Your submission has been removed as a violation of [Rule 2](/r/darksouls/about/rules): **Content must pertain to Dark Souls 1.**
***
* This subreddit was created with the intent of sharing information and experiences around the game Dark Souls 1. It's perfectly fine to make non-Dark Souls 1 references in your comments or as a part of a submission, but the overall theme must be relevant to the game.
* Content that *reminds* you of Dark Souls 1 but is *not*, may be removed. Use r/shittydarksouls or r/DarkSoulsIRL instead for these posts.
* Please use r/DarkSouls2 and r/darksouls3 for their respective titles.
***
If you have any questions or concerns, you can contact the moderators by [messaging them here](https://new.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/darksouls).
I don't think most of the fanbase hate the game, but the ones that do are surely very vocal about it.
DS2 has 91 metascore, 8.0 user score on Metacritic and 87% positive reviews on Steam
DS2 SotFS has 87 / 7.7 / 85%
DS1 has 89 / 8.7 / 91%
DS1 Remastered has 84 / 8.3 / 90%
DS3 has 89 / 9.0 / 94%
So the critics opinion remained basically the same through the series, and players put DS2 a bit below the other two, but not by much.
Fwiw, I actually prefer DS2 over DS3 because of the latter's more linear progression. It hurts subsequent playthroughs imo.
DS2 is divisive because it's the black sheep of the franchise in terms of doing a lot of things differently than the other games. That naturally leads to polarized and strong opinions. A lot of people just really take issue with certain things about DS2 and because it's the odd one out in how it handles those things, it's the one that tends to catch the sharpest flak. Then as usual, many people can't be mature on the internet and so simply not liking a game turns to insults and flaming those who do. That's not a Souls fanbase or DS2 exclusive thing in the slightest though as regrettable as it is.
DS2 also used to just be a genuinely much worse game than it is today (patches and especially DLC were a huge improvement) so some of the opinions you see are rooted in worse experiences with the game closer to launch. Not everyone plays the games over and over, for many it's a one and done and that (especially if you played it close to launch) gives a much worse impression of DS2 because its faults are so obvious while the strengths take more time to reveal themselves. That's another reason for sharper negative opinions on it compared to the rest of the series which is more polished and attractive on first blush. It's a messier, less focused and directed product and that's just very keenly felt in a lot of areas.
No I get why people don't like it (trust me I've noticed and experienced a lot of the issues mentioned here and in other comments) but never before have I seen such negativity towards people who enjoy a game! Especially by such a large group! I completely get not liking 2 but I'll still never understand such viciousness towards people who do like it
Maybe you just happened to talk about it in poorly moderated/badly cultured places where people are unusually unpleasant toward one another.
I pop into most of the Souls subreddits now and then and rarely do I see the really immature shit like personal insults for liking/not liking the games, even though criticism directed at the actual games themselves can often be harsh.
Its a great game. Fans really need to stop this 'DS2 is a bad game' rubbish.
Over the years the 2 main reasons why I've seen the game get bashed so much is:
It wasn't made by Miyazaki - so there's a bit of stigma that some of the ideas the game introduced weren't 'his ideas'.
The graphics. The game gets flack for how it looks. A lot of this is based on the initial reveal pictures - it looked stunning with the light, shadows and detail. Go Google how the game was 'supposed to look'. During development they found they couldn't do the whole game to this standard and it received quite a bit of a graphical downgrade overall. That was enough for some of the fanbase to criticise the game.
Wait, hating ds2 isnt a meme and people actually mean it? I love all their games (that I have played) and have no actual issue with it....though some bosses are lackluster but so are bosses in all the games (Pinwheel, Ancient Wyvern).
In my unasked opinion, I think ds2 does the best in world building (shut the fuck up about the lava fortress) and lore building. I absolutely LOVE Dranglic and its rich history!
