I made a comment response video where I kill all the enemies in every level: ua-cam.com/video/rR-a3zIOE2w/v-deo.html I made a video comparing vanilla to Scholar since vanilla is a lot better. You can watch that video with the link below. ua-cam.com/video/dgJM4O8mAys/v-deo.html I also made a video called "In Defense of Dark Souls 2" where I tried to understand why a minority of people enjoyed Scholar. It had some issues so I made it unlisted. If you wanna watch it you can use the link below. ua-cam.com/video/2A6s_Wq-6PU/v-deo.html
@@highlightermarca-texto3281 I did not try that. I do need video evidence of this occurring multiple times and working consistently to know for sure. Either way I still think that a boss with a boss run like that shouldn't be the hardest to create healing windows in the game.
You say that you have to fight two knights at the start of Heide, but I’ve never played a version of SotFS where that is true. Likewise you complain about infinitely respawning invaders, but they don’t respawn if you kill them like in every Souls game. People are valid to criticize your use of footage that exaggerates the problem you are discussing even if it is coincidental and unintentional - inferred hyperbole will still weaken your argument to other people. The pyromancer at the end of the ivory king doing too much damage is probably because you never leveled INT or FTH, the only stats tied to fire defense - just a guess. Also, I can’t exactly fault people for not knowing this, but the DLCs have areas designed for three player parties. This includes the run up to Alonne, a very questionable choice IMO, but each one gives you two NPC summons for offline play. I haven’t seen a single DS2 review fairly acknowledge this. You could summon to fight your way through and then unsummon before Alonne, but I can’t really defend that area too much as it is the most boring multiplayer area. NPCs can’t interact with the Iron Passage’s side paths, either, so that one is somewhat dysfunctional, too. Honestly, the gank squad is probably the best multiplayer area to do with the NPCs. All of this to say if you try to solo those areas your pride will be the death of you. 😉
@@Zapdos7471 I view using summons as playing in easy mode, and for a critique to be "legit" it should probably be done in normal mode if possible. But after beating Dark Souls 2 no summons level 1 I can say that yes, using summons is developer intended. I disagree with that design decision and prefer Dark Souls 1 being designed around solo play, but maybe for some who enjoy co op Dark Souls 2 is fun for them. And I killed an invader in the Iron Keep and then died, ran back to Smelter Demon, and was invaded again. So yes, there were multiple respawning invaders, however I think that if I killed the invaders every run eventually they would stop respawning. I didn't do this because it's stupid and I just ran to Smelter Demon, but respawning invaders are real. And I think the only real "exaggerated" gameplay of gank fests is what I showed in the lost bastille. Since the forest of the fallen giants has a ladder you can run to if you run past the enemies with another enemy coded to go down the ladder and force you to fight all 30 enemies at once, so no I don't think that gameplay was exaggerated as the game tricked me!
The one reason I finished my first, and so far only, playthrough was bc an invader dropped me some good gear when I was struggling through Iron Keep. Then he left with a wave and without a fight. That act of kindness carried me frfr.
The one that i found instead is someone spamming hexes in Shrine of amana, while that gank at the end pursuing me. Also someone else in Iron keep also spamming sorceries when attempting to run from the army
Just out of curiosity, do you remember what the Kind Souls player dropped? Would be hilarious if he dropped you a +10 Smelter Hammer or something like that 🤣
It's just death by a thousand cuts. Most of the issues aren't really big deals, but when they all get mushed together it just makes a bad experience. Finding a hair in your food isn't a big deal. Finding a dozen is.
It would all be worth the pain if the bosses were good. But they're not - almost all of them have no counter whatsoever to circle strafing, and every "dude in armor" (which isn't inherently bad) is the same because they all have the same, similar, three-five swing combos, maybe a smash.
@@feebleking21 Hey dood I don't know if you'll see this but i hope you do, I personally agree with some of your grievances with ds2 but I think this video might change your out look by just a little ua-cam.com/video/td1HJEB3aKQ/v-deo.html. Well have a good one dood and look after yourself
Please identify any member of this ostensible “B team” outside of Yui Tanimura (who has actually been co-director on other games like Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring).
I liked the idea of the hollowing that happens after each death but man I died so many more times directly because of it. It didn't make the game "harder" it made it more annoying. That's honestly how I would describe the game as a whole. More annoying than difficult.
thats what i dislike the most about dark souls, too much artificial difficult added to compensate for the lack of good AI and physics, it worked well on the ps3 era as a low budget esque game, but now this design is aging pretty bad
I didn't know you could use human effigies as a consumable cause I thought their only use was to be burnt at a bonfire so I played through the whole game with 75%/50% health lol.
@@core-nix1885 Ember is the same as effigies to me, i don't like getting punished and not being able to have max HP using a ressource annoying to farm because I died in a game that can easily kill you. Thats why I prefer DS1 when it comes to dying, Humannity is mostly used for summoning and I don't get smacked harder when screwing up/getting fucked.
You forgot about the best part of the dlcs : Reindeer-Fuckland or as some call it the frigid outskirts. How could the devs make this and think thats a good idea. Horrible place,disgusting boss run.
It is a coop area designed to be unfair, so that you can overcome it with friends. It is the most optional of optional areas specifically for Sunbros encounters. I get if you don't like it but I fully understand the core idea and why it is there.
Sir Alonne has a unique death animation if you kill him without taking damage, so his aggression and ability to punish heals plays into this. I agree the boss run is stupid, but trying to kill him flawless to get the unique seppuku animation made that boss very memorable for me.
exactly, he encourages learning his patterns and AI and encourages flawless play. i was always terrible at Alonne until sl1 run and I learned him and flawlessed him. then i learned him no roll and flawless sl1 CoC no rolled him. working on him no sprint now. i absolutely love Alonne nowadays lol.
Screw Alonne. Who throws an army at you and then pretends like he's having an honorable battle with a guy half dead from the gauntlet? On the plus side, when he commits seppuku, you could say he couldn't handle the absolute shame of losing in such an advantageous position.
That’s what that was?! I got that animation first time through after dying to him at least a few dozen times. After a while of trying I straight gave up on defending, restatted for quick dex weapons and high adaptability, stripped, and just dodged for like an hour. I’d get in one quick strike then dodge because I was too scared to go in and get hit. I figured if I got hit, I’d never be able to heal, so just don’t get hit. It only occurs to me now as you mention this that I beat him without taking damage. I was just too excited to have finally beat him, without even having an effigy left.
In all your gameplay it shows you just running past multiple enemies, aggroing them then trying to fight them all instead of taking one by one no wonder why you are getting killed in all areas.
dont even bother, bro, here is a shithole for the bad Fromsoft players. you see how they all agree with every meanspirited opinion that appears out of pure skill issue and crafted encounters that do not occur in normal playthrough, you can't fight against stupidity on its nest (I don't know if there is a relation, but every DS2 hater love to shit talk the game while sucking the balls of Bloodborne, that is the easiest and smaller Fromsoft game)
He established a dichotomy between running past enemies and having to fight them. Either you sluggishly kill the enemies every single run back or you try to make it past them. Both are equally frustrating
@@BasedIfTrue no it is not, killing enemies carefully in an area is a lot easier and they are not that many, in that forest of the giants part they always show the enemies don't even get up unless you get close to them, watch Domo 3000 videos debunking all these claims with actual examples.
@@comicsans6487 You missed my entire argument bud, if the gameplay sucks then killing a few enemies suck as well. And that problem multiplies the longer the boss runs are
I’m so glad you mentioned undead burg. For me Undead burg and parish on my first play thru was the most fun I’ve had in a souls game. And the magic of going down that elevator for the first time and finding myself at firelink where I look up and realise I can see all of the path I had just taken while looking outward to where I might be able to go next.
Man... Every developer must have been a sorcerer. I didn't have much difficulty with the enemy numbers or ranged enemies because I fired lasers from a stick
I played powerstance UGS and I had a blast. You're just bad Don't worry about it tho, it's probably the most difficult Souls game, it's not for casuals and babbies
@@wrcz nah. You know the game is objectively bad when instead of allowing players to go down the well early and die, they just decide to increase the fall damage across the board. I'm not even going to talk about the piss poor balancing of lifegems.
@@wrcz I think the original version was balanced for casuals. It's definitely not the easiest one, but some things make me think that way. Even bad players can see nearly the whole game if they try hard enough. Required bosses are easy, optional bosses are hard and the way to the bosses is somewhere between (and can be cleared with enough time). Also with lifegems you will never run out of healing items.
Part of my brain still remembers how enemies were set up in the OG dark souls 2. It's like they took nearly every encounter and asked themselves: is this annoying enough yet? Then we got SOTFS
i recently bought normal ds2 on steam due to nostalgia since i got pissed at scholar. ds2 standard is actually a masterpiece compared to the shitfest that is scholar.
@@xlgapelsin6173 I second that. One of the biggest complaints about OG DS2 was the enemy placements and how unfair they felt. So when I heard that Fromsoft is gonna release a complete overhaul of the game (SotFS), me and a lot of other people were excited, that they would finally fix the game... oh boy, they made it so much worse... what a waste.
@Chris Janzen funnily enough. SOTFS isnt worse. It just has different fucky areas. I even think SOTFS is better by the internets opinion. And i only grew up on SOTFS. And having watched hours and hours and hours of both copies. Youd rather have some parts of the OG and some of SOTFS Its a pick your poison and id take SOTFS cause its better- trust me. Platted the game 2 times and i have countless countless hours
After replaying it again, I realized that you have to play the game the slowest out of all of them otherwise you’ll get ganked and die especially if you run past everything
Commented get good on this video 2 years ago. Seen an AI voice bro criticizing this video and remembered this guys voice so vividly cause it sucks. Had to come find my own old comments and here you are
I learned not to rely on lock on from playing demon’s souls, so that was never really an issue for me. I also think it’s neat that the level of light in an area corresponds to your lock on range.
Well, I mean a big issue Feeble had with it is that he learned to not use lock-on by watching UA-cam videos rather than the game itself teaching him.....and you learning it from another game entirely is no better.
@@Spiral81C1 did he not play Ds1 before this? I find it really hard to believe that you'd never even consider just not locking on if you have any prior experience with these games, even if they don't explicitly say that it can be useful. Like, how do you beat a boss like O&S or 4 Kings while locked on?
@@yellowsaurus4895 I was also thinking Asylum Demon even is easier not locked on. I guess it is just easier in that game to brute force, and maybe in this game it was the level areas rather than the bosses which rarely happened in dark souls 1.
Stop agroing every single enemies. You complain about getting attacked by mobs, but I saw in the Iron Keep footage that you purposefully ran into even more enemies, refused to heal, and then complained that you got killed. Tf did you expect?
I'm playing DS2 and every time the game stresses me out for some objectively unfair reason, I return to this video as anger therapy Edit: Finally beat that hell with DLC's included
The best thing about DS2 was that it was the first one I played, but managed to push myself through it and had fun which made me enjoy the others even more.
Funny enough for me, Ds2 was also my first one, years and years ago, I started it and never finished it and never played another Souls game because I thought all of them were like that. It turned me away from the series until this year when I finally got back into them
I feel like in every scene where you're fighting enemies, you are fighting like every possible enemy in that room/hall/area. Would there not be a compromise between fighting every enemy whilst under archer fire and running past every enemy? I'm pretty sure that, to go along with the slow combat, you're supposed to approach levels slowly and kill off a few enemies at a time at most, by luring them and methodically clearing the area without resorting to a mega brawl.
@@naproupi perhaps in 2-3 enemies see you at the same time, the only way for them to spot you in bigger groups is if you run through the level and have no idea where to go, like in the start of the video.
Was thinking that when he woke up all the enemies in that one spot in forest of the fallen giants. I’ve played through the area half a dozen times and have never done that lol
Finally someone resonable, the only really annoying areas are iron keep, but not really, and shrine of amana. I've completed the game a ton of times and i liked the first time like the 10th, i think that ds2 is way way easier than ds3 where everything oneshots you and u have to apend souls on health unless u want to suffer, not to talk about the completely unfair enemies in the prison of ithryll or the fact that the hotboxes of grabs are huge, the good thing about ds3 is the design and the dynamic bossfights the rest is bs.
@@fabriziomessina6734 i feel like DS3 has the best bosses in the series, but the areas feel really boring. Every playthrough feels the same because you have One way to go. Ds2 has a lot of flaws but at least they tried something new, and i like that aspect of the game. Dual wielding was the best things about the game, creating a lot of build diversity and new moveset. DS3 went the safe way. Removed everything from ds2 even the Good things, and abused fan service, but removing depth from the game (not lore-wise)
DS2 did a lot of really cool stuff. The dual wielding "power stance" was awesome, and a lot of the areas have really cool atmosphere and variety (the "pirate level," doors of Pharos, shrine of Amana, the "rainy castle," the area with the buff mummy dudes, earthen peak, dragon aerie, the cursed woods area, etc are all really cool looking areas, and the kind of nonsensical progression makes it hard to predict what will come next on your first playthrough...
I have played through all of the "soulsborne" games multiple times (starting with demons souls on PS3), as well as kings field 1 and 2 (na), and I can honestly say I remember more areas from DS2 than any of the others (although elden ring may change that), despite having played it less. It took me a while to buy DS2 due to negative reviews, but I can now say, with all it's faults, DS2 is probably my favorite overall "souls" game. I feel like most of the areas you show in this video are the least interesting areas in the game. That being said, I'm not saying DS2 is flawless, and I'm sure I was frustrated as hell at least 50% of the time I played it (as with all from soft games), but in hindsight, I really appreciate the unique design of DS2.
The graphics in each level dip in quality throughout the game, as some areas look very dull and static while others as you stated look cool and atmospheric. Mechanics matter more to me than visuals, but if the cool looking areas of Dark Souls 2 made you enjoy playing the game then that's great!
@@feebleking21 I really liked the power stancing (glad elden ring brought it back), and DS2 had the best caestus of all the souls games (especially when you maxed it out with a strength build and "two handed" a single caestus, the "rapid powersmack" move obliterates everything), and the red iron twinblades/ santiers spear/ hydouken(sp?) launching bone fist/ the left handed sword used by artorias in ds1 dlc, were a ton of fun to use. Ds2 also felt like it was more influenced by the kings field games than ds1 or 3. I seem to remember the PS3 version of sotfs having some insanely frustrating enemy placement/ aggression levels that seemed to have been fixed in the PS4 version (or it could have just been that I had improved on my second playthrough, so it seemed easier on PS4). Either way, I feel like ds2 has been critically "drug through the mud," more than it probably deserved, for issues that are also present in other souls games that were/are generally more well received. While they are all excellent games, none of them are perfect (would it kill from soft to pull the damned camera back a bit when you are fighting a boss that's bigger than a roided out empire state building?), But I thought ds2 made more improvements than downgrades to the fromsoft formula.
@@feebleking21 the only area I remember thinking looked really bad (bad bad, not good bad) was that stupid "lava castle" with the archer bastards. And I totally agree with you about that areas supreme levels of suckage...
@@BBQcheese I think that you have the suspension of disbelief that a magical world could be underground since you can't see underground. You do not have the suspension of disbelief that a lava castle could be ontop of a windmill because that would be crazy. If the elevator in Earthen Peak went down instead of up you might believe it a bit more since anything could be underground (though they'd have to make the Iron Keep skybox be a cave thing to match the underground theme).
Lets yourself be swarmed with enemies by ignoring them one by one until they overwhelm you and then face them with the one handed broad sword. Proceeds by healing milliseconds before an incoming hit and then die. Damn, this does not represent the average player, it represents FeebleKing21 fishing for video-content. As for the broad-sword, it represents a player who doesn't know how to spend their upgrade materials. Create a new player and start over.
I died so many times in this game because an enemy got behind me and I couldnt do the 180 swing thing you mentioned at minute 10 I almost got an aneurysm
@ 1:00 i suppose you are just trying to make a point and while I agree Dark souls 2 has a lot of spam problems it does take a pretty big amount of stupid to aggro that many of them at once considering the short range and the fact they are all passive on the ground until you approach them. I think its actually one of the better spots with a large amount of enemies in the game.
He said it in passing in the video but he did clear out some of the areas legitimately and then gave up on clearing them out so that he can just go for the boss since that would take far less time. His point is that nobody wants to fight through a slump of annoying mobs just to fight a boss and die, since dying at any point in that scenario would mean you wasted so much time.
The game tricked me into this encounter as I ran to the ladder to retrieve my souls only for the enemy AI to be coded to kick me off the ladder and force me into the fight. I thought everyone already knew this so I didn't mention it but I guess I should have.
Yeah, that area is an amazing tutorial. Its teaching you to calm the fuck down and take things one at a time. Dont rush because then you'll get swarmed. Its a lesson that you will find a million uses for in this game. I cant tell if its disingenousness or incompetence that resulted in him complaining about a good encounter TWICE in 3 minutes, but its enough for me to not want to invest in the rest of the video. Ciao!
I just did that area in the Forest of Fallen Giants, you can literally walk right behind each hollow and kill them right after they get up. It's like reading a message that tells you to jump off of a cliff for treasure. If you don't learn from your mistake, is that the game's fault?
@@tokidoki9116 seeing how BHS in Elden ring makes you nearly invulnerable for as long as you can mash L2 with FP, I can see why they seethe when going back to older titles lol. DS3 and ER especially were very lenient and forgiving with both the stamina cost, speed, and frames of rolls.
I've never played DS2 but seeing the Sinh fight made me laugh because I instantly thought of Elden Beast that you would have to run a fucking marathon to get to just to hit him once and for him to fly away again
@@just70hq Sihn is much worse because of DS2's high stamina consumption for running. He also breaks your weapons by reducing durability faster than usual whenever you HIT HIM. He punishes you for hitting him. Such a fun boss.
my take is that the devs genuinely believed that players would replay sections over and over until the enemies disappeared, then make it to the boss and fight it face-to-face locked on.
That's honestly what I'm inclined to believe. Your weapons and armor are so extremely fragile in Dark Souls 2 compared to Demon's Souls and DS1, that fighting enemies on the way to the boss will likely cause your equipment to completely break at some point before managing to kill the boss.
@@NexusKinthis happened to me once in all of my ds2 playthroughs. Also you can just switch weapons or use repair powder or use a durability ring. I think the despawning mechanic was added as a failsafe for stuck players. I only ever used it on my first run to the Blue Smelter Demon in the dlc. Ds2 is probably the best game in the series in terms of being able to control difficulty. That’s part of it.
I think dark souls 2 is fine, I have replayed all the souls games plenty of times over the years and I really don't think it sticks out as much as people make it out to. Probably wouldn't say it's the hardest souls game either.
I feel ds2 overstayed its "HAH GOT YOU" moments. In DS1 if a suprise enemy spawn happens or the dragon comes, he stays there. Saying, ok, i got you once, arent we having good fun. In DS2 they dont do that. They overstay it and do the suprise every time. Leading to you having to wait till they do their suprise. One of the worst offenders are the enemys on the way to the horse boss in huntsman corpse. They are too strong to fight 2 to 1. But every time they come back they wait on sticks unreachable. So either tiptoe to trigger them ...wasting soooo much time. Or do ranged. Its just infuriating and wastes time.
