Apparently there is a scammer in the comments with my profile pic. Obviously don't click on any links. I will ban these people as they come up but I am just one guy so I can't always keep up with bot accounts. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An alternative strategy to clearing the big room in Iron Keep after smelter demon I didn’t mention is to use the switches to have the platforms drop and kill the enemies. I didn’t see the switches so I didn’t know that I could do this until my Patron (Matt St. Amand) told me. I still somewhat prefer playing it safe and luring the enemies away from the archers because if you play risky in Scholar and die you are punished with having to clear large groups of enemies to get back to where you were, but I thought it’d be worth noting that I missed a strategy to clear this room in the video. Also, any footage of me running past enemies other than the Smelter Demon boss run is from my old videos, and not from my last playthrough where I fought all the enemies. To most people this should be obvious but sometimes people get confused so I thought I'd clarify.
I remember one time on those platforms, I press the button and almost fell together with the turtle dude, but he hit me with the hammer and I got on the safe part.
🤣 fr, he replayed the whole game the way the comments told him to just so he could say it's still trash, that is hall of fame hating. But he's not wrong scholar is garbage
@@nopurposeposting1548 Scholar is not a bad game, it is just the weakest game among all the great dark souls games which are already on a different level then most AAA games
The game got so ridiciously easy when starting as a cleric. Great Resonant Soul and Great Lightning Spear tore so heavily through the game. I remember doing effortless a deathless NG+ run with such a build to get the ring that made your right hand weapon invisible.
i credit ds2 to getting me into fromsoft games so i always had a soft spot for it. these videos made me replay it to see if i would still enjoy it. i did not.
i finished DS1 when i got into the franchise, then i heard all the criticism of DS2 SOTFS, lowered my expectations so much, kind of liked it but hated some stuff. then i played DS3, after playing DS3, i could not stand playing 5 seconds of DS2 SOTFS. and yes, the original DS2 is better tbh
Currently replaying it too. Until the Iron Keep everything was pretty easy and fun sometimes. But the swarm of enemies attacking you on several occasions is just horrible. Now in the Iron Keep the fun is gone! The fact the the archers blend into the background makes it even worse!
@@floend4810 swarms of enemies? you literally only fight 1-2 at a time if you play slowly and carefully. if you are fighting a "swarm" that is your own damn fault.
@@Garl_Vinland the build variety is pretty nice and weapons are aplenty for a good build in your 1st playthough. I’ve had two great swords duelweileded on my first playthough. Though due to the games mixed bosses and feel I just never had fun using what would be my fav build I’ve made in the franchise
@@Garl_Vinland in my subjective experience I just wasn’t engaged. Bosses took at the most 4 tries. The run backs were harder. If I had this build fighting ds3 or Elden ring bosses I would have way more fun because personally it’s more engaging.
Speaking as someone who thinks Iron Keep is the best grind spot in the series, you messed up by pulling the second lever. I only ever pull the first one and leave it at a diagonal angle. It prevents one of the knights from coming towards you and you can dispatch him with a plunging attack when you get near Smelter's boss room. Of course, not the right audience for discussing the habit of staying in one place for 3 hours grinding souls and listening to podcasts. But someone might find this helpful!
I don’t know how running past enemies makes you bad. I run past enemies a ton in ds3 and I love the game and am good at it. It gets boring after a while especially in ds2
I kill every single enemy in ds3 at least once or I don't feel like I've actually won. But in Elden Ring I just sneak past almost everything 🤷♂ Too many of them and too little runes to bother
It's time consuming is all. You want to apply what you just learned from dying to the boss and you don't want to spend five minutes killing enemies to get there just to probably die again.
@@PiterTraceurFA I feel the same. I need to clear all enemies at least the first time, i wanna to pick up every item, se every room, learn the layout, i think people rely to much on guides, they see a guy doing somenthing and just follow. I like to play blind, cleaning every part at least the first time, how do you will know the layout if you aways running and rushing the game?🤔
Very difficult levels where you are best off killing most or all of the enemies, followed by a boss that's relatively easy if you make it there with enough of your resources intact, is one of quite a few ways that Dark Souls 2 feels like a throwback to Demon's Souls to me.
@@coolguychapman6685 you never have to deal with that many enemies if you take your time. the fact that people complain about the amount of enemies is just a testament to the lack of care and precision they take to deal with them.
I seem to remember you saying in a previous video that you don't do spellcaster builds, but for those of us that use them, a hexer battlemage is one of the most fun builds I've had in the series. I've found that light roll with a dex weapon makes pure melee significantly easier for me at least. Being fast in a slow game has a definite advantage. 100% collection in this game sucks and I can't defend it. Non-respawning red phantoms and Dragon Shrine are the bane of completionists.
@Isidoro T Yeah, I know. It becomes quite a pain in Undead Crypt and Aldia's Keep repeatedly having to clear an area and fight a boss just to respawn an enemy and hope for a drop.
Correction the game isnt slow your character is slow this is one of the cheap difficulty ds2 have if you want me to deal 8 enemies in a tight place at least let me cancel my attack to dodge but nope you cant do that you attack first then dodge like playing a turn base rpg
Imo ds2 is still better than elden ring. I still remember all the shit ds2 received for reused 1-2 boss and for making gank squads as boss fight. And here we are now in elden ring, killing the same bosses over and over sprinkled in some gank squad bosses. Not even getting into the combat, where every single weapon has almost the same or simply the same movesets and the pvp is mostly about ashes of war spamming while in previous souls you got multiple different type of movesets in the same tiers. Ands imo DS2 is still among the harder one from the souls series, atleast compared to ds1 and demon souls its stupid hard, compared to ds3 its stupid easy.
I guess I must not be a "normal person", because I kill all the enemies when going through the levels, and not only do I not find it boring, I find it fun! Oh, and to be fair I always kill every boss on my first or second attempt so I never had to deal with the dreaded "boss run".
There would be no dreaded boss runs if the area between the bonfire and fog door is devoid of enemies. It actually make me sad when the enemies stopped respawning.
"My main issue with Scholar is that the game is still janky as ever, but they decided to spam me with enemies to make all of the issues worse" This legit sums up my issues with Scholar. I don't mind most of the Souls jank when the game is clearly designed around said jank, like most Souls games are. There's some areas in each game that you can point at and say they may have overstepped a little (Lost Izalith being an easy example), but that's basically *all* of Scholar. DS2 vanilla didn't really have a very significant portion of the issues I have with Scholar, sure it has a lot of the core design issues in the systems (Soul Memory, Agility, etc) but the enemy placement and quantity are significantly better, and it's really a shame that it's so hard to get your hands on the original version of the game nowadays.
@@Hans1994yout I'm more referring to on PC. Getting physical DS2 vanilla for a console now is always secondhand and you pretty much have to get a Steam Key from a shady website to get it on PC.
Izalith is bad, but it was clear they were short on time. The entire area is half backed and everyone accepts it. DS2 is that, throughout the entire game, and we're told we have to enjoy it or we're bad
@@Pangora2 DS2, even in Scholar, has some areas I genuinely enjoy. But even in those areas you can always feel the looming presence of DS2 waiting to kill you. It's very obvious that the devs of DS2 designed the game with the express goal of being difficult. Miyazaki has said before that when they designed DS1 the difficulty was a result of following their design philosophy, not the goal, which is very telling.
Learn to adapt to the game situation and scholar is more easy then base they more many things like ancient dragon you are a challenge runner stop playing bad on purpose
Scholar is like a long slide but instead of being aimed down to have fun it goes up and down, so you can slide a little then climb a lot then slide more, then climb but the climbing is boring so boring some people feel it is not worth finishing it, so they jump off, what I mean is the slope doesn't give enough momentum to get up, so you have to walk then slide again only to have to walk.
Just got ds2 sotfs and quit 6 hrs in after the pursuer. The fact that majority of the rooms have like 2-5 enemies that agro onto you before you can even see them and then they gank you ruins the experience. Going to give the vanilla version a try. Also, I enjoy your critiques Feeble King, cant stop watching them.
I'm the same though I got further than that. Bosses are trash mobs are overwhelming, movement is to slow no I frames for doors or chests adp investment is mandatory the list could go on and it's sad I want to play dark souls 2 not softs but will never get to.
@wilfredwayne7139 probably the builds you and that other guy was using. I went with Strength/Hex builds and demolished bosses and mobs like it was nothing. I even went pure Strength and still demolished most mobs. It's how you approach the area and enemies. Don't just rush in head strong cause you gonna get crushed. Game takes a bit more patience and map knowledge. Once you know the map knowledge you can run through mobs easily. In my opinion this is the best dark souls game.
@@coolguychapman6685 well the reason that the assumption is made, is because you never have to fight that many enemies at a time. even when you do have to fight multiple, usually they come in waves, allowing you to take them out in groups of 1-2, sometimes 3. it's not hard.
DS2 stans are weird to me. There are objectively poor gameplay mechanics in the game and they either refuse to admit it/flat out deny it, or they defend the poor choices simply because they have a personal bias towards the game. I think it's important to criticize the things we like too. Every time a criticism video comes out all I see are "DS2 is so dreamy, the atmosphere is magical, DS2 brings me the most nostalgia, etc"
It's sad, DS2 does some good things but by defending the bad stuff so hard it just makes it all look bad. We can admit the hitboxes are garbage and that bonfire aescetic system is good.
@@SoulsOfCinderI play vanilla and I genuinely loved taking it slow and just enjoying my time. I kind of want to play SOTFS to see if it’s actually that bad
I think it's very telling that DS2 is the only souls game that has the mechanic of enemies disappearing if you kill them enough time. It's like the devs realized in late-stage development that people would quit the game out of boredom if they had to fight 30 alonne knights every time they died to smelter demon and didn't want to redo all the enemy placement, so added this mechanic(that is never mentioned at any point to the player) last minute. When looking up strats for iron passage / memory of the old iron king I found people who were genuinely recommendeding that I kill every enemy one at a time, rest at the bonfire, and then kill them all *again* until they don't respawn. At that point I'd rather write a fucking essay.