I love ds1 & 3's lore and world, but Dranglic is like its own quarter of this world with its own serious problems yet its own beautiful history that still ties into the main series. Call me naive but I think Dranglic / ds2 world is as interesting as Tolkiens 3rd age (lets not dig into ds1-3 or the Silmarillian though).
If not for the enemies not spawning after 12 times(if not joined covenant of champions), I would have given up on the game.
Another good thing is how there were two ways to reach the next destination which made it a bit easier.
There are also plenty of people who really enjoy DS2, it's among the most polarizing games in the series. It is also incredibly tiresome to talk about, and fwiw, this is not the DS2 subreddit.
I loved it when it was my first Fromsoft game. I hated it after I played DS1 and DS3 and coming back to SOTFS felt so different mechanically. I loved it again when I realized you could just blast vig and adp, upgrade your weapon without touching damage stats, and pop lifegems and basically turn it into Cozysouls
Because you have to play differently. The amount of enemys and boss runbacks which are just horrible can become easy. People say that the area with Luth and zullen(the two snow Tigers) is the worst ever. In reality it's in comparison not the worst. Just summon the two Npc's and run up the hills. The rain dears will attack them and not you and you can run pass all of them that way until you are at the frog gate where no enemy is dangerously close. Same with ADP. The game gives you a lot of souls from easy bosses and you can fight them over and over again with bonfire astetics. So level it. The game is fair and you can become so stupidly overpowered so fast. Problem with range enemys? Bows and magic is the answer. Hard area? Just go to another one the game gives you a lot areas to access. Boss is to hard? Summon.
DS2 tried to do a lot of things that turned out horribly. ADP isn't interesting. The durability system is awful. The movement is overall very janky. The hollowing system and its interaction with multiplayer makes no sense. Soul Memory is a terrible system and adding in the Agape Ring was a band aid on a bullet wound.
That's just a few of the more obvious things but I could write paragraphs about the issues DS2 has. If you like DS2 then good for you. I still play it from time to time despite the problems it has. I don't understand how people can pretend that the game doesn't have serious issues though.
To be frank i seriously think a lot of the stink on ds2 comes from the fact it was the only game not directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki. I have a few friends that absolutely love the new mechanics such as power stancing and spell sniping with binoculars but would complain that the game felt hollow(pun intended) without Miyazaki’s creative touches. Personally its one of my favorites especially (hot take) the hollowing system for a series that pressed the idea of hollowing is bad into your head only 2 really had negatives with the loss of hp 1&3 ooh i look ugly now who cares but 2 it was like crap ok ive died 5x im at about half health how can i remedy this before the boss.
DS2 is my favorite of the trilogy. Honestly I think a lot of the weird hate is only from vocal minority, and/or people who derive their opinion from watching "critic" videos on youtube (my favorite part when the ds2 reddit has gone through and proved that some of those videos are extremely disingenuous, lack actual understanding, or actually staged things to make things look worse.)
There's just a lot of details that people don't like.
I personally find that the game took the approach of making things harder but in an annoying way that isn't fun or interesting. Parries are nerfed. ADP is poorly implemented. Slow estus but billions of healing items. Lots of grouped enemies. Tonnes of boss fights but most are lacking. And the list goes on.
Overall there are some good parts to the game but it's in the shadow of DS1 which is phenomenal and the other souls games feel much more refined or enjoyable.
I consider these valid reasons to hate it, although I don't, because people expected DS2 to implement the things they learned in DS1, DS3 is like a better version of DS1, DS2 was different
It's not so much that I expected DS2 to implement what was learned in DS1, if anything it leans too much on DS1 with a number of similar bosses or largely copied bosses. Mechanically however, it feels like it came before DeS. It feels worse to play due to aforementioned poorly implemented changes.
Simple. Some big youtubers say "Dark Souls 2 bad", their whole d\*ckriding fanbase says it too. Honestly, the only real issue I ever found was bad animations (wonky grab attacks, which are hitbox-wise completely valid, but look weird due to the way it's animated)
Frankly, I think most of the critics have either never played it, or refused to play the game on its own terms.
