Dark Souls 2

[AndyKurosaki]

If Bloodborne had "clear enemies out and they all eventually die", I'd have stuck with it. On my PS3 playthrough of this, I did it for almost every area, levelling up and grinding better gear like mad. And I'll no doubt do the same this time round as well.

[DisturbedSwan]

Everytime I encountered enemies I couldn't take down I'd just put the ol' running shoes on and run through them all in Bloodborne so this was never really a problem for me, I can't remember how far you got but the opening 2-3 hours are pretty tough I guess, and a very rude awakening to the game.

[AndyKurosaki]

That was about it for me. It just utterly put me right off,and by the sounds of it,it gets harder from there.

[AndyKurosaki]

So I got to Forest Of Giants, expecting to see the Heide Knight to kill him for his sword... He's not there. Kind of makes it exciting, not knowing what's up next.

[radiofloyd]

Bought the dlc recently so I booted this up tonight. My file was 68 hours and I'm level 150-something. Spent half an hour looking through my menus and re-equipping my best equipment (I had some random shit on for achievements). I started the first dlc which is called The Crown of the Sunken King, you access it from the boss bonfire in the Black Gulch. Within two minutes I was invaded. I put up a decent fight but I lost. I was still re-learning the controls god damn it... Fifteen minutes later the same guy invaded again. I was more used to the controls and I really should have exacted my revenge, I had him down to a sliver of health when I had loads of health left, but of course, I tried to force the issue and ending up losing again.

It seems a cool area. It's like a huge castle that you descend down into. I only played a small bit of it, there was standard archers and knights, and also some weird fly-like enemies. There's definitely some serious meat to this dlc. I'm not going to play it now but I might later in the summer.

[Hendo]

Picked this up in the sale.

 

It definitely looks better than it did. Only really because of the resolution, though.

 

After spending so much time with DS3 though, it does look and play a lot rougher. And the sound design has come on leaps and bounds too, that grass noise at the beginning is pretty painful.

 

A lot of memories of the game coming back though. I'd forgotten a lot and could only remember little bits before but now more of the game is coming back to me.

[Maf]

I’ve spent the last week playing SotFS and am decidedly torn between it being kind of Ok to kind of bad. For the most part I thought the game was incredibly easy. I cleared out most areas no hassle, and the areas that were hassle were more annoying than hard (Eg, The Gutter) and must have 1 shotted more than 50% of the bosses. With no boss except the Pursuer and the final boss taking more than 3 attempts.
 

Also the whole game took me less than 40 hours. I played as a sorcerer as I heard this game was hard and this made it easy. But even though pelting idiots from a distance with blue beams made some of the game easier, when I did mix it up with the sword and shield it was still really easy. So I think both of those things I heard were lies.

 

Where the game was outrageously difficult was figuring out where the fuck to go. And this is where I’m torn with the game. I expect there will be a lot of people that really enjoy trying to figure this side of the game out. In another game I might enjoy it, too. But the further I got the more I lost patience for it. First it was in line with what I expect from the series. Where I just progress in to an area, realise these enemies are too high level, and go somewhere else. Fair enough. But even after the Lost Bastille I just couldn’t find where to go so required a guide. Then I hit a door where a statue was blocking it and to get past it I needed to use a branch or something-something to progress but the item was finite. So I was like do I do this or not? So I used a guide. And then at the end where you have to revisit Giant’s memories and whatever...Man, I don’t think I would have ever figured that out.  
 

I’m torn on it. I don’t think having to figure out where to go yourself is bad design. But I really struggled with the navigation aspect of this game so much. Whether it was simple things like opening up new pathways to really complicated things like triggering sequence based events, this game lost me multiple times and I had no ideas how to find my way again. I didn’t even know what I was doing most of the time, mind about knowing there was stuff I wasn’t doing. I just walk forward and kill the monsters. Eventually all the paths end, though, and it’s like err...now what?