Thanks for keeping the DS2 conversation going, it doesn’t deserve to be forgotten love it or hate it. Original version is definitely much better than scholar.
I feel old since my first game was demons souls ps3, seeing now most people got their start on either DS3 or Elden ring, they probably went back and played sotfs since it’s the “definitive” version leaving us OG fans a forgotten relic.
Discovered this channel recently, after watching way way way too many Dark souls and elden rings critique/analysis videos and watching the videos on this channel where a synthesis of the best ideas of other channels, mixed with some great original ideas. In particular, I loved the video when you outlined the development of boss design from DS1 to DS3 to Elden ring. That was a personal favorite.
( I know it's common knowledge ) Something I don't hear a lot of people talk about is how you can actually by farming an area and killing the enemies many many times and clearing the area you actually depopulate the area the enemies will no longer spawn until you use a bonfire aesthetic...best of my knowledge this is the only from soft game that actually enemies disappear when you kill them enough times permanently
twelve times, you need to kill the twelve times and Feeble King actually talked about it in his las video. Just goes to show deep down the devs probably knew the enemy placement/number was just ridiculous, so they added this to help players who are struggling in a certain area. A well designed level with good enemy placement wouldn't need that kind of feature.
@Hevig Krieger I wish all Souls games had it tbh. A counter argument would be that enemy despawns keep you from farming and force you to up the difficulty of the level if you wish to continue farming. Not saying that that *is* the reason, but it is a possibility that that was the reason they added it in Vanilla (it has been around since vanilla not scholar btw -- idk if you were insinuating that, but thought I should mention it).
I mean the fact that people would consider it worthwhile to farm enemies over and over just so they can run back to a boss says more about how bad DS2's enemy placement is than it does about that being a good feature.
@@HonsHon I think is to make things easier, COC that is supposed to be the hard mode of the game disable this feature, and make even the enemies you killed until despawn spawn again, so if you want to farm you can just join COC, farm enemies, and then leave COC, so the only thing this achieve is making things a bit easier for struggling players, and allow people with too much free time to completely clean some area, just to hang around in a empty map ...i did in Heides, the place looks beautiful when everyone is dead.
Ds2 is one of my top favorite games, and its definitely got alot of issues. Shrine of amana is definitely a nightmare, even if you perfect doing runs through it. Iron keep was one of my most hated spots at first until i learned bash weapons like the hammer eats through the knights health almost completely. The game for me feels less like brute forcing through the game, and more like reciting a book/story with remebering when to use which item or weapon to pull out for what situation, but thats definitely not a thing for everyone
I did a playthrough of DS2 after 7 years recently with a grand lance build, I don't know if that weapon is one of those "noob meta" weapons like the Sellsword Twin Blades or Ludwigs Holy Blade, but I was astounded how trivial the game was going back to it. There wasn't a single boss in the game that could kill me, it got to the point where I didnt even have my estus on my hot bar, the life gems alone were more than enough to sustain me. Everytime I ran into a spam bush I just chucked an Alluring Skull into the corner of the room and started backstab chaining. My hot bar was reserved for Pine Resin, Life Gems and throwables almost exclusively. literally the only thing that could kill me in DS2 was gravity and the jank ass "Snap Point" control stick dead zone based movement. it was incredibly boring and underwhelming, I wasn't even using a shield, at 25 ADP nobody could hardly touch me, IF I even needed to dodge in the first place with how slow every boss was. Very dissapointing experience, I dont understand how anyone could consider it a good souls game.
you call it boring but the slow kill everything play style for scholar is fun to me. i used a shield to block ranged attack, never was problem. i honestly dont like to roll so every dark souls game and elden ring im at 99% equip load. i want adaptability back. loved the salt it generated while i ignored it.
Man i cant think about dark souls whitout the roll Is like the thing that make me love these games The way you can perfect that ability and be invencible
@@alanbastos9766i mostly hate ds2 because of the parry mechanic since im not a "roll" guy but a "parry" guy and the deprived class which was aeguably the best class in ds1 and a decent in ds3 sucks. Obv i chose it to slowly, progessibly go through the game and still remember gettinf the first "dagger" but relying on backstabs only isnt too cool. At least for me
I am one of those people you mentioned back in your other Scholar of the First Sin-roast video. I am one of these guys who very much enjoyed Dark Souls 2. But just like you, I enjoyed the base game much more than the Scholar edition, even though I am not really able anymore to differ between my memories of DS2/Scholar. I played both version over 800 hours and the greatest appeal of this game to me was that it was my first Souls-experience with a mostly stable and fully functional multiplayer as well as the probably most variable fashion style. But when it comes down to mechanics, level-design, enemy behavior and overall difference in animations to the other entries of the souls series, I totally agree with you. But I still do like DS2 to return to Drangleic once in a while - just to wallow in nostalgia ~
U repeating so much "infinite healing" that is Like if gems are actually a fast Heal System. Also all the clips u show with ganks (that u showing costantly) seems Like watching a different game, that is not a normal thing in ds2, stop trying to make this game look worst than what it is XD lol
Your comment about pacing pretty much nailed it. One of the most beautiful strengths of DSII is the story-telling, and seeing that story played out through the characters and environments and interactions with the NPC's. When you break the pacing, you break the heart and soul of this game. Alternatively, even say somehow magically somebody could OP through all the gank squads and not "ruin" the pacing, the sheer clutter of the whole mess would be like trying to listen to a beautiful musical composition while someone is jack-hammering outside your window- it's beyond "just irritating" and even if you survive it, it 100% ruins the experience. DSII my favorite Souls game... I weep for what they did to this beautiful gem in Scholar. Btw, thanks for your commitment to seeking answers and sharing the journey. Love it.
I get what you're saying, but I think a lot of these issues exist in the other souls games too: Hidden archers? What about the dart dudes in blightown? Levels that aren't hard just slow to navigate? Crystal caves, dukes library, izalith, and, oh my god - tomb of the giants As far as enemy spam goes, DS3 has more enemies per area than any of the previous games, and they're faster, too I do agree that there are issues with agility, hitboxes, etc. that are exclusive/more prevalent in DS2, but just like all the other games, there are things DS2 does better than the other entries in the series Obviously it's all subjective, but the condescending tone here and stuff like "I was surprised to find a niche community who enjoy SOTFS" doesn't feel great for people who really value this weird, unique game
To counter your shitty points You mean the one area in the ENTIRE game that has hidden archers? The ones that do no damage and die in one hit? Those ones? Their annoying but at least they don't take 25 percent of your life with every hit while they send 3 or 4 melee dudes after you Crystal caves is slow to navigate? It take 3 MINUTES TO EXPLORE ALL OF IT izaleth is only annoying to navigate cause of bed of chaos the ONE bad boss in the game and tomb of the giants is easy as fuck when you get the skull lantern While dark souls 3 may have had more enemies they were FAR MORE SPREAD OUT then the enemies in dark souls 2 not only that but the enemies in dark souls 3 can't see you 30 or 40 yards away like they can in dark souls 2 FURTHURMORE dark souls 3 enemies dont spam attack you and break your poise with every hit As much as dark souls 2 has good combat everything else sucks about it the bosses the enemies the area designs the fact you need to level up a stat just to get invincibility frames when you didn't have to do that at all in ANY other souls borne game before or since this game is trash its fine people like it but they have to admit the flaws and bad game designs this game has
@@samcrow4640 MAYBE I could take any of his Souls titles 'critiques' seriously if 90% of his footage wasn't playing by two handing a Broadsword, or something similar (Longsword in Elden Ring). I think his 'critiques' are too based off his SL1 experiences, which negates much of what he has to say.
What an idiot thinking he could play a souls game with a... normal sword? ds2Tards will say this like it doesn't mean that the game is poorly balanced.
my strategy for Iron Keep: die enough times that the enemies don't respawn after being killed. interestingly enough that was also my strategy for the boss run in Brume Tower...
I agree, the PvE in this game is the worst in the series. Like why is my lock on range so short compared to the sorcerers who can shoot me across the map? Why does the game use weapon degradation to punish me for playing the game? How is playing the same level I just fully explored 4 times to fight the same boss suppose to be engaging? I can understand if its a eassy boss but for harder bosses like sir alonne I feel boss runs like this just ruins the boss.
Not sure why you wasted your time making three videos on this game when all three can be summarized as "Dark Souls 2 is bad because I can't run past every enemy and anybody who disagrees just hates my playstyle."
@@1stoftheFatuiHarbingers let's just say it was a bit like if you decided to roast the whole sport of soccer, because you don't like interacting with the other players or the field or the rules or the referee and you just want to kick a ball into a goal over and over, assuming that *that's* the intended way to play soccer.
I platinumed scholar and I loved it so much I'm currently platinuming ds2 vanilla. Vanilla has pretty much the same or worse gank squads compared with scholar. I am seeing very little difference honestly. Scholar also gives you the tools to build your own gank squad if you're smart about it. Almost every level has an NPC summon or two that will help you clear the enemies. In scholar you can even pull an NPC that's meant for the old iron king boss fight and use her and Lucatiel to kill smelty boy. I also used her to help me perma-clear almost the entire iron keep map as I needed to use Unveil to see when an invader spawned for the bell keeper covenant spell Hidden Weapon. The bullshit statue and ruin sentinel room in Dranglic? There's an NPC summon there in scholar that distracts them all and tanks wonderfully, its an excellent mid game soul farm with him in the fight. Dragon rider duo? scholars got a summon. The area after dragon rider duo? Yet another summon and you can pull him into the looking glass knight boss fight as well to keep Benhart of Jugo alive for an easy moonlight greatsword achievement . Scholar gives ample tools to make the game a breeze if you actually use them. Plus all the weapons you can get earlier in scholar as opposed to their later game placements in vanilla makes a scholar more fun right out of the gate. You and I definitely have different playstyles though and if I played like you do I can see me not enjoying either version of the game at all, especially scholar.