Dark souls 3 : How about we do that but with collectables from corpses? It'll be cool if you picked up something only to End up fighting 3 Gremlin Thieves Thankfully in most cases you have a bit of time to react.
@Good Hunter like i said this isn't that big of a problem, because when you run through and do it right, the enemies won't hit you when you reach the fog gate.
I’m playing through this for the first time right now and while I see the things that people take issue with, I’ve greatly enjoyed my time with it so far
I haven't beaten it yet but I really love dark souls 2 so far (I'm on the optional king vendrick boss so maybe it gets worse after) but so far even iron keep and shrine of Amana never gave me the problems that it gave others (maybe it was improved in Sotfs I'm not sure) my only issues so far are with ds2 is that the level design is either way too convoluted or too straightforward, and there is an overall lack of the routing back shortcut systems found in ds1 (my favorite in the entire series)
Its a good game. I deleted all comments i heard abt the game 6 hours in when i broke out of my noob shell. If i could offer myself any tip it would literally only be: "Rolling works like sekiro parrying, roll when the attack is inside you" All the stuff i heard abt ADP is dumb lol. I have countless hours and 2 plats - never leveled it past base and i think ds2 has as good a dodge timing as sekiro does a parry
Well that went entirely over your head. His issue with the Estus was the lack of s and how slow they were such that lifegems just made more sense so he didn't bother reinforcing the estus. It's not that he wasn't aware of it, he just didn't bother with because it made more sense just to use the lifegems. I swear DS2 fans are just special XD
@@Spiral81C1 he didn’t reinforce his Estus because of the lack of s and how slow they are??? Lifegems have a lack of s and they heal pretty slowly compared to reinforced estus that doesn’t take that long to drink if ADP is decently invested into. For most bosses you can dodge roll through an attack and while they’re recovering you can easily drink an Estus Brah! I know that’s there are those superior lifegems that heal more but on new game they are not a requirement to beat the game as long your Estus upgrades are used and ADP is decently leveled.
DS2 was always the one fromsoft game still in my backlog, and after numerous half attempts to start and get frustrated with the early game I finally got past the initial hump and have nearly cleared the base game, about to start the DLC's. The thing is every criticism of DS2 and Scholar is fairly valid, it just comes down to how much you value the asthetic, level design, lore and other creative ideas over it, the areas are nightmares, but the ascetic system and having a wider suite of weapons and ranged options, the areas are only ever hard if you try and run through them, like all Dark souls games taking it slow and methodically is all you need to do, and the game hard forces you to, which is antithetical to some of the other games but if you just accept that and appreciate the world for what it is I feel like it works. Even the flaws in combat when looked at over the evolution of combat in all fromsoft games, you can see how things have changed and been tried and if Dark souls 2 wasn't the way it was, then e great ideas that were carried over to Elden ring wouldn't be there, as a game it may have flaws, but as a piece of the genres evolution is one of the best still. In regards to the game ramping up its bullshit levels in the pursuit of "videogame hard" is as much a symptom of the community as it is a mistake by the devs, we/you did this! Sometimes I will see reddit threads from 5+years ago about ds1 or 2, and the responses to simple questions, often not even related to combat mechanics but just simple questions was "git gud scrub" over and over, and that was how the community was. I was working games retail throughout the 2010's even if I wasn't as in love with the franchise then I am now (games didn't click for me till bloodborne) but i remember the marketing, and it was pretty cringe, but it was what the community deserved.
Unpopular opinion: the ds2 dlcs are overrated. They are still ganky and annoying and every dlc has at least one absolute bullshit area (frigid outskirts, alonnes past and the area before gank squad) I played through ds2 a lot of times with all sorts of challenges but most of the time i just cant be bothered to push through the dlc areas just to get to the good bosses.
I think the interconnected level design is great, but the gank squads are still unfun. The only enemy design I liked was in the beginning city of the Sunken King, partially because moving buildings could wipe out all the enemies, but even without that there were no hidden archers since they were all within reach. The other two dlcs have worse gank squads and the Ivory King has the worst design imo of all of them.
Preach. Sunken King DLC was straight-up trash, dude, especially when you get to the ziggurats and go inside. The DLCs have their moments, but all in all they're still pretty mediocre, and not much better than the base game.
@@chicken29843 Do not tell me that DS2 is good because enemies disappear after 12 deaths. And did I complain about Ruin Sentinels? I did the 1v3 on purpose because I enjoy the challenge and like the boss. I literally put on screen text that reads, "Ruin Sentinels are cool" as I talk about outlining good things in DS2... I guess you didn't pay attention And what are you talking about, there is gameplay of me using all the loyce knights? I believe you are confused because most of your comment did not made sense.
@@chicken29843 I'm sorry but how the fuck is iron keep,the shrine of Amana, the shitty poison valley and the black gulch not inexcusable level design? Enemy spam galore and it was absolutely fucking awful to get through. Not even the lake of Rot or the liturgical town in elden ring are even close to DS2s dosghit ganky areas I've heard the DLCs have some good bosses but I genuinely can't be bothered to get through them after experiencing the main game
@@chicken29843 I hear you man, these content creators swear on their lives that what they’re saying is the end all be all for a game when in reality they just suck major balls
I guess I did a challenge run of Dark Souls 2 because I finished the game locked on just like the other titles. Playing the game locked off is a workaround for the shitty enemy density, not an intended design choice. The fact it only works against early-game trash-mobs supports this. Fighting the ghosts in the Shaded Ruins locked off is fucking horrid since they are usually one-on-one pvp fights where being able to space and face the enemy at the same time is pretty important and FromSoft's amateur hour team decide to fuck it up because "game is hard lolz".
DS 2 is the very first souls game I've ever played and it was what got me hooked in the souls series. I agree, Shrine of Amana is so bad and it was the worst experience for me but I still had fun in the hundreds of hours I've spent playing this game. Hard, yes but still enjoyable. So when I started playing DS 3, I was shocked at how easy it was compared to DS 2. But just because it was a lot easier doesn't mean it was bad. DS 3 is the best dark souls among the three for me and the most memorable, especially the Slave Knight Gael boss fight. I understand your reasons for hating DS 2 and I know it has flaws but because it was my introduction to the souls series, it has a special place in my heart.
I can understand this perspective. Dark souls is so different from other games that your first souls game will make feel like an experience like none other. That's how I feel about Dark Souls 1 since that was my first souls game.
Same here, I had to check to make sure 3 was made by the same team cuz it was just like 'hey remember ds1? Well it's like that but made for people who never beat a souls game before'.. I was actually floored when they straight up just used Gwynn again as the final boss. Elden Ring makes me feel like they regret making hard games and want to get a more casual playerbase, which they 100% succeeded in doing.
@@chicken29843 in other words, ER is only hard if you handicap yourself. DS3 is pretty hard if you don't roll, and rolling means you had to dodge an attack meaning you didn't learn how to parry, thus making it cheesing.
I still have fond memories of enjoying this game. I know it's bad, I agree with most every argument on why it's bad, but I still enjoyed it. Maybe it's just because there's something fun about someone asking "How do you like X? It's absolutely awful!" and responding "Yeah, I know."
I don't even think it's necessarily a "bad" game, it just has flaws that, when compared to DS1 or DS3, make it stand out and maybe even "worse" in comparison to those games. I can totes understand having fond memories, Dark Souls 2 is lit!
There really is so much wrong with it, even before you compare it to other Souls games. Heck, having the Souls branding probably helps it out a lot as people want to view it favorably. If you really want a good in-depth talk about it and have 10 hours to kill (or have a job where you can sneak an earbud in and have a listen while working), Mauler has probably the best video series about it. Fully accounts for subjective enjoyment, admits his own enjoyment as well, but explains in obsessive detail the huge amount of faults it has. It's ok to like bad things, whether in spite of or because of them being bad.
DS2 looked at the way players overcame obstacles in DS1 that weren’t “Getting gud” and saw them as exploits. So it sought to stop them. What’s become obvious in subsequent games is that they weren’t exploits, they were intended features (or they at least became so). I think Elden Ring has proven that Miyazaki will happily allow players to find creative solutions to problems, even if they ‘break the game’ from a purists’ perspective.
I played every fromsoftware game since demon's souls... But i've never finished ds2, even if i reached nashandra boss fight. Ds2 misses a good level design, a coherent art direction, a balanced level scaling and a good silent narration like in miyazaki's games.
@@untipo. elden ring is just too easy in my opinion, I like ds3 more. Ds2 is unfair and super slow and has awful regions (you know which ones). Ds1 (remastered) is actually the fair but hard one
I really never had trouble with Iron Keep.. if you don’t run the entire time, you’ll aggro 2-3 enemies at once and if you can kill them before the next group comes- it feels pretty fun
I just finished DS1 and was blown away.. so excited I bought DS2 and now I hate myself.. I feel like this game was made by the controller manufacturing company just to strum up extra business from the amount of controller smashes the players will commit
@AE personally I loved DS2, found it quite entertaining, but I do understand why some people wouldn't. It probably also helped that I took a few months after beating DS1 before buying DS2.
I just have to disagree on Sir Alonne. Yes the boss run is awful but the boss itself is amazing, maybe even better than Fume Knight for me. The only questionnable move he has is the thrust grab attack which has a weird hitbox. When you get into the flow of the fight, it’s unlike any other in the game for me. The dodges feel satisfying, there are a lot of openings and healing opportunities feel fair. I don’t get the complaint of only being able to heal for 2 specific attacks, maybe I haven’t fought him enough to realise that my healing opportunities weren’t 100% safe but I took estus after most of his combos and didn’t get punished in multiple attempts. My brother actually had a lot of the same complaints as you when fighting him, so I took the controller, showed him how I fought him and kept Alonne at 1 hit then killed himself and told him to try again. He tried replicating what I did and actually beat him and completely changed his opinion on the fight. It’s one of those fights where locked on is much better imo.
Gonna have to disagree with you chief. I enjoyed Sir Alonne boss fight, but that run to it was really awful. I actually had to despawn most of the enemies in that hallway because each run usually took me like half an hour. You are either filled with arrows by the back or burn to a crisp by the lizards. That alone killed the boss for me and it's such a shame.
Sir alonne is amazing as a boss but they completely ruined him because of the terrible run back to him, he is quite difficult as a ds2 so you'll probably die a lot to him and every time you die you'll have to deal with his dreadful run back, just like the smelter demon
@@A_Real_Rascal I didn't upgrade my ADP as much as I should have so I thought the hit boxes were very bad in this game but once I upgraded it, they became fine for the most part
Use magic. Use poison. Farm a little upgrade stones. Use one of about a dozen ways to heal yourself more. If you're feeling spicy summon help. It truly isn't that hard. In fact, I feel DS2 is the easiest entry in the series.
After beating DS1 years ago, I had a very hard time beating DS2 leading to burn out from the series for a few months. Iron Keep is the worst area in the game and it’s not even close lol. Having an agility stat is cheap to me, but learning how about it early allows the game to feel somewhat normal. Life gems makes the game a bit easy. There’s a lot of cheapness in the game due to the fact that you can’t predict what “traps” they have for you when playing for the first time. Oddly enough, I replayed it on PS4 this week and I somehow remembered a lot about the game and it was pretty easy. My first play through was on PS3 and for some reason the enemy placement seemed harder and the game overall felt harder. It’s nowhere near close to my favorite in my opinion, but the music in mejula slaps 😅
watching you rush throught the dlcs area taking agro of every mob in the level, trying to open gate/chest without clearing a zone and then calling the ennemy placement too ganky sure was agrovating. I can understand it when it comes to runbacks to bosses, but you gotta respect the content at some point
The problem is that killing each and every enemy in these areas is excessively time consuming and tedious, and sometimes you'll just die to a cheap shot anyway. Personally, I did kill every enemy the first time I ran through those areas, but on successive deaths, the patience level wears down quickly, and eventually you have to essentially speedrun the area by running past everything just so it doesn't keep wasting your time.
I don't think that I could have cleared the enemies with a melee only build in Crown of the Iron or Ivory King without spending 10 extra hours clearing enemies. You just can't expect that of anyone.
@@feebleking21 well maybe I need to replay ds2, but i really dont think it was that bad. The runback to sir allonne was awful I admit that, but for the ivory king, yes it does take patience but you re still exploring the level, for me it makes sense to take the level seriously until you proven you mastered it, and the fact that you are not invulnerable while activating doors open chest etc.. maybe irritating but it goes along with that design, which btw is for me one of the core design of the series, mastery throught repetition, bosses and level. Btw the section you've shown for the iron king is absolutly doable, especially if you use the red barril guys at your advantage.
@@coco3584 There's a route for the sprint to Alonne without taking any damage or killing any enemies, just kiting them. *Most boss runs feature creative ways to make it to the fog wall without killing every enemy or tanking tons of damage, typically by rewarding the players spacing, positioning, creativity, etc.
@@Nightweaver1 Not to mention Soul Memory exists so killing anything is a commitment. Do you really want to go up a tier in the matchmaking? DkS2 in itself has a bunch if systems that alone would be alright, but when combined they make everything so much worse
I can't help but laugh when i see these forest of the fallen giants footages with the argument "too many enemies", like you're not supposed to take it slow because they're sleeping, instead of running around like a complete idiot.
SOTFS fixed all those issues of getting swarmed by dozens of enemies by going back to what DS1 focused on which was taking your time and luring enemies away from groups. But people need to use the same tired complaint while ignoring how many more enemies you encounter in DS3 and Bloodborne by comparison with DS2.
@@obredaanps3 but he never played vanilla DS2, so his footage is Scholar and thus he pulled the sleeping enemies to make the point there are too many enemies. But that’s his fault.
This game feels like an anime that you loved but its second season was moved to a totally different studio and all feels weird and not better or not even close how the og studio made you feel. After beating dark souls remastered (One of the best gaming experiences I've ever had in my life) I bought this like 1 day ago on ps4 for 40 fucking bucks and what a disappointment this is not even close to what the original was. It feels hard because it wants to be and not because it is. And the biggest irony is that Bloodborne is basically Dark Souls 2 large horde of enemy style of combat but done right.
And here is the best thing, you play this and it feels weird, you play the first 3 minutes of Dark Souls 3 which I did after this and it feels just like home.
OH MY GOD DARK SOULS 2 IS LIKE SOUTH PARK'S SECOND SEASON. Creator diddled off to do their own thing, and the B Team was unfairly expected to steer the franchise.
DARK SOULS 2 is UNFAIR!!! *shows footage of him just rushing into every situation with a sword, no shield in a game with tons of tools in your disposal to make situations easier but him refusing or just being too stupid to use them* I'm gonna go ahead and play super mario without jumping, then make a review how the game is unfair because it doesn't let me beat it without jumping
I completely agree. People who complain about the "ganks" are typically completley unwillng to approach fights with a strategy. Instead they just run in and die. Dark Souls 2 is realistic in that you need to plan out your engagements and as long as you are not a spoiled lazy brat that should be a source of enjoyment.
@@ivanasukjadic1423 Why should fighting same type of enemy be a source of enjoyment? Do they have the depth required for continuous engagement like Sekiro where you will find many enemies in one part but combat and enemies moveset is designed in such a way that it's always enjoyable. In Ds2 i just used a bow to attract agro and killed them one by one but lack of mechanical depth throught Ds2 made it a repetitive chore by the time you get to the dlc.
@@yourdad5799 imagine watching dress up darling and then posting a comment like that. yes ladies and gentlemen, this guy watches dress up darling and he doesn't like dark souls 2. make of that what you will ;)
@@TheRitva26 I haven't even watched that show. Bro out here giving me character traits like I'm some kind of lowly lifeform to his majesty the ds2 enjoyer. I wonder what you'll do next, since you got hurt so bad that you immediately jumped to the gun with saying I "watched" something you considers "bad", how about you post my adress or ip next?
DS2 Hater: DS2 is an awful game. Me: Yes. DS2 Lover: Fuck you, DS2 is an amazing game. Me: Yes. I get why people dislike/hate DS2, and they're for similar issues that I have with the game. It's definitely the weakest FS Soulsborne game. That said, there's still a lot I love about this game. The lore is my favorite in the series, some of the bosses (including a couple from main game, imo) are some of FS's best, the environments are interesting, and I genuinely have fun with more than half of the levels even through low points. Which is why I kind of am able to just nod my head and agree with most of this video. None of this triggers me, I'm just kind of like, "Yup. That's definitely a thing with DS2."
I went into ds2 expecting something dismal and horrible after hearing countless people complain about it. What i got instead was a pleasant surprise and it became my favourite of the series.
@@alessandroofthemediterranean Nah, if so many people dislike something, there is something to dislike. Like you can't make the argument the game is actually good when the development was as bad as it was
@@3idiotsblack So many people that apparently don't even own the game. I had to check since if its so hated as you say it would have a poor rating obviously. Its in the 85-87% positive just on steam alone. Based on evidence available you who hate it is the minority and most don't even own or play the game.
@@alessandroofthemediterranean If you actually played the game you might understand the hate for it, I am playing it right now and it's not bad but it's definitely not good either, it's just meh
I saved this video. It explains my issues with this game perfectly. And like you I genuinely tried. On analysis. I might have a save for me to try out Fume Knight and I nearly beat Shulva. But I also became so Hollow that I was done with the DS2. Absolutely done. I slogged through it and hated it. I don't get the love for it at all. None of the other FromSoftware games come close to being this bad.
@Alexis Leskinen these are all very minute details compared to things that are considered obviously bad. But I will go through each of these to add to the conversation Free fast travel: DS1 used the Lordvessel as a reward for beating a tough boss, and to level out the increasing world size. I think getting it where we did is perfectly acceptable. Free Storage: You can get this from the Undead Merchant, as well as Domhall for like 1000 souls. These NPCs are hard to miss on a first playthrough, Domhall especially. Simplified Titanite and Infusions: Okay? I like the upgrade systems of every single souls game, none of them are poorly designed. just preferential. Hollow Punishment: This has never returned in a similar fashion in any game. DS3 feels balanced around not being embered in the first place. Demon's Souls soul form was the intended baseline of the game. Though I am of the opinion that the Cling Ring (From Demon's Souls) and the Ring of Binding (DS2) are both poorly implemented to shore up a system that was not well thought out. That being hollowing in DS2 and soul form in DeS. Estus Flask tied to shards instead of Bonfire: Alright you might prefer one way over the other, but neither is inherently better. As an example, 5 flasks is plenty of heals to get through every area in DS1 and so the game should be balanced around that since its the baseline. DS2 and DS3 also balance the game around how many heals you should have by that point in the game, barring life gem spam in DS2. The only real issue with DS2 and DS3 is that not every player may find every shard or bone shard to improve their flasks. That is the only flaw I can think of and it isn't even a big one. Become Human anywhere: just convenience, you still have to go to a bonfire to perform a myriad of functions. This is extremely minor. No weapon upgrade at bonfire: So? you couldn't ascend weapons at bonfires anyways. Demon's Souls did this first as well. Another minor change with minimal effect. Upgrade Catalysts: seems pretty logical to me, except they took out upgrading armor after DS2. Still minor. More Equipment Slots: Good, a new game in a series should improve on areas like this if it was a technical difficulty. Not to mention that it was certainly a design decision. I usually only have three to four items equipped at any time anyways. But more power to people who want all ten+ slots filled with stuff to use. More Ring slots: More customization is always good. Though you may have to realize that each rings effect might be toned down in order to account for having two more slots right? Multiple Levels of Rings: Good, incentivizing NG+ runs is only a benefit to the longevity of the game. DS2 does NG+ better in almost every way. Should be the way most NG+ in souls games should be handled. Aiming Crossbows: Good, why couldn't they be aimed in the first place, silly DeS and DS1. Second hand ammo on right trigger: just a minor change, I think it would be cooler to give bows a different attack on R2 instead of just another ammo type. Auto Repair at Bonfire: Durability is such an afterthought in all these games that it should either be expanded upon or removed. Guess we know in Elden Ring they decided to remove it completely. Ways to Restore Spells outside of resting at bonfires: Certainly a balance decision. Again, DeS did it first. Clutch Rings: Is a specific set of Items really such a big thing? Not to me they arent. Using a woman to level up: First off, DeS did it first, secondly she is literally right next to a Bonfire. Thirdly, you have to do a lot of things at the Majula Bonfire specifically anyways. This is weird to me. Speeding up and Down ladders: You can slide down ladders in DS1, or let go completely. Props on sprinting to move up faster though. Improved Menus: Good, any sequel should do technical things like this better than their predecessors. Powerstancing/Dual Wield shields: Good build diversity is a plus in any case. So as you can see, a lot of these are technical improvements or simply small changes in design with a small impact on the games. If you think none of the other games would be what they are without these changes in DS2 I think you are being silly. You could just as easily criticize it for things that they have removed/changed in future games. like Hollowing and Life Gems.
