because run backs to bosses are annoying af period. No matter which game it is. That's one of my criticisms for the entire genre and I was very happy to see elden ring introduce that mechanic.
Don't say I have a fundamental misunderstanding of the game when really what's going on is you're unable to accept the criticism. I tried defending the game where i could in this video, stating Dark Souls 2 is not a bad game, and pointing out all the ways that it changed the genre for the better. Its gotten overhated to the point where know one actuslly knows wtf is going on and they just hop on the bandwagon. That's what this video is about
Getting +1 stamina past 20 was a crazy decision among many others and don't even get me started on the lizards that are impossible to kill before they run off or dissapear and you cant even quit out the game to reset them. That being said I still enjoyed the game and will play again for sure. Also that Shrine area is the most toxic area of the game and you are forced to clear it out because trying running through all that and you're gone.
32:00 it is crazy that they expect you to burn the windmill but there is an npc summon that will try to get you to follow it to the windmill and they will point at it.
Yeah I think if it was more centrally placed then it wouldn't be so easy to miss. But it's off on a ledge on some random window. I never found it and actually killed that boss twice with the poison present. It wasn't till my 3rd playthorugh that I looked up if this poison could be removed
@@joegella The Windmill its Guarded too for some Reason
@@irpanfauzi1160 Yeah, but no one on their own is going to guess that you can burn the metal part of the windmill xDD
I completed the game years ago in my brother's account. Been playing DS1 recently, makes me wanna play DS2 again. But after you reminding me of all the crap especially the keys part, I'm not so sure I wanna go through that again. Only fond memory I had of it is that it allows me to roleplay as Guts. Pretty cool.
12:21 you just had a critical hit, you can boost your crit rate stat too with some gauntlets
Damn I didn't think of that possibility. Thanks! Critical hits are pretty common im videogames but it's never been in any of the other souls games.
Still was annoying that I never knew if a guy would be a 1 or 2 hit kill
@@joegella critical hits and counter hits exist in all the souls games dude. DS3 even explicitly telegraphs critical / counter hits by having a unique damage sound
@rigorm136 leave him before he says ds2 is the only game you can die or something
DS2 is my fav from the series! I like this video, I would like to discuss some of the topics mentioned and give my insight.
Lockstones - When you talk about Lockstones and having too many doors / not knowing if you're wasing a key: There are 2 specific zones of the Rat King covenant that incorperate lockstones. Upon entering the Grave of Saints or Doors of Pharros, players have a chance to be teleported into the world of a covenant member who is in one of those locations. Covenant members can use the lockstones to set traps for players who have invaded. It's a neat idea for a PVP covenant IMO. You are loyal to the Rat King and protect his turf from tresspassers. Also the water ones in Iron Keep are used to give fire resistance to the player to aquire the items on the magma stones.
ADP - I actually quite like this mechanic. In DS1 and 2, the game wasn't designed with the idea that players will basically only be using the roll to dodge. There are a few different methods of evasion that are viable in both games. 1: Dodge rolling / backstepping. 2: Shielding attacks / parrying. 3: staying back and using ranged attacks, and moving out of the way of incoming attacks. I think that the addition of ADP really brings out the RPG aspect of the levelling system. If I want to have my character be up close and fast then levelling ADP is a good choice. If I want my character to utilize a tower shield and heavy armor, rolling isn't a necessity so I don't have to level ADP as much. If I want my character to utilize spells or bows, I can spend my levels on INT or DEX instead of ADP and focus on moving out of the way of attacks. It's way more engaging than having the most advantagous evasion tactic be maxed out from the very beginning for any type of character. Being able to roll spam at lvl 1 in DS3 and ER makes tanky shield builds feel pointless and unimmersive. My second thought is also that I love how underpowered you feel when you're level 1 compared to later entries. It gives the player incentive to take it slow and explore to get more souls and level up. I think this is a major flaw of Elden Ring. You can decide to only level up Vigor and the game will be maybe 5% more difficult than if you could level up every stat. You already start out with infinite stamina, scaling is very negligable compared to weapon upgrades, and they removed VIT, ADP and ATN, so levelling up doesn't feel like you really get any more powerful. It's a real shame considering how large the game is, you'd think they would reward taking your time going through the huge open world. I don't understand your point of saying it feels like "wasting souls" upgrading ADP when you're literally putting them to such good use giving you a better dodge. Wasting souls would be putting them into someting that doesn't vastly improve your character, like ER stats. When I level up in a game, I want to feel more powerful and I want my exploration to feel worth it, and I think this is done the best in DS2 and done the worst in ER.
Hollowing - I'm fine with this tbh. You get an abundance of human effigies, and I think it's good to use them when you want an extra boost. I think there should be a punishment for dying in video games, however I do understand this being frustrating.
Stamina - I agree with you about the full stamina drain debuff, I don't think it's a necessary mechanic and I think it detracts from the game and doesn't really add anything. I do like how little stamina you get though, I think it rewards having a reserved playstyle instead of like in Elden Ring where you have basically infinite stamina and instant regen which allows you to basically always be doing an action with no consequences. This is why I think DS2 doesn't have a roll-spamming issue while DS3 and ER do.
Conditional Weapon Damage - This is something I partially agree with. A lot of the mechanics feel needless, however I am very fond of CERTAIN weapons having a spot that deals more damage. For instance: Halberds and Reapers have much more damage at the very end of the weapon which promotes good spacing and makes it a fun challenge to be dodging and attacking while maintaining maximum distance to increase damage.
Enemy aggro range & fog gates - I like this feature. In all the other games, it feels almost incentivized to run past everything. In DS2 you either have to fight enemies, or have a strategic plan of how you will escape from them. if you can just run past everything, fighting the enemy will feel almost pointless. In Elden Ring, if enemies don't care if I run past them, and getting souls from them will barely benefit me at all when I level up, why even bother? And I think the points about not having i-frames on fog gates, chests and doors is weird. Why are you opening a chest if you know the enemy is right there? Why are you opening a door if the enemy is about to hit you? This logic only makes sense if you come from playing the previous games that reward you with invulnerability for performing actions that shouldn't protect you in combat. Why should I be invincible if I am opening a chest? Why am I being rewarded for ignoring the enemies and blasting through the game without paying attention? If I enter a room full of enemies and decide to open a chest without dealing with the enemies, it makes sense to suffer the consequences.