I had a hard time deciding whether this video was satire or not, but apparently it's not. The dude seems to just power on with dual broadswords and doesn't use items like Alluring Skull for manipulating enemies or anything like that. It's like he chose to hit the wall with his head and complained that it hurts. DS2 has an excellent selection of weapons and some of the best movesets in the franchise, and he still chose dual broadswords... I agree that there are many things SotFS did wrong, but still prefer it compared to vanilla. Also I completely understand people that hate the pacing of the game if they come from DS3, Bloodborne or Elden Ring. It's simply not the same and takes time to get used to. Also all of the aforementioned have areas packed with enemies and mistakes as far as game design is concerned.
Great reply. I’m on my first run of SoTFS and have been curious about vanilla but never played it. I loved this game until Ruin Sentinels. The areas after are gank city and aren’t enjoyable like the first several hours. It was an awesome chill game prior to that. Which isn’t what I was expecting since I came from DS3/BB/ER. I’m at Iron Keep now. Good luck on your vanilla run.
i personally like dark souls 2 SOTFS but for different reasons but what you said is correct , fighting enemies is fun until you die and have to do it again , you can kill them 12 times but it is a time sink making your bored when all you want to do is fight the 5th mediocre boss of the day , dark souls 2 SOTFS pve is meh but the pvp is really good
Last year I played Dark Souls 2 SotFS for the first time, I played it eliminating most of the enemies and with the target-lock activated and at least I can say that it was not pleasant. In the first game choosing between running past enemies or fighting everyone makes sense, one way is faster but the other way is safer. In Dark Souls 2, facing all the enemies will probably cause you to consume more resources, be it healing or weapon repair items, the only exception is if you intend to depopulate the entire area killing everything enough times but it is a process that personally seems to me quite tedious. Despite the fact that at first I almost hated every minute of this game, in the long run I was able to appreciate some aspects that I liked, although in my case I am not going to start a new game or play the previous version of the game xD
People are incapable of self control. Just buy 10 lifegems at a time. Can't carry more than that. Have to travel back and reset to get more, just like estus. Scholar is fun, but in a pokemon kinda way with nuzlocking. You have to implement your own rules because the developers didn't/couldn't do the job of balancing the game right.
I best the Iron Keep (in SOTFS) an hour before this video was released. That level fucking sucks. Who the hell thought that fighting all those Alonne knights before the Smelter Demon was a good idea!?
Me personally, I'm not going to argue, enemy placement sucks, there is jank, the combat is kinda ass. But, I enjoy dark souls 2, because it's the most metroid like, and I can make some really stupid builds way faster and easier. This is also one of the few games I'd argue it being so easy is a form enjoyment. Not just lifegems, but I can level 140 by mid game with bonfire aesthetics and farming rotten. So, I don't disagree it's valid reasons to hate it, and it is bad game design, but just cause it's bad doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. But my enjoyment is like, I'll go to DS3 and do a challening run and have great duels, I go to ds2 to feel like a god, for some chill lo fi souls
Having played both vanilla and scholar at the time they released and having played through multiple times since, my only consensus after all of this is that DS2 sorely needs a current gen remake. Not just a remaster, it needs a remake. There are positive changes to borrow from scholar, enemy spam aside, so I would love to see everything ironed out by bringing the positives of both versions together in a remake. It would be fine by me if enemies and the player got adjusted to the DS3 pace of things, I just want the black sheep of souls to have a chance for redemption. All this being said, it is more likely we get a bloodborne PC port than any of this happening imo.
I only played vanilla but once i noticed enemies stop spawning after so many runs, I kinda just thought that's what I should do to get the most levels and clear the way to the boss, I enjoyed it, there is something cool about basically clearing out the map
I think there should have been a fortress with absolutely insane enemy spam in elden ring, an area dedicated to summoning your homies and spamming those aoe spells and arts of war that are barely ever that useful in the regular game but then outright mandatory in this hypothetical area. Elden Ring encourages new players to summon and co-op with their overtuned bosses that are too confusing to learn even for veteran players, would have liked some areas where the actual areas had any point to summon and do co-op in them.
As someone who is playing through Scholar rn. It’s definitely a different game from ds3, where it feels more like the original demon souls in the fact it’s challenge is through the whole level rather than just the bosses. It makes every level feel interesting compared to the slog of ds3s levels where I would just run past everything
Ds2 and SOTFS are both amazing games. I have sunk 1k hours into just vanilla DS2. Most of those hours were PvP. I have yet to sink that many hours into any other souls game. No other souls game besides Elden Ring has hex builds or has such a complex build system as DS2. Hex builds are amazing especially the Crypt Blacksword with high faith, int and strength. That thing is such a beast. And the fun doesn’t even stop there. I used to dominate the Lava Bridge with the Eleum Loyce PvP. Good times! DS2 had some of the most over the top weapons, like the Boss Katana from the DLC or the Burnt chicken wing hammer or the Cool ranch and Cheddar Smelter Swords or Raime’s Ultra GreatSword. So many good boss armors and weapons it’s insane.
@@billythenarwhal1579 Yeah that’s your opinion though lol. I’ve played every single souls game and it’s not anything different. Some games are faster, some are slower.
@@billythenarwhal1579 Deffo. Ds2’s gameplay feels like it was made by a completely different dev team. People like to point out ds1 was also slow but that’s not at all what makes ds2 feel different.
Having never played vanilla, only having scholar for reference in my personal experience, I very reluctantly became a scholar fan. When I first started playing the souls games, I got DS1 on the xbox 360 and played until I got to the Taurus Demon. At the time, I only knew that Dark Souls was that stupidly hard game that everyone says to "Git gud" at, and I had no frame of reference for what a boss run was supposed to be like. So every time I tried to fight Taurus Demon while on the bridge, he would knock me off the side, body block me into being unable to avoid his lingering hitbox, walk into me so I stagger right before an attack, etc. and die without getting a proper chance to fight him. I noticed the parapet with the crossbow hollows and killed them every time, but I didn't plunge attack him because I wanted to fight him in the way I thought was "The intended experience". Needing to replay basically an entire level every time I died made me insanely frustrated, but I knew it was a hard game, so I kept trying for a while. I realized, thinking how much of an idiot I was, that fighting him on the bridge is NOT intended, because of how unreasonable it is to win that way. So I went to the top of the parapet, where there is more room to avoid his attacks. So I wait for him to jump up, and he does, but in doing so, there is a sweeping hitbox that kills me in one hit. I put the game down and watched some design analysis videos to see what I might have been doing wrong. The video I saw said that the intended way to kill Taurus is to climb up, apply gold pine resin, plunge, run away, then climb and plunge again, 3 more times in a row. He said that the structure of this fight had the purpose of piggybacking off of advice given from player-to-player. I registered this as meaning "Dark Souls fans don't actually git gud, they just use whatever cheats they want and pretend like they're the best gamers around. This game SUCKS." So this is where I went hollow for the first time. That's right. I didn't even make it to Capra before going hollow. After some time, my curiosity got the better of me, and I finally tried playing DS3, which I had heard was much better for beginners. After some initial struggling, I quickly fell in love with it. I played through the whole game, and was so excited to go back to the first that when my file corrupted at the soul of cinder, I didn't even care. After making my way past Taurus, then accidentally skipping capra and going through all of upper blighttown backward since I was told by the internet that the master key is the only viable starting gift. By the time I got to Sen's, then Anal Rodeo, and beyond, I reluctantly decided that I also loved DS1. After a long time of playing DS3 and 1, I tried my hand at the infamous DS2. I struggled so hard with the first half of the game, but after getting my +10 weapon, like 50 health, full adaptability, etc. I basically breezed through the second half and had much, much, much more fun. Even areas like the shrine of amana were so much easier than I had heard. Now, I can proudly say that I've gotten 100% achievements for all 3 games, and I very reluctantly love all of them.
I have two things I don't really understand: 1: Why do you say the castle is the lategame? It is the powertrip before the boss. You had the same in DS1, everything after Orstein & Smough is really easy, to show you how strong you have become. Scholar includes every DLC, did you ever play it? 2: Did you forget about the bossruns to the Bed of Chaos or just the way to New Londo? The latter area only works, because you are constantlay on edge because of the trouble to get there. Yes, you can just run for all of them, same for Scholar though, I don't remember how, but on my first playthough I just booked it to the Smelter Demon. Sometimes you have to hit an enemy to stagger them or get them out of range, before traversing the fog. I wouldn't ever touch something as puny as a Broadsword, though, so I don't know if this also works for weapons without any knockback or stagger.
Finally playing DkS2 Scholar - and I can see what you mean. I have played and beat all the other souls games, DkS2 just came out when I was burnout playing souls games and DkS3 got me to come back because of friends and then I took a long hiatus from Souls games. Playing this now and on my first run. having to fight and kite 3 armored turtles, is legit annoying, you can make a mistake and aggro 4. =/ theres no boss in this area either, why are some places like this. I swear the game wants you to farm the enemies till they disappear before you get a safe boss run, which in my honest opinion is really bad design, the whole point of shortcuts was to make getting from bonfire to boss gate because it was rewarding you for getting to the boss and wasnt punishing you for trudging through the deluge of mobs to finally get to the boss gate, simple reward system. feels unrewarding if I just need to do everything over again even after unlocking the shortcut.