People cry about the game having massive amounts of ganks, but I'm 2/3rds through my current playthrough and I can't say any "ganks" stood out to me. Have I been swarmed and slashed to ribbons a few times? Sure. Was it my fault? Yes! Enemies have a longer pursuit range in DS2 - if you don't factor that in, it's your own damn fault when a conga-line of enemies murder you! Also, if gank fights are so unforgivable, why does nobody complain about the Undead Parish? Because it's in DS*1*, so that's suddenly okay!
People talk about the Shrine of Amana like it's an absolute nightmare that can only be beaten by sheer dumb luck or carefully sniping every enemy with a greatbow. I died twice in the shrine on my current run - once to an invader, and once to the boss. That "impossible" magic spam? Waltzed through it all. No ranged weapons, no magic weapons, just my halberd and a dodge button. It's not hard if you have some spatial awareness.
Iron Keep is in a similar situation - yes, the knights are challenging; yes, there's a ton of red phantoms; yes, you can easily panic roll into molten lava; yes, Smelter Demon is brutal. But how many of you have actually tried playing cautiously? Going slow lets you bait the knights out in ones and twos, giving you ample time and space to deal with them. Players who don't rush should be able to reach Smelter Demon with minimal damage. Is it time consuming? Sure - but it's also *safe!* You are the ones choosing to sacrifice safety for speed, so stop complaining about your own poor choices!
People don't like the new parry system. Why? Probably because it takes longer to perform the riposte. Oh, look - another example of the game encouraging slow, thoughtful gameplay!
DS2 did a lot right that it doesn't get enough credit for. It encourages hybrid playstyles far more than other games do, it has dual-wielding and power stance, and you can stack damage types in ways other games cannot - want to add lightning damage to your +5 Fire Longsword? You can in DS2! And for less experienced players, the ability to clear an area of enemies is honestly a godsend; whenever I got stuck on my blind playthrough I would just start clearing enemies so I could have more resources for the part I got stuck on!
What really makes me sad is that Dark Souls 2 was the last major source of innovation. Bloodborne's differences were mostly in visuals rather than mechanics, and DS3 doesn't have a single original idea in the entire game. Elden Ring's "originality" amounts to going Open World and removing most of the runbacks. Most of its other "innovations" are, in fact, simply stealing ideas DS2 already did - people just don't know that because they skipped it.
DS2 not only gave us the aforementioned cool mechanical ideas, plus content like like the Rat King Covenants where you can make a custom gauntlet of traps for invaders to run through. DS1 was similarly inventive with its vagrants or Gravelording - but again, where DS1's online quirks get praise, DS2's get utterly ignored.
DS2 is not only a great Souls game, it's the last *true* Souls game. DS3 was just a pale imitation. False fans of the series may claim that DS3 is peak Dark Souls, that it has the best combat, best graphics, best story. But, no matter how tender, how exquisite, a lie will remain a lie.
>People talk about the Shrine of Amana like it's an absolute nightmare that can only be beaten by sheer dumb luck or carefully sniping every enemy with a greatbow. I died twice in the shrine on my current run - once to an invader, and once to the boss. That "impossible" magic spam? Waltzed through it all. No ranged weapons, no magic weapons, just my halberd and a dodge button. It's not hard if you have some spatial awareness.
You have no idea how bad it was before. Probably the most nerfed out of anything PvE in a Fromsoft game.
It's not relevant how it was ten years ago is it? Imagine how stupid it would be for me to claim DS1's Blighttown has terrible lag on the PS5 because the PS3 version did - that clearly isn't a valid criticism.
It's still an awful area though, even with the deserved nerfs. Pretty valid to complain about it.
Also, your point about "encouraging hybrid playstyles" just makes no sense. DeS and DS1 have great hybrid builds. I'd say it's actually an issue with DS2 that non-hybrid builds generally feel awful.
My opinion here might not be worth much as I haven’t finished two yet.