 

Everything from the Undead Crypt to the credits I had to use a guide for because I just didn’t know what to do. I also stopped trying to figure it out and just googled “Dark Souls 2 areas in order”. Which I’m glad I did because apparently I almost skipped 5 areas and 3 other bosses and went straight to the final boss. I literally walked up to the Throne of Want fog gate but just thought it didn’t feel right.

 

Admittedly I also just stopped trying to figure things out after a while, and this series is meant to be obtuse so maybe I’m just being a baby. However after seeing the answers it’s like oh. Well that seems like kind of bullshit no? The final few legs of the game are like figuring out the Painted World in Dark Souls 1 but even weirder and actually part of the critical path. I would never have got that. 

I’m not damning it for this I just don’t know how I feel about it. On the one hand I respect it, but on the other hand I just don’t like it. No I didn’t really give it much of a chance, but I was also pretty disinterested through most of the game so is it my fault the game didn’t really engage me enough to care or try.  
 

And this is the other thing. The game is just kind of bad. The short list of problems is the bosses are largely the same, all of the areas are really simple* and filled with traps and trolls you’re already used to, and the way the game tries to be hard is instead of coming up with creative challenges it just gimps the player’s abilities instead. Costing more Souls to level up, taking away Estus, making you need to stop moving to drink it, tying I-frames and stuff to a level up stat, stopping stamina from recharging as fast, stopping the player raising their shield immediately if they’re out of stamina, etc. Content wise it is very boring and stale and mechanically the changes just seem like they’re all about taking things away from the player and making life more difficult. There’s a difference between hard fun and hard and this game doesn’t seem to get it. Especially because it’s all kind of easy anyway. Maybe they knew this and that’s why they make the changes to the player instead. I don’t know. 
 

What I do know is the fundamental problem with Dark Souls 2 is if you have played and completed Dark Souls 1 you already know way more than this game has planned on you knowing. Sometimes people ask “What is the hardest Souls game?” And the answer is the first one you play. I can’t think of another action based video games series where knowledge is so powerful and skills required are so basic. After finishing Dark Souls 1 a few times and Bloodborne once Dark Souls 2 just doesn’t have shit to say and is a real yawn fest most of the time. Maybe this is also a problem with me playing them out of order, but a good game shouldn’t be bought to it’s knees because you played the one before. A good sequel should build on what came before not feel like it was left empty handed because of the first one. 
 

Ultimately the game this reminded me most of was Bayonetta 2. A game that tried to copy the one before it but didn’t realise why the first one worked. Except instead of giving it a really good go Dark Souls 2 also just gives up on the really hard parts like a interconnected world and meaningful boss fights. Just roll to the right and chop, chop people like that, that will do. 
 

I don’t think this game is awful I’m just torn between it being Ok and kind of not. 
 

A hollow experience ?

 

*Err, you know. Once you can figure out how to get in to them. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah this game is super weird (hi btw). I went into it a few years ago expecting to hate it, did hate it, then halfway through started to love it.

 

I ran into the same issues as you where the world is like it's designed in the shape of a wheel and when you reach the end of a 'spoke' the game is like 'haha, fuck you'. Usually looking at a guide for a game like this can ruin the experience but the game is constantly flinging you down these paths and hitting you with dead ends. It's so fucking annoying lol.

 

But I still ended up really liking it. It has my favourite story in a Souls game. I think that's partly cause this is the first one where I tried to do a lore hunt and read all the item descriptions but I got super into the stories about the cycle of empires expiring and being forgotten. Vendrick's story and 

Spoiler

his appearance, where he's a barely living zombie trying to hold back the darkness or whatever (I don't remember the specifics of his mission but something like that).

 

I will never replay this game because of how poor it is mechanically but the stuff it did well I really digged.

 

This game also has maybe the worst hitboxes I've ever seen. There's one knight called Alonne or something, look that one up. Fucker can stab the air a meter away from you and teleport you onto a skewer and murder you.