@@nicolasoliveira4903 No it was still made mostly by fromsoft team just under a different director and as a smaller side project to bloodborne developed in the meantime. And i grouped it for being a part of the franchise so not like who specifically made it at fromsoft changes anything. You are just showing off and trying to sound smart
The comment on hit trading is true until you reach NG++, Shrine of Amana becomes a nightmare as agroing one enemy from afar pulls all of them and a simple gank combo can take down a level 230 character
Bro. That guy just can't play DS2 that good so he choose to badmouth this game. Also, why bragging about 1 clip that he showed like 11 times as it game fault and not his
The problem in your last video wasn't only trying to rush past all enemies and failing, you also was using a +3 broadsword by the time you were in Iron Keep, you could have a +8 weapon easily by that point, and it would be much easier to kill the enemies. And the part where you complained about the "invisible archer" that you literally hit once and run past it was really funny
This is spot on! I played PS3 Scholar (which has same enemy placements as vanilla) back in the day and loved it. I recently fired up Scholar on PC- it's a gank nightmare and makes the game tedious and much less fun.
Whenever I think about Scholar vs Dark Souls II, I always remember my experience. I first played through Scholar half way then quit. Then I played through Dark Souls II multiple times and loved it. Then I played the rest of Scholar out of pure obligation.
Thanks for sharing your scholar experiences i started with scholar and hated this game so much until you introduced me to the original had no idea how different the 2 were.
Finally getting a friend to play dark souls series, and ds2 is my favourite, I kinda forgot how awful the scholar changes were since its been years and years, but.. I might legitimately buy them the more expensive and less populated ds2 (i dont even know if vanilla DS2 has a community, maybe a similar community to dark souls 1 pc in 2013? when it was like 800 people tops?) I just can't express how soulless scholar feels, like they gutted the game, made it a "play it once" thing and tried to make people hate it? IDK They seriously mis stepped with scholar, None of the games changes needed to happen, including making my favourite armour, the visible Aurous set less valuable (its in a chest... versus having to grind sentinel boss new game+ and most people never seeing it at all) I dont see why they would make it so you actually burn out from the tedious enemy placements, Who playtested it? What was the goal of it? To make people look up builds and stuff? They kind of played around with the idea of making some enemies tougher with the DLC (im pretty sure in vanilla, the dlc enemies had their own version of toughness where you couldn't kill them too quickly) and I guess they werent happy with that so they just spammed you with enemies and called it a day.
Dude play dark souls 2 with the seeker of fire mod improves everything about the game and makes it so much more enjoyable I used to hate Dark souls 2 but after I played the Dark souls 2 seek of fire mod it made me love this game
As someone who really likes the game, I think what irks me a lot about criticism it gets is that the general negative consensus causes people to often look for things to be frustrated with rather than the other way around. Groups of enemies are frequently referred to derisively as being something done just to make the game hard but I see it a different way. I think much of the gameplay loop of dark souls 2 (scholar at least) is about putting the player in a bad situation and forcing them to rely on tactical thinking to get out of it. The area before the Ruin Sentinels in the Lost Bastille is a great example of this. You open the door and suddenly are charged by a large group of knight enemies. This seems like a huge problem, but the player has options here. They can back out of the room and lead the enemies onto a narrow bridge where it is impossible for them to surround the player. A little further back than that, there is a section with some explosive barrels that the player can use to do aoe damage to the group. It is on the player to consider their options in what seems like a bullshit scenario, and I find that style extremely compelling. Admittedly there is a varying degree of quality in terms of how fun these segments are, but I think the game becomes a lot more enjoyable when looked at like this. Even that area in iron keep does have a sort of solution, in that it is possible to lure a lot of the enemies into the room with the ballista and shoot them. This also makes life gems as a mechanic make a lot more sense, since the game is more about surviving a set of specific scenarios than the heavy attrition the first game had.
It's a system that isn't built for tons of enemies, yet DS2 and scholar rely on cheap tricks and numbers just to kill new players more. Veterans know to avoid it but that takes time and effort
Also that thing about that knight gank squad - the player mastered that skill in the forest. Agro too much and kite them backwards. It's the same in every encounter. Aggro and run awaym aggro and run away.
The bosses weren't bad in my experience, it was the mob enemies. The boss runbacks combined with the aggro range and sheer number of mobs is infuriating. Beating this game once is enough
RUclips is so funny showing me this video now. At the same time, others are complaining about ER DLC being too hard and I watched Lil Aggy complete a blind DS2 run and felt it was too easy then chose the CoC halfway. git good has never been more apt advice than this.
The guy with the comment at 3:11 has a point. Take for example Iron Keep. Alonne knights go down easily if you don't bum rush them and get swarmed and are good for soul farming. What is the point of a game if the only thing you do is just rush, rush, rush and never take the time to explore / kill enemies to increase your level and get more gear ?
@@agostonbazmajer1100 I know all about it trust me. But it's also important to have. I love getting stronger in RPG games, especially in tough ones like Dark Souls. I love revisiting areas and crushing enemies that once kicked my ass.
Apparently there is a scammer in the comments with my profile pic. Obviously don't click on any links. I will ban these people as they come up but I am just one guy so I can't always keep up with bot accounts.
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An alternative strategy to clearing the big room in Iron Keep after smelter demon I didn’t mention is to use the switches to have the platforms drop and kill the enemies. I didn’t see the switches so I didn’t know that I could do this until my Patron (Matt St. Amand) told me. I still somewhat prefer playing it safe and luring the enemies away from the archers because if you play risky in Scholar and die you are punished with having to clear large groups of enemies to get back to where you were, but I thought it’d be worth noting that I missed a strategy to clear this room in the video.
Also, any footage of me running past enemies other than the Smelter Demon boss run is from my old videos, and not from my last playthrough where I fought all the enemies. To most people this should be obvious but sometimes people get confused so I thought I'd clarify.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. The dlc are still pretty awesome and it doesn’t seem like that was ruined by enemy spam atleast
Gotta play it again the right way for the authentic experience. Ain't over yet bro
Eh the platforms sort of help, but that part is still annoying even in vanilla
If someone answers that I give them my like, it is inevitable
I remember one time on those platforms, I press the button and almost fell together with the turtle dude, but he hit me with the hammer and I got on the safe part.
Domo3000 has debunked this stupid video by Feeble King, Feeble is just ignorant, we can't blame him for not understanding a damn thing
I love DS2 and DS2 critique videos.
I put them on while playing.
legit bro I play mauler critic videos while playing ds2 Scholar 😆
Indeed, it's my guilty pleasure to watch DS2 SotFS be shat on while the original DS2 is getting loved for what it is.
I did that when I was grinding the covenants for the platinum. Lol
Woah, I thought I was the only one haha
@@doriangray1935 haha me too
This man actually said “i took your advice and it still sucks.” Lmao I love it
Scholar convinced me that quitting out to reset enemies is an intended mechanic
lmao
Just like in 1
........ 👌
@@ShadeTavish ive only spam quit out in 2 and 3 lol
@@ameshizen381 you've never done the Catacombs run then
the dedication this guy put on hate-playing is astonishing
🤣 fr, he replayed the whole game the way the comments told him to just so he could say it's still trash, that is hall of fame hating. But he's not wrong scholar is garbage
I played this game twice even tho I hated it because I wanted to be able to know with certainty why ds2 fans are liars
@@rondobrondo i havent completed the game but i can say i enjoyed it (sotfs version)
@@nopurposeposting1548did you enjoy it when you reached Amana because that is the most boring area in any fromsoft game I’ve played
@@nopurposeposting1548 Scholar is not a bad game, it is just the weakest game among all the great dark souls games which are already on a different level then most AAA games
Now you only need to do a vanilla patchless cleric run for the complete trinity of Dark Souls 2 experience
The game got so ridiciously easy when starting as a cleric. Great Resonant Soul and Great Lightning Spear tore so heavily through the game. I remember doing effortless a deathless NG+ run with such a build to get the ring that made your right hand weapon invisible.
The goal is to lower suicide rates, not increase them....
@@zacoliver5547Wish that was in Scholar so i could clear Iron keep and Shrine without wanting to kms every 39 seconds
Ah yes, Dark Souls 2 Sotfs. A.k.a, the Dark Souls of the Dark Souls series
Nice grasses man.
@@bchro thank you. Hopefully nothing will be wong
@@Kampfender_Kriegerthere's no brame, there's no frame, ish up to you
i credit ds2 to getting me into fromsoft games so i always had a soft spot for it. these videos made me replay it to see if i would still enjoy it.
i did not.
i finished DS1 when i got into the franchise, then i heard all the criticism of DS2 SOTFS, lowered my expectations so much, kind of liked it but hated some stuff. then i played DS3, after playing DS3, i could not stand playing 5 seconds of DS2 SOTFS. and yes, the original DS2 is better tbh
Currently replaying it too. Until the Iron Keep everything was pretty easy and fun sometimes. But the swarm of enemies attacking you on several occasions is just horrible.
Now in the Iron Keep the fun is gone! The fact the the archers blend into the background makes it even worse!
Dark souls 2 is great... Youve been brainwashed a d gaslit
@@floend4810 swarms of enemies? you literally only fight 1-2 at a time if you play slowly and carefully. if you are fighting a "swarm" that is your own damn fault.
The best way to describe Ds2 is this:
I’ve made my favorite build in all of dark souls in this game yet I never had fun with it once
Explain
@@Garl_Vinland the build variety is pretty nice and weapons are aplenty for a good build in your 1st playthough. I’ve had two great swords duelweileded on my first playthough. Though due to the games mixed bosses and feel I just never had fun using what would be my fav build I’ve made in the franchise
@@juicybrucey_5352 Explain why
@@Garl_Vinland in my subjective experience I just wasn’t engaged. Bosses took at the most 4 tries. The run backs were harder. If I had this build fighting ds3 or Elden ring bosses I would have way more fun because personally it’s more engaging.