I've always hated how "light" this game feels. It's hard to explain, but the character never felt grounded, like I was walking on ice all over the game, making every movement I make feel like it didn't come out properly and putting me in places I didn't wanna be in. It doesn't help that the sound design is mediocre, lacks impact, and made even worse by that dumb i-frames change where your timings are completely thrown off.
I know im late, but I was talking to my friend about this, and it doesn't seem to get mentioned often. Super floaty controls. Like you're moving on ice a lot. I died so many times by just slipping off ledges and sliding after jumps. Makes dark souls 1 movement feel s tier.
It's so slow, it's like I'm getting hit with paper mache. It looks like _air resistance_ is slowing down Fume Knight's swing. I have no clue how they made the engine feel this shitty, it was 5 years old and was perfectly fine even in Demon's.
One of the reasons is that your character automatically locks to one of 8 directions when moving, instead of moving in the full range of 360 degrees. It makes movement really janky
I remember starting it 3 times. And each time i was like "It can't be that bad, it's probably just me being impatient! I can beat any DS, DS2 can't be THAT different". Man do i love my bad memory, i can easily forget everything about it and start again, just to drop it again. Like right now, i think exactly the same.
Yeah I fell for that once and partially because everyone started saying its actually a great game. I thought maybe I didn't give it a fair shake. Being patient has nothing to do with it. The other games make you patient because they're so good you stick with it. 2 is just bad. The movement feels bad, combat feels bad, the world, the enemies, the bosses, the NPCs are all bad. None of it makes me want to persist further like DS1 did. I quit DS1 when I got stuck in Blight Town. Kept getting toxic and had no blooming purples. Came back months later, restarted, beat the whole game and then went back to that character and speed ran the entire upper portion because I got good. I have it firmly in my mind how bad the game truly is now because I went through and actually came up with all those reasons as to why I hate the game and compared that feeling I had with DS1 with my subsequent attempt at 2. 2 did not illicit that same response.
@@sashabagdasarow497 you say with your stack of 99 life gems. DS2 isn't difficult, its fundamentally broken the same way Demon Souls was. The only difference is that Demon Souls was still fun to play despite having infinite healing and broken ass builds.
Demons souls was very difficult back then. The challenge was in healing at the right times. It’s still an amazing game and I still need to play the Bluepoint one.
Gonna be honest... In the beginning when you're going on about the sheer number of enemies, it seems in most clips like the player is actively aggro-ing the whole group rather than trying to pick out a couple at a time. Most enemy placements I remember from the game have a couple of active enemies and then a few that aggro if you get too close. Even when I was new to the game, it was usually only bosses that tended to give me difficulty... Except for those turtle knights... And the heide knights... Aside from that, most everything else wasn't that bad... Oh wait, those guys that are in the quarry outside of the poison windmill and wave around giant sickles, those guys can go jump off a cliff because the place you fight them is bullshit and gives you practically no room to fight them in.
10 seconds into the vid, dark souls 2 is actually my second favorite Dark souls game, so this will hit me in the guts, but I do know that the game is terribly flawed beyond belief. Time to continue watching. 3:20 I would like to clarify why I like Ds2 a lot. And be assured, it’s absolutely NOT because of the combat and level design. The level design actually has its good moments in this game which I can really respect, but enemy placement really just counters the positives most of the time. But I love drangleic a lot. I love the fantasy feel, I love the npc’s, the unique enemy’s in every “region” and I love the sheer amount of cool stuff that can be found around the world. Also I’m 99% sure that my view in the game is very unique to most people and reminiscent on a day 1 playthrough. I played the game November of last year completely blind with my brother and our friend. (We didn’t play together but we played at the same time while talking together if that makes sense.) We all 3 got to experience the lands, enemy’s, weapons, and even crappy jank all at the same time. It was a very fun experience because if this. I feel like my friendships helped paint this game in a much more positive light even though we all knew that the game was kinda bad lol. Time to continue watching 👍 15:41 (This part here is wrong as you are playing on scholar, it’s just I never experienced backstab jank even though I did them fairly often, my bad lol)Did you not play Scholar of the First Sin?? Scholar version fixed a good amount (not all lol) if problems people had with the game, I don’t know all the differences between vanilla and scholar, but I feel like for the sake of a critique/review, playing the latest version would make the most sense. (And if this is scholar, then my bad lol.) 20:23 ahhh I was wrong! 21:05 No mans wharf is pretty weird, but using a torch actually made the area really cool because those freaky monsters wouldn’t fight back. 25:22 Yea I agree with this 100% I was a magic user for the first time so I just used soul arrow so while it was doable it was still pretty dumb. 26:42 BRO don’t get me started on forlorn. He is the hardest invader ever, but Jester Thomas has a special place in my heart ❤️ 30:28 Absolutely, the bosses sometimes feel like fighting a normal enemy with a lot of health. 33:26 Life gems are crazy op and they trivialize a lot of the difficulty of the game. But estus is just so bad that there’s no other option 34:37 earlier I said how I love the world, which is true. But you are correct, to doesn’t make any logical sense how close everything is. I think everyone knows about that one elevator taking you up to iron keep smh 30:29 this is something I’ve never noticed, but I’ll agree with you, there are parts that are very pretty in this game, then there’s that garbage lol 36:52 I actually never enjoyed the DLC I mean the bosses were great and so were the environments, but idk, maybe you will change my opinion lol. 41:28 I was originally going to kill every boss in this game but these 2 bosses made me realize that it’s not worth it, just for their boss runs alone. 41:46 from this point on to the next bonfire actually made me almost stop playing entirely. This part of the level is so poorly designed it tainted my whole experience of this dlc. Yea, I know I’m weird. 49:26 yea for this part of the game I was actually fine because my friend was a little ahead of me (in game but we were not playing together) and he talked me through most of the place lol. It’s these special 1 of a kind experiences is why I’m biased tho :) 51:25 woah I never even knew about the black knight that spawns later, I beat this dude with just 3 silver knights because I stupidly managed to walk past one of them, so they never joined my team. But yea I agree that’s pretty bull shit. Because I never experienced that, I really, and I mean REALLY loved this fight. It is just too cool. 52:23 Aldia was soo unbelievably cool. He told us so much lore about the lie that is sacrificing our lives for the first flame, and how humans are slaves for the gods and stuff like that, and then we fight him? I know he doesn’t die though because of some lore, which is kinda neat, but the fight is so lame. So anticlimactic. 54:25 A reason I like this game so much is because I watched my own father play through this game when I was little, right now I’m 17 years old, it’s really weird to say, but some of my earliest gaming memories, are from watching my dad play dark souls 1 and 2, so getting to play the games I watched when I was little is a cool experience. I distinctly remember my dad playing through blight town and fighting qualag, and I also distinctly remember seeing watching my dad beat orinstein and smogh. (But later on he got stuck on and gave up on 4 kings LOL) but he moved onto ds2 when that came out, and I remember majula, heids tower, shrine of amana, and so much more from just watching him play. So I have a very unique experience with souls games because of him, and I thank him for it very often lol. (And even though I may have seen some of these things when I was a child, I still consider my playthrough blind, cause I really knew nothing about the game lol. 55:34 I agree, it is an objectively bad game, but idk, I’m still so attached to it. Sorry for the wall of text that is this comment, but like I said, this game hits close to me, more than most games out there, so I simply have a lot to say about it. As always, thank you for this literally perfect video 👍
Dark Souls 2 definitely has a unique feel to it's world, and while I didn't talk too much about it some areas like Majula have a certain sense of sadness that really hits you. And Dark Souls 2 still definitely feels like a brutal unforgiving world like any souls game.
@@tylerherdman1755 dang, you could make your own video on Dark Souls 2 with this script lol. It really seems like the game was special to you as you grew up watching your dad play it, and sentimental value will always matter a lot when it comes to art.
This was actually the first darksouls game I've beaten. It's actually a breeze on NG+ because all the only thing that adds to the difficulty is the environmental restrictions or dangers.
I enjoyed this video, although I'm playing Dark Souls II for the first time, and I'm enjoying it. One thing you might want to know, you don't have to kill every enemy 12 times to clear every level. That's only true in the early levels. The number of iterations, I have been finding, declines as you advance through the game. I'm down to about 6 iterations to get the enemy to stop respawning.
I never get why NPC peaked with DS2 (Maldron) and goes downgrade from then on. Even elden ring got lazy invader AI. They don't emote, they don't do "gimmicks", they just attack you like usual enemy. Not smart nor memorable. You will always be missed Maldron the Assassin.
16:00 Exactly, my main issue when moving to DS2 from DS1. It felt like my hit didn't land and I had to go extremely close to an enemy to be sure (which is also more dangerous because they attack you early on if you don't first and stun you), meanwhile a lot of their hits shouldn't have hit (like clearly being one meter away from a boss attack). Forgiving for the enemies, punishing for the player. Now, I got used to it, I am replaying DS2 and finding the same problems but manage to play more careful and somehow win, but a lot of unfair damage taken. Going back to DS1 I have seen the difference. Also DS1 had parries/backstab/plunge attacks that ALL worked like a charm, ALL were feeling great to do. All these exist in DS2 but nothing seems to work properly, I end up in DS2 with two handed a strong weapon and hoping to hit and not miss an enemy and kill him before he attacks, or roll back and wait for their attack for an open window, but nothing works as well as DS1 used to.
I think that, the people who made this game leaned too much on the difficult aspect of the souls games. Miyazaki said that his intention was not making it difficult, but to make the players feel good after completing a task. The team that made this might be out of touch with this idea, hence we got this game.
Thank you for the video🔥 I can confirm everything!😂 But one thing I don’t understand is: Do you really pull all enemies in an area when you‘re playing, or was it only for showcase what the developers did? Because it would be really dumb to blame the game for dying like that. I‘m watching a let‘s play of DS2 that is still ongoing and he never had a horde of enemies like that, I don‘t remember either from my playthrough back in the days when it released. You kill them one after another and sometimes there are more enemies, but not like it looks in your video. The game really isn‘t good, compared to 1 and 3, I don‘t want to defend it, but the right way to play is safe and pull as less enemies as possible. That is blameable, because it makes the game really really slow. Perhaps it‘s a wrong impression on my side, because it feels like you‘re pulling everything in your whole video.
DS2 tend to punish game skipping (popularized in DS1) , where you could just run pass most of the enemies. DS2 funnel towards cautious gameplay and "clearing area" (enemies stop respawning after you killed them certain number of times) .
I have a love hate relationship with ds2 sotfs. On the one hand, power stancing and the sheer variety of weapons, a heckuva lot more spells and armor combinations plus the amount of content it offers with the dlcs and the pvp actually being somewhat good make it a lot more replayable than ds1 and demon's souls. But then you have far more inconsistent hit detection, movement not being fully 360 degrees, the level design and enemy placement of the base game leaves a lot to be desired, i-frames being tied to a stat along with the speed you drink your estus forcing you to use early levels on that instead. But I still come back to it regardless because it is still dark souls.
I don’t get the i-frame thing. You still have them. But not as many. Everyone complaining about that needs to time the rolls better. I beat the game first time without putting a single level in AGL. And no, this is not a git gud thing. People just run into 7 enemies and complain they can’t roll thru 7 sword swings at once. People who dislike ds2, for the most part, seems like the kind of players who just ran past enemies in the other games and expect it to work.
@@HeyAddieImTojo I think I had the i-frame issue because I played dark souls 1 first which made me not really care about the dodge mechanics since there was nothing else to take into consideration apart from your equip weight. But jumping straight to ds2 without knowing anything about the changes just made it feel off in a way that makes ds1 look like it has better dodging mechanics (cus it was probably more forgiving with the i-frames) when ds2 actually has the better one with the multi-directional rolls. It did put me out of my comfort zone and hearing other critiques about ds2 just made me hate it initially. I came to accept it tho, cus I enjoy replaying it much more than ds1.
I love dark souls and I honestly love this game but I also agree with almost everything you said. I really appreciate hearing other people's opinions about this series and you definitely got yourself a new sub. I can't wait to see what else you put out!
Same, some time ago i heard rumors about a DS2 switch port and thought that might give new life to the game similar to how i ended up enjoying some other games in a portable format. Ended up playing it on pc again to refresh memories and stoped at the lost bastille. Instantly decided that i won't pay for it again no matter what. It's the only souls game i never bothered to beat.
Almost all of your points are valid and true, however, if this is your gameplay then i understand why you have problems with the game because jesus christ
Almost for every boss there is a way to avoid enemies and rush to bonfire. Only few times I had trouble doing this like Sir Alonne, Red Smelter demon. But it was still doable, even tho you may also die doing this many times it never seemed that terrible. All the gank squad issues you showed in this video can be easily avoided if you are patience enough and fight them one on one
22:42 what I seemed to figure out is if you have just enough cash speed, you can group up a bunch of enemies and if they're not immune to poison. Then fucking hit them with toxic cloud and run after they sat in it long enough. That's really the only way you can kill a horde of enemies without having to get lucky enough to get the first hit in with a greatsword. Poison for the most part is gonna be your best friend throughout most of this game since most enemies are usually just resistant to poison. Cause resistant doesn't mean they're immune so they're gonna die anyway to it. How to deal with the archers in iron keep? Poison arrows. How to deal with groups of enemies? Toxic mist. How to deal with annoying ass bosses? Well maybe a combination of poison and bleed. and whatever else their weakness is. What ever kills them the quickest use it. Or just whatever makes your life easier
Agreed, especially the lock on thing, why is it the game's fault that he couldn't figure out he can fight without lock on, but he did make a lot of great points ngl
Here's a little detail that I thought I was just gaslighting myself with for a while, but watching someone else fight Sir Alonne confirmed it. Some attacks have delayed timings. Sir Alonne especially has two different gap closers that start the same way. This means that you need to keep watch on him like a hawk at all times, and even if you react the moment he starts to move, if you get unlucky for it to not be the quick one, you're getting hit. The only way I've seen to mitigate this is to just have enough Adaptibility, which from my experience is more than what you need to get DS1's mid-roll back.
@@kokorochacarero8003 Honestly most of ER super fast delayed attacks feel akward because they are delayed enough for humans to lose the rythm of combat. You cant react to the start of the attack and dodge after a certain time, you have to prepare for the attack when it starts and then dodge after you see somekind of tell during the wind up. I did a lvl 1 run with +0 weapons and no torrent recently and it made realize that ER has some of the best thrash mobs in the series. Enemy stance breaks, bleed, cold, parries, ashes of war (piercing fang) that allow both better positionin big dmg and dodging at the same time really gives you the abiliy to control the fight like never before (sekiro not included). In the video the creator mentions several times how he didnt know if he should beat some of ds2 levels like he was playing soul lvl 1 run, that being to run past all of the enemies to the boss door and then fight the boss. In ER my experience was that you didnt really need to run past them because we had so many tools that we could control the fight to actually have a good fighting chance. Even with ganks there really is no situation with more than 2 (maybe in some rare cases 3) big guys that have enough posture that you cant R1 to stagger them. Just to give an example of whats possible, you can beat farum azula lvl 1 +0 weapons playing normally, even the 1v2 1v3 and 1v4 ganks there, because there really is no situation where they have more than 2 big guys at once and even them it only takes like 2 fully charged R2s to stance break. Ofc no matter how good the level is or how good the encounters its ruined by god skin duo... It really is such a huge contrast to jump from being the one who has the ability to dictate the fight during the level to the one who just has just run away and spam parry on the fat god skin and spam carian retaliation of black flame balls. Even then it felt more like i got lucky to beat them than skilled enough to beat them. Elden Ring ŕeally is a mix of the best and the worst.
@@illliiiiillliii6265 honestly, I couldn't agree more about the trash mobs. Throughout the entire game (except maybe some very specific zones in the mountaintops and the snowfields) I felt like I had many options to aproach combat against packs. I think this is also due to the exquisite variety of movesets given to weapons. And for that, I have to tip my hat to Fromsoftware Almost every weapon I can think of has one or a few moves that can be used to cleave through a pack, pierce through lined up enemies, crow control them or have recovery animations that enable you to barely crouch under swings/projectiles. And the stance breaks take so much pressure off you. I used to relly on backstabs and parries back in the day for DS1 packs because of the i-frames. Now I can always have a stance break critical up my sleeve for situations in which the former are not so viable. And the jump attacks, running heavies and guard counters are just 😩👌 Stealth and ranged options have also been such a life saver when choosing how to manage pulls. I hope they play around with stealth, sleep and madness a little more on the DLC That being said, my main gripe is with specific delayed attacks of some bosses. Even after learning to wait the correct ammount of time, some still feel really weird. I have to tell myself to dodge 0.5s after the point where I feel the attack would make sense. Margit and Mogh would be the worst offender in my eyes (as well as the regular omen enemies, although they are really easy to backstab, parry and stance break)
I’ve never had this problem on alonne. If I remember correctly, the two catch-up moves he has that have different timings have slightly different tells. I loved his fight.
just picked up the trilogy so i am still on the first game. Does this one not have shields? because it would seem that alot of the bullshit in your video would be fixed with blocks and parries and not relying on rolling all the time. Rolling is just as janky in the first game and my experience greatly improved when i started blocking enemies.