Illusory Walls - The ones in ruin sentinels are quite unfair, HOWEVER, there are hints. There is an inaccessible ledge with an item and no door, so that will alert the player that there might be a fake wall. There is also an enemy rattling a chain behind a fake wall. I think if there were also subtle hints as to WHERE the walls were, it would be perfectly fine. The rest are usually not nearly as bad, although the Aldia's keep one is also too hidden IMO. My favorite one was in Drangleic Castle, where there is a beam around a pillar except for one spot where there isn't the beam, and that section is about the size of a door.
Hitboxes - I don't have specific examples, but I never found them to be obnoxious. IMO, they improved with each entry to the series.
Estus flask drinking time - I think this makes more sense when you think about how the player also has life gems. There is a more committal heal (estus) that gives you a better bonus, or a less committal heal (life gems) that give you a smaller bonus. The player can address which one is correct for how much health they have and how risky it is to heal in that moment.
Enemies not respawning - I think this is fine tbh. If you are really struggling with a run-up to a boss, the enemies will despawn so it gives an advantage to a struggling player. I think it also discourages farming which is good because it's some of the least engaging gameplay you can have in these games so I'm glad that it will make players less inclined to do it.
Large scale level design - I mostly agree with you on this. I feel like the first half of DS1 and DS2 have a good amount of connectivity, but I think DS1 is a little more smooth.
Levels having traps - I actually like how the player is ambushed. There are a ton of moments where if you are perceptive you will see these things and can address the situation. Like in Earthen Peak - you can look up and see enemies hanging off the balcony from the lower level and snipe them down before going up and being ambushed. There are a lot of moments where there are explosive barrels that can be used to take care of a threat from far away with fire arrows. In Wharf, there's a ton of enemies hanging from ledges that you can hit into the water if you catch them early. I like having to look around and address the situation, and if I die then I like wondering how to handle it differently and what I can look out for.
Shrine of Amana - I think this part is quite overwhelming and could use some hiding places to protect from the casters, but I don't think it's horrible. The worst part is just the hammer wielders being so agile, I think if they were more reserved then you could deal with them while dodging the magic. There are a lot of stone paths that make traversing less difficult, and the lizard men only really aggro when you go into the water where you shouldn't be. It's a big mess but there is a method to a lot of it, it's not all chaos.
Earthen Peak - I think there's a lot of hints for the windmill. There's an enemy guarding it who won't notice you until you go right up in its face, and if you have the NPC summon, he will use the point gesture towards the place where you burn it. That coupled with the fact that it's a dead end being guarded, and you'll most likely read messages guiding you there, I don't think it's a very cryptic puzzle. I do empathize with how frustrating it would be to not get it on your first go though. I think having the secret bonfire actually makes it less easy to understand because you won't run past the area you need to burn it in every time.
Drangleic Castle - I actually agree with everything you said in here. The area was dissappointing.
Torch Mechanic - Torches were originally supposed to play a bigger role in the game, however the lighting engine was changed during development making dark areas a lot brighter which makes the torch almost obsolete. It's just unfortunate.
Edit: corrected some spelling errors
I always thought the negative stamina and all the ways weapons lose damage were really cool and made sense.
Also, why would you be invulnerable during chests and doors? Adds to the immersion instead of just cheesing i-franes and progressing.
I always thought hitting a weapon with it’s max range and it does less damage makes a lot of sense and makes the weapon feel more tangible. Direct hits almost always give you the “consistent” number.
The way weapons lose damage may make sense in terms of real life, but they don't make sense in the game. When a game punishes you for an action, it's telling you to avoid doing that. So the game is telling you to avoid clipping through walls which is impossible.
Iframes during animations make sense because you don't have control over your character, ao why should yoy get hit fir that. If there's no s on animations, then why do enemies get s after riposte?
Hitting an enemy with the weapon tip is an advantage you get for using a long weapon. The tip debuff is telling you that you shouldn't be using the weapons reache. So what's the point if carrying around a massive weapon with high damage and long reach just to have constant debuffs all day? It's already balanced by being slow af
@@joegellayou do have control over your character during animations though, as you can press dodge to cancel the animation or dodge out of the animation as well.
Weapon sweet and sour spots always felt cool to me.
It's part of the process of learning how to use a particular weapon, and finding cases where a weapon works well.
Weapons are usually relatively light in DS2, and it added that third arm slot, and more immediately pressing durability for a reason. You're SUPPOSED to have several weapons with different preferred use cases. You're SUPPOSED to try and use new things.
The "reach penalty" was actually just counter damage. He used a weapon so Big he attacked before the enemy could enter an attack animation.
The weapons that do have different hitboxes at different lenghts are polearms, whick make the most damage when you use the end of their reach.
@@joegella just use the saniters spear or extra weapons like the game obviously wants you to dude
i heavily agree with you about teleporting between bonfires, but i dont get it why people say thats a bad thing, like having to walk 5 minutes doing absolutely nothing just running and ignoring enemies was fun and engaging lol... i see most people say that is better to not teleport because the world feels more alive (?). i dont really get it, but its the first time i see someone agree with teleporting between bonfires is good
(also sorry for bad english i barely my native language xd)
Yeah teleporting is absolutely a good change to the formula. Fromsoftware kept it for all future games because it's great.
I think no teleport works fine in ds1 because they eventually give it to you halfway in. But the first time I played thst game, I ended up going all the way down through blighttown and then couldn't kill that fire spider boss at the bottom because I wasn't properly equipped. But then I had to painfully fight my way back up just to get to the blacksmith
I loved DS1’s interconnected level design. It’s probably my favorite part of the game. But the other souls games aren’t as interconnected, because warping between bonfires made that unnecessary.
Warping is cool, but if the cost of warping is that the level design getting worse, then it’s not worth it.
Warping made the games slightly better, but the lack of inter-connectivity made the level design WAY worse.
Overall, it’s a net negative imo.