Damn he smoked you @Garl_Vinland
9:17
Can we just appreciate that the enemy was so dedicated to his weeb slash that he killed himself hoping to land it?
yes
Speaking as someone who thinks Iron Keep is the best grind spot in the series, you messed up by pulling the second lever. I only ever pull the first one and leave it at a diagonal angle. It prevents one of the knights from coming towards you and you can dispatch him with a plunging attack when you get near Smelter's boss room. Of course, not the right audience for discussing the habit of staying in one place for 3 hours grinding souls and listening to podcasts. But someone might find this helpful!
Dark Souls 2 fans are just like Dark Souls fans, just one more level Dark Souls.
You can find out that you are bad in this game when you have a problems with things that no one else has a problems with. Get good, bruh...
Someone wasn’t paying attention…
I don’t know how running past enemies makes you bad. I run past enemies a ton in ds3 and I love the game and am good at it. It gets boring after a while especially in ds2
I kill every single enemy in ds3 at least once or I don't feel like I've actually won. But in Elden Ring I just sneak past almost everything 🤷♂ Too many of them and too little runes to bother
It's time consuming is all. You want to apply what you just learned from dying to the boss and you don't want to spend five minutes killing enemies to get there just to probably die again.
It’s a waste of flasks to kill all the ads, these ashen flasks ain’t cheap ya know
@@PiterTraceurFA I feel the same. I need to clear all enemies at least the first time, i wanna to pick up every item, se every room, learn the layout, i think people rely to much on guides, they see a guy doing somenthing and just follow. I like to play blind, cleaning every part at least the first time, how do you will know the layout if you aways running and rushing the game?🤔
@@PiterTraceurFA Thats why i hate DS2, its a trash game if you wanna to clear every area, to many ganks and its to jank.
Very difficult levels where you are best off killing most or all of the enemies, followed by a boss that's relatively easy if you make it there with enough of your resources intact, is one of quite a few ways that Dark Souls 2 feels like a throwback to Demon's Souls to me.
Except demon souls doesnt have 200 dudes that chase you through the entire level
@@coolguychapman6685 you never have to deal with that many enemies if you take your time. the fact that people complain about the amount of enemies is just a testament to the lack of care and precision they take to deal with them.
I seem to remember you saying in a previous video that you don't do spellcaster builds, but for those of us that use them, a hexer battlemage is one of the most fun builds I've had in the series.
I've found that light roll with a dex weapon makes pure melee significantly easier for me at least. Being fast in a slow game has a definite advantage.
100% collection in this game sucks and I can't defend it. Non-respawning red phantoms and Dragon Shrine are the bane of completionists.
@Isidoro T Yeah, I know. It becomes quite a pain in Undead Crypt and Aldia's Keep repeatedly having to clear an area and fight a boss just to respawn an enemy and hope for a drop.
How exactly your build looks like? I was thinking of making a hexer with a katana recently
Correction the game isnt slow your character is slow this is one of the cheap difficulty ds2 have if you want me to deal 8 enemies in a tight place at least let me cancel my attack to dodge but nope you cant do that you attack first then dodge like playing a turn base rpg
I've finished DSR for the first time, got pretty decent at it so I decided to play scholar and it feels like playing a whole new game.
Same , used keyboard and mouse and hated it so much, deleted it middle of nowhere.
Imo ds2 is still better than elden ring. I still remember all the shit ds2 received for reused 1-2 boss and for making gank squads as boss fight. And here we are now in elden ring, killing the same bosses over and over sprinkled in some gank squad bosses. Not even getting into the combat, where every single weapon has almost the same or simply the same movesets and the pvp is mostly about ashes of war spamming while in previous souls you got multiple different type of movesets in the same tiers. Ands imo DS2 is still among the harder one from the souls series, atleast compared to ds1 and demon souls its stupid hard, compared to ds3 its stupid easy.
I guess I must not be a "normal person", because I kill all the enemies when going through the levels, and not only do I not find it boring, I find it fun! Oh, and to be fair I always kill every boss on my first or second attempt so I never had to deal with the dreaded "boss run".
There would be no dreaded boss runs if the area between the bonfire and fog door is devoid of enemies. It actually make me sad when the enemies stopped respawning.
"My main issue with Scholar is that the game is still janky as ever, but they decided to spam me with enemies to make all of the issues worse"
This legit sums up my issues with Scholar. I don't mind most of the Souls jank when the game is clearly designed around said jank, like most Souls games are. There's some areas in each game that you can point at and say they may have overstepped a little (Lost Izalith being an easy example), but that's basically *all* of Scholar. DS2 vanilla didn't really have a very significant portion of the issues I have with Scholar, sure it has a lot of the core design issues in the systems (Soul Memory, Agility, etc) but the enemy placement and quantity are significantly better, and it's really a shame that it's so hard to get your hands on the original version of the game nowadays.
Not hard at all I got ds2 vanilla on PS3 for 10 bucks so I could compare it to scholar.
@@Hans1994yout I'm more referring to on PC. Getting physical DS2 vanilla for a console now is always secondhand and you pretty much have to get a Steam Key from a shady website to get it on PC.
Izalith is bad, but it was clear they were short on time. The entire area is half backed and everyone accepts it. DS2 is that, throughout the entire game, and we're told we have to enjoy it or we're bad
@@Hans1994yout I more mean on PC. I still have my PS3 but not everyone does.
@@Pangora2 DS2, even in Scholar, has some areas I genuinely enjoy. But even in those areas you can always feel the looming presence of DS2 waiting to kill you. It's very obvious that the devs of DS2 designed the game with the express goal of being difficult. Miyazaki has said before that when they designed DS1 the difficulty was a result of following their design philosophy, not the goal, which is very telling.
Learn to adapt to the game situation and scholar is more easy then base they more many things like ancient dragon you are a challenge runner stop playing bad on purpose
Truly the duality of FromSoft.
Made some of the best games of all time,
also made some of the worst communities of all time.
Gives me conniptions
Scholar is like a long slide but instead of being aimed down to have fun it goes up and down, so you can slide a little then climb a lot then slide more, then climb but the climbing is boring so boring some people feel it is not worth finishing it, so they jump off, what I mean is the slope doesn't give enough momentum to get up, so you have to walk then slide again only to have to walk.
“The climb is infinite, the climb is beautiful, the climb never stops” -Skumnut
Just got ds2 sotfs and quit 6 hrs in after the pursuer. The fact that majority of the rooms have like 2-5 enemies that agro onto you before you can even see them and then they gank you ruins the experience. Going to give the vanilla version a try. Also, I enjoy your critiques Feeble King, cant stop watching them.
I'm the same though I got further than that. Bosses are trash mobs are overwhelming, movement is to slow no I frames for doors or chests adp investment is mandatory the list could go on and it's sad I want to play dark souls 2 not softs but will never get to.
@wilfredwayne7139 probably the builds you and that other guy was using. I went with Strength/Hex builds and demolished bosses and mobs like it was nothing. I even went pure Strength and still demolished most mobs. It's how you approach the area and enemies. Don't just rush in head strong cause you gonna get crushed. Game takes a bit more patience and map knowledge. Once you know the map knowledge you can run through mobs easily. In my opinion this is the best dark souls game.
@@hirotashi5950dark souls 2 fans LOVE to think you just rush through rooms ignoring the fact enemies can see you even when you can't see them
@@coolguychapman6685 well the reason that the assumption is made, is because you never have to fight that many enemies at a time. even when you do have to fight multiple, usually they come in waves, allowing you to take them out in groups of 1-2, sometimes 3. it's not hard.
DS2 stans are weird to me. There are objectively poor gameplay mechanics in the game and they either refuse to admit it/flat out deny it, or they defend the poor choices simply because they have a personal bias towards the game. I think it's important to criticize the things we like too.
Every time a criticism video comes out all I see are "DS2 is so dreamy, the atmosphere is magical, DS2 brings me the most nostalgia, etc"
It's sad, DS2 does some good things but by defending the bad stuff so hard it just makes it all look bad.
We can admit the hitboxes are garbage and that bonfire aescetic system is good.
@@SoulsOfCinderI play vanilla and I genuinely loved taking it slow and just enjoying my time. I kind of want to play SOTFS to see if it’s actually that bad
I think it's very telling that DS2 is the only souls game that has the mechanic of enemies disappearing if you kill them enough time.
It's like the devs realized in late-stage development that people would quit the game out of boredom if they had to fight 30 alonne knights every time they died to smelter demon and didn't want to redo all the enemy placement, so added this mechanic(that is never mentioned at any point to the player) last minute.
When looking up strats for iron passage / memory of the old iron king I found people who were genuinely recommendeding that I kill every enemy one at a time, rest at the bonfire, and then kill them all *again* until they don't respawn. At that point I'd rather write a fucking essay.
"At that point I'd rather write a fucking essay." Couldn't have said it better myself haha.
Those strats of killing every enemy are stupid. Buy gemstones and save the estus flasks for the bosses. DS2 practically has regenerating health
@@feebleking21 you kinda just suck at the game man. sorry not sorry.
Thanks for keeping the DS2 conversation going, it doesn’t deserve to be forgotten love it or hate it. Original version is definitely much better than scholar.
Needs a proper remake imo. Deserves one.
For real, im in that same minority that prefers og over scholar
@@thelichenking9878 based minority for shure no one whith a sane mind could say scholor is better. Logicly it makes no sense
@@monthc More of a reboot than anything.
I feel old since my first game was demons souls ps3, seeing now most people got their start on either DS3 or Elden ring, they probably went back and played sotfs since it’s the “definitive” version leaving us OG fans a forgotten relic.
Discovered this channel recently, after watching way way way too many Dark souls and elden rings critique/analysis videos and watching the videos on this channel where a synthesis of the best ideas of other channels, mixed with some great original ideas.