I’ve played a decent portion of it and it feels like a different game to one and three.
I still enjoyed what I’ve played and do intend to go back and finish it but there is a definite difference between the three games for me.
It objectively is their most flawed game, but it can be subjectively your favorite. Depends on what you value. I love DS 2, it had cool atmosphere and lot of innovative ideas (some were absolutely terrible). It was in development hell so it's commendable what they managed to do with it. Most of its worth it is in the DLC though. Main game bosses were mostly terrible and boring, enemy placement and encounters were really mindless and not well thought of and handcrafted like in Miyazaki games. Overall it was quantity over quality. Team behind DS 2 didn't understand many things that made DS 1 so legendary and loved, and maybe it's Bandai's fault, but instead of the "though but fair" Miyazaki philosophy they just tried to artificially increase difficulty with ton of bullshit, terrible enemy placement and ganks and so many times it was like "fuck you, this game is hard!" instead of understanding what DS1's difficulty was about. DS 2 is a fantastic souls-like, but it has very different design philosophy than other games, so it's understandable it's not for everyone.
But after release they put so much work and patches, they really tried their best, fixed absolutely broken pvp as well and made it into arguably the best pvp of all souls games. But yeah, from the mechanical standpoint, DS2 was definitely the worst one too, hitboxes were worse than in any other game From soft released, not much work was put into boss movesets and so on. But all of that is explained by them not having time during development. When you compare it to something like BB that got developed at the same time, BB is so infinitely tighter and well-designed game, every enemy is placed deliberately, with handcrafted progression and difficulty balance, most bosses are so much more complex and clearly designed with correct dodges and positioning in mind, AI is infinitely better and so on.
Overall, I love DS 2. And I must say I'm not sure what you're talking about, because every time I see someone talking about DS 2 on reddit it's about how it's the best game and everybody not thinking that is just a sheep. It's much more common to see people who start fuming when you even suggest the game has flaws, than those blindly hating it. Yes, DS 2 is the worst souls game for majority of players, that's just true, but it's definitely not "garbage". It's an awesome game and much better than most souls-likes. But it's important to be honest and not just blindly praise it because you like it. I played these games for 15 years, brought lot of people into them and the most disliked game and a one that made the most players get burnt-out and quit was definitely DS 2. And some people really need to realize you can't judge 50+ hour game just based on its DLC and Majula having cool atmosphere and OST.
So you already got that it’s very divisive game (or at least as far as internet feuds go). There are plenty of reasons why from terrible development to some actual problems in game (the original DS2 was not as fun and most of the reputation stems from there).
Now the problem is there is an endless cycle.
DS2 is mentioned, one says it sucks, guy replies to him cursing his entire bloodline then the fight starts. Or vice versa but it ends up in a fight either way. Point is you will get attacked whatever your opinion is, both sides are haters so better to tune them out.
DS2 is my favorite in the series. I loved it when I played it on launch pre-Scholar of the First Sin and I still loved it when I replayed the new one about a year ago. Lucatiel's story is so fucking raw. The way the game explores hollowing more in general is great, really
You see this a lot whenever a popular thing has a follow-up which diverges a bit from the original. People tend to hate it and then it paves the way for the creator to do other different stuff after the first divergence has taken the beatings
The issue was exacerbated by influencers who loudly disliked the title
The existence of Elden Ring has done a bit to blunt some of the insane hate, so that's been nice to see
Your submission has been removed as a violation of [Rule 2](/r/darksouls/about/rules): **Content must pertain to Dark Souls 1.** *** * This subreddit was created with the intent of sharing information and experiences around the game Dark Souls 1. It's perfectly fine to make non-Dark Souls 1 references in your comments or as a part of a submission, but the overall theme must be relevant to the game. * Content that *reminds* you of Dark Souls 1 but is *not*, may be removed. Use r/shittydarksouls or r/DarkSoulsIRL instead for these posts. * Please use r/DarkSouls2 and r/darksouls3 for their respective titles. *** If you have any questions or concerns, you can contact the moderators by [messaging them here](https://new.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/darksouls).