This is a great point too. The no warp in ds1 works because it was designed for that.
I can totally get behind it if they decide to revisit this in the future. But I do still think that it limits your options. You sort of have to tackle what's in front of you rather than going back to another location and trying that, because it takes time to get there
@@ezekielanderson9055 i strongly disagree, I don't think trading a "better" level design for walking around doing literally nothing is worth it
@@zeldola2202🤦♂️ you aren’t walking around doing nothing. You’re exploring the map. Exploring is much better than just POOF you’re there.
I’m a little disappointed you didn’t mention that powers stancing began in this game. Because he didn’t come back until Elden Ring. It’s one of the sole combat mechanics that everyone agrees is good. Even people who hate DS2 praise, power stancing, which says a lot.
Powerstancing was pointless in DS2 because there are no good fights to use the weapons for.
@@saysalla tell that to everyone who used it, myself included, to cleave people in half with the push of a single button. Also, it was obvious influential if it made it into Elden Ring
I did mention it. It's in the good game mechanics section, and it's the 2nd or 3rd thing I mentioned.
I couldn't let that go unpraised!
@@joegellaoh, my bad then! I must’ve missed it. Sorry about that.
Edit: you called it dual wielding, and I, for some reason, didn’t connect that to power stancing
Yeah, power stance in DS2 is so well done. It adds another layer of stat management that I thoroughly enjoy, not to mention the new tactics it unlocks.
About the ring of binding: its easy to keep it most of the game, but you are not forced to. You get about 4 deaths until you start to "need it" after using an effigy.
But 1/4 is way better than the 1/2 of its predecessor, there "ring of favor and protection" is not only best in slot, but also destroyed if you remove it (an actual severe punishment)
You can also farm human effigy.
What happened to git gud? If I remember correctly when this game came out it was praised universally and everyone loved it,then some internet weebs started talking trash when ds3 came out and now it's trashed, with the same points being parroted around the internet. I even saw a review of the elden ring dlc, wherein it said it was bad but not as bad as the Ds2 dlc. The Ds2 dlcs are masterpieces and can stand with even the artorias dlc. Stop schmeat riding
because some id1ots like Mauler exist, ds2 haters LOVE mauler because he say: "ds2 bad, is not your skill issues"
Says the one riding DS2s schmeat 😂 even called the dlc masterpieces lol
@@45noop they are actually cause the levels are actually cool and have more more than a glorified boss rush. Name a single other level in the franchise which actually has you use a bow or arena traps to solve puzzles like shulva or brume tower
@@45noop Did you even play the dlcs? I highly encourage you to, and judge it yourself. The lore and theme of longing gets deepened in it. Oh and your character is the only person who gets the cure to hollowing in the entire series, from the dlc.
@@45noop BTW your were probably 5 when ds2 came out, so go ride some fortnite schmeat, pleb
11:51 392 dmg because counter damage and sweet spot, that one was NOT in attack/special animation, the other 2 were attacking u, maybe learn what is counter dmg, i believe u know what is the sweet spot alrdy. ( if not learn about it )
It's amazing how someone is willing to make a whole video about Dark Souls 2 without even trying to understand it fully... and counter damage is something that is present in every souls game....
@@simonenot5839 this guy played ds2 till Ng+2 with the intention of making a video, Imagine playing a game to have fun, and even worst, he probably followed a fooking guide while playing, that's a even bigger no-no
@@AtreyusNinja Lmao, DS2 is not a game you play blind. It tells you nothing, so you'll miss out on most of the game's mechanic. Hidden walls, adp, powerstancing, the windmill...
@@ssssimmons8736 oh because Mytha is not calculated to be fight with the poison, she don't stare at u for 5 minute before attacking u, r u fooking blind?
do u know there are lifegems in this game? 1 lifegem counter the poison effect, 2 lifegems heals u, with a DECENT dps u kill her with the poison, i don't expect u to understand sh1t tho.
I got this platinum as well, several times. I can see why people complain but I feel the level designs and the bosses were great. The Chariot boss is my favorite. Thanks for the great video.
Everybody "hates "DS2 and yet if you ask a Dark soul fan which one is the funniest Parody they can even quote from the franchise there's a high change this person will say something from "Happy souls".
Nah, for me it's "Spiders? Not in my house!"
Pom porom porom porom porom pom, pom porom porom POM
@@mrkiscool3yeah for you, not for dark souls fans
@@IRON_KING_KNIGHT I am a dark souls fan, ergo your argument doesn't apply. Soz
So me and my friend decided to but the darksouls games since they had gone on sale while neither of us actually interacting with souls content so after jolly cooperating thru ds1 while I watched happy souls again and never have I had such a "I finally get it" moment in my life
Glad you touched on the biggest issues I have with the game that no one elses talks about namely the soft lock/8 direction mechanic. Also everyone complains about adaptability but you are the first to mention vitality which i find more agreegious.
darks souls 2 is my go to comfy game. Ds3 reminds me of my ex and it makes me sad. ds1 is just too easy. DS2 vanilla just feels soooo right.
I understand fully about your take on DS3,
but that's obviously on you not DS3's fault...
Just sayin...
@@FurtiveSkeptical ik but then again, ds3 lacks color compared to ds1 and ds2 imo. Ds3 just seems too gloomy
"Ds3 reminds me of my ex and it makes me sad" bro had a deep character arc
@@emmelinesupremacy yeah... I loved ds3 alot and used to talk to her about it alot. She would listen even if she didn't understand any of it with her big shiny eyes. Idk dude, it's been tough lately
@@mr.potato3759 Feel you. I bought trilogy in March of this year
When I started DS1 I used to talked with her about the world, the relevance of souls in gaming, why Miyazaki is a genius. Then when I get in Blightown for first time, I was alone, we broke up. Maybe thats why I loved Gwyn's boss fight so much, his piano theme was perfect to finish this sad journey for me
It was a mutual decision, we had our differences and Im glad to say there is no hatred between us, but hey, nowadays I finished the trology and DS1 is my favourite honestly
Try DS3 again someday, maybe your experience will be different
12:14 It's not the same enemy, the shield variant has higher defenses
16:00 getting interrupted is not 100% a bad thing. Running through a level instead of clearing it goes against the "overcoming obstacles against all odds" that the community preaches. I frames through gates just enables rushibg as THE MOST VIABLE strat to a boss, trivializing the levels (most of the content of the game)
@@vittocrazi I get that, BUT, when running back to a boss for the 5th time, who is gonna kill EVERY enemy every single time? It gets so tedious.