DS2 defenders scorn the use of shields, I have no clue why, but most of them (Hbomberguy is a big one for defending this opinion) will tell you that using shields and locking on is not a viable tactic in this game, and that it wasn't meant to be played like that, as if there was a "proper" way to play
@@XragebootsX that's why I love these games, there are so many different ways to approach them and deal with the challenges, especially the later ones like DS3 and Elden Ring
I'm playing the game for the first time having played most other games in the souls universe(elden, dark 1 and 3, Bloodborne, the Japanese one lol). And I think the best way I can describe this game's performance is wonky as hell. I think you really showed it in the beginning of your video with the first area having like a shit ton of dudes and then the whole thing's hitting you when they're not really hitting you. And don't get me started on the parry in this game, it's fucking terrible. It's definitely been a challenge. I also don't like how they have these sections of the games locked off with the statues that one lady selling the way to knock down that statue for like 12,000 Souls, a number I haven't even gotten close to yet. It's just .... like looking at the pure execution of the gameplay, it's just not well done. You can tell this is from another era of gaming. And I feel like saying something from another era can be a compliment too but I mean this in the worst way possible
It's weird how he found the insight in "locked on combat punishes me, so I need to try something else" but never made the leap to "aggroing crowds and then trying a lever/chest/door punishes me, I should try something else". So much of this video is him running through an area drawing aggro, then making himself a sitting duck. That's supposed to be a course of action that kills you. Right?
Because sometimes it does work. If it wasnt intended, animations wouldnt have half assed i-frames like they forgot to shove in extra adaptability code.
I always love watching these videos about darksouls 2 because no matter the fact that I always agree with what is said, it never seems to change my irational love for it. Darksouls 2 by far isn't the best souls game but it is absolutely my favourite. (Also I'm convinced SotFS was just a version for extremists)
i used lock on on every playthrough and had no idea it was that much of a detriment.... although if ur really good at using i frames in the rolls lock on for bosses is very useful. i just learned to aggro less enemies at a time and slowly work my way through the level.
I actually think Iron Keep was one of the only enjoyable areas of the game, I think it’s the only place in any of the games where the enemies are faster than you and actually feel kind of skilled, rather than just having stronger attack power than you. I also loved how they added new red phantom enemies in ng+ (which is something I CANNOT believe they never did again. its almost as if they forgot about it entirely. it’s such a cool idea. bloodborne kind of did it with the insight but that’s it)
DS2 had several neat ideas that sadly never came back, seemingly due to the negative reaction. Bonfire ascetics and ng+ changing item & enemy locations in particular.
@@oloxhossono1956 I know right? Maybe from has user data that says players mostly don't bother with ng+, instead preferring to start entirely clean characters for subsequent runs, so the extra effort making ng+ feel new and exciting isn't worth it. Still, though, it's something I've always wanted to see make a come back.
At least somebody here sees all the influence. I think it's for the detriment of the games, overall, but there are plenty of things he took from the game.
Just finished Scholar the other day for the first time and hated every second of it. Just an absolutely abominable experience from beginning to end. I'm glad you made this because I can just cite this video when people ask me why it was so terrible.
DS2 is the only one of the SoulsBorneSekiroRing (man we need a new name for that) games that I haven't gone back to to do a second playthrough. I played the rest multiple times. I must say, I did actually enjoy quite a bit of DS2 from what I remember, but BS like Iron Keep have stopped me from bothering to go through it again.
Darksouls2 is the easiest game of the series . Sounds more like a skill issue , you're mad you can't just run past everything and expect it to work out in your favor with a gang of enemies chasing you. Then say boohoo bad game . 😂
The only reason you can't run pase enemies is because the controls in the game are garbage like the rest of the game, that doesn't make it difficult it just makes it trash.
@@Happy_Sailor639 The way to actually tell someone you have brain damage is to say "skill issue" in response to every criticism because the truth hurts your delicate fanboy feelings, I hear that's real popular among your kind.
Consistently running past every enemy to group them up and die trying to kill all of them paints DS2 bad, but only amplifies your opinion. You could “use the tools” in the game like you say you did in DS1. But that wouldn’t show the flaws with the game. Just with your playstyle. You harp on gank-squads in the game, but you are the one that created them. You chose many times in the video to round up every enemy you could to illustrate your point, when there’s ways to mitigate “ganks.” Yes, there are many instances where you have to fight multiple enemies at once. But only using a broadsword with no other weapons, spells, or equipment will often times lead to failure. It’s fun to play with a limited arsenal, but there are always shortcomings to every playstyle. Also, you praise Sens Fortress floor trap, but fail to use or demonstrate using traps in DS2 when they’re present. The fire pillars in Iron Keep can wreck enemies. Another issue you have is with the lock on system. I really don’t get it. It’s not wise to lock on with multiple enemies aggro’d to you. Better to do so during one-on-one engagements. The game teaches this pretty soon, telling you to be aware and pay attention because danger lurks around every corner. I get people don’t think greatly of DS2. They played the first one and fell in love. When they released the 2nd game, they became upset or disappointed or both. “Why can’t I circle-strafe every enemy for a backstab? OMG soooo many enemies! Look at me with my shield always up!” I could go on. Every FromSoft title has its faults. But I genuinely believe most of the complaints about DS2 come from the expectations of players who loved the first game, and were angry the game didn’t exceed their expectations they set for it. Also, Bloodborne is the best FromSoft game.
Not being able to circle strafe things isn’t what pissed me off about the game. Backstabbing cheese was boring in the first game so I never did it. It’s not any one particular thing about the game I don’t like. Getting no I-frames when you enter a boss fog. Getting hit 7 feet away from the boss by an attack that’s not even an aoe. The ugly animations. Forgettable boss design, beating the game 3 times and still not knowing where you should go first every time you get to majula because world layout makes no goddamn sense. Dark souls 2 brought a lot of new changes to the series that became series features going forward. Most important being omnidirectional dodging while locked on. It’s only fair the worst iteration of these new changes exists in the first iteration of them. I wanna be clear on something. Dark souls 2 is not a bad game. Not at all. It’s actually a good game. It’s just a bad Dark Souls game. It feels like Dark Souls, if Dark Souls was made by people who didn’t understand why people loved Dark Souls. To be fair I don’t even know why I love it so much and why dark souls 2 irks me so badly. It’s all the little shit. The fact that your healing flask isn’t a burst heal but instead is just a fast over time heal. High stamina cost for nearly every action. Inconsistent dodges because of the game’s active (and therefore in-flux) calculation of i-frames due to adaptability being a fucking thing. A lot of the late game areas feel empty as fuck, as well. Just enemies. Nothing there to let the player feel like this use to be a place people lived, but instead feels like a tailor-made video game level, because that’s what it is. At least dark souls hides that fact behind clever design, making the areas feel lived-in and designing them in a way that makes it feel logical to navigate. This is strange, but why I don’t like dark souls 2 reminds me of why I didn’t like fable 2. Fable 2 is just fable but on ice. Dark souls 2 is just dark souls but drowned in molasses.
@@BulykrynVancho it feels more like shit hits the fan because you’re there to me. But I only just beat rom for the first time a few nights ago. Many times I’ve tried playing bloodborne and many times I’ve deleted an old save and started all over. I’ve owned the game for years and been able to play it all this time. I’ve played all the other soulsborne games except for demons souls, all of them I’ve played I’ve beaten more than twice. Except for bloodborne. I don’t know why. I really like it. Probably the frame rate. I’m just coming off of 200 hours of elden ring and before that it was dark souls 3, so the frames are hard on the eyes and really do hinder you sometimes. But yeah, all of fromsoft’s worlds feel abandoned and desolate. But that’s the thing. In order for something to feel abandoned, it has to appear as if people once lived there, a long time ago. Dark souls 2 can’t even manage that. Areas don’t feel abandoned. They can’t, because they don’t feel like they were ever actually lived in by anyone. So instead of feeling abandoned and desolate, it just feels empty. You said it yourself, remnants of what was. Except in dark souls 2, because we can’t even perceive that there ever was a “was.”
Ds2 was actually my introduction to the souls games and is still the only one I've beaten, unless you cont elder ring. My roommate at the time is a diehard souls fan and he said it was the easiest and therefore a good introduction.
I watched this video multiple times before playing dark souls 2, from the footage you showed I agreed with you. I feared the game but I still played it. Now I finished the main game and I can say you're wrong, I don't even understand how you can end up with that many enemies chasing you
You make the mistake of agro-ing too many enemies once and you never do it again. Playing SotFS a few times in the last 6 months since my first play through has taught me to learn enemy placements and not agro too many at once
@@randychristensen1028 I agree with that. After playing ds2, I completed the rest of the souls games, elden ring, ds3, sekiro, bloodborne, and demon souls. I can definitely say that knowing enemy placement is key, especially to ds2. knowing where they are is crucial to overcoming the challenge, since just running past them is not the best option (except for sir allone's run up, I just booked it everytime haha). Taking your time is the way to complete sections, and knowing the layout makes it better for traversing, even on replays.
@@novarangerx6441no it isn’t that why they never did this shit again in future games. It’s just bad game design to constantly gank and overflow it just makes it shit
Always love when people criticize ds2 they always talk about the amount of enemies while showing video of them aggroing like 4 packs of enemies and then wondering why lol
"I will lure all of these guys and put in a video and tell them "see? it's bad!" They like being baby-ed like in other souls where if an enemy went on a set range, they will not follow you anymore like is that more realistic?
Idk maybe if the enemies didn't keep agro for a year maybe it wouldn't be so bad. I was just trying to run away and mf almost followed me to another side of the area. The game sucks
@@erieriderschillingcorner1595Well, maybe if you're a little less coward and you think a little you can fight separating them, maybe trowing a knife or arrow from the distance or idk, fight in the order that they are and not running into them and die because you trapped yourself? Don't you think that blame the game because you trapped yourself running into enemies without a plan it's kinda dumb?
Ds2 fans are so cringe man. The game is ass in a lot of areas. Lots of people (who actually have their frontal lobe intact) wouldn't really like how cheap the difficulty of the game is. Sorry I think that shoving 30 enemies into a small area only to face yet another mediocre boss afterwards is lame is very cheap.
I love how people who say it's "bad" probably played through it at least twice and played all the dlcs too. 😂 generally, people don't play something that much if it's not good.
I played the entirety of Dark Souls 2 by killing every single ennemie I could see because it was a way to a lot of souls, experience everything in the game and also not get overwhelmed For some areas, especially Iron Keeps (god I hate this place) I ended up making almost every single ennemie permanentely gone (unless using bonefire astetic) and get over 100k souls... which I lost to the boss because I rolled into a small hole with lava I didn’t see I had so much frustration with the game and how unfair a lot of stuff was, but for some reason I just kept wanting to play the game so I learned the rules and played with them, sure it was long and sometimes unfun but it worked And it weird because even after all of this I still love this game (my first dark souls) When I started playing Dark Souls 3 it felt like all these hours of mostly pain were training for this absolute masterpiece, I was absolutely stomping on the game and on everything, it felt so good to... be able to do stuff fast, take risk and be rewarded and not punished because you didn’t waited for the ennemie to finish their attack, it was clearly one of the best experience I had in video game in a long time, feeling strong because of experience and not because of things being "easy", something Dark Souls 2 barely had because in this you essentially just had to die and retry again and again until you knew every single ennemie placement, pattern and aggro and was basically able to do the exact same actions everytime to win... which was oddly fun (at least for me) even if it meant having to die There’s also weapons and armor in the game that... all felt the exact same to me as the number of hit you could do to an ennemie was basically the same for a lot of weapons, especially because almost all of them have so much poise you can never stagger them, so it was just what weapon dealt the most damage as they all felt the same... and that’s it. Armor were practically useless too Idk, I feel complicated about Dark Souls 2, lot of things I hate and find unfair but I still love it... DS3 is still superior in almost every way
Recently went through the entire trilogy and DS2 was my favorite. Some of the issues people had with DS2 are worse to me in DS3. But I liked all three games.
Agreed, Ds3 imo is the worst of the series although Elden Ring may be another contender. Ds2 is underrated extremely. People just don’t want to learn how to play it, plus it’s atmosphere and rich environments are stellar.
@@dylanschmeichel2008 Agreed. Didn't like DS3's over emphasis on action, shameless fan service references to the first game, and limited playstyles. I hear Elden Ring is DS3 but more over the top. And most of the issues people had with DS2, didn't bother me. AGL stat is still dumb though.
@@iwanttodiebutimtoobigofacoward I've heard something similar. I'm guessing this is because they initially tried to make DS2 an open worldish kind of game.
I just took everything as a challenge and overcame it with at least 6 characters. The way you play rushing and getting every enemy on you at once and calling it a negative isn't right. I played every game multiple times through and I just see it and play it as it is without trying to compare. I like them all
@@JKurayami so the game is bad because he didn’t want to actually take the time play the game (or learn and try different strategies to make the enemies easier to handle)… ok
@@ByzantineDarkwraith If you've ever played any of the Fromsoft Souls-like games, you are able to at a point, evade enemies to get to certain sections. And yes, you can adopt the easiest method of dealing with enemies. Which is only effective so long as you're assigned stats are good enough to do the thing that you're supposed to do. And you'd have to do it 12 times in a row to make sure they stop spawning. He also mentions many other reasons why the game sucks. You should watch the video. I know it's longer than the average tik tok, but if you pay attention, you'll notice his list of things.
After watching your gameplay it's obvious that you really gimped yourself by opting to run past everything instead of trying to be methodical, like bro you only have a +3 weapon and NO RINGS as far into the game as iron keep, no wonder you were struggling. It's like you watched a speedrun of someone running straight to all the bosses and thought that's how the game is actually supposed to be played lmao At the 10 minute mark you complain that the attack animations are much slower than the dodge roll, which results in you getting roll-caught. My guy, if you're trying to roll attacks and still getting hit, it's because YOUR TIMING IS OFF. I can't.
@@isaiahwebb3743 bloodborne fans are usually really annoying and always consider it the best and most flawless fromsoftware game even elden ring fans aren't as annoying as them
@@isaiahwebb3743 nothing wrong with it very cool game actually. It's just that he's complaining about ds2 speed so he'll probably really like BB cause it's very fast (although the game throws a bunch of enemies at you too)
I love Metallica so much! I saw them live about 2 years ago, what a great day! They played all my favorite songs (Fade to Black, One, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Nothing Else Matters, Master of Puppets etc.)
I made a comment response video where I kill all the enemies in every level: ua-cam.com/video/rR-a3zIOE2w/v-deo.html
I made a video comparing vanilla to Scholar since vanilla is a lot better. You can watch that video with the link below.
ua-cam.com/video/dgJM4O8mAys/v-deo.html
I also made a video called "In Defense of Dark Souls 2" where I tried to understand why a minority of people enjoyed Scholar. It had some issues so I made it unlisted. If you wanna watch it you can use the link below.
ua-cam.com/video/2A6s_Wq-6PU/v-deo.html
Good for you.
@@highlightermarca-texto3281 I did not try that. I do need video evidence of this occurring multiple times and working consistently to know for sure. Either way I still think that a boss with a boss run like that shouldn't be the hardest to create healing windows in the game.
sotfs is a "hardkore" version and infirier at that vanilla is wery different a specialy the iron fortres
You say that you have to fight two knights at the start of Heide, but I’ve never played a version of SotFS where that is true. Likewise you complain about infinitely respawning invaders, but they don’t respawn if you kill them like in every Souls game. People are valid to criticize your use of footage that exaggerates the problem you are discussing even if it is coincidental and unintentional - inferred hyperbole will still weaken your argument to other people.
The pyromancer at the end of the ivory king doing too much damage is probably because you never leveled INT or FTH, the only stats tied to fire defense - just a guess.
Also, I can’t exactly fault people for not knowing this, but the DLCs have areas designed for three player parties. This includes the run up to Alonne, a very questionable choice IMO, but each one gives you two NPC summons for offline play. I haven’t seen a single DS2 review fairly acknowledge this. You could summon to fight your way through and then unsummon before Alonne, but I can’t really defend that area too much as it is the most boring multiplayer area.
NPCs can’t interact with the Iron Passage’s side paths, either, so that one is somewhat dysfunctional, too. Honestly, the gank squad is probably the best multiplayer area to do with the NPCs. All of this to say if you try to solo those areas your pride will be the death of you. 😉
@@Zapdos7471 I view using summons as playing in easy mode, and for a critique to be "legit" it should probably be done in normal mode if possible. But after beating Dark Souls 2 no summons level 1 I can say that yes, using summons is developer intended. I disagree with that design decision and prefer Dark Souls 1 being designed around solo play, but maybe for some who enjoy co op Dark Souls 2 is fun for them.
And I killed an invader in the Iron Keep and then died, ran back to Smelter Demon, and was invaded again. So yes, there were multiple respawning invaders, however I think that if I killed the invaders every run eventually they would stop respawning. I didn't do this because it's stupid and I just ran to Smelter Demon, but respawning invaders are real.
And I think the only real "exaggerated" gameplay of gank fests is what I showed in the lost bastille. Since the forest of the fallen giants has a ladder you can run to if you run past the enemies with another enemy coded to go down the ladder and force you to fight all 30 enemies at once, so no I don't think that gameplay was exaggerated as the game tricked me!
The one reason I finished my first, and so far only, playthrough was bc an invader dropped me some good gear when I was struggling through Iron Keep. Then he left with a wave and without a fight. That act of kindness carried me frfr.
😂😂 forever remember this kind soul
Git gud
Kind but strong 🦾 He wanted to fight the more powerful you in the future
The one that i found instead is someone spamming hexes in Shrine of amana, while that gank at the end pursuing me.
Also someone else in Iron keep also spamming sorceries when attempting to run from the army
Just out of curiosity, do you remember what the Kind Souls player dropped? Would be hilarious if he dropped you a +10 Smelter Hammer or something like that 🤣
It's just death by a thousand cuts. Most of the issues aren't really big deals, but when they all get mushed together it just makes a bad experience.
Finding a hair in your food isn't a big deal. Finding a dozen is.
Exactly. This game would be so much better if you got i-frames at fog walls and doors and if some of the gank squads were lessened.
This is a really good take
It would all be worth the pain if the bosses were good. But they're not - almost all of them have no counter whatsoever to circle strafing, and every "dude in armor" (which isn't inherently bad) is the same because they all have the same, similar, three-five swing combos, maybe a smash.
Dark Souls 2 is like if you find bunch of hairs in a meal you paid 60 bucks for and the chef makes you eat those hairs with the meal..
@@feebleking21 Hey dood I don't know if you'll see this but i hope you do, I personally agree with some of your grievances with ds2 but I think this video might change your out look by just a little
ua-cam.com/video/td1HJEB3aKQ/v-deo.html.
Well have a good one dood and look after yourself
Hey look at the bright side, if the B team hadn't handled DS2, we wouldn't have had Bloodborne
Please identify any member of this ostensible “B team” outside of Yui Tanimura (who has actually been co-director on other games like Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring).
@@heyguysinternet the lack of miyazaki is b team worthy on its own
Worst game ever made
idc about bloodborne because i cant play it
no wonder this game is so terrible the b team made it lol that explains alot
"i am bad in the game and is the game fault that i suck at it" the video
Also said as "skill issue lol"
You say this like it isn't the easiest souls game
@@slapdonkey409 True. Which makes the entire video all the worse. The guy literally has to fabricate his evidence.
I liked the idea of the hollowing that happens after each death but man I died so many more times directly because of it. It didn't make the game "harder" it made it more annoying. That's honestly how I would describe the game as a whole. More annoying than difficult.