[shinymcshine]

I really enjoyed this, and the DLC, apart from the Fume Knight.

[OCH]

This was the last Souls game I played on release. I had such a miserable time by the end (pre-DLC), I tapped out of the series altogether. Having to kill pre-nerf Ancient Dragon and Vendick, sapped any enjoyment I'd had along the way. I recall I liked two NPCs and a couple of areas of the game, but that would never be enough to make me even pick this up again.

[AndyKurosaki]

This is the only Souls game I’ve properly committed to, and finished. I’ve tried the rest (1, 3 and Bloodborne), and just found them way too hard. 
What I loved about this, was being able to constantly kill enemies til they stopped returning, then levelling up like crazy. It was a lot of fun. Except for the Smelter Demon, he was an utter twat.

 

A lot of Souls fans seem to hate 2. For me, it’s the only one I actually found fun.

[OCH]

Both Smelter Demons were just torture. Dwarf talked about wonky hitboxes, Ancient Dragon had an inescapable one hit kill move that took up 99.8% of the boss room.

[AndyKurosaki]

It may have been 6 years ago (bloody hell), but killing the Smelter Demon, solo, remains one of my proudest gaming moments. Because he was a cheap bastard.

[OCH]

Every Souls game has one. That is either cheap or broken. Smelter Demon is definitely Dark 2's poster child for that.

[one-armed dwarf]

I never fought that Ancient Dragon thing. My main gripe with this game difficulty wise is some of the DLC does this silly thing where they designed it for co-op, so the runs up to certain bosses are almost impossible to do solo. That knight I talked about, I never beat it cause the gauntlet up to it was the hardest thing I've ever seen in a Souls game.

 

The only option was to grind the enemies out until they stopped respawning. That's the thing with this game, every great idea well executed is shat on from high by some of the worst decisions imaginable (MP balanced areas in a SP game why the hell)

 

Yet I still really liked this game. Power stances were dope, made me feel like Guts. The DLC area that Fume Knight is in is one of the coolest in the series, you could make a good cut of this game which removes some of the bad stuff and puts the DLC in the main game I feel. 

[OCH]

I suppose that is why there were so many "Gank Squads" in this game. It was supposed to encourage you to go multiplayer. I never did, so it just made some areas a real chore. I think the enemies outside Smelter and Ancient Dragon I had to stop respawning. The run from the Bonfire to AD was too long not to.

 

The bits I liked about this game were where it showed it's own identity. The Dreams, the pirates cove that had an interesting lighting gimmick. A split personality NPC, depending on whether you talk to him as a Hollow or with your humanity restored. But there were too many other "nods" to Dark 1 that brought down the whole thing.

 

Oh and for those that have never had the pleasure...

 

 

I'm thinking this was after the first nerf. Note the damage values and player stats. This boss was misery incarnate.

[Maf]

Sat down and did the Sunken King DLC today. That was fun! Unique bad guys, a cool area. Made me think both about how to traverse the area but also then how to deal with lots of enemies in tight spaces. However I was literally forced to summon two NPC’s to help me deal with the final boss because magic was mostly useless throughout the whole DLC and my sword kept coming close to breaking on the boss before I’d even done 20% damage to it. 
 

All in all pretty cool, though. Will do the next one tomorrow, I think. 

[Maf]

Oh, ok, Blue Smelter Demon. I see, I see. That’s where you’ve been hiding, Dark Souls, I remember you now. 
 

Sure wish my character build wasn’t based around magic and a fucking fire sword.
 

Mamajama

[OCH]

I had a magic build, with the (pre-nerf) Great Lightning Spear. That was an awesome spell. I heard later patches took its uses down from 11 to 2 though.

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't regard myself as a quitter usually, but I packed it in on Blue Smelter Demon. 

 

I don't even know if that fight is actually hard, all I know is I couldn't stand the bullshit you have to run through every time to fight it.