@@lucasmek2 thats why enemies despawn IS ds2
The philosophy I have taken with souls games is: It has an HP bar? So I can kill it? bet!
That is to say, unless I am hopelessly outclassed by a monster on the path, my way has always been to take it on/kill it. I honestly do not fear runebears in eldenring.
DS2 actually made me quit though, I recently came back to it after beating the DLC in ER... I played the souls games in order btw, this may have helped me a bit since I played DS2 immediately after DS1 and now having recently revisited DS2 I did finally beat it/clearing 100% of the bosses...
Ironically what made me quit was combination run up to the trio boss "The Graverobber, Varg, and Cerah" in the cave of the dead from the crown of the sunken king DLC...
Me and my best friend were playing through the souls games together and we both collectively got finally/fully fed up with trying to take on this particular boss/path to...
Anyways, I enjoyed playing DS2 this time around, but it was my least favorite experience of the 4 souls games I have played (ds1-3 and ER)
@@lucasmek2 I can't think of any fog door that requires you to kill every enemy. Its usually just the last guys, and you don't need to kill them, just kite them a bit to trigger their attack a bit further. The game just requires a bit of kiting, lol, is this that hard? Even the door to Velstadt with 5 guys right before it is perfectly passable.
@@RussianSmacker smelter demon, but you can just skip him. you needa kill ALL of those knights or you're fucked iirc
small nit-pick: in DS1 you can use the firekeeper souls to strengthen estus. you can use a humanity (dark soul) to have a select bonfire increase its limit to 10 estus, and to 15 estus once you get the rite of kindling
You can actually kindle to 20 estus with the rite of kindling
Yeah I was so confused, is this poor man using Fire Keeper Souls to kindle 😭
I feel like you miss understood the flasks in DS1, or you didn't word it right.
The main upgrade increased the potency of your flasks, but you can farm a recourse that lets you have the current maximum flasks, then killing a boss gives you the current maximum flasks of that NG+ cycle and when you upgrade a bonfire to the maximum flasks currently, it carries over to the next NG+ cycle.
Also with ADP, it also increased how fast you drink flasks but it is still a dumb mehcanic.
The lowering of health after death, yes they took that from Demon's Souls, yes you have to have a ring slot to keep your health at 75% but that was the same as Demon's Souls as there was a ring to keep your hewlth at 75% when in soul form also.
Now with the final boss, there is also a 3rd final boss. By going through the other giant memories you get giant souls and there's a hidden one in Black Gultch, but once you get 4 of them, or 5 if you kill the Ancient dragon, you then fight Vendric, collecting and keeping the gaint souls lowers vendrics defense because if you don't have them, you won't hurt him much. But killing him triggers a 3rd boss after Nashandra
I definitely miss remembered the flask upgrade from ds1. Someone corrected me earlier on the comments, but I still think ds2s system is way better
@@joegellait was implemented into DS3 also.
Also one mechanic that you probably didn't know about is with Fume Knight in Iron King DLC. He has 2 unique mechanics only to him
You can go through the full fight without triggering his 2nd phase, but you have to constantly drink your flasks under 12 seconds on each other, it keeps his sword glowing which stops him from going into phase 2.
Speaking of phase 2, if you went into his boss fight with Velstaad's armour, he instantly goes into phase 2 as soon as you walk into the boss room
as someone who started with DS2 as their first entry in the series, I feel like I appreciated the game more bc a lot of these points are just comparing it to the other games.
scholar is my favorite souls game, after beating dark souls 1, being very new to souls, i decided to get scholar and play through that bad boy, and what a journey it was!
now, is the game perfect?
yes
skill issue
Lmao that "read more" got me
You can farm pharro lockstones
Another case of loud minority, DS2 was always loved ever since it's release by most people, you can also tell by the very high ratings all around.
What makes me sad is the people who love to shit on this game do not give it any fair view or acknowledgement especially for all the cool and unique mechanics and details it offered, DS1 had alot of flaws (if not worse) yet for some reason all i see is praise for it, It's just plain unfair imo.
I just which people were more fair with their criticism towards the whole series.
I tried to give this game a fair view by presenting all the good along with the bad. This game literally changed the game for the better so it deserves all the praise for that
@@joegella yeah, although i wish more of it's cool aspects were implemented in ER, like NG+ changes, or unique puzzles and interractions etc... the more charming things that you randomly find in the game
People being fair? You expect too much.
I wish elden ring took the ng+ enhancements and bonfire ascetics from dark souls 2. Seems like a no brainer to me. Ds2 has the best ng+ of any of the games
@@joegella 6:02 "and the rest of these, these are all great but...i want to get to the bad"
So, what you are lighting on fire with the windmill is the lubricant, which is poison. You don't actually burn the windmill. You burn the lubricant, which causes it to jam.
Not everyone. There are MANY ds2 fans. And we are extremely passionate about this underappreciated game :)
Naaa, you are just trying so hard to be different
@@Aulossgive me you phone number pls, I would consult with you anytime I need to decide if I like something or not.
@@Aulossfacts
I feel like I keep getting gaslit. Everything people complain about I really enjoy. Am I just a contrarian? I doubt it. Why should we complain that you're not invincible when opening doors or that enemies don't give up chasing you arbitrarily?
@@michaelcarroll5801nah. Its just the ds1 crowd was too brain dead to Accept a different Game. And they always decide to double down instead of actually adapting to playing a different game
The random modifier on enemy damage you mentioned is likely counter hits. The counter hit window in DS2 is very big, it's very easy to regularly hit counter hits, they can be done with any damage type, and the damage differs depending on the counter damage stat listed on the weapon.