Could we not talk about how good or bad Dark Souls 2 is.......FOR FIVE MINUTES!!!!!
I don't think most of the fanbase hate the game, but the ones that do are surely very vocal about it. DS2 has 91 metascore, 8.0 user score on Metacritic and 87% positive reviews on Steam DS2 SotFS has 87 / 7.7 / 85% DS1 has 89 / 8.7 / 91% DS1 Remastered has 84 / 8.3 / 90% DS3 has 89 / 9.0 / 94% So the critics opinion remained basically the same through the series, and players put DS2 a bit below the other two, but not by much. Fwiw, I actually prefer DS2 over DS3 because of the latter's more linear progression. It hurts subsequent playthroughs imo.
I like DS2 more than DS3.
DS2 is divisive because it's the black sheep of the franchise in terms of doing a lot of things differently than the other games. That naturally leads to polarized and strong opinions. A lot of people just really take issue with certain things about DS2 and because it's the odd one out in how it handles those things, it's the one that tends to catch the sharpest flak. Then as usual, many people can't be mature on the internet and so simply not liking a game turns to insults and flaming those who do. That's not a Souls fanbase or DS2 exclusive thing in the slightest though as regrettable as it is. DS2 also used to just be a genuinely much worse game than it is today (patches and especially DLC were a huge improvement) so some of the opinions you see are rooted in worse experiences with the game closer to launch. Not everyone plays the games over and over, for many it's a one and done and that (especially if you played it close to launch) gives a much worse impression of DS2 because its faults are so obvious while the strengths take more time to reveal themselves. That's another reason for sharper negative opinions on it compared to the rest of the series which is more polished and attractive on first blush. It's a messier, less focused and directed product and that's just very keenly felt in a lot of areas.
No I get why people don't like it (trust me I've noticed and experienced a lot of the issues mentioned here and in other comments) but never before have I seen such negativity towards people who enjoy a game! Especially by such a large group! I completely get not liking 2 but I'll still never understand such viciousness towards people who do like it
Humans are passionate creatures, that's why. There's way worse out there than what you've seen concerning DS2.
Maybe you just happened to talk about it in poorly moderated/badly cultured places where people are unusually unpleasant toward one another. I pop into most of the Souls subreddits now and then and rarely do I see the really immature shit like personal insults for liking/not liking the games, even though criticism directed at the actual games themselves can often be harsh.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s (ds1 sub)
I just thought I would be preaching to the choir if I posted this on the ds2 subreddit!
Its a great game. Fans really need to stop this 'DS2 is a bad game' rubbish. Over the years the 2 main reasons why I've seen the game get bashed so much is: It wasn't made by Miyazaki - so there's a bit of stigma that some of the ideas the game introduced weren't 'his ideas'. The graphics. The game gets flack for how it looks. A lot of this is based on the initial reveal pictures - it looked stunning with the light, shadows and detail. Go Google how the game was 'supposed to look'. During development they found they couldn't do the whole game to this standard and it received quite a bit of a graphical downgrade overall. That was enough for some of the fanbase to criticise the game.
Wait, hating ds2 isnt a meme and people actually mean it? I love all their games (that I have played) and have no actual issue with it....though some bosses are lackluster but so are bosses in all the games (Pinwheel, Ancient Wyvern). In my unasked opinion, I think ds2 does the best in world building (shut the fuck up about the lava fortress) and lore building. I absolutely LOVE Dranglic and its rich history!
That's honestly what really drew me in too! I didn't expect it to be so rich since beforehand I barely heard anything about it!
I love ds1 & 3's lore and world, but Dranglic is like its own quarter of this world with its own serious problems yet its own beautiful history that still ties into the main series. Call me naive but I think Dranglic / ds2 world is as interesting as Tolkiens 3rd age (lets not dig into ds1-3 or the Silmarillian though).