In particular, I loved the video when you outlined the development of boss design from DS1 to DS3 to Elden ring. That was a personal favorite.
I literally just found your channel yesterday and listened to all of your DS2 videos while beating Bloodborne. What great timing lmao.
The WOAT vs the GOAT of the era
“Easiest bosses of the series” *demon souls starts blushing* -> “realllyyyyy🥰?”
even ds1 has worst bosses, pinwheel? butterfly? everything in lost izalith is sh1t, bed of chaos? smh
( I know it's common knowledge )
Something I don't hear a lot of people talk about is how you can actually by farming an area and killing the enemies many many times and clearing the area you actually depopulate the area the enemies will no longer spawn until you use a bonfire aesthetic...best of my knowledge this is the only from soft game that actually enemies disappear when you kill them enough times permanently
twelve times, you need to kill the twelve times and Feeble King actually talked about it in his las video.
Just goes to show deep down the devs probably knew the enemy placement/number was just ridiculous, so they added this to help players who are struggling in a certain area.
A well designed level with good enemy placement wouldn't need that kind of feature.
Yes, this is my personal method for getting through Iron Keep.
@Hevig Krieger I wish all Souls games had it tbh. A counter argument would be that enemy despawns keep you from farming and force you to up the difficulty of the level if you wish to continue farming.
Not saying that that *is* the reason, but it is a possibility that that was the reason they added it in Vanilla (it has been around since vanilla not scholar btw -- idk if you were insinuating that, but thought I should mention it).
I mean the fact that people would consider it worthwhile to farm enemies over and over just so they can run back to a boss says more about how bad DS2's enemy placement is than it does about that being a good feature.
@@HonsHon I think is to make things easier, COC that is supposed to be the hard mode of the game disable this feature, and make even the enemies you killed until despawn spawn again, so if you want to farm you can just join COC, farm enemies, and then leave COC, so the only thing this achieve is making things a bit easier for struggling players, and allow people with too much free time to completely clean some area, just to hang around in a empty map
...i did in Heides, the place looks beautiful when everyone is dead.
Ds2 is one of my top favorite games, and its definitely got alot of issues.
Shrine of amana is definitely a nightmare, even if you perfect doing runs through it.
Iron keep was one of my most hated spots at first until i learned bash weapons like the hammer eats through the knights health almost completely.
The game for me feels less like brute forcing through the game, and more like reciting a book/story with remebering when to use which item or weapon to pull out for what situation, but thats definitely not a thing for everyone
shrine of amana is amazing, it's the perfect skill check for players.
I did a playthrough of DS2 after 7 years recently with a grand lance build, I don't know if that weapon is one of those "noob meta" weapons like the Sellsword Twin Blades or Ludwigs Holy Blade, but I was astounded how trivial the game was going back to it. There wasn't a single boss in the game that could kill me, it got to the point where I didnt even have my estus on my hot bar, the life gems alone were more than enough to sustain me.
Everytime I ran into a spam bush I just chucked an Alluring Skull into the corner of the room and started backstab chaining.
My hot bar was reserved for Pine Resin, Life Gems and throwables almost exclusively.
literally the only thing that could kill me in DS2 was gravity and the jank ass "Snap Point" control stick dead zone based movement.
it was incredibly boring and underwhelming, I wasn't even using a shield, at 25 ADP nobody could hardly touch me, IF I even needed to dodge in the first place with how slow every boss was.
Very dissapointing experience, I dont understand how anyone could consider it a good souls game.
you call it boring but the slow kill everything play style for scholar is fun to me. i used a shield to block ranged attack, never was problem. i honestly dont like to roll so every dark souls game and elden ring im at 99% equip load. i want adaptability back. loved the salt it generated while i ignored it.
Man i cant think about dark souls whitout the roll
Is like the thing that make me love these games
The way you can perfect that ability and be invencible
@@alanbastos9766i mostly hate ds2 because of the parry mechanic since im not a "roll" guy but a "parry" guy and the deprived class which was aeguably the best class in ds1 and a decent in ds3 sucks. Obv i chose it to slowly, progessibly go through the game and still remember gettinf the first "dagger" but relying on backstabs only isnt too cool. At least for me
I am one of those people you mentioned back in your other Scholar of the First Sin-roast video. I am one of these guys who very much enjoyed Dark Souls 2. But just like you, I enjoyed the base game much more than the Scholar edition, even though I am not really able anymore to differ between my memories of DS2/Scholar. I played both version over 800 hours and the greatest appeal of this game to me was that it was my first Souls-experience with a mostly stable and fully functional multiplayer as well as the probably most variable fashion style. But when it comes down to mechanics, level-design, enemy behavior and overall difference in animations to the other entries of the souls series, I totally agree with you. But I still do like DS2 to return to Drangleic once in a while - just to wallow in nostalgia ~
U repeating so much "infinite healing" that is Like if gems are actually a fast Heal System.
Also all the clips u show with ganks (that u showing costantly) seems Like watching a different game, that is not a normal thing in ds2, stop trying to make this game look worst than what it is XD lol
Your comment about pacing pretty much nailed it. One of the most beautiful strengths of DSII is the story-telling, and seeing that story played out through the characters and environments and interactions with the NPC's. When you break the pacing, you break the heart and soul of this game. Alternatively, even say somehow magically somebody could OP through all the gank squads and not "ruin" the pacing, the sheer clutter of the whole mess would be like trying to listen to a beautiful musical composition while someone is jack-hammering outside your window- it's beyond "just irritating" and even if you survive it, it 100% ruins the experience.
DSII my favorite Souls game... I weep for what they did to this beautiful gem in Scholar.
Btw, thanks for your commitment to seeking answers and sharing the journey. Love it.
I get what you're saying, but I think a lot of these issues exist in the other souls games too:
Hidden archers? What about the dart dudes in blightown?
Levels that aren't hard just slow to navigate? Crystal caves, dukes library, izalith, and, oh my god - tomb of the giants
As far as enemy spam goes, DS3 has more enemies per area than any of the previous games, and they're faster, too
I do agree that there are issues with agility, hitboxes, etc. that are exclusive/more prevalent in DS2, but just like all the other games, there are things DS2 does better than the other entries in the series
Obviously it's all subjective, but the condescending tone here and stuff like "I was surprised to find a niche community who enjoy SOTFS" doesn't feel great for people who really value this weird, unique game
To counter your shitty points
You mean the one area in the ENTIRE game that has hidden archers? The ones that do no damage and die in one hit? Those ones? Their annoying but at least they don't take 25 percent of your life with every hit while they send 3 or 4 melee dudes after you
Crystal caves is slow to navigate? It take 3 MINUTES TO EXPLORE ALL OF IT izaleth is only annoying to navigate cause of bed of chaos the ONE bad boss in the game and tomb of the giants is easy as fuck when you get the skull lantern
While dark souls 3 may have had more enemies they were FAR MORE SPREAD OUT then the enemies in dark souls 2 not only that but the enemies in dark souls 3 can't see you 30 or 40 yards away like they can in dark souls 2 FURTHURMORE dark souls 3 enemies dont spam attack you and break your poise with every hit
As much as dark souls 2 has good combat everything else sucks about it the bosses the enemies the area designs the fact you need to level up a stat just to get invincibility frames when you didn't have to do that at all in ANY other souls borne game before or since this game is trash its fine people like it but they have to admit the flaws and bad game designs this game has
@@coolguychapman6685you’re just bad lol
Did anyone tell him yet that there's more weapons in this game besides the Toothpi...I mean, Broadsword?
@@samcrow4640 MAYBE I could take any of his Souls titles 'critiques' seriously if 90% of his footage wasn't playing by two handing a Broadsword, or something similar (Longsword in Elden Ring). I think his 'critiques' are too based off his SL1 experiences, which negates much of what he has to say.
nooo you have to play the game the way i want you to play it!!! 😠😠😠😠
What an idiot thinking he could play a souls game with a... normal sword? ds2Tards will say this like it doesn't mean that the game is poorly balanced.
@@samcrow4640bigger than the ds2 messiah lol
You would love Lords of the Fallen 2023. It's 90% Dark Souls 2 ganking sessions with even less enemy variety.
Sounds like hell
After playing scholar so much, it makes vanilla boring and makes the flaws of world design more apparent
my strategy for Iron Keep: die enough times that the enemies don't respawn after being killed.
interestingly enough that was also my strategy for the boss run in Brume Tower...
Watching Dark souls 2 gradually break this poor bastard has been an experience.
Elden Ring has a shitload of enemies but that was not a problem.... I'll never understand the DS2 hate, game is amazing
Problem is enemy aggro range in scholar which is busted in sotfs.
I mean if you put a title like this you expect to get dislike bombed
I don't get it when people try to play X game like Y and then complain that their strategies from Y don't work in X.
I have such mixed feelings about this game! Some areas make me wanna delete the game but others I find myself really enjoying it
No man’s wharf in a nutshell
I agree, the PvE in this game is the worst in the series. Like why is my lock on range so short compared to the sorcerers who can shoot me across the map? Why does the game use weapon degradation to punish me for playing the game? How is playing the same level I just fully explored 4 times to fight the same boss suppose to be engaging? I can understand if its a eassy boss but for harder bosses like sir alonne I feel boss runs like this just ruins the boss.
Not sure why you wasted your time making three videos on this game when all three can be summarized as "Dark Souls 2 is bad because I can't run past every enemy and anybody who disagrees just hates my playstyle."
Lmao, well said.
Your Sekiro review and double down video on it are still the worst takes on a FromSoft game I’ve ever seen
What'd he say about Sekiro?
@@1stoftheFatuiHarbingers let's just say it was a bit like if you decided to roast the whole sport of soccer, because you don't like interacting with the other players or the field or the rules or the referee and you just want to kick a ball into a goal over and over, assuming that *that's* the intended way to play soccer.