DS2 is different from the other games in the series, so I think most people get annoyed when they encounter this "different" gameplay structure. Bad bosses, adp and hitboxes are my problems in this game. However, I have to give credit where the bad bosses in DS2 were worse than the bad bosses in DS1, I agree. However, the good bosses in DS2 were better than the good bosses in DS1. People forget this. If we include DLCs then I have Sir Alonne>Artorias, Fume Knight>Kalameet, Ivory King>Manus. In my opinion, people are too hyped about DS1, so they spew unnecessary hate on DS2 because it is not like DS1. Now they might kill me for what I'm about to say, but I'll say it anyway: I think DS2 is better than DS1, despite its problems. DS1 is a game that is impossible to go back to and play after playing it a few times, it has very lumbering gameplay. But I see people playing DS2 and coming back even in 2024. DS2 is still playable. (DS3 is better than both)
I personally think ds1 was better then ds2 but ds2 is better then ds3, I liked how ds2 had a different story that wasn’t about linking the flame again and in my opinion ds3 was unnecessarily hard to level up compared to the rest of the games and ds2 has the best art style and they need to bring it back lol. but out of the soulsborne games I’d have to say bloodbornes the best and my favorite lol.
how can Linear-Souls-3 / no-Build-Variety-3 Souls have a better replayability than ds2 ?
if it is for its linearity i won't answer anymore, that's the thing i can't stand about ds3.
@@sir_wolfenstien4017 In my opinion, DS3 is much better than both DS1 and DS2 in terms of gameplay, mechanics, bosses, music, etc. in general.
@AtreyusNinja ds3 is too linear and too roll spammy. Shields feel pretty much useless. No game is faultless and free from criticism
@@AtreyusNinja Why do you disparage linear game design? This means you can finish the game much faster and do boss runs more easily. Your direction is clear, it is not complicated and you will not waste any free time. Note that this design pleases many players. This is why DS3 is still played today.
This entire video feels like 1) you didn't pay attention to any of the characters dialogue, 2) didn't read item descriptions, 3) didn't pay attention to the map, 4) didn't watch cutscenes, 5) didn't explore the game organically, 6) didn't read the descriptions of the abilities when leveling up, and 7) didn't think about your playstyle. I have over a thousand hours in the game, multiple characters with over 200 hours each, have played as a mage, a dark mage, a cleric, a paladin, a tank, a swordsman, using only knives, using only axes, using only fencing swords, only dual weilding, using no rings, using no armor, and I'm sure other ways that I dont recall right now. I have never had half the issues you ran into. The emerald herald literally tells you to find the 4 old ones, get their souls, then tells you to go to drangleic castle when you have all 4 souls, then tells you to go find the memories once you have the kings ring, then tells you to go back to drangleic castle to finish the game and become the next monarch. It feels like you never heard her dialogue beyond "seek, seek, lest" when leveling up. The dragon tells you to explore the memories. I dont know how you had so many issues in this game.
DS2 is the only soulsbourne game I've played where I never had to look up where to go next or what to do. I definetly looked up where items are (fuck finding keys for shit, especially accessing the DLC's), but I dont think I've ever needed a guide to progress to the next path in this game. I need to be reminded how to get to archdragon peak literally every playthrough.
im a large ds2 enjoyer but i think stonesword keys are much better implemented because they're never mandatory, whereas multiple key moments in progression rely on fboys and pls
This is where I praise ds2 though, because it did stone sword keys first. I agree elden rings system is a bit better but ds2 still did it great
@@joegella 🤝
theres if I remember only 1 required fragbranch being the one with the stoned lady, the rest are either, unlocking a bonus area or a bonus bonfire or some extra loot
edit: even if you loose all of the branches you can still progress by having 1milion soul memory, in DS1 if you go the catacombs you can legit soft locked yourself if you dont have the Lord Vessel
@@dradonie There is a way back after Pinwheel's boss room, but good luck finding it if you don't have a light source.
"You kinda just never do it because theres such a big down side and its just never worth it. So youre basically never gunna be doing this, youre always gunna be making sure your stamina bar stays in the positive which means youre never using the stamina to its full potential. Its kind of wasteful."
My dude. I have well over a thousand hours in dark souls 2, and multiple characters with over 200 hours each. I *constantly* go into negative stamina. Its a trade off that I learned how and when to use, and i do it all the fuckin time.
Dark Souls 2 is my favorite
Idk the map design in FEET is honestly better than even ds1 for me
Feet simulator is an underrated game imo. Lmao
7:31 losing 5% of hp when u die ONE TIME is worst than demon's souls when u lose 50% of your max hp when u die once? why not mentioning DS3? u die one time and u lose 33% of your max hp.
u think human effigy r rare in pve? hmh, interesting. do u even know how u can farm them? ascetic bonfire, forest of fallen giant first bonfire, u open a chest and u will get 5 human effegy, u repeat the process > ascetic bonfire > 5 human effigy > ascetic bonfire > 5 human effigy > ascetic bonfire > 5 human effigy (u don't have to beat any boss to do so)
or just ascetic majula and kill the skelly in the house, but u have to kill something so the first strategy is better.
Don't the random dogs in Lost Bastille drop human effigies like candy too?
This is why I have always said that most of the clowns that rag on Ds2 aren't honest. They just like to use the legitimate problems the game has, as an excuse/smokescreen to slurp down miyazakis baby gravy and act like he can do no wrong. They excuse problems all the time in the other's but somehow Ds2 is an exception and they nitpick relentlessly? totally not because miyazaki didn't direct Ds2.
The hp buff/debuff is semantics clear as day. I can understand how one treats them like A reward/punishment and how that works psycologically, there is SOME merit to the haters argument there, but the debuff is so minor and will almost never be an issue (unless you die A ton without restoring) it's almost entirely cope on their part with A dash of truth sprinkled in.
DS2 was my first experience with the souls series. tbh, it was the best game for me out of the trilogy. maybe because it was the first one. i still love DS2 and replay it sometimes.