Effigies undo Erosion (reverse Hollowing)
Embers provide Erection ("briefly heightened" strength)
Like toothpaste versus viagra.
thats what i dislike the most about dark souls, too much artificial difficult added to compensate for the lack of good AI and physics, it worked well on the ps3 era as a low budget esque game, but now this design is aging pretty bad
@@felipe8511 overall I like 1 and 3 pretty well but I definitely agree
I didn't know you could use human effigies as a consumable cause I thought their only use was to be burnt at a bonfire so I played through the whole game with 75%/50% health lol.
@@core-nix1885 Ember is the same as effigies to me, i don't like getting punished and not being able to have max HP using a ressource annoying to farm because I died in a game that can easily kill you.
Thats why I prefer DS1 when it comes to dying, Humannity is mostly used for summoning and I don't get smacked harder when screwing up/getting fucked.
You forgot about the best part of the dlcs : Reindeer-Fuckland or as some call it the frigid outskirts. How could the devs make this and think thats a good idea. Horrible place,disgusting boss run.
or the boss fight that is literally a gank squad lol
It is a coop area designed to be unfair, so that you can overcome it with friends. It is the most optional of optional areas specifically for Sunbros encounters. I get if you don't like it but I fully understand the core idea and why it is there.
Reindeer-Fuckland or Horsefuck-Valley will always make me giggle.
Still love when Demodcracy called it Reindeer fuckland
Oh god when I made it to the consecrated snowfield I was literally having horsefuck-valley PTSD flashbacks
Sir Alonne has a unique death animation if you kill him without taking damage, so his aggression and ability to punish heals plays into this. I agree the boss run is stupid, but trying to kill him flawless to get the unique seppuku animation made that boss very memorable for me.
exactly, he encourages learning his patterns and AI and encourages flawless play. i was always terrible at Alonne until sl1 run and I learned him and flawlessed him. then i learned him no roll and flawless sl1 CoC no rolled him. working on him no sprint now. i absolutely love Alonne nowadays lol.
most enemies' AI will punish heals.
@noc omment Never said it was the best, or good, or even a game.
Screw Alonne. Who throws an army at you and then pretends like he's having an honorable battle with a guy half dead from the gauntlet?
On the plus side, when he commits seppuku, you could say he couldn't handle the absolute shame of losing in such an advantageous position.
That’s what that was?! I got that animation first time through after dying to him at least a few dozen times. After a while of trying I straight gave up on defending, restatted for quick dex weapons and high adaptability, stripped, and just dodged for like an hour. I’d get in one quick strike then dodge because I was too scared to go in and get hit. I figured if I got hit, I’d never be able to heal, so just don’t get hit. It only occurs to me now as you mention this that I beat him without taking damage. I was just too excited to have finally beat him, without even having an effigy left.
In all your gameplay it shows you just running past multiple enemies, aggroing them then trying to fight them all instead of taking one by one no wonder why you are getting killed in all areas.
dont even bother, bro, here is a shithole for the bad Fromsoft players.
you see how they all agree with every meanspirited opinion that appears out of pure skill issue and crafted encounters that do not occur in normal playthrough, you can't fight against stupidity on its nest
(I don't know if there is a relation, but every DS2 hater love to shit talk the game while sucking the balls of Bloodborne, that is the easiest and smaller Fromsoft game)
He established a dichotomy between running past enemies and having to fight them. Either you sluggishly kill the enemies every single run back or you try to make it past them. Both are equally frustrating
@@BasedIfTrue no it is not, killing enemies carefully in an area is a lot easier and they are not that many, in that forest of the giants part they always show the enemies don't even get up unless you get close to them, watch Domo 3000 videos debunking all these claims with actual examples.
@@comicsans6487 You missed my entire argument bud, if the gameplay sucks then killing a few enemies suck as well. And that problem multiplies the longer the boss runs are
@@BasedIfTrue that is his opinion not objective fact, many enjoy the gameplay and not rushing to a fog gate
I’m so glad you mentioned undead burg. For me Undead burg and parish on my first play thru was the most fun I’ve had in a souls game. And the magic of going down that elevator for the first time and finding myself at firelink where I look up and realise I can see all of the path I had just taken while looking outward to where I might be able to go next.
Or going across the bridge and hearing the thudding of the hammer, looking across the bonfire and seeing the closed gate, it’s amazing
Man... Every developer must have been a sorcerer. I didn't have much difficulty with the enemy numbers or ranged enemies because I fired lasers from a stick
I used a whip it was a pain
dex + bow works fine too
only for str-builds there are no good solutions if you get unlucky (crossbows still do the job)
I played powerstance UGS and I had a blast. You're just bad
Don't worry about it tho, it's probably the most difficult Souls game, it's not for casuals and babbies
@@wrcz nah.
You know the game is objectively bad when instead of allowing players to go down the well early and die, they just decide to increase the fall damage across the board. I'm not even going to talk about the piss poor balancing of lifegems.
@@wrcz I think the original version was balanced for casuals. It's definitely not the easiest one, but some things make me think that way. Even bad players can see nearly the whole game if they try hard enough.
Required bosses are easy, optional bosses are hard and the way to the bosses is somewhere between (and can be cleared with enough time). Also with lifegems you will never run out of healing items.
Part of my brain still remembers how enemies were set up in the OG dark souls 2. It's like they took nearly every encounter and asked themselves: is this annoying enough yet? Then we got SOTFS
i recently bought normal ds2 on steam due to nostalgia since i got pissed at scholar. ds2 standard is actually a masterpiece compared to the shitfest that is scholar.
@@xlgapelsin6173 I second that. One of the biggest complaints about OG DS2 was the enemy placements and how unfair they felt. So when I heard that Fromsoft is gonna release a complete overhaul of the game (SotFS), me and a lot of other people were excited, that they would finally fix the game... oh boy, they made it so much worse... what a waste.
@@chrisjanzen7748 the Enemy placement is horrendous in og aswell but compared to scholar its the so much better
@Chris Janzen funnily enough.
SOTFS isnt worse.
It just has different fucky areas.
I even think SOTFS is better by the internets opinion.
And i only grew up on SOTFS. And having watched hours and hours and hours of both copies.
Youd rather have some parts of the OG and some of SOTFS
Its a pick your poison and id take SOTFS cause its better- trust me.
Platted the game 2 times and i have countless countless hours
@@Lemontarts01 oh trust me Brother. Scholar is worse than og. Much worse
After replaying it again, I realized that you have to play the game the slowest out of all of them otherwise you’ll get ganked and die especially if you run past everything
I run pass enemies just fine.
@@hirotashi5950alright well ur asian you guys are built for this shit
Your just bad because you can run past enemies like any souls game lmao
@@rolllimbo973you can, but you're going to have a tougher time getting into a fog gate.
@@rolllimbo973you cant
Never cook again
Actual Jumpscare seeing you in the comments
Commented get good on this video 2 years ago. Seen an AI voice bro criticizing this video and remembered this guys voice so vividly cause it sucks. Had to come find my own old comments and here you are
Bro had such a bad take it brought OnlyWaifu back from the ER PVP purgatory.
No puedo creer lo que creció tu canal en 1 año. Podes notar que te ubico porque se que hablás español y que sos del mismo país que yo jajaja
True
I learned not to rely on lock on from playing demon’s souls, so that was never really an issue for me. I also think it’s neat that the level of light in an area corresponds to your lock on range.
Well, I mean a big issue Feeble had with it is that he learned to not use lock-on by watching UA-cam videos rather than the game itself teaching him.....and you learning it from another game entirely is no better.
@@Spiral81C1 did he not play Ds1 before this? I find it really hard to believe that you'd never even consider just not locking on if you have any prior experience with these games, even if they don't explicitly say that it can be useful. Like, how do you beat a boss like O&S or 4 Kings while locked on?
@@yellowsaurus4895 I was also thinking Asylum Demon even is easier not locked on. I guess it is just easier in that game to brute force, and maybe in this game it was the level areas rather than the bosses which rarely happened in dark souls 1.
After completing DS2 again, I gotta say it's a fucking great game imo
Stop agroing every single enemies. You complain about getting attacked by mobs, but I saw in the Iron Keep footage that you purposefully ran into even more enemies, refused to heal, and then complained that you got killed. Tf did you expect?
But then how will he make content and sensationalized statements?
I'm playing DS2 and every time the game stresses me out for some objectively unfair reason, I return to this video as anger therapy
Edit: Finally beat that hell with DLC's included
Reading this gave me a good laugh
@@feebleking21 how've you been, just watched your latest vid a few days ago
@@opgroundzero2.0 I'm alright, new video soon
that's why I'm here too
What is an objectively unfair reason?
The best thing about DS2 was that it was the first one I played, but managed to push myself through it and had fun which made me enjoy the others even more.
Funny enough for me, Ds2 was also my first one, years and years ago, I started it and never finished it and never played another Souls game because I thought all of them were like that.
It turned me away from the series until this year when I finally got back into them
@@t_r_a_y_e9858 You were simply too young, stupid and impatient for the game.
I feel like in every scene where you're fighting enemies, you are fighting like every possible enemy in that room/hall/area. Would there not be a compromise between fighting every enemy whilst under archer fire and running past every enemy? I'm pretty sure that, to go along with the slow combat, you're supposed to approach levels slowly and kill off a few enemies at a time at most, by luring them and methodically clearing the area without resorting to a mega brawl.
Doesn't really work when ennemies AI spot you by groups.
@@naproupi perhaps in 2-3 enemies see you at the same time, the only way for them to spot you in bigger groups is if you run through the level and have no idea where to go, like in the start of the video.
Was thinking that when he woke up all the enemies in that one spot in forest of the fallen giants. I’ve played through the area half a dozen times and have never done that lol
Finally someone resonable, the only really annoying areas are iron keep, but not really, and shrine of amana. I've completed the game a ton of times and i liked the first time like the 10th, i think that ds2 is way way easier than ds3 where everything oneshots you and u have to apend souls on health unless u want to suffer, not to talk about the completely unfair enemies in the prison of ithryll or the fact that the hotboxes of grabs are huge, the good thing about ds3 is the design and the dynamic bossfights the rest is bs.
@@fabriziomessina6734 i feel like DS3 has the best bosses in the series, but the areas feel really boring. Every playthrough feels the same because you have One way to go. Ds2 has a lot of flaws but at least they tried something new, and i like that aspect of the game. Dual wielding was the best things about the game, creating a lot of build diversity and new moveset. DS3 went the safe way. Removed everything from ds2 even the Good things, and abused fan service, but removing depth from the game (not lore-wise)
*fucking rushesh in without killing any enemies
Why is it just gank fights???
DS2 did a lot of really cool stuff. The dual wielding "power stance" was awesome, and a lot of the areas have really cool atmosphere and variety (the "pirate level," doors of Pharos, shrine of Amana, the "rainy castle," the area with the buff mummy dudes, earthen peak, dragon aerie, the cursed woods area, etc are all really cool looking areas, and the kind of nonsensical progression makes it hard to predict what will come next on your first playthrough...
I have played through all of the "soulsborne" games multiple times (starting with demons souls on PS3), as well as kings field 1 and 2 (na), and I can honestly say I remember more areas from DS2 than any of the others (although elden ring may change that), despite having played it less. It took me a while to buy DS2 due to negative reviews, but I can now say, with all it's faults, DS2 is probably my favorite overall "souls" game. I feel like most of the areas you show in this video are the least interesting areas in the game. That being said, I'm not saying DS2 is flawless, and I'm sure I was frustrated as hell at least 50% of the time I played it (as with all from soft games), but in hindsight, I really appreciate the unique design of DS2.
The graphics in each level dip in quality throughout the game, as some areas look very dull and static while others as you stated look cool and atmospheric. Mechanics matter more to me than visuals, but if the cool looking areas of Dark Souls 2 made you enjoy playing the game then that's great!
@@feebleking21 I really liked the power stancing (glad elden ring brought it back), and DS2 had the best caestus of all the souls games (especially when you maxed it out with a strength build and "two handed" a single caestus, the "rapid powersmack" move obliterates everything), and the red iron twinblades/ santiers spear/ hydouken(sp?) launching bone fist/ the left handed sword used by artorias in ds1 dlc, were a ton of fun to use. Ds2 also felt like it was more influenced by the kings field games than ds1 or 3. I seem to remember the PS3 version of sotfs having some insanely frustrating enemy placement/ aggression levels that seemed to have been fixed in the PS4 version (or it could have just been that I had improved on my second playthrough, so it seemed easier on PS4). Either way, I feel like ds2 has been critically "drug through the mud," more than it probably deserved, for issues that are also present in other souls games that were/are generally more well received. While they are all excellent games, none of them are perfect (would it kill from soft to pull the damned camera back a bit when you are fighting a boss that's bigger than a roided out empire state building?), But I thought ds2 made more improvements than downgrades to the fromsoft formula.
@@feebleking21 the only area I remember thinking looked really bad (bad bad, not good bad) was that stupid "lava castle" with the archer bastards. And I totally agree with you about that areas supreme levels of suckage...
@@BBQcheese I think that you have the suspension of disbelief that a magical world could be underground since you can't see underground.
You do not have the suspension of disbelief that a lava castle could be ontop of a windmill because that would be crazy. If the elevator in Earthen Peak went down instead of up you might believe it a bit more since anything could be underground (though they'd have to make the Iron Keep skybox be a cave thing to match the underground theme).
Lets yourself be swarmed with enemies by ignoring them one by one until they overwhelm you and then face them with the one handed broad sword. Proceeds by healing milliseconds before an incoming hit and then die. Damn, this does not represent the average player, it represents FeebleKing21 fishing for video-content. As for the broad-sword, it represents a player who doesn't know how to spend their upgrade materials. Create a new player and start over.
Yeah I don't feel like they gave the game a fair shake at all.
I died so many times in this game because an enemy got behind me and I couldnt do the 180 swing thing you mentioned at minute 10 I almost got an aneurysm
Can I just say how much I love the transition skeleton? You can do it buddy. I believe in you.
Don't give up, Skeleton
And don't you dare go Hollow, friend
@ 1:00 i suppose you are just trying to make a point and while I agree Dark souls 2 has a lot of spam problems it does take a pretty big amount of stupid to aggro that many of them at once considering the short range and the fact they are all passive on the ground until you approach them. I think its actually one of the better spots with a large amount of enemies in the game.
He said it in passing in the video but he did clear out some of the areas legitimately and then gave up on clearing them out so that he can just go for the boss since that would take far less time. His point is that nobody wants to fight through a slump of annoying mobs just to fight a boss and die, since dying at any point in that scenario would mean you wasted so much time.
The game tricked me into this encounter as I ran to the ladder to retrieve my souls only for the enemy AI to be coded to kick me off the ladder and force me into the fight. I thought everyone already knew this so I didn't mention it but I guess I should have.
@@feebleking21 Wait, what do you mean it tricked you? If you were retrieving souls, then you had already been there. It was the same encounter.
Yeah, that area is an amazing tutorial. Its teaching you to calm the fuck down and take things one at a time. Dont rush because then you'll get swarmed.
Its a lesson that you will find a million uses for in this game. I cant tell if its disingenousness or incompetence that resulted in him complaining about a good encounter TWICE in 3 minutes, but its enough for me to not want to invest in the rest of the video. Ciao!
@@John-uw2je i for one find it fun to fight things
I just did that area in the Forest of Fallen Giants, you can literally walk right behind each hollow and kill them right after they get up. It's like reading a message that tells you to jump off of a cliff for treasure. If you don't learn from your mistake, is that the game's fault?
He's upset that he can't roll spam in Dark Souls 2.
@@tokidoki9116 try to roll spam in any other fromsoft game and see how far you can get lol
@@tokidoki9116 seeing how BHS in Elden ring makes you nearly invulnerable for as long as you can mash L2 with FP, I can see why they seethe when going back to older titles lol. DS3 and ER especially were very lenient and forgiving with both the stamina cost, speed, and frames of rolls.
@Good Hunter Literally better than DS1 but keep deluding yourself.
He blames everything on the game just seems like he can't stay alive because he's making everything agro at him all at one time
I've never played DS2 but seeing the Sinh fight made me laugh because I instantly thought of Elden Beast that you would have to run a fucking marathon to get to just to hit him once and for him to fly away again
Sinh is a much better boss than Elden Beast and is actually fun. Sinh feels much more fair too.
Nah bruv, i did elden beast in 3 tries. Yaall are just fkng bad, and it was actually pretty damn easy
@@theultimatep1e40 stfu kid he took me 2 tries I just said it’s a bad boss
@@theultimatep1e40 it's not hard dumbass it's not fun there's a difference
@@just70hq Sihn is much worse because of DS2's high stamina consumption for running. He also breaks your weapons by reducing durability faster than usual whenever you HIT HIM. He punishes you for hitting him. Such a fun boss.
my take is that the devs genuinely believed that players would replay sections over and over until the enemies disappeared, then make it to the boss and fight it face-to-face locked on.
Honestly tho if they wanted that why would the enemies respawn 12 times. It would make a lot more sense for anything less than 7 times
That's honestly what I'm inclined to believe. Your weapons and armor are so extremely fragile in Dark Souls 2 compared to Demon's Souls and DS1, that fighting enemies on the way to the boss will likely cause your equipment to completely break at some point before managing to kill the boss.
@@NexusKinthis happened to me once in all of my ds2 playthroughs. Also you can just switch weapons or use repair powder or use a durability ring.
I think the despawning mechanic was added as a failsafe for stuck players. I only ever used it on my first run to the Blue Smelter Demon in the dlc. Ds2 is probably the best game in the series in terms of being able to control difficulty. That’s part of it.
@@NexusKin2 weapons are more than enough plus u can repair it for cheap
Tbh thats exactly what i did the whole game lol
I think dark souls 2 is fine, I have replayed all the souls games plenty of times over the years and I really don't think it sticks out as much as people make it out to. Probably wouldn't say it's the hardest souls game either.
I feel ds2 overstayed its "HAH GOT YOU" moments.
In DS1 if a suprise enemy spawn happens or the dragon comes, he stays there. Saying, ok, i got you once, arent we having good fun.
In DS2 they dont do that.
They overstay it and do the suprise every time.
Leading to you having to wait till they do their suprise.
One of the worst offenders are the enemys on the way to the horse boss in huntsman corpse.
They are too strong to fight 2 to 1.
But every time they come back they wait on sticks unreachable.
So either tiptoe to trigger them ...wasting soooo much time.
Or do ranged. Its just infuriating and wastes time.
Dark souls 3 : How about we do that but with collectables from corpses? It'll be cool if you picked up something only to End up fighting 3 Gremlin Thieves
Thankfully in most cases you have a bit of time to react.
Kill them all once, kill the phantom at the end, go back and heal if needed, run to boss, done.
Or just literally run through, if you do it right, you don't have to fight a single one of them.
@@Strohbergung if the best course of action is kill them all or ignore what they layed before it...its not that well designed imo.
@Good Hunter like i said this isn't that big of a problem, because when you run through and do it right, the enemies won't hit you when you reach the fog gate.