@@1stoftheFatuiHarbingers In simple terms, he played a ninja game like a samurai then complained when the entire game kept forcing him to be a ninja.
All of his critiques and reviews are shitty takes. And for a guy who hates DS2, he sure spends a lot of time making videos about it.
His takes on everything are the worst I've ever seen and he has the most punchable voice I've ever heard
I platinumed scholar and I loved it so much I'm currently platinuming ds2 vanilla. Vanilla has pretty much the same or worse gank squads compared with scholar. I am seeing very little difference honestly. Scholar also gives you the tools to build your own gank squad if you're smart about it. Almost every level has an NPC summon or two that will help you clear the enemies. In scholar you can even pull an NPC that's meant for the old iron king boss fight and use her and Lucatiel to kill smelty boy. I also used her to help me perma-clear almost the entire iron keep map as I needed to use Unveil to see when an invader spawned for the bell keeper covenant spell Hidden Weapon.
The bullshit statue and ruin sentinel room in Dranglic? There's an NPC summon there in scholar that distracts them all and tanks wonderfully, its an excellent mid game soul farm with him in the fight. Dragon rider duo? scholars got a summon. The area after dragon rider duo? Yet another summon and you can pull him into the looking glass knight boss fight as well to keep Benhart of Jugo alive for an easy moonlight greatsword achievement . Scholar gives ample tools to make the game a breeze if you actually use them. Plus all the weapons you can get earlier in scholar as opposed to their later game placements in vanilla makes a scholar more fun right out of the gate.
You and I definitely have different playstyles though and if I played like you do I can see me not enjoying either version of the game at all, especially scholar.
I had a hard time deciding whether this video was satire or not, but apparently it's not. The dude seems to just power on with dual broadswords and doesn't use items like Alluring Skull for manipulating enemies or anything like that. It's like he chose to hit the wall with his head and complained that it hurts. DS2 has an excellent selection of weapons and some of the best movesets in the franchise, and he still chose dual broadswords...
I agree that there are many things SotFS did wrong, but still prefer it compared to vanilla. Also I completely understand people that hate the pacing of the game if they come from DS3, Bloodborne or Elden Ring. It's simply not the same and takes time to get used to. Also all of the aforementioned have areas packed with enemies and mistakes as far as game design is concerned.
Great reply. I’m on my first run of SoTFS and have been curious about vanilla but never played it. I loved this game until Ruin Sentinels. The areas after are gank city and aren’t enjoyable like the first several hours. It was an awesome chill game prior to that. Which isn’t what I was expecting since I came from DS3/BB/ER. I’m at Iron Keep now. Good luck on your vanilla run.
You're seeing very little difference? Wow, I didn't know blind people could play Dark Souls. Cool!
i personally like dark souls 2 SOTFS but for different reasons but what you said is correct , fighting enemies is fun until you die and have to do it again , you can kill them 12 times but it is a time sink making your bored when all you want to do is fight the 5th mediocre boss of the day , dark souls 2 SOTFS pve is meh but the pvp is really good
Last year I played Dark Souls 2 SotFS for the first time, I played it eliminating most of the enemies and with the target-lock activated and at least I can say that it was not pleasant.
In the first game choosing between running past enemies or fighting everyone makes sense, one way is faster but the other way is safer.
In Dark Souls 2, facing all the enemies will probably cause you to consume more resources, be it healing or weapon repair items, the only exception is if you intend to depopulate the entire area killing everything enough times but it is a process that personally seems to me quite tedious.
Despite the fact that at first I almost hated every minute of this game, in the long run I was able to appreciate some aspects that I liked, although in my case I am not going to start a new game or play the previous version of the game xD
peruano?
@@guillermoaqv7461 No, de Uruguay
People are incapable of self control. Just buy 10 lifegems at a time. Can't carry more than that. Have to travel back and reset to get more, just like estus.
Scholar is fun, but in a pokemon kinda way with nuzlocking. You have to implement your own rules because the developers didn't/couldn't do the job of balancing the game right.
I best the Iron Keep (in SOTFS) an hour before this video was released. That level fucking sucks. Who the hell thought that fighting all those Alonne knights before the Smelter Demon was a good idea!?
I played SOTFS a bit and now playing DS2 vanilla, and I am already enjoying DS2 vanilla more so far.
Literally me, played SOTFS for 2 hours hated it then refunded it and bought vanilla
Me personally, I'm not going to argue, enemy placement sucks, there is jank, the combat is kinda ass.
But, I enjoy dark souls 2, because it's the most metroid like, and I can make some really stupid builds way faster and easier. This is also one of the few games I'd argue it being so easy is a form enjoyment. Not just lifegems, but I can level 140 by mid game with bonfire aesthetics and farming rotten.
So, I don't disagree it's valid reasons to hate it, and it is bad game design, but just cause it's bad doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. But my enjoyment is like, I'll go to DS3 and do a challening run and have great duels, I go to ds2 to feel like a god, for some chill lo fi souls
My biggest problem with the game was . Clearing hard areas for mediocre bosses at most. Bit disappointing
Having played both vanilla and scholar at the time they released and having played through multiple times since, my only consensus after all of this is that DS2 sorely needs a current gen remake.
Not just a remaster, it needs a remake. There are positive changes to borrow from scholar, enemy spam aside, so I would love to see everything ironed out by bringing the positives of both versions together in a remake. It would be fine by me if enemies and the player got adjusted to the DS3 pace of things, I just want the black sheep of souls to have a chance for redemption.
All this being said, it is more likely we get a bloodborne PC port than any of this happening imo.
I only played vanilla but once i noticed enemies stop spawning after so many runs, I kinda just thought that's what I should do to get the most levels and clear the way to the boss, I enjoyed it, there is something cool about basically clearing out the map
Yo guys who complain about having too many enemies in ds2, have you heard of elden ring?
Elden Ring isnt half as janky or linear as DS2 and you cant die in a fog wall.
Holy shit you've beat DS2 twice more than me, that's impressive.
dark souls fans talk about dark souls 2 the same way that non-dark souls fans talk about dark souls
It really is the dark souls of dark souls
ruclips.net/video/8Nm5kD9DK30/видео.html
look how wrong is feeble about ds2 scholar
the amount of false information in this video is staggering.
Didn't die in Majula, just as hard as iron keep
I think there should have been a fortress with absolutely insane enemy spam in elden ring, an area dedicated to summoning your homies and spamming those aoe spells and arts of war that are barely ever that useful in the regular game but then outright mandatory in this hypothetical area. Elden Ring encourages new players to summon and co-op with their overtuned bosses that are too confusing to learn even for veteran players, would have liked some areas where the actual areas had any point to summon and do co-op in them.
As someone who is playing through Scholar rn. It’s definitely a different game from ds3, where it feels more like the original demon souls in the fact it’s challenge is through the whole level rather than just the bosses. It makes every level feel interesting compared to the slog of ds3s levels where I would just run past everything
The reason i play ds 2 is to kill every single enemies. Its satisfying
Despite how insanely wrong Feeble was on sekiro he is right on with his DS2 scholar critique.
It's pretty amazing that the souls games have both the worst and best community simultaneously.
Ds2 and SOTFS are both amazing games. I have sunk 1k hours into just vanilla DS2. Most of those hours were PvP. I have yet to sink that many hours into any other souls game.
No other souls game besides Elden Ring has hex builds or has such a complex build system as DS2.
Hex builds are amazing especially the Crypt Blacksword with high faith, int and strength. That thing is such a beast. And the fun doesn’t even stop there. I used to dominate the Lava Bridge with the Eleum Loyce PvP. Good times!
DS2 had some of the most over the top weapons, like the Boss Katana from the DLC or the Burnt chicken wing hammer or the Cool ranch and Cheddar Smelter Swords or Raime’s Ultra GreatSword.
So many good boss armors and weapons it’s insane.
There's lots of great content in DS2/SOTFS, however the gameplay is awful and drags the quality of the game down substantially...
@@billythenarwhal1579 Yeah that’s your opinion though lol. I’ve played every single souls game and it’s not anything different. Some games are faster, some are slower.
@@elden_beast8489 some games have balanced healing systems and hitboxes that work and others don't.
@@billythenarwhal1579 Deffo. Ds2’s gameplay feels like it was made by a completely different dev team. People like to point out ds1 was also slow but that’s not at all what makes ds2 feel different.
Having never played vanilla, only having scholar for reference in my personal experience, I very reluctantly became a scholar fan. When I first started playing the souls games, I got DS1 on the xbox 360 and played until I got to the Taurus Demon. At the time, I only knew that Dark Souls was that stupidly hard game that everyone says to "Git gud" at, and I had no frame of reference for what a boss run was supposed to be like. So every time I tried to fight Taurus Demon while on the bridge, he would knock me off the side, body block me into being unable to avoid his lingering hitbox, walk into me so I stagger right before an attack, etc. and die without getting a proper chance to fight him. I noticed the parapet with the crossbow hollows and killed them every time, but I didn't plunge attack him because I wanted to fight him in the way I thought was "The intended experience". Needing to replay basically an entire level every time I died made me insanely frustrated, but I knew it was a hard game, so I kept trying for a while. I realized, thinking how much of an idiot I was, that fighting him on the bridge is NOT intended, because of how unreasonable it is to win that way. So I went to the top of the parapet, where there is more room to avoid his attacks. So I wait for him to jump up, and he does, but in doing so, there is a sweeping hitbox that kills me in one hit.
I put the game down and watched some design analysis videos to see what I might have been doing wrong. The video I saw said that the intended way to kill Taurus is to climb up, apply gold pine resin, plunge, run away, then climb and plunge again, 3 more times in a row. He said that the structure of this fight had the purpose of piggybacking off of advice given from player-to-player. I registered this as meaning "Dark Souls fans don't actually git gud, they just use whatever cheats they want and pretend like they're the best gamers around. This game SUCKS."