Man... being a ds2 fan is hard; seeing so many people hate what you love. (Btw I'm only missing the Cristal soul spear to 100% this headache of a "masterpiece")
I also just wanted to mention that at this moment, the hollow you one-shoted was in the middle of a swing, so you probably did counter damage while the latter one wasn't 12:00
Also, the lock-on issue only applies to colossal weapons (so I avoid those in many cases cause it can get frustrating)
I tried DS2 couple of years ago, couldn’t stand it more than couple of hours. Bought SOTFS edition on Steam this summer, finished it in about 20h (not including the DLCs), and I have to say that it isn’t “the worst game ever made”, as some people say, but it genuinely is the worst DS game. Difficulty isn’t the problem, it is the lack of; B-team that made DS2 clearly didn’t know how to implement rewarding difficulty, so they went with couple of weird designs; gem stones, abundance of souls, enemy galore etc. I found the story to be quite good, with Majula being the best hub out of all DS games. However, the game (for me) lacked in difficulty to an extreme; if you play extremely slow and pick your targets, it is a breeze. Secondly, bosses were extremely underwhelming, to the point where I had to try to die. Thirdly, hitboxes are atrocious. Finally, level design was also a bit weird, and connection between locations made 0 sense. Other than that, it was a fine game, but certainly not worth FS signature in my opinion. There are some additional problems with the game, but they are tied to some weird decisions that b-team made (ADP, life decreasing after death, enemy despawning etc.)
honestly, I hated my first ds2 playthrough. I played it right after ds1 (I played the whole series in order). Then I revisited it after elden ring and I appreciate it a lot more for some reason; maybe it's because of how out there it is. It still grinds my gears on some sections (snow field, cough cough) @VREMEPLOV1
3:05 I think that unlocking teleporting in the middle of the game is better. The world is designed around the fact that in the first half of the game you walk everywhere and locations are better connected. Blighttown wouldn't be that scary if you could just teleport out. When you defeat queelag you have to go through the blighttown, depths, lower undead burg and undead burg if you don't know the shortcut. I think that the feeling of being stuck somewere and the way the world is designed is very important in ds1, especially on the first playthrough.
Honestly DS2 fans are pretty ride or die. It's a great game and deserves a lot of praise while the negatives are very subjective. Some people actually enjoy the "bad" you talked about because it adds depth. DS2 haters make a lot of noise but most people just played it, enjoyed it, and moved on.
Edit: Is it such a bad thing that you had to rethink your approach to certain mechanics and unlearn some habits?
i'd argue yes if you make a third game where you have to learn all the unlearned habits lol.
11:53 the damage drops are meant to add an element of greater realism into the game, if you cut through someone then the impact is gonna be less on the second guy because the first guy absorbs the force from the attacks. Everyone learns this in school, at least I think they still teach it.
The most puzzling design decision IMO is replacing the occurrence of mimic chests with chests that punish you for hitting them by destroying their contents. Even enemy swings can accidentally destroy them!
Not really. Chests can survive a single swing even with the FUGS. The only instance where the enemy destroy a chest is in after the Ruin sentinels in the Lost Bastille where a rupturing hollow can destroy a chest that contains a rouge water.
A few corrections. 1) the distance damage (tip does less than middle) was in ds1. 2) ds2 added 8 directional rolling.
Distance damage for UGS definitely wasn't in ds1
@@ashketchup8392 yeah, not for UGSes but Halberds had them, it also makes more sense. Which would hurt more the tip of a sword, or the entire middle bit.
@@brickwitti if it's not the very tip, but the top part of the blade should pretty much do the same damage, because it's still a large chunk of metal with it's center of mass in the whole blade, not the handle
@@ashketchup8392 Yeah, I just feel like the middle would still do more. It's just more blade.
Seek seek lest
At 12 minutes, the difference is that one of them had a shield
First of all, pardon my english. Second of all, great editing and animations! Also the structure was pretty well paced.
But I must say that not only I disagree with most of your points, I'd say that your mostly wrong in your perception of the game. I think most people that dislike DS2 are just not willing to learn how to play the game. You said that the torch, one of the ONLY things that gets consistently praised, is usefull for only 2 levels, wich is kinda of wrong. You could have used in black gulch to set fire to the oil spills to burn the mobs. You could have used in shrine of amana to see the border of the level. Just to name a few.
Also, one of the good things about the small level design, is that there are traps and enviromental hazards that you can use to dispose of enemies, like in Iron Keep and Earthen Peak (plus the DLCs). Honestly, its the ONLY souls to try to make you do BIG BRAIN moves using not only the enviroment, but all tools in your disposal, like maybe using some itens on shrine of amana to easy things out?
And I'm sorry but I think your bad game mechanics are mostly "skill issue". Brrr feels bad to use this term, but most things you citaded to be BAD are manageble enogh. What I mean is: someone new to DS1 or Demon Souls could say the same thing about those games.
Anyway, I just like this game. And if I took my time to write you this it's because I care. Keep up the good work man!
Thanks for watching and great feedback! I also really like this game and can talk about it forever.
I wanted to make this video about why people generally don't like it. But because that would be too negative, I included the good as well, but only the biggest parts of the good. I agree with you pointing out all the ways you can use the environment to your advantage, and the additional moments you can use the torch. I feel like overall, the game mechanics I talked about in the negative section made the biggest impact. I don't see the devs reasoning behind giving you a damage debuff for clipping through walls or using the weapon tip. I feel like they're telling you not to use larger weapons which is against the whole identity of RPGs.
Overall it's not a bad game but I still think it's not as good as the others. Thanks for the comment!
I dont think the limited enemy spawn was a bad thing. When I first got to the slemter demon I was getting ganked every single time and the few times I was able to enter the boss room and survive, I had already used half of my heals. Ever since I figured out enemies arent infinite, I take some extra time to clear them out so I can have a combat free runback.
Simple answer:
Controls.
The player controls determine what the gameplay loop is like, what the pacing of it is, how it flows, how one approaches each situation and how they act in them, what sort of approach is safe and what is risky, etc. These controls also determine how enemies will be designed, how their behaviour will work, how recoveries, attack chains and tracking will function. And because DS2 has imprecise character movement with loads of unnecessary recovery animations on everything, weird momentum on most attacks, weird rules about input queue's, freaking pause animation before sprinting, the lock on state making all movement slower, odd weapon tracking and reaiming, and a slow dodge roll with rather low i-frames by default because it is tied to a stat... Yeah it's a mess. It results with a very clunky dungeon crawler type of game where exploration is fun and there's loads of weapon and build variety, but the combat gameplay is slow, tedious and discourages a whole lot so you're not left with much enjoyment overall. Or at least I really don't like the overall gameplay loop and how the mechanics are designed because it results with not that fun gameplay most of the time. This isn't helped by enemy placements and designs that further dictate how the player should act with these limited questionable controls.