I’m playing through this for the first time right now and while I see the things that people take issue with, I’ve greatly enjoyed my time with it so far
Good joke
@@ricky.t.1658 cry about it
@@ricky.t.1658 cope
I haven't beaten it yet but I really love dark souls 2 so far (I'm on the optional king vendrick boss so maybe it gets worse after) but so far even iron keep and shrine of Amana never gave me the problems that it gave others (maybe it was improved in Sotfs I'm not sure) my only issues so far are with ds2 is that the level design is either way too convoluted or too straightforward, and there is an overall lack of the routing back shortcut systems found in ds1 (my favorite in the entire series)
Its a good game.
I deleted all comments i heard abt the game 6 hours in when i broke out of my noob shell.
If i could offer myself any tip it would literally only be:
"Rolling works like sekiro parrying, roll when the attack is inside you"
All the stuff i heard abt ADP is dumb lol.
I have countless hours and 2 plats - never leveled it past base and i think ds2 has as good a dodge timing as sekiro does a parry
wow you just didn’t burn your sublime bone dust to reinforce your estus the whole time
It's dark souls II fault 😆
@@gordo_homemlivre1909 its just the guy being stupid
Well that went entirely over your head. His issue with the Estus was the lack of s and how slow they were such that lifegems just made more sense so he didn't bother reinforcing the estus. It's not that he wasn't aware of it, he just didn't bother with because it made more sense just to use the lifegems.
I swear DS2 fans are just special XD
@@Spiral81C1 he didn’t reinforce his Estus because of the lack of s and how slow they are??? Lifegems have a lack of s and they heal pretty slowly compared to reinforced estus that doesn’t take that long to drink if ADP is decently invested into. For most bosses you can dodge roll through an attack and while they’re recovering you can easily drink an Estus Brah! I know that’s there are those superior lifegems that heal more but on new game they are not a requirement to beat the game as long your Estus upgrades are used and ADP is decently leveled.
YOU CAN REINFORCE THEM?
DS2 was always the one fromsoft game still in my backlog, and after numerous half attempts to start and get frustrated with the early game I finally got past the initial hump and have nearly cleared the base game, about to start the DLC's.
The thing is every criticism of DS2 and Scholar is fairly valid, it just comes down to how much you value the asthetic, level design, lore and other creative ideas over it, the areas are nightmares, but the ascetic system and having a wider suite of weapons and ranged options, the areas are only ever hard if you try and run through them, like all Dark souls games taking it slow and methodically is all you need to do, and the game hard forces you to, which is antithetical to some of the other games but if you just accept that and appreciate the world for what it is I feel like it works.
Even the flaws in combat when looked at over the evolution of combat in all fromsoft games, you can see how things have changed and been tried and if Dark souls 2 wasn't the way it was, then e great ideas that were carried over to Elden ring wouldn't be there, as a game it may have flaws, but as a piece of the genres evolution is one of the best still.
In regards to the game ramping up its bullshit levels in the pursuit of "videogame hard" is as much a symptom of the community as it is a mistake by the devs, we/you did this! Sometimes I will see reddit threads from 5+years ago about ds1 or 2, and the responses to simple questions, often not even related to combat mechanics but just simple questions was "git gud scrub" over and over, and that was how the community was. I was working games retail throughout the 2010's even if I wasn't as in love with the franchise then I am now (games didn't click for me till bloodborne) but i remember the marketing, and it was pretty cringe, but it was what the community deserved.
Unpopular opinion: the ds2 dlcs are overrated. They are still ganky and annoying and every dlc has at least one absolute bullshit area (frigid outskirts, alonnes past and the area before gank squad)
I played through ds2 a lot of times with all sorts of challenges but most of the time i just cant be bothered to push through the dlc areas just to get to the good bosses.
I think the interconnected level design is great, but the gank squads are still unfun. The only enemy design I liked was in the beginning city of the Sunken King, partially because moving buildings could wipe out all the enemies, but even without that there were no hidden archers since they were all within reach.
The other two dlcs have worse gank squads and the Ivory King has the worst design imo of all of them.
Preach. Sunken King DLC was straight-up trash, dude, especially when you get to the ziggurats and go inside. The DLCs have their moments, but all in all they're still pretty mediocre, and not much better than the base game.
@@chicken29843 Do not tell me that DS2 is good because enemies disappear after 12 deaths. And did I complain about Ruin Sentinels? I did the 1v3 on purpose because I enjoy the challenge and like the boss. I literally put on screen text that reads, "Ruin Sentinels are cool" as I talk about outlining good things in DS2... I guess you didn't pay attention
And what are you talking about, there is gameplay of me using all the loyce knights? I believe you are confused because most of your comment did not made sense.
@@chicken29843 I'm sorry but how the fuck is iron keep,the shrine of Amana, the shitty poison valley and the black gulch not inexcusable level design? Enemy spam galore and it was absolutely fucking awful to get through. Not even the lake of Rot or the liturgical town in elden ring are even close to DS2s dosghit ganky areas
I've heard the DLCs have some good bosses but I genuinely can't be bothered to get through them after experiencing the main game
@@chicken29843 I hear you man, these content creators swear on their lives that what they’re saying is the end all be all for a game when in reality they just suck major balls
I guess I did a challenge run of Dark Souls 2 because I finished the game locked on just like the other titles. Playing the game locked off is a workaround for the shitty enemy density, not an intended design choice. The fact it only works against early-game trash-mobs supports this. Fighting the ghosts in the Shaded Ruins locked off is fucking horrid since they are usually one-on-one pvp fights where being able to space and face the enemy at the same time is pretty important and FromSoft's amateur hour team decide to fuck it up because "game is hard lolz".
I beat it at SL1 and it was pain. That said, I killed every boss EXCEPT Lud n Zallen. I swore never to step into the Frozen Outskirts ever again
@@Walamonga1313 I will drink for that
You can't lock on the ghosts in the forest and they get staggered easily
Oh you loved DS1 lockon system then, right?
Right?
covetous demon is peak of all the bosses in ds2 because he is soo cute
DS 2 is the very first souls game I've ever played and it was what got me hooked in the souls series. I agree, Shrine of Amana is so bad and it was the worst experience for me but I still had fun in the hundreds of hours I've spent playing this game. Hard, yes but still enjoyable. So when I started playing DS 3, I was shocked at how easy it was compared to DS 2. But just because it was a lot easier doesn't mean it was bad. DS 3 is the best dark souls among the three for me and the most memorable, especially the Slave Knight Gael boss fight.
I understand your reasons for hating DS 2 and I know it has flaws but because it was my introduction to the souls series, it has a special place in my heart.
I can understand this perspective. Dark souls is so different from other games that your first souls game will make feel like an experience like none other. That's how I feel about Dark Souls 1 since that was my first souls game.
Same here, I had to check to make sure 3 was made by the same team cuz it was just like 'hey remember ds1? Well it's like that but made for people who never beat a souls game before'.. I was actually floored when they straight up just used Gwynn again as the final boss. Elden Ring makes me feel like they regret making hard games and want to get a more casual playerbase, which they 100% succeeded in doing.
@@chicken29843 in other words, ER is only hard if you handicap yourself. DS3 is pretty hard if you don't roll, and rolling means you had to dodge an attack meaning you didn't learn how to parry, thus making it cheesing.
@@chicken29843 so, you mean to tell me you've never learned how to parry and think you can have an opinion on souls games?
@@stinkfinga4918 I'm doing a solo strength run and it's harder than the others maleketh alone took me 6 hours
I still have fond memories of enjoying this game. I know it's bad, I agree with most every argument on why it's bad, but I still enjoyed it. Maybe it's just because there's something fun about someone asking "How do you like X? It's absolutely awful!" and responding "Yeah, I know."
I don't even think it's necessarily a "bad" game, it just has flaws that, when compared to DS1 or DS3, make it stand out and maybe even "worse" in comparison to those games. I can totes understand having fond memories, Dark Souls 2 is lit!
@@masterspino8583 death by a thousand cuts
I just flat out don't agree it's bad. Boogerman is bad. Dark Souls 2 is way, way, way better than most non-FromSoft games.
There really is so much wrong with it, even before you compare it to other Souls games. Heck, having the Souls branding probably helps it out a lot as people want to view it favorably.
If you really want a good in-depth talk about it and have 10 hours to kill (or have a job where you can sneak an earbud in and have a listen while working), Mauler has probably the best video series about it. Fully accounts for subjective enjoyment, admits his own enjoyment as well, but explains in obsessive detail the huge amount of faults it has.
It's ok to like bad things, whether in spite of or because of them being bad.
@@orangesouls7112 If you don't have 10 hours then Mauler's "defense of dark souls 2" is a good watch.
DS2 looked at the way players overcame obstacles in DS1 that weren’t “Getting gud” and saw them as exploits. So it sought to stop them.
What’s become obvious in subsequent games is that they weren’t exploits, they were intended features (or they at least became so).
I think Elden Ring has proven that Miyazaki will happily allow players to find creative solutions to problems, even if they ‘break the game’ from a purists’ perspective.
I played every fromsoftware game since demon's souls... But i've never finished ds2, even if i reached nashandra boss fight.
Ds2 misses a good level design, a coherent art direction, a balanced level scaling and a good silent narration like in miyazaki's games.
After playing Elden Ring I realised how much I like ds2, Elden Ring is too easy (even without summons) compared to ds
@@balthasargelt4098 yep, but ds2's difficulty is annoying, ds1, ds3 and elden ring are more balanced
@@untipo. elden ring is just too easy in my opinion, I like ds3 more. Ds2 is unfair and super slow and has awful regions (you know which ones). Ds1 (remastered) is actually the fair but hard one
@@untipo. Elden Ring actually inherits a lot of the problems of Dark Souls 2, and is often unfair due to poor boss/area design.
I really never had trouble with Iron Keep.. if you don’t run the entire time, you’ll aggro 2-3 enemies at once and if you can kill them before the next group comes- it feels pretty fun
THIS IS WHAT IVE BEEN LOOKING FOR DS2 IS NOT THAT HARD
@@cubemanishere7294 exactly, also rolling behind enemy on the weapon side makes most of the enemies much easier.
Once you learn the enemy placement and develop a system to clear them out 1 at a time iron keep just becomes free souls essentially
yeah like my guy pulls the entire castle, gets overwhelmed and complains ab how hard the game is
@@Litthoess yeah this feels like a troll video honestly.
I just started playing DS2 after nearly finishing my first DS1 playthrough, love that game. First impressions of DS2 = ambushes, ambushes everywhere
Yes, if you play the original version, there are far less ambushes. SOTFS has a lot of them.
Literally can you not handle more than one enemy at a time? Damn all you ds1 fanboys are so shit at these games it’s a wonder you play them XD
I just finished DS1 and was blown away.. so excited I bought DS2 and now I hate myself.. I feel like this game was made by the controller manufacturing company just to strum up extra business from the amount of controller smashes the players will commit
@@pg9193 Yeah it was made by the from software B team so It does not have the same feel as the original dark souls. Still a great game.
@AE personally I loved DS2, found it quite entertaining, but I do understand why some people wouldn't. It probably also helped that I took a few months after beating DS1 before buying DS2.
I just have to disagree on Sir Alonne. Yes the boss run is awful but the boss itself is amazing, maybe even better than Fume Knight for me. The only questionnable move he has is the thrust grab attack which has a weird hitbox. When you get into the flow of the fight, it’s unlike any other in the game for me. The dodges feel satisfying, there are a lot of openings and healing opportunities feel fair. I don’t get the complaint of only being able to heal for 2 specific attacks, maybe I haven’t fought him enough to realise that my healing opportunities weren’t 100% safe but I took estus after most of his combos and didn’t get punished in multiple attempts.
My brother actually had a lot of the same complaints as you when fighting him, so I took the controller, showed him how I fought him and kept Alonne at 1 hit then killed himself and told him to try again. He tried replicating what I did and actually beat him and completely changed his opinion on the fight.
It’s one of those fights where locked on is much better imo.
Gonna have to disagree with you chief. I enjoyed Sir Alonne boss fight, but that run to it was really awful. I actually had to despawn most of the enemies in that hallway because each run usually took me like half an hour. You are either filled with arrows by the back or burn to a crisp by the lizards. That alone killed the boss for me and it's such a shame.
Allant if he had 1 attack and was shitty
Sir alonne is amazing as a boss but they completely ruined him because of the terrible run back to him, he is quite difficult as a ds2 so you'll probably die a lot to him and every time you die you'll have to deal with his dreadful run back, just like the smelter demon
So many sheeple just love to hate on this game
Most of them have some great points
@@A_Real_Rascal
Never mind I just finished the game and realized most of their points are bs lol
@@A_Real_Rascal
I didn't upgrade my ADP as much as I should have so I thought the hit boxes were very bad in this game but once I upgraded it, they became fine for the most part
Use magic. Use poison. Farm a little upgrade stones. Use one of about a dozen ways to heal yourself more. If you're feeling spicy summon help. It truly isn't that hard. In fact, I feel DS2 is the easiest entry in the series.
I love how the weakest soulsborne titles (DS2 and Demon's Souls) are still better than most games out there. I had a lot of fun with them.
Ain't no way you put Demon's Souls in the same box as DS2. Also yes, DS2 is still a great game
@@c.b.5104 Yes I did, and I totally stand by it. Demon's Souls is mostly a game of nostalgia for me. And I like DS2 more than the most so yeah.
@@juwe7143 I can respect that
@@c.b.5104 most respectful Fromsoftware fan
Demons souls? Weakest? );
After beating DS1 years ago, I had a very hard time beating DS2 leading to burn out from the series for a few months. Iron Keep is the worst area in the game and it’s not even close lol. Having an agility stat is cheap to me, but learning how about it early allows the game to feel somewhat normal. Life gems makes the game a bit easy. There’s a lot of cheapness in the game due to the fact that you can’t predict what “traps” they have for you when playing for the first time. Oddly enough, I replayed it on PS4 this week and I somehow remembered a lot about the game and it was pretty easy. My first play through was on PS3 and for some reason the enemy placement seemed harder and the game overall felt harder. It’s nowhere near close to my favorite in my opinion, but the music in mejula slaps 😅
watching you rush throught the dlcs area taking agro of every mob in the level, trying to open gate/chest without clearing a zone and then calling the ennemy placement too ganky sure was agrovating. I can understand it when it comes to runbacks to bosses, but you gotta respect the content at some point
The problem is that killing each and every enemy in these areas is excessively time consuming and tedious, and sometimes you'll just die to a cheap shot anyway. Personally, I did kill every enemy the first time I ran through those areas, but on successive deaths, the patience level wears down quickly, and eventually you have to essentially speedrun the area by running past everything just so it doesn't keep wasting your time.
I don't think that I could have cleared the enemies with a melee only build in Crown of the Iron or Ivory King without spending 10 extra hours clearing enemies. You just can't expect that of anyone.
@@feebleking21 well maybe I need to replay ds2, but i really dont think it was that bad. The runback to sir allonne was awful I admit that, but for the ivory king, yes it does take patience but you re still exploring the level, for me it makes sense to take the level seriously until you proven you mastered it, and the fact that you are not invulnerable while activating doors open chest etc.. maybe irritating but it goes along with that design, which btw is for me one of the core design of the series, mastery throught repetition, bosses and level. Btw the section you've shown for the iron king is absolutly doable, especially if you use the red barril guys at your advantage.
@@coco3584 There's a route for the sprint to Alonne without taking any damage or killing any enemies, just kiting them.
*Most boss runs feature creative ways to make it to the fog wall without killing every enemy or tanking tons of damage, typically by rewarding the players spacing, positioning, creativity, etc.
@@Nightweaver1 Not to mention Soul Memory exists so killing anything is a commitment. Do you really want to go up a tier in the matchmaking? DkS2 in itself has a bunch if systems that alone would be alright, but when combined they make everything so much worse
I can't help but laugh when i see these forest of the fallen giants footages with the argument "too many enemies", like you're not supposed to take it slow because they're sleeping, instead of running around like a complete idiot.
SOTFS fixed all those issues of getting swarmed by dozens of enemies by going back to what DS1 focused on which was taking your time and luring enemies away from groups. But people need to use the same tired complaint while ignoring how many more enemies you encounter in DS3 and Bloodborne by comparison with DS2.
itz a cazul friend
@@obredaanps3 The crowds of enemies work in Bloodborne though. The rally mechanic almost always awards players for being aggressive.
@@obredaanps3 but he never played vanilla DS2, so his footage is Scholar and thus he pulled the sleeping enemies to make the point there are too many enemies. But that’s his fault.
@@elvickRULESYeah. Super dishonest video.
This game feels like an anime that you loved but its second season was moved to a totally different studio and all feels weird and not better or not even close how the og studio made you feel. After beating dark souls remastered (One of the best gaming experiences I've ever had in my life) I bought this like 1 day ago on ps4 for 40 fucking bucks and what a disappointment this is not even close to what the original was. It feels hard because it wants to be and not because it is. And the biggest irony is that Bloodborne is basically Dark Souls 2 large horde of enemy style of combat but done right.
And here is the best thing, you play this and it feels weird, you play the first 3 minutes of Dark Souls 3 which I did after this and it feels just like home.
OH MY GOD DARK SOULS 2 IS LIKE SOUTH PARK'S SECOND SEASON.
Creator diddled off to do their own thing, and the B Team was unfairly expected to steer the franchise.
The promised neverland 😑
@@guiyerod444 truing true truth
DARK SOULS 2 is UNFAIR!!! *shows footage of him just rushing into every situation with a sword, no shield in a game with tons of tools in your disposal to make situations easier but him refusing or just being too stupid to use them*
I'm gonna go ahead and play super mario without jumping, then make a review how the game is unfair because it doesn't let me beat it without jumping
I completely agree. People who complain about the "ganks" are typically completley unwillng to approach fights with a strategy. Instead they just run in and die. Dark Souls 2 is realistic in that you need to plan out your engagements and as long as you are not a spoiled lazy brat that should be a source of enjoyment.
@@ivanasukjadic1423 Why should fighting same type of enemy be a source of enjoyment? Do they have the depth required for continuous engagement like Sekiro where you will find many enemies in one part but combat and enemies moveset is designed in such a way that it's always enjoyable. In Ds2 i just used a bow to attract agro and killed them one by one but lack of mechanical depth throught Ds2 made it a repetitive chore by the time you get to the dlc.
Ds2 apologists be like
@@yourdad5799 imagine watching dress up darling and then posting a comment like that.
yes ladies and gentlemen, this guy watches dress up darling and he doesn't like dark souls 2.
make of that what you will ;)
@@TheRitva26 I haven't even watched that show. Bro out here giving me character traits like I'm some kind of lowly lifeform to his majesty the ds2 enjoyer. I wonder what you'll do next, since you got hurt so bad that you immediately jumped to the gun with saying I "watched" something you considers "bad", how about you post my adress or ip next?
DS2 Hater: DS2 is an awful game.
Me: Yes.
DS2 Lover: Fuck you, DS2 is an amazing game.
Me: Yes.
I get why people dislike/hate DS2, and they're for similar issues that I have with the game. It's definitely the weakest FS Soulsborne game.
That said, there's still a lot I love about this game. The lore is my favorite in the series, some of the bosses (including a couple from main game, imo) are some of FS's best, the environments are interesting, and I genuinely have fun with more than half of the levels even through low points.
Which is why I kind of am able to just nod my head and agree with most of this video. None of this triggers me, I'm just kind of like, "Yup. That's definitely a thing with DS2."