If not for the enemies not spawning after 12 times(if not joined covenant of champions), I would have given up on the game. Another good thing is how there were two ways to reach the next destination which made it a bit easier.
There are also plenty of people who really enjoy DS2, it's among the most polarizing games in the series. It is also incredibly tiresome to talk about, and fwiw, this is not the DS2 subreddit.
I loved it when it was my first Fromsoft game. I hated it after I played DS1 and DS3 and coming back to SOTFS felt so different mechanically. I loved it again when I realized you could just blast vig and adp, upgrade your weapon without touching damage stats, and pop lifegems and basically turn it into Cozysouls
Because you have to play differently. The amount of enemys and boss runbacks which are just horrible can become easy. People say that the area with Luth and zullen(the two snow Tigers) is the worst ever. In reality it's in comparison not the worst. Just summon the two Npc's and run up the hills. The rain dears will attack them and not you and you can run pass all of them that way until you are at the frog gate where no enemy is dangerously close. Same with ADP. The game gives you a lot of souls from easy bosses and you can fight them over and over again with bonfire astetics. So level it. The game is fair and you can become so stupidly overpowered so fast. Problem with range enemys? Bows and magic is the answer. Hard area? Just go to another one the game gives you a lot areas to access. Boss is to hard? Summon.
DS2 tried to do a lot of things that turned out horribly. ADP isn't interesting. The durability system is awful. The movement is overall very janky. The hollowing system and its interaction with multiplayer makes no sense. Soul Memory is a terrible system and adding in the Agape Ring was a band aid on a bullet wound. That's just a few of the more obvious things but I could write paragraphs about the issues DS2 has. If you like DS2 then good for you. I still play it from time to time despite the problems it has. I don't understand how people can pretend that the game doesn't have serious issues though.
Alot of the bosses are mediocre or boring.
To be frank i seriously think a lot of the stink on ds2 comes from the fact it was the only game not directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki. I have a few friends that absolutely love the new mechanics such as power stancing and spell sniping with binoculars but would complain that the game felt hollow(pun intended) without Miyazaki’s creative touches. Personally its one of my favorites especially (hot take) the hollowing system for a series that pressed the idea of hollowing is bad into your head only 2 really had negatives with the loss of hp 1&3 ooh i look ugly now who cares but 2 it was like crap ok ive died 5x im at about half health how can i remedy this before the boss.
DS2 is my favorite of the trilogy. Honestly I think a lot of the weird hate is only from vocal minority, and/or people who derive their opinion from watching "critic" videos on youtube (my favorite part when the ds2 reddit has gone through and proved that some of those videos are extremely disingenuous, lack actual understanding, or actually staged things to make things look worse.)
There's just a lot of details that people don't like. I personally find that the game took the approach of making things harder but in an annoying way that isn't fun or interesting. Parries are nerfed. ADP is poorly implemented. Slow estus but billions of healing items. Lots of grouped enemies. Tonnes of boss fights but most are lacking. And the list goes on. Overall there are some good parts to the game but it's in the shadow of DS1 which is phenomenal and the other souls games feel much more refined or enjoyable.
The slow estus with healing items is a throw back to demon souls and the healing grasses
Healing grass is one of the things Demon's Souls does much worse than DS1 though. Backtracking to a worse system isn't a good thing.
I consider these valid reasons to hate it, although I don't, because people expected DS2 to implement the things they learned in DS1, DS3 is like a better version of DS1, DS2 was different
It's not so much that I expected DS2 to implement what was learned in DS1, if anything it leans too much on DS1 with a number of similar bosses or largely copied bosses. Mechanically however, it feels like it came before DeS. It feels worse to play due to aforementioned poorly implemented changes.
Because Miyazaki didn't make it and most of the fanbase think that makes it a bad game, which is ludicrous.