So this is where I went hollow for the first time. That's right. I didn't even make it to Capra before going hollow. After some time, my curiosity got the better of me, and I finally tried playing DS3, which I had heard was much better for beginners. After some initial struggling, I quickly fell in love with it. I played through the whole game, and was so excited to go back to the first that when my file corrupted at the soul of cinder, I didn't even care.
After making my way past Taurus, then accidentally skipping capra and going through all of upper blighttown backward since I was told by the internet that the master key is the only viable starting gift. By the time I got to Sen's, then Anal Rodeo, and beyond, I reluctantly decided that I also loved DS1.
After a long time of playing DS3 and 1, I tried my hand at the infamous DS2. I struggled so hard with the first half of the game, but after getting my +10 weapon, like 50 health, full adaptability, etc. I basically breezed through the second half and had much, much, much more fun. Even areas like the shrine of amana were so much easier than I had heard.
Now, I can proudly say that I've gotten 100% achievements for all 3 games, and I very reluctantly love all of them.
I have two things I don't really understand:
1: Why do you say the castle is the lategame? It is the powertrip before the boss. You had the same in DS1, everything after Orstein & Smough is really easy, to show you how strong you have become. Scholar includes every DLC, did you ever play it?
2: Did you forget about the bossruns to the Bed of Chaos or just the way to New Londo? The latter area only works, because you are constantlay on edge because of the trouble to get there.
Yes, you can just run for all of them, same for Scholar though, I don't remember how, but on my first playthough I just booked it to the Smelter Demon. Sometimes you have to hit an enemy to stagger them or get them out of range, before traversing the fog. I wouldn't ever touch something as puny as a Broadsword, though, so I don't know if this also works for weapons without any knockback or stagger.
Finally playing DkS2 Scholar - and I can see what you mean.
I have played and beat all the other souls games, DkS2 just came out when I was burnout playing souls games and DkS3 got me to come back because of friends and then I took a long hiatus from Souls games.
Playing this now and on my first run. having to fight and kite 3 armored turtles, is legit annoying, you can make a mistake and aggro 4. =/ theres no boss in this area either, why are some places like this.
I swear the game wants you to farm the enemies till they disappear before you get a safe boss run, which in my honest opinion is really bad design, the whole point of shortcuts was to make getting from bonfire to boss gate because it was rewarding you for getting to the boss and wasnt punishing you for trudging through the deluge of mobs to finally get to the boss gate, simple reward system. feels unrewarding if I just need to do everything over again even after unlocking the shortcut.
At least we'll all come out of this realizing that scholar is THE game ever made
Let's be honest, scholar is easily one of the fromsoftware games
@@Reinoiro Its not a fromsoftware game
@@nicolasoliveira4903 Oh my bad, it was actually made by EA
@@Reinoiro The janitors at the Fromsoftware building developed ds2, while the main team cooked Bloodborne.
@@nicolasoliveira4903 No it was still made mostly by fromsoft team just under a different director and as a smaller side project to bloodborne developed in the meantime. And i grouped it for being a part of the franchise so not like who specifically made it at fromsoft changes anything. You are just showing off and trying to sound smart
Please make nothing besides DS2 videos for the next 60 years. I need it to full my hunger
The comment on hit trading is true until you reach NG++, Shrine of Amana becomes a nightmare as agroing one enemy from afar pulls all of them and a simple gank combo can take down a level 230 character
Bro. That guy just can't play DS2 that good so he choose to badmouth this game.
Also, why bragging about 1 clip that he showed like 11 times as it game fault and not his
The problem in your last video wasn't only trying to rush past all enemies and failing, you also was using a +3 broadsword by the time you were in Iron Keep, you could have a +8 weapon easily by that point, and it would be much easier to kill the enemies.
And the part where you complained about the "invisible archer" that you literally hit once and run past it was really funny
I love how DS2 is now getting love. I really love DS2, vanilla is the best way to play it btw too
Me too. I get the problems the game has, but it’s a fantastic gsme
@@KayOScode if you admit it has problems then you cannot in good faith call it fantastic
@@ies_irae1397 why not? It fits my subjective definition of fantastic
@@ies_irae1397nearly every game has problems, other souls games included. Does that not make them fantastic despite their flaws?
This is spot on! I played PS3 Scholar (which has same enemy placements as vanilla) back in the day and loved it. I recently fired up Scholar on PC- it's a gank nightmare and makes the game tedious and much less fun.
Dark rising 2 the new zombie game that breaks the limit to how much stuff can be on the screen (800 enemys on Area)
I like scholar. You’re totally missing the point of the game
You got it wrong; you just have massive skill issues, and you insist it's the games fault.
Whenever I think about Scholar vs Dark Souls II, I always remember my experience. I first played through Scholar half way then quit. Then I played through Dark Souls II multiple times and loved it. Then I played the rest of Scholar out of pure obligation.
Thanks for sharing your scholar experiences i started with scholar and hated this game so much until you introduced me to the original had no idea how different the 2 were.
Finally getting a friend to play dark souls series, and ds2 is my favourite, I kinda forgot how awful the scholar changes were since its been years and years, but.. I might legitimately buy them the more expensive and less populated ds2 (i dont even know if vanilla DS2 has a community, maybe a similar community to dark souls 1 pc in 2013? when it was like 800 people tops?)
I just can't express how soulless scholar feels, like they gutted the game, made it a "play it once" thing and tried to make people hate it? IDK
They seriously mis stepped with scholar, None of the games changes needed to happen, including making my favourite armour, the visible Aurous set less valuable (its in a chest... versus having to grind sentinel boss new game+ and most people never seeing it at all)
I dont see why they would make it so you actually burn out from the tedious enemy placements, Who playtested it? What was the goal of it? To make people look up builds and stuff?
They kind of played around with the idea of making some enemies tougher with the DLC (im pretty sure in vanilla, the dlc enemies had their own version of toughness where you couldn't kill them too quickly) and I guess they werent happy with that so they just spammed you with enemies and called it a day.
Dude play dark souls 2 with the seeker of fire mod improves everything about the game and makes it so much more enjoyable I used to hate Dark souls 2 but after I played the Dark souls 2 seek of fire mod it made me love this game
If the awnser to making a game good is a mod than that is not a valid defense
@@namethefifth7315 when was this a defense I hated this game
@@shadowfreaper8158 Yeah some people are out for blood in this comment section haha
As someone who really likes the game, I think what irks me a lot about criticism it gets is that the general negative consensus causes people to often look for things to be frustrated with rather than the other way around. Groups of enemies are frequently referred to derisively as being something done just to make the game hard but I see it a different way. I think much of the gameplay loop of dark souls 2 (scholar at least) is about putting the player in a bad situation and forcing them to rely on tactical thinking to get out of it.
The area before the Ruin Sentinels in the Lost Bastille is a great example of this. You open the door and suddenly are charged by a large group of knight enemies. This seems like a huge problem, but the player has options here. They can back out of the room and lead the enemies onto a narrow bridge where it is impossible for them to surround the player. A little further back than that, there is a section with some explosive barrels that the player can use to do aoe damage to the group. It is on the player to consider their options in what seems like a bullshit scenario, and I find that style extremely compelling.
Admittedly there is a varying degree of quality in terms of how fun these segments are, but I think the game becomes a lot more enjoyable when looked at like this. Even that area in iron keep does have a sort of solution, in that it is possible to lure a lot of the enemies into the room with the ballista and shoot them. This also makes life gems as a mechanic make a lot more sense, since the game is more about surviving a set of specific scenarios than the heavy attrition the first game had.
It's a system that isn't built for tons of enemies, yet DS2 and scholar rely on cheap tricks and numbers just to kill new players more. Veterans know to avoid it but that takes time and effort
Also that thing about that knight gank squad - the player mastered that skill in the forest. Agro too much and kite them backwards. It's the same in every encounter. Aggro and run awaym aggro and run away.
The only things I personally hate are the co-op system, hit boxes, adapt being tied to your roll, and the fucking hit boxes again
It's so incredible that if you play as a mage/hex/pyro 90% os problems just vanish and nobody talks about it
This was content I didn't know I needed. A random urge to binge DS games brought me here. Subbed.
Git Gud
ruclips.net/video/8Nm5kD9DK30/видео.html
look how wrong is feeble about ds2 scholar
It IS a shame that my favorite weapon is in DS2 but not DS3... Oh Blue Flame...
The bosses weren't bad in my experience, it was the mob enemies. The boss runbacks combined with the aggro range and sheer number of mobs is infuriating. Beating this game once is enough
because u suck at the game, yes u r right.
In my opinion, I think dark souls 2 is better than ds3 and elden ring. But that just from my experience from playing
RUclips is so funny showing me this video now. At the same time, others are complaining about ER DLC being too hard and I watched Lil Aggy complete a blind DS2 run and felt it was too easy then chose the CoC halfway. git good has never been more apt advice than this.
Best Souls 2 baybeeee!!
You need to do 30k Soul Memory run in Scholar. Because, if you didn't do 30k SM run, did you really beat the game? No. 😊
The guy with the comment at 3:11 has a point. Take for example Iron Keep. Alonne knights go down easily if you don't bum rush them and get swarmed and are good for soul farming. What is the point of a game if the only thing you do is just rush, rush, rush and never take the time to explore / kill enemies to increase your level and get more gear ?
Soul farming is the most boring part of these games that can exist.
@@agostonbazmajer1100 I know all about it trust me. But it's also important to have. I love getting stronger in RPG games, especially in tough ones like Dark Souls. I love revisiting areas and crushing enemies that once kicked my ass.