I went into ds2 expecting something dismal and horrible after hearing countless people complain about it. What i got instead was a pleasant surprise and it became my favourite of the series.
People hate DS2 because it's the popular thing to do
@@alessandroofthemediterranean Nah, if so many people dislike something, there is something to dislike. Like you can't make the argument the game is actually good when the development was as bad as it was
@@3idiotsblack So many people that apparently don't even own the game. I had to check since if its so hated as you say it would have a poor rating obviously. Its in the 85-87% positive just on steam alone. Based on evidence available you who hate it is the minority and most don't even own or play the game.
@@alessandroofthemediterranean
If you actually played the game you might understand the hate for it, I am playing it right now and it's not bad but it's definitely not good either, it's just meh
I saved this video. It explains my issues with this game perfectly. And like you I genuinely tried. On analysis. I might have a save for me to try out Fume Knight and I nearly beat Shulva. But I also became so Hollow that I was done with the DS2. Absolutely done. I slogged through it and hated it. I don't get the love for it at all. None of the other FromSoftware games come close to being this bad.
@noc omment did you create your channel so you can shittalk ds2? Get a job dude
Build and weapon?
If it explains your complaints perfectly then sorry you’re just bad at the game. Just like this guy is.
@Alexis Leskinen these are all very minute details compared to things that are considered obviously bad. But I will go through each of these to add to the conversation
Free fast travel: DS1 used the Lordvessel as a reward for beating a tough boss, and to level out the increasing world size. I think getting it where we did is perfectly acceptable.
Free Storage: You can get this from the Undead Merchant, as well as Domhall for like 1000 souls. These NPCs are hard to miss on a first playthrough, Domhall especially.
Simplified Titanite and Infusions: Okay? I like the upgrade systems of every single souls game, none of them are poorly designed. just preferential.
Hollow Punishment: This has never returned in a similar fashion in any game. DS3 feels balanced around not being embered in the first place. Demon's Souls soul form was the intended baseline of the game. Though I am of the opinion that the Cling Ring (From Demon's Souls) and the Ring of Binding (DS2) are both poorly implemented to shore up a system that was not well thought out. That being hollowing in DS2 and soul form in DeS.
Estus Flask tied to shards instead of Bonfire: Alright you might prefer one way over the other, but neither is inherently better. As an example, 5 flasks is plenty of heals to get through every area in DS1 and so the game should be balanced around that since its the baseline. DS2 and DS3 also balance the game around how many heals you should have by that point in the game, barring life gem spam in DS2. The only real issue with DS2 and DS3 is that not every player may find every shard or bone shard to improve their flasks. That is the only flaw I can think of and it isn't even a big one.
Become Human anywhere: just convenience, you still have to go to a bonfire to perform a myriad of functions. This is extremely minor.
No weapon upgrade at bonfire: So? you couldn't ascend weapons at bonfires anyways. Demon's Souls did this first as well. Another minor change with minimal effect.
Upgrade Catalysts: seems pretty logical to me, except they took out upgrading armor after DS2. Still minor.
More Equipment Slots: Good, a new game in a series should improve on areas like this if it was a technical difficulty. Not to mention that it was certainly a design decision. I usually only have three to four items equipped at any time anyways. But more power to people who want all ten+ slots filled with stuff to use.
More Ring slots: More customization is always good. Though you may have to realize that each rings effect might be toned down in order to account for having two more slots right?
Multiple Levels of Rings: Good, incentivizing NG+ runs is only a benefit to the longevity of the game. DS2 does NG+ better in almost every way. Should be the way most NG+ in souls games should be handled.
Aiming Crossbows: Good, why couldn't they be aimed in the first place, silly DeS and DS1.
Second hand ammo on right trigger: just a minor change, I think it would be cooler to give bows a different attack on R2 instead of just another ammo type.
Auto Repair at Bonfire: Durability is such an afterthought in all these games that it should either be expanded upon or removed. Guess we know in Elden Ring they decided to remove it completely.
Ways to Restore Spells outside of resting at bonfires: Certainly a balance decision. Again, DeS did it first.
Clutch Rings: Is a specific set of Items really such a big thing? Not to me they arent.
Using a woman to level up: First off, DeS did it first, secondly she is literally right next to a Bonfire. Thirdly, you have to do a lot of things at the Majula Bonfire specifically anyways. This is weird to me.
Speeding up and Down ladders: You can slide down ladders in DS1, or let go completely. Props on sprinting to move up faster though.
Improved Menus: Good, any sequel should do technical things like this better than their predecessors.
Powerstancing/Dual Wield shields: Good build diversity is a plus in any case.
So as you can see, a lot of these are technical improvements or simply small changes in design with a small impact on the games. If you think none of the other games would be what they are without these changes in DS2 I think you are being silly. You could just as easily criticize it for things that they have removed/changed in future games. like Hollowing and Life Gems.
@Alexis Leskinen some of these are in bloodborne so cope
I've always hated how "light" this game feels. It's hard to explain, but the character never felt grounded, like I was walking on ice all over the game, making every movement I make feel like it didn't come out properly and putting me in places I didn't wanna be in. It doesn't help that the sound design is mediocre, lacks impact, and made even worse by that dumb i-frames change where your timings are completely thrown off.
I know im late, but I was talking to my friend about this, and it doesn't seem to get mentioned often. Super floaty controls. Like you're moving on ice a lot. I died so many times by just slipping off ledges and sliding after jumps. Makes dark souls 1 movement feel s tier.
I think I'm just used to the controls, but I feel the same about Code Vein. Slippery controls/animations feel really bad
It's so slow, it's like I'm getting hit with paper mache. It looks like _air resistance_ is slowing down Fume Knight's swing. I have no clue how they made the engine feel this shitty, it was 5 years old and was perfectly fine even in Demon's.
YES! Another person who hates how DS2's controls feels!
One of the reasons is that your character automatically locks to one of 8 directions when moving, instead of moving in the full range of 360 degrees.
It makes movement really janky
I remember starting it 3 times. And each time i was like "It can't be that bad, it's probably just me being impatient! I can beat any DS, DS2 can't be THAT different". Man do i love my bad memory, i can easily forget everything about it and start again, just to drop it again. Like right now, i think exactly the same.
Exactly the same with me, I've started DS2 I think 5 or 6 times separately, each more and more confident I'd finally finish. Still never have.
Git gud
Yeah I fell for that once and partially because everyone started saying its actually a great game. I thought maybe I didn't give it a fair shake. Being patient has nothing to do with it. The other games make you patient because they're so good you stick with it. 2 is just bad. The movement feels bad, combat feels bad, the world, the enemies, the bosses, the NPCs are all bad. None of it makes me want to persist further like DS1 did.
I quit DS1 when I got stuck in Blight Town. Kept getting toxic and had no blooming purples. Came back months later, restarted, beat the whole game and then went back to that character and speed ran the entire upper portion because I got good.
I have it firmly in my mind how bad the game truly is now because I went through and actually came up with all those reasons as to why I hate the game and compared that feeling I had with DS1 with my subsequent attempt at 2. 2 did not illicit that same response.
@@sashabagdasarow497 you say with your stack of 99 life gems. DS2 isn't difficult, its fundamentally broken the same way Demon Souls was. The only difference is that Demon Souls was still fun to play despite having infinite healing and broken ass builds.
Demons souls was very difficult back then. The challenge was in healing at the right times. It’s still an amazing game and I still need to play the Bluepoint one.
Gonna be honest... In the beginning when you're going on about the sheer number of enemies, it seems in most clips like the player is actively aggro-ing the whole group rather than trying to pick out a couple at a time. Most enemy placements I remember from the game have a couple of active enemies and then a few that aggro if you get too close.
Even when I was new to the game, it was usually only bosses that tended to give me difficulty... Except for those turtle knights... And the heide knights... Aside from that, most everything else wasn't that bad... Oh wait, those guys that are in the quarry outside of the poison windmill and wave around giant sickles, those guys can go jump off a cliff because the place you fight them is bullshit and gives you practically no room to fight them in.
This guy is absolute trash at DS it’s pretty straight forward.
@@samueldavis5895 DS2 is just absolute trash my dude. Just awful design.
@@Spiral81C1 Spoken as someone that cannot roll.
10 seconds into the vid, dark souls 2 is actually my second favorite Dark souls game, so this will hit me in the guts, but I do know that the game is terribly flawed beyond belief.
Time to continue watching.
3:20 I would like to clarify why I like Ds2 a lot. And be assured, it’s absolutely NOT because of the combat and level design. The level design actually has its good moments in this game which I can really respect, but enemy placement really just counters the positives most of the time.
But I love drangleic a lot. I love the fantasy feel, I love the npc’s, the unique enemy’s in every “region” and I love the sheer amount of cool stuff that can be found around the world.
Also I’m 99% sure that my view in the game is very unique to most people and reminiscent on a day 1 playthrough. I played the game November of last year completely blind with my brother and our friend. (We didn’t play together but we played at the same time while talking together if that makes sense.) We all 3 got to experience the lands, enemy’s, weapons, and even crappy jank all at the same time. It was a very fun experience because if this. I feel like my friendships helped paint this game in a much more positive light even though we all knew that the game was kinda bad lol. Time to continue watching 👍
15:41 (This part here is wrong as you are playing on scholar, it’s just I never experienced backstab jank even though I did them fairly often, my bad lol)Did you not play Scholar of the First Sin?? Scholar version fixed a good amount (not all lol) if problems people had with the game, I don’t know all the differences between vanilla and scholar, but I feel like for the sake of a critique/review, playing the latest version would make the most sense. (And if this is scholar, then my bad lol.)
20:23 ahhh I was wrong!
21:05 No mans wharf is pretty weird, but using a torch actually made the area really cool because those freaky monsters wouldn’t fight back.
25:22 Yea I agree with this 100% I was a magic user for the first time so I just used soul arrow so while it was doable it was still pretty dumb.
26:42 BRO don’t get me started on forlorn. He is the hardest invader ever, but Jester Thomas has a special place in my heart ❤️
30:28 Absolutely, the bosses sometimes feel like fighting a normal enemy with a lot of health.
33:26 Life gems are crazy op and they trivialize a lot of the difficulty of the game. But estus is just so bad that there’s no other option
34:37 earlier I said how I love the world, which is true. But you are correct, to doesn’t make any logical sense how close everything is. I think everyone knows about that one elevator taking you up to iron keep smh
30:29 this is something I’ve never noticed, but I’ll agree with you, there are parts that are very pretty in this game, then there’s that garbage lol
36:52 I actually never enjoyed the DLC I mean the bosses were great and so were the environments, but idk, maybe you will change my opinion lol.
41:28 I was originally going to kill every boss in this game but these 2 bosses made me realize that it’s not worth it, just for their boss runs alone.
41:46 from this point on to the next bonfire actually made me almost stop playing entirely. This part of the level is so poorly designed it tainted my whole experience of this dlc. Yea, I know I’m weird.
49:26 yea for this part of the game I was actually fine because my friend was a little ahead of me (in game but we were not playing together) and he talked me through most of the place lol. It’s these special 1 of a kind experiences is why I’m biased tho :)
51:25 woah I never even knew about the black knight that spawns later, I beat this dude with just 3 silver knights because I stupidly managed to walk past one of them, so they never joined my team. But yea I agree that’s pretty bull shit. Because I never experienced that, I really, and I mean REALLY loved this fight. It is just too cool.
52:23 Aldia was soo unbelievably cool. He told us so much lore about the lie that is sacrificing our lives for the first flame, and how humans are slaves for the gods and stuff like that, and then we fight him? I know he doesn’t die though because of some lore, which is kinda neat, but the fight is so lame. So anticlimactic.
54:25 A reason I like this game so much is because I watched my own father play through this game when I was little, right now I’m 17 years old, it’s really weird to say, but some of my earliest gaming memories, are from watching my dad play dark souls 1 and 2, so getting to play the games I watched when I was little is a cool experience. I distinctly remember my dad playing through blight town and fighting qualag, and I also distinctly remember seeing watching my dad beat orinstein and smogh. (But later on he got stuck on and gave up on 4 kings LOL) but he moved onto ds2 when that came out, and I remember majula, heids tower, shrine of amana, and so much more from just watching him play. So I have a very unique experience with souls games because of him, and I thank him for it very often lol. (And even though I may have seen some of these things when I was a child, I still consider my playthrough blind, cause I really knew nothing about the game lol.
55:34 I agree, it is an objectively bad game, but idk, I’m still so attached to it.
Sorry for the wall of text that is this comment, but like I said, this game hits close to me, more than most games out there, so I simply have a lot to say about it.
As always, thank you for this literally perfect video 👍
Dark Souls 2 definitely has a unique feel to it's world, and while I didn't talk too much about it some areas like Majula have a certain sense of sadness that really hits you.
And Dark Souls 2 still definitely feels like a brutal unforgiving world like any souls game.
@@feebleking21 sorry for the absolute wall of text my comment became, you don’t need to read it all if you don’t want too 😂
@@tylerherdman1755 dang, you could make your own video on Dark Souls 2 with this script lol. It really seems like the game was special to you as you grew up watching your dad play it, and sentimental value will always matter a lot when it comes to art.
It's an objectively flawed game, not necessarily a bad one.
@@derek96720 it's a great game. People forget that it only has major detractions compared to other fromsoft masterpieces.
While playing through the game for the first time I had all these thoughts and thought about making a video. Thank you for doing it for me king 🙏
This was actually the first darksouls game I've beaten. It's actually a breeze on NG+ because all the only thing that adds to the difficulty is the environmental restrictions or dangers.
yes, it's hard but I can tell you're purposely making it harder than what it actually is.
I enjoyed this video, although I'm playing Dark Souls II for the first time, and I'm enjoying it. One thing you might want to know, you don't have to kill every enemy 12 times to clear every level. That's only true in the early levels. The number of iterations, I have been finding, declines as you advance through the game. I'm down to about 6 iterations to get the enemy to stop respawning.
Not sure if that’s true dude. Always 12 for me no matter the area and I played this game a tonne.
Which enemies in particular only need six kills?
Did you try running past...?
I never get why NPC peaked with DS2 (Maldron) and goes downgrade from then on. Even elden ring got lazy invader AI. They don't emote, they don't do "gimmicks", they just attack you like usual enemy. Not smart nor memorable.
You will always be missed Maldron the Assassin.
The invader at the Roundtable bows, I thought that was really cool.
@@xelith6157 The Hoslow guy in Mountain Tops of the Giants also emotes when you invade him.
16:00 Exactly, my main issue when moving to DS2 from DS1. It felt like my hit didn't land and I had to go extremely close to an enemy to be sure (which is also more dangerous because they attack you early on if you don't first and stun you), meanwhile a lot of their hits shouldn't have hit (like clearly being one meter away from a boss attack). Forgiving for the enemies, punishing for the player. Now, I got used to it, I am replaying DS2 and finding the same problems but manage to play more careful and somehow win, but a lot of unfair damage taken. Going back to DS1 I have seen the difference. Also DS1 had parries/backstab/plunge attacks that ALL worked like a charm, ALL were feeling great to do. All these exist in DS2 but nothing seems to work properly, I end up in DS2 with two handed a strong weapon and hoping to hit and not miss an enemy and kill him before he attacks, or roll back and wait for their attack for an open window, but nothing works as well as DS1 used to.
I think that, the people who made this game leaned too much on the difficult aspect of the souls games. Miyazaki said that his intention was not making it difficult, but to make the players feel good after completing a task. The team that made this might be out of touch with this idea, hence we got this game.
Thank you for the video🔥 I can confirm everything!😂 But one thing I don’t understand is: Do you really pull all enemies in an area when you‘re playing, or was it only for showcase what the developers did? Because it would be really dumb to blame the game for dying like that. I‘m watching a let‘s play of DS2 that is still ongoing and he never had a horde of enemies like that, I don‘t remember either from my playthrough back in the days when it released. You kill them one after another and sometimes there are more enemies, but not like it looks in your video. The game really isn‘t good, compared to 1 and 3, I don‘t want to defend it, but the right way to play is safe and pull as less enemies as possible. That is blameable, because it makes the game really really slow. Perhaps it‘s a wrong impression on my side, because it feels like you‘re pulling everything in your whole video.
@noc omment you can kite enemies. If there is a larger group, kite back and reset aggro until 1 or 2 are left.
So essentially, his video is completely pointless.
@@Chevelle3_ his video is better than anything you could do in your life
@@ricky.t.1658 bro played ds2 and got mad for dying 🤓
DS2 tend to punish game skipping (popularized in DS1) , where you could just run pass most of the enemies. DS2 funnel towards cautious gameplay and "clearing area" (enemies stop respawning after you killed them certain number of times) .
I have a love hate relationship with ds2 sotfs. On the one hand, power stancing and the sheer variety of weapons, a heckuva lot more spells and armor combinations plus the amount of content it offers with the dlcs and the pvp actually being somewhat good make it a lot more replayable than ds1 and demon's souls. But then you have far more inconsistent hit detection, movement not being fully 360 degrees, the level design and enemy placement of the base game leaves a lot to be desired, i-frames being tied to a stat along with the speed you drink your estus forcing you to use early levels on that instead. But I still come back to it regardless because it is still dark souls.
I don’t get the i-frame thing. You still have them. But not as many. Everyone complaining about that needs to time the rolls better. I beat the game first time without putting a single level in AGL. And no, this is not a git gud thing. People just run into 7 enemies and complain they can’t roll thru 7 sword swings at once. People who dislike ds2, for the most part, seems like the kind of players who just ran past enemies in the other games and expect it to work.
@@HeyAddieImTojo I think I had the i-frame issue because I played dark souls 1 first which made me not really care about the dodge mechanics since there was nothing else to take into consideration apart from your equip weight. But jumping straight to ds2 without knowing anything about the changes just made it feel off in a way that makes ds1 look like it has better dodging mechanics (cus it was probably more forgiving with the i-frames) when ds2 actually has the better one with the multi-directional rolls. It did put me out of my comfort zone and hearing other critiques about ds2 just made me hate it initially. I came to accept it tho, cus I enjoy replaying it much more than ds1.
I love dark souls and I honestly love this game but I also agree with almost everything you said. I really appreciate hearing other people's opinions about this series and you definitely got yourself a new sub. I can't wait to see what else you put out!
I can't believe it but I'm making another Dark Souls 2 video.
Sanest ds2 hater:
Great video as always man, keep up the stellar content!
99% sure this is how game journalists view the other souls games lol
I completely agree with everything in this video, sometimes I replay ds2 because I want to like it but I end up hating it more and more.
Same, some time ago i heard rumors about a DS2 switch port and thought that might give new life to the game similar to how i ended up enjoying some other games in a portable format. Ended up playing it on pc again to refresh memories and stoped at the lost bastille. Instantly decided that i won't pay for it again no matter what. It's the only souls game i never bothered to beat.
I love Dark Souls 2 and can't understand why you hate it.
@@ivanasukjadic1423 I think this video does a good job explaining why we dont like it
@@ivanasukjadic1423 idk. We're not mentaly ill
I think ds2 is my favorite dark souls game. I like demons souls on ps3 over all of them.