I think for me, the bad mechanics also include the way they made invasions work. Particularly how hollow players were open to invasions.
Yes, you could burn a human effigy to cut off the invasions, but this also cut summoning off if you became human again.
And with the addition of Shades (temporary summons), I feel like there's no reason they couldn't have let hollow players summon Shades as a tradeoff to hollow invasions. At least they made being hollow somewhat viable with the addition of the Forlorn set in Scholar of the First Sin.
I remember when I brought my issue up, someone explained it was implemented to punish those that were "gaming the mechanics of the first game by remaining hollow to avoid invasions." To which I respond with "Okay, but I think 1 had a fair compromise. Yes, you could avoid invasions by remaining hollow, but this left you on your own against the world and bosses. You had to be willing to take the risk by going back to a bonfire, restoring humanity and risking an invasion if you wanted to summon backup. It was a fair compromise, not system gaming."
I love having my weapon break after 20 hits, my i-frame stat, enemies hitting me while walking through fog walls. And not to mention the amazing boss design, I just can't wait to fight 20 men at once using the same hp bar.
Too much hyperbole to take seriously, next pls
7:25 There is an item in Demon's Souls that makes you "human" again just like in Dark Souls 2 so you do not need to kill a boss for that. I would say the reason why DS2 handles the death penalty better is because it gradually lowers your health unlike Demon's Souls which just instantly halves your hp (unless you use the Cling Ring which works just like the Ring of Binding).
I think it’s the best one of the trilogy
good for you, you are wrong, but still.
Facts
Objectively unjustifiable position to have.
@@HopefulNihilist ah yes ds2 haters saying this game is objectively bad because they didn't git gud
@@khashygeld9776
Or maybe it's because the game fails miserably at everything it tries to do?
You fanboys are just bots who aren't capable at formulating a coherent thought to save yalls life.
I think we forget that judging something objectively is separate from our own opinions and preferences. Dark Souls 2 objectively isn't as well made and refined as the other 2 games, it introduced issues that the other 2 games didn't have. On the other hand, it's a different person's interpretation of Dark Souls, it's incredibly difficult to pick up someone else's art and produce a "next edition."
In the trilogy, I recognise that Dark Souls 2 is objectively the lowest in quality overall.
However, if you were to ask me which game is my favorite, 9/10 times I'm gonna say Dark Souls 2 and the reasons for that are far more complex than objective quality.
I am reminded every time I watch low budget movies that quality doesn't have to effect enjoyment. I think with entertainment, enjoyment is the only necessary metric.
Most sane comment yet
@@joegella I appreciate that.
I think this is a great video. One thing I'd add, (if it was mentioned and I missed it I apologise) is Dark Souls 2 offers a more powerful co op system. I had such a fun time playing through it with a friend, the small soapstone allows 15 minutes of co op practically anywhere, even if the area boss is dead. Dark Souls 3 felt more limited, "oh well, can't go any further, guess i'll leave, run to the same place in my world, and you can summon me back on the other side of this arbitrary fog wall."
This may well have been an issue with all the games but I noticed it more in Dark Souls 3.
just wanted to say REALLY good video, and i learned some new things.
around 12:00 the enemies without shields have different defense values (regardless whether they are blocking or not)! thats not really obvious that they're not the same type of enemy as the ones with a shield and weapon
13:30 free-aim when locked on only applies to great and ultra weapons, i think. it's supposed to be helpful in PvP
I dislike Dark Souls 2 for a few reasons, but the biggest one by far is that the bosses provided far less challenge for me than any of the other souls games. The vast majority were a first try and the most difficult boss took only 4 attempts. Most of the bosses seemingly only had 3 attacks, and they were generally slow and heavily telegraphed. I don't say all this to flex. It simply made things uninteresting for me. I enjoy a fight that takes me 20 tries and by the end I feel like I've learned something and increased my skill. It is unquestionably the easiest Souls/Soulslike, and, for me, its difficulty doesn't even kind of compare to its many competitors. I think it has fair few other problems beyond this, but this is what bothered me the most in my recent playthrough.
All this being said, I do not think it's a bad game, just bad in the sense that it offered little challenge in a genre that I play almost exclusively for the well crafted challenge.
To give it some credit, I think Majula is the best central hub area, the levels are well designed (enemy placement was very iffy at times, though), there are tons of interesting weapons and some cool mechanics (power stancing), and there's solid enemy variety.
Honestly the "Bad Game Mechanics section" Is jack full of misinformation and just echoing all the points that people have over and over refuted. It's sad that such points are still being made when there's tons of resources online to help you look into why things happen instead of writing them off as "Random" or "Unique" to DS2 when they're not
Its not jackfull of misinformation. You're watching it happening on screen. Everything in that section is something I've personally noticed while playing. Whether the details of why something happens is completely accurate or not is irrelevant because it's still something that happens. Just because I can't pinpoint exactly why I'm getting a damage debuff doesn't mean it isn't happening and isn't annoying as hell to deal with. Also, the fact that it's hard to pinpoint those details just shows how theres too many reasons for it to happen
Ds2 fans when someone points out game mechanics that are extremely unintuitive and obfuscated from the user
@@joegella i never said they're not happening. I said they're not random nor unique. This game is not DS1 and if you come in expecting to play the exact same game with a slightly different story and mechanics (like what ds3 eventually was) then you're coming in with the wrong expectations. Here's my rebuttal to your bad game mechanic points:
1. Your point on s is literally incorrect check domo's video on s for a detailed rebuttal
2. saying leveling adaptability sucks you dry ignores the fact that levels are cheaper in this game and you got a ton of souls from bosses
3. having vitality as a separate stat is crucial as equip load is not tied to s anymore and can actually be part of the build to have low vit but high end (Flynn's ring)
4. health declining gradually is actually less punishing than ds3 where you instantly lose 25% of your hp when you die embered
5. negative stamina penalty is not unique and is asking you to be more attentive of your stamina instead of roll+r1 spamming like ds1 and ds3
6. rolling costing so much stamina plays in hand to the fact that many other options are also available to avoid damage (blocking, strafing, ...)