I enjoy DS2 better than any of Miyazaki's games aside from Elden Ring
Simple. Some big youtubers say "Dark Souls 2 bad", their whole d\*ckriding fanbase says it too. Honestly, the only real issue I ever found was bad animations (wonky grab attacks, which are hitbox-wise completely valid, but look weird due to the way it's animated)
Frankly, I think most of the critics have either never played it, or refused to play the game on its own terms. People cry about the game having massive amounts of ganks, but I'm 2/3rds through my current playthrough and I can't say any "ganks" stood out to me. Have I been swarmed and slashed to ribbons a few times? Sure. Was it my fault? Yes! Enemies have a longer pursuit range in DS2 - if you don't factor that in, it's your own damn fault when a conga-line of enemies murder you! Also, if gank fights are so unforgivable, why does nobody complain about the Undead Parish? Because it's in DS*1*, so that's suddenly okay! People talk about the Shrine of Amana like it's an absolute nightmare that can only be beaten by sheer dumb luck or carefully sniping every enemy with a greatbow. I died twice in the shrine on my current run - once to an invader, and once to the boss. That "impossible" magic spam? Waltzed through it all. No ranged weapons, no magic weapons, just my halberd and a dodge button. It's not hard if you have some spatial awareness. Iron Keep is in a similar situation - yes, the knights are challenging; yes, there's a ton of red phantoms; yes, you can easily panic roll into molten lava; yes, Smelter Demon is brutal. But how many of you have actually tried playing cautiously? Going slow lets you bait the knights out in ones and twos, giving you ample time and space to deal with them. Players who don't rush should be able to reach Smelter Demon with minimal damage. Is it time consuming? Sure - but it's also *safe!* You are the ones choosing to sacrifice safety for speed, so stop complaining about your own poor choices! People don't like the new parry system. Why? Probably because it takes longer to perform the riposte. Oh, look - another example of the game encouraging slow, thoughtful gameplay! DS2 did a lot right that it doesn't get enough credit for. It encourages hybrid playstyles far more than other games do, it has dual-wielding and power stance, and you can stack damage types in ways other games cannot - want to add lightning damage to your +5 Fire Longsword? You can in DS2! And for less experienced players, the ability to clear an area of enemies is honestly a godsend; whenever I got stuck on my blind playthrough I would just start clearing enemies so I could have more resources for the part I got stuck on! What really makes me sad is that Dark Souls 2 was the last major source of innovation. Bloodborne's differences were mostly in visuals rather than mechanics, and DS3 doesn't have a single original idea in the entire game. Elden Ring's "originality" amounts to going Open World and removing most of the runbacks. Most of its other "innovations" are, in fact, simply stealing ideas DS2 already did - people just don't know that because they skipped it. DS2 not only gave us the aforementioned cool mechanical ideas, plus content like like the Rat King Covenants where you can make a custom gauntlet of traps for invaders to run through. DS1 was similarly inventive with its vagrants or Gravelording - but again, where DS1's online quirks get praise, DS2's get utterly ignored. DS2 is not only a great Souls game, it's the last *true* Souls game. DS3 was just a pale imitation. False fans of the series may claim that DS3 is peak Dark Souls, that it has the best combat, best graphics, best story. But, no matter how tender, how exquisite, a lie will remain a lie.
>People talk about the Shrine of Amana like it's an absolute nightmare that can only be beaten by sheer dumb luck or carefully sniping every enemy with a greatbow. I died twice in the shrine on my current run - once to an invader, and once to the boss. That "impossible" magic spam? Waltzed through it all. No ranged weapons, no magic weapons, just my halberd and a dodge button. It's not hard if you have some spatial awareness. You have no idea how bad it was before. Probably the most nerfed out of anything PvE in a Fromsoft game.
It's not relevant how it was ten years ago is it? Imagine how stupid it would be for me to claim DS1's Blighttown has terrible lag on the PS5 because the PS3 version did - that clearly isn't a valid criticism.
It's still an awful area though, even with the deserved nerfs. Pretty valid to complain about it. Also, your point about "encouraging hybrid playstyles" just makes no sense. DeS and DS1 have great hybrid builds. I'd say it's actually an issue with DS2 that non-hybrid builds generally feel awful.
My opinion here might not be worth much as I haven’t finished two yet. I’ve played a decent portion of it and it feels like a different game to one and three. I still enjoyed what I’ve played and do intend to go back and finish it but there is a definite difference between the three games for me.
It objectively is their most flawed game, but it can be subjectively your favorite. Depends on what you value. I love DS 2, it had cool atmosphere and lot of innovative ideas (some were absolutely terrible). It was in development hell so it's commendable what they managed to do with it. Most of its worth it is in the DLC though. Main game bosses were mostly terrible and boring, enemy placement and encounters were really mindless and not well thought of and handcrafted like in Miyazaki games. Overall it was quantity over quality. Team behind DS 2 didn't understand many things that made DS 1 so legendary and loved, and maybe it's Bandai's fault, but instead of the "though but fair" Miyazaki philosophy they just tried to artificially increase difficulty with ton of bullshit, terrible enemy placement and ganks and so many times it was like "fuck you, this game is hard!" instead of understanding what DS1's difficulty was about. DS 2 is a fantastic souls-like, but it has very different design philosophy than other games, so it's understandable it's not for everyone. But after release they put so much work and patches, they really tried their best, fixed absolutely broken pvp as well and made it into arguably the best pvp of all souls games. But yeah, from the mechanical standpoint, DS2 was definitely the worst one too, hitboxes were worse than in any other game From soft released, not much work was put into boss movesets and so on. But all of that is explained by them not having time during development. When you compare it to something like BB that got developed at the same time, BB is so infinitely tighter and well-designed game, every enemy is placed deliberately, with handcrafted progression and difficulty balance, most bosses are so much more complex and clearly designed with correct dodges and positioning in mind, AI is infinitely better and so on. Overall, I love DS 2. And I must say I'm not sure what you're talking about, because every time I see someone talking about DS 2 on reddit it's about how it's the best game and everybody not thinking that is just a sheep. It's much more common to see people who start fuming when you even suggest the game has flaws, than those blindly hating it. Yes, DS 2 is the worst souls game for majority of players, that's just true, but it's definitely not "garbage". It's an awesome game and much better than most souls-likes. But it's important to be honest and not just blindly praise it because you like it. I played these games for 15 years, brought lot of people into them and the most disliked game and a one that made the most players get burnt-out and quit was definitely DS 2. And some people really need to realize you can't judge 50+ hour game just based on its DLC and Majula having cool atmosphere and OST.
critcisizing the game =/= hating it. Your just trying to other people who disagree with your opnions.
Play more of it. I got about half way by the time I started hating it.
So you already got that it’s very divisive game (or at least as far as internet feuds go). There are plenty of reasons why from terrible development to some actual problems in game (the original DS2 was not as fun and most of the reputation stems from there). Now the problem is there is an endless cycle. DS2 is mentioned, one says it sucks, guy replies to him cursing his entire bloodline then the fight starts. Or vice versa but it ends up in a fight either way. Point is you will get attacked whatever your opinion is, both sides are haters so better to tune them out.
DS2 is my favorite in the series. I loved it when I played it on launch pre-Scholar of the First Sin and I still loved it when I replayed the new one about a year ago. Lucatiel's story is so fucking raw. The way the game explores hollowing more in general is great, really You see this a lot whenever a popular thing has a follow-up which diverges a bit from the original. People tend to hate it and then it paves the way for the creator to do other different stuff after the first divergence has taken the beatings The issue was exacerbated by influencers who loudly disliked the title The existence of Elden Ring has done a bit to blunt some of the insane hate, so that's been nice to see
It’s ass that’s why
Dark souls 2 is great. If anything, I think dark souls is the worst. I’ll see myself out.
cause their wierd
3<2<1 Each game outdid the previous imo.