7. conditional weapon damage is not random but rather a mechanic where all weapons have "sweet spots" (again not necessarily better just different, learn and work with it)
8. movement being locked to 8 cardinal directions is actually something they stuck with in all the following titles up to and including elden ring
9. soft locking is the game giving you more freedom in aiming and was perfect for pvp, if you want a hard lock simply let go of your movement (l-stick), e
10. Enemies following you and having long aggro after is the game discouraging running past enemies (again different, not necessarily better) and the game compensates for that by despawning enemies if you're stuck on a boss with CoC available for those who want to farm (something you put as a negative point?)
11. same goes for no animation s, hidden walls requiring a different button to discover is deliberate to you know HIDE THE WALLS from ds1 veterans (discovering these was very rewarding on launch)
12. hit boxes are not perfect yes but saying constantly scummed is blatantly a lie as ds2 has many samples of great hitboxes (fume knight, ruin sentinels, lost sinner to name a few)
13. healing being different is also the game telling you to think harder before healing (you know just like elden ring did, except it's not with animation reading but the heal being a more deliberate choice) again not necessarily better just different
14. durability now actually means something as opposed to ds3 and the game gives you the bracing knuckle ring and infinite repair powders if you're good (I and many others have completed the whole game no bonfire)
15. no heavy infusion is valid but it wasn't a thing in ds1 either so it's unfair to hold it against ds2
16. camera control being awkward is completely valid but it's a constant pain point in ALL souls games all the way up to elden ring now.
Happy to address any points i may have missed.
@@user-cg3em4cw4f DS2 haters when it's actually a different game from ds1 and not a reskin with a couple of added mechanics like ds3 was to ds1
@user-cg3em4cw4f ds1 fans furiously masturbating at how little of their game was explained to them, they watched a million videos instead
I think only UGSs miss the hits while locked on, the rest of the weapons all attack towards the enemy locked on. What's infuriating however, is that the lock on most of the time targets the far enemy rather than the close one.
i still prefer ds2 to ds3. at least ds2 did some interesting stuff with its lore instead of lazily rehashing ds1. and more than anythingi despise ds3s gameplay....that weird mix between bloodborne and souls combat just didnt work for me at all. genuinely love ds2
let's talk about "replayability" and how good is ds2 ng+ ... the build variety is gold together with elden ring, ds3 in that sense is sh1t.
DS3 is so overrated. IMO DS2 is the best of the 3. And a lot of the things that was said in this video just made me laugh. Seemed more like whining than actual criticism.
@@user-fq1qv3zk3z naah, complete cap. DS2 is the worst of the series and the only one of the series id genuinely call a bad game.
@@user-fq1qv3zk3z you have terrible taste
what mix? think that is just in your head.
I was someone who went into DS2 immediately after DS1 with no outside influence on how good or bad it supposedly was. I like the game now, but one thing that really annoyed me at first was the way your character moves. It feels completely different from DS1, and I can’t really say why they changed it. The only good thing about it is you can roll in 8 directions instead of 4, but even that doesn’t feel like an improvement when strafing in DS1 felt so much better.
Again, this was mostly just a case of something I had to get used to, but it’s still my #1 reason why DS2 is my least favorite Soulsborne. The way your character feels when they move is something I don’t hear a lot of people talk about in these types of videos, but in a game where getting into the flow of the movement and combat is a large part of what makes the game fun instead of just playable.
7:03 wasting souls? hard to level up adp? ds2 haters even complain cuz the game toss u too many souls, seems to be too ez in ds2 to become high lvl, how is lvling adp bad when u just need 20 levels to have the same amount of s of ds1 FAST roll ? u kill 2 boss and u gucci. ( and u can respec remember )
something that has never made sense is the bashing on having to allocate points to ADP, when the level costs are significantly cheaper, bonfire aesthetics and there are much more boss encounters that give you more souls. Even the soft caps are lower at 40, people clearly just know fuck all about the game.
@vryyyx people not liking taking away a core mechanic of the game and then requiring you to farm souls to get it back is not understandable to you?
@@joegella Was it not understandable to you that you don’t need to farm shit and the lower costs of levels + more bosses is natural progression? Bonfire aesthetic farming takes minutes and breaks the game anyway, and is a last resort, not a necessity.
You also didn’t comprehend the fact I opened what I said about the ALLOCATION of points, not the existence of it to begin with. No shit ADP shouldn’t exist to begin with, I didn’t dispute that. My point was, people who complain you have to level to 30 like it’s some hurdle when it’s not even remotely a problem if you just have common sense
@@vryyyx yeah it's insane to me, it's so f easy to lvl it up, even 92 agility is alrdy a decent spot, but ofc if u can reach 96 agility u can't complain at all.
@@joegella its that you said you get suficient adp "mid to late game" when actually you can get sufficient adp after the first 2 bosses and still upgrade hp and stamina etc (offcourse, if you know what you are doing)
Something big your good list was missing is the community from 2014/2015. DS2 has the best drip of the franchise so meta builds like Giant Dad disappeared and "Fashion Souls" took off. The Iron Keep Bridge became the first true spot for the new way to PVP, fight clubs. Challenge runs started to become a really popular thing with ladle runs and other shenanigans. Arena play was great and it was always busy. Arena even had special rewards for ranking up to different milestones. Covenants were a ton of fun to interact with and provided unique multiplayer experiences with their own special rewards to unlock. The ring that changes your appearance to look like a friendly phantom would also change the color of your red summoning signs on the ground that were used for dueling, lol. If a host disconnected from an invasion they would be placed in time out from all multiplayer gameplay. The game mechanics might have been a bit jank at times but the experience playing this game when it came out is irreplaceable. It was so much fun