Almost all of your points are valid and true, however, if this is your gameplay then i understand why you have problems with the game because jesus christ
lmao
Jesus "R1s are faster" Christ
Almost for every boss there is a way to avoid enemies and rush to bonfire. Only few times I had trouble doing this like Sir Alonne, Red Smelter demon. But it was still doable, even tho you may also die doing this many times it never seemed that terrible. All the gank squad issues you showed in this video can be easily avoided if you are patience enough and fight them one on one
You forgot Reindeer-fuckland
@@hideforblue1364 That's the only boss I didn't beat. On the bright side, it's optional
22:42 what I seemed to figure out is if you have just enough cash speed, you can group up a bunch of enemies and if they're not immune to poison. Then fucking hit them with toxic cloud and run after they sat in it long enough.
That's really the only way you can kill a horde of enemies without having to get lucky enough to get the first hit in with a greatsword. Poison for the most part is gonna be your best friend throughout most of this game since most enemies are usually just resistant to poison. Cause resistant doesn't mean they're immune so they're gonna die anyway to it.
How to deal with the archers in iron keep? Poison arrows. How to deal with groups of enemies? Toxic mist. How to deal with annoying ass bosses? Well maybe a combination of poison and bleed. and whatever else their weakness is. What ever kills them the quickest use it. Or just whatever makes your life easier
Finished dark souls 2 a few days ago, can safely say some of these dislikes are a you problem.
Agreed, especially the lock on thing, why is it the game's fault that he couldn't figure out he can fight without lock on, but he did make a lot of great points ngl
Here's a little detail that I thought I was just gaslighting myself with for a while, but watching someone else fight Sir Alonne confirmed it.
Some attacks have delayed timings. Sir Alonne especially has two different gap closers that start the same way. This means that you need to keep watch on him like a hawk at all times, and even if you react the moment he starts to move, if you get unlucky for it to not be the quick one, you're getting hit. The only way I've seen to mitigate this is to just have enough Adaptibility, which from my experience is more than what you need to get DS1's mid-roll back.
And then they took this concept and decided to make it Elden Ring's entire design philosophy
@@kokorochacarero8003 Honestly most of ER super fast delayed attacks feel akward because they are delayed enough for humans to lose the rythm of combat. You cant react to the start of the attack and dodge after a certain time, you have to prepare for the attack when it starts and then dodge after you see somekind of tell during the wind up.
I did a lvl 1 run with +0 weapons and no torrent recently and it made realize that ER has some of the best thrash mobs in the series. Enemy stance breaks, bleed, cold, parries, ashes of war (piercing fang) that allow both better positionin big dmg and dodging at the same time really gives you the abiliy to control the fight like never before (sekiro not included).
In the video the creator mentions several times how he didnt know if he should beat some of ds2 levels like he was playing soul lvl 1 run, that being to run past all of the enemies to the boss door and then fight the boss. In ER my experience was that you didnt really need to run past them because we had so many tools that we could control the fight to actually have a good fighting chance. Even with ganks there really is no situation with more than 2 (maybe in some rare cases 3) big guys that have enough posture that you cant R1 to stagger them.
Just to give an example of whats possible, you can beat farum azula lvl 1 +0 weapons playing normally, even the 1v2 1v3 and 1v4 ganks there, because there really is no situation where they have more than 2 big guys at once and even them it only takes like 2 fully charged R2s to stance break. Ofc no matter how good the level is or how good the encounters its ruined by god skin duo... It really is such a huge contrast to jump from being the one who has the ability to dictate the fight during the level to the one who just has just run away and spam parry on the fat god skin and spam carian retaliation of black flame balls. Even then it felt more like i got lucky to beat them than skilled enough to beat them. Elden Ring ŕeally is a mix of the best and the worst.
@@illliiiiillliii6265 honestly, I couldn't agree more about the trash mobs. Throughout the entire game (except maybe some very specific zones in the mountaintops and the snowfields) I felt like I had many options to aproach combat against packs.
I think this is also due to the exquisite variety of movesets given to weapons. And for that, I have to tip my hat to Fromsoftware
Almost every weapon I can think of has one or a few moves that can be used to cleave through a pack, pierce through lined up enemies, crow control them or have recovery animations that enable you to barely crouch under swings/projectiles.
And the stance breaks take so much pressure off you. I used to relly on backstabs and parries back in the day for DS1 packs because of the i-frames. Now I can always have a stance break critical up my sleeve for situations in which the former are not so viable. And the jump attacks, running heavies and guard counters are just 😩👌
Stealth and ranged options have also been such a life saver when choosing how to manage pulls. I hope they play around with stealth, sleep and madness a little more on the DLC
That being said, my main gripe is with specific delayed attacks of some bosses. Even after learning to wait the correct ammount of time, some still feel really weird. I have to tell myself to dodge 0.5s after the point where I feel the attack would make sense. Margit and Mogh would be the worst offender in my eyes (as well as the regular omen enemies, although they are really easy to backstab, parry and stance break)
I’ve never had this problem on alonne. If I remember correctly, the two catch-up moves he has that have different timings have slightly different tells. I loved his fight.
Alonne is EZ
just picked up the trilogy so i am still on the first game. Does this one not have shields? because it would seem that alot of the bullshit in your video would be fixed with blocks and parries and not relying on rolling all the time. Rolling is just as janky in the first game and my experience greatly improved when i started blocking enemies.
DS2 defenders scorn the use of shields, I have no clue why, but most of them (Hbomberguy is a big one for defending this opinion) will tell you that using shields and locking on is not a viable tactic in this game, and that it wasn't meant to be played like that, as if there was a "proper" way to play
@@PeterTheAlienDunno, my friend played with parry and did good while I played roll lock on and it worked. Guess people just suck.
@@PeterTheAlienI love ds2 and I also use a shield and lock on with no issues. There is no “intended” way to play
@@XragebootsX that's why I love these games, there are so many different ways to approach them and deal with the challenges, especially the later ones like DS3 and Elden Ring
I'm playing the game for the first time having played most other games in the souls universe(elden, dark 1 and 3, Bloodborne, the Japanese one lol).
And I think the best way I can describe this game's performance is wonky as hell.
I think you really showed it in the beginning of your video with the first area having like a shit ton of dudes and then the whole thing's hitting you when they're not really hitting you. And don't get me started on the parry in this game, it's fucking terrible.
It's definitely been a challenge. I also don't like how they have these sections of the games locked off with the statues that one lady selling the way to knock down that statue for like 12,000 Souls, a number I haven't even gotten close to yet. It's just .... like looking at the pure execution of the gameplay, it's just not well done. You can tell this is from another era of gaming. And I feel like saying something from another era can be a compliment too but I mean this in the worst way possible
It's weird how he found the insight in "locked on combat punishes me, so I need to try something else" but never made the leap to "aggroing crowds and then trying a lever/chest/door punishes me, I should try something else".
So much of this video is him running through an area drawing aggro, then making himself a sitting duck. That's supposed to be a course of action that kills you. Right?
thank you
Play the game however you want, doesn't make it any less shit
DS2 copium in 2023 lol
Because sometimes it does work. If it wasnt intended, animations wouldnt have half assed i-frames like they forgot to shove in extra adaptability code.
Ds2 fans try not to blame players for the games shitty design challenge (impossible)
Ironically, most of the criticism for Dark Souls 2 can easily be applied to Elden Ring.
Doesn’t count because elden ring is a better game
How minimal runbacks mostly great hitboxes and the bosses are 10 times better
I always love watching these videos about darksouls 2 because no matter the fact that I always agree with what is said, it never seems to change my irational love for it. Darksouls 2 by far isn't the best souls game but it is absolutely my favourite. (Also I'm convinced SotFS was just a version for extremists)
you really got it
Was it yours 1st S game?
i used lock on on every playthrough and had no idea it was that much of a detriment.... although if ur really good at using i frames in the rolls lock on for bosses is very useful. i just learned to aggro less enemies at a time and slowly work my way through the level.
Its not this dude just highlights how its bad in situations where you aggro 40n enemies at once
This video is a massive strawman
"too many enemies" as you sprint through the level. Seems like a skill issue
@@scandalouspanda7489 You must have forgotten Bloodborne. Hell, there are even chalice dungeons.
I actually think Iron Keep was one of the only enjoyable areas of the game, I think it’s the only place in any of the games where the enemies are faster than you and actually feel kind of skilled, rather than just having stronger attack power than you.
I also loved how they added new red phantom enemies in ng+
(which is something I CANNOT believe they never did again. its almost as if they forgot about it entirely. it’s such a cool idea. bloodborne kind of did it with the insight but that’s it)
DS2 had several neat ideas that sadly never came back, seemingly due to the negative reaction. Bonfire ascetics and ng+ changing item & enemy locations in particular.
@@Malisteen enemy location changes in ng+ is such a simple, brilliant idea that keeps you on edge when you replay the game
@@oloxhossono1956 I know right? Maybe from has user data that says players mostly don't bother with ng+, instead preferring to start entirely clean characters for subsequent runs, so the extra effort making ng+ feel new and exciting isn't worth it. Still, though, it's something I've always wanted to see make a come back.
I appreciate Dark Souls 2 for being unique, and if not for it's existance; Dark Souls 3 & Elden Ring would be VERY different games.
No they wouldn’t. Miyazaki didn’t like DS2 after release and retconned it aside from keeping armors and certain items because of the fan base
At least somebody here sees all the influence. I think it's for the detriment of the games, overall, but there are plenty of things he took from the game.
@@danielboucheofficial source?
@@theretrosunset "there is no source coz i made it the fuck up"
him probably
Just finished Scholar the other day for the first time and hated every second of it. Just an absolutely abominable experience from beginning to end. I'm glad you made this because I can just cite this video when people ask me why it was so terrible.
Hey, didn't expect to see you here! Howdy Mike.
DS2 is the only one of the SoulsBorneSekiroRing (man we need a new name for that) games that I haven't gone back to to do a second playthrough. I played the rest multiple times.
I must say, I did actually enjoy quite a bit of DS2 from what I remember, but BS like Iron Keep have stopped me from bothering to go through it again.
@@Estorium Instead of SoulsBorneEkiroRing, I tend to just say "modern FromSoft games", so everything past (and including) Demon's Souls.
@@xelith6157 The Miyazaki era
@@Estorium Just a little more confusing because of DS2, but that works too
Darksouls2 is the easiest game of the series . Sounds more like a skill issue , you're mad you can't just run past everything and expect it to work out in your favor with a gang of enemies chasing you. Then say boohoo bad game . 😂
My man, this creature litteraly runs past the f-cking archer, and then says he don't see any.
What did you expect?
Facts man
The only reason you can't run pase enemies is because the controls in the game are garbage like the rest of the game, that doesn't make it difficult it just makes it trash.
@@DeadEndScreamer How to tell someone if you have brain damage without actually telling it:
@@Happy_Sailor639 The way to actually tell someone you have brain damage is to say "skill issue" in response to every criticism because the truth hurts your delicate fanboy feelings, I hear that's real popular among your kind.
Consistently running past every enemy to group them up and die trying to kill all of them paints DS2 bad, but only amplifies your opinion. You could “use the tools” in the game like you say you did in DS1. But that wouldn’t show the flaws with the game. Just with your playstyle.
You harp on gank-squads in the game, but you are the one that created them. You chose many times in the video to round up every enemy you could to illustrate your point, when there’s ways to mitigate “ganks.” Yes, there are many instances where you have to fight multiple enemies at once. But only using a broadsword with no other weapons, spells, or equipment will often times lead to failure. It’s fun to play with a limited arsenal, but there are always shortcomings to every playstyle. Also, you praise Sens Fortress floor trap, but fail to use or demonstrate using traps in DS2 when they’re present. The fire pillars in Iron Keep can wreck enemies.
Another issue you have is with the lock on system. I really don’t get it. It’s not wise to lock on with multiple enemies aggro’d to you. Better to do so during one-on-one engagements. The game teaches this pretty soon, telling you to be aware and pay attention because danger lurks around every corner.
I get people don’t think greatly of DS2. They played the first one and fell in love. When they released the 2nd game, they became upset or disappointed or both. “Why can’t I circle-strafe every enemy for a backstab? OMG soooo many enemies! Look at me with my shield always up!” I could go on. Every FromSoft title has its faults. But I genuinely believe most of the complaints about DS2 come from the expectations of players who loved the first game, and were angry the game didn’t exceed their expectations they set for it.
Also, Bloodborne is the best FromSoft game.
Not being able to circle strafe things isn’t what pissed me off about the game. Backstabbing cheese was boring in the first game so I never did it. It’s not any one particular thing about the game I don’t like. Getting no I-frames when you enter a boss fog. Getting hit 7 feet away from the boss by an attack that’s not even an aoe. The ugly animations. Forgettable boss design, beating the game 3 times and still not knowing where you should go first every time you get to majula because world layout makes no goddamn sense. Dark souls 2 brought a lot of new changes to the series that became series features going forward. Most important being omnidirectional dodging while locked on. It’s only fair the worst iteration of these new changes exists in the first iteration of them. I wanna be clear on something. Dark souls 2 is not a bad game. Not at all. It’s actually a good game. It’s just a bad Dark Souls game. It feels like Dark Souls, if Dark Souls was made by people who didn’t understand why people loved Dark Souls. To be fair I don’t even know why I love it so much and why dark souls 2 irks me so badly. It’s all the little shit. The fact that your healing flask isn’t a burst heal but instead is just a fast over time heal. High stamina cost for nearly every action. Inconsistent dodges because of the game’s active (and therefore in-flux) calculation of i-frames due to adaptability being a fucking thing. A lot of the late game areas feel empty as fuck, as well. Just enemies. Nothing there to let the player feel like this use to be a place people lived, but instead feels like a tailor-made video game level, because that’s what it is. At least dark souls hides that fact behind clever design, making the areas feel lived-in and designing them in a way that makes it feel logical to navigate. This is strange, but why I don’t like dark souls 2 reminds me of why I didn’t like fable 2. Fable 2 is just fable but on ice. Dark souls 2 is just dark souls but drowned in molasses.
@@smocloud all fromsoft worlds tend to be empty remnants of what was. At least Bloodborne has the feeling of shit hitting the fan WHILE you’re there.
@@BulykrynVancho it feels more like shit hits the fan because you’re there to me. But I only just beat rom for the first time a few nights ago. Many times I’ve tried playing bloodborne and many times I’ve deleted an old save and started all over. I’ve owned the game for years and been able to play it all this time. I’ve played all the other soulsborne games except for demons souls, all of them I’ve played I’ve beaten more than twice. Except for bloodborne. I don’t know why. I really like it. Probably the frame rate. I’m just coming off of 200 hours of elden ring and before that it was dark souls 3, so the frames are hard on the eyes and really do hinder you sometimes. But yeah, all of fromsoft’s worlds feel abandoned and desolate. But that’s the thing. In order for something to feel abandoned, it has to appear as if people once lived there, a long time ago. Dark souls 2 can’t even manage that. Areas don’t feel abandoned. They can’t, because they don’t feel like they were ever actually lived in by anyone. So instead of feeling abandoned and desolate, it just feels empty. You said it yourself, remnants of what was. Except in dark souls 2, because we can’t even perceive that there ever was a “was.”
Ds2 was actually my introduction to the souls games and is still the only one I've beaten, unless you cont elder ring. My roommate at the time is a diehard souls fan and he said it was the easiest and therefore a good introduction.
cant believe he told you to play 2 as an introduction
Your friend doesn’t like you.
You got trolled...
Dark souls 3 is the easiest except its dlc has some of the hardest bosses in all the souls games.
@@jprec5174 Ds2 is easier than 3 and 1
I watched this video multiple times before playing dark souls 2, from the footage you showed I agreed with you. I feared the game but I still played it. Now I finished the main game and I can say you're wrong, I don't even understand how you can end up with that many enemies chasing you
Sotfs?
You make the mistake of agro-ing too many enemies once and you never do it again. Playing SotFS a few times in the last 6 months since my first play through has taught me to learn enemy placements and not agro too many at once
@@randychristensen1028 I agree with that. After playing ds2, I completed the rest of the souls games, elden ring, ds3, sekiro, bloodborne, and demon souls. I can definitely say that knowing enemy placement is key, especially to ds2. knowing where they are is crucial to overcoming the challenge, since just running past them is not the best option (except for sir allone's run up, I just booked it everytime haha). Taking your time is the way to complete sections, and knowing the layout makes it better for traversing, even on replays.
@@novarangerx6441no it isn’t that why they never did this shit again in future games. It’s just bad game design to constantly gank and overflow it just makes it shit
@@aspart2842 They did that both in earlier and later games. Ds2 is not any different with its ganks.
Always love when people criticize ds2 they always talk about the amount of enemies while showing video of them aggroing like 4 packs of enemies and then wondering why lol
"I will lure all of these guys and put in a video and tell them "see? it's bad!" They like being baby-ed like in other souls where if an enemy went on a set range, they will not follow you anymore like is that more realistic?
Idk maybe if the enemies didn't keep agro for a year maybe it wouldn't be so bad. I was just trying to run away and mf almost followed me to another side of the area. The game sucks
@@erieriderschillingcorner1595Well, maybe if you're a little less coward and you think a little you can fight separating them, maybe trowing a knife or arrow from the distance or idk, fight in the order that they are and not running into them and die because you trapped yourself?
Don't you think that blame the game because you trapped yourself running into enemies without a plan it's kinda dumb?
Ds2 fans are so cringe man. The game is ass in a lot of areas. Lots of people (who actually have their frontal lobe intact) wouldn't really like how cheap the difficulty of the game is. Sorry I think that shoving 30 enemies into a small area only to face yet another mediocre boss afterwards is lame is very cheap.
I love how people who say it's "bad" probably played through it at least twice and played all the dlcs too. 😂 generally, people don't play something that much if it's not good.
I played the entirety of Dark Souls 2 by killing every single ennemie I could see because it was a way to a lot of souls, experience everything in the game and also not get overwhelmed
For some areas, especially Iron Keeps (god I hate this place) I ended up making almost every single ennemie permanentely gone (unless using bonefire astetic) and get over 100k souls... which I lost to the boss because I rolled into a small hole with lava I didn’t see
I had so much frustration with the game and how unfair a lot of stuff was, but for some reason I just kept wanting to play the game so I learned the rules and played with them, sure it was long and sometimes unfun but it worked
And it weird because even after all of this I still love this game (my first dark souls)
When I started playing Dark Souls 3 it felt like all these hours of mostly pain were training for this absolute masterpiece, I was absolutely stomping on the game and on everything, it felt so good to... be able to do stuff fast, take risk and be rewarded and not punished because you didn’t waited for the ennemie to finish their attack, it was clearly one of the best experience I had in video game in a long time, feeling strong because of experience and not because of things being "easy", something Dark Souls 2 barely had because in this you essentially just had to die and retry again and again until you knew every single ennemie placement, pattern and aggro and was basically able to do the exact same actions everytime to win... which was oddly fun (at least for me) even if it meant having to die
There’s also weapons and armor in the game that... all felt the exact same to me as the number of hit you could do to an ennemie was basically the same for a lot of weapons, especially because almost all of them have so much poise you can never stagger them, so it was just what weapon dealt the most damage as they all felt the same... and that’s it. Armor were practically useless too
Idk, I feel complicated about Dark Souls 2, lot of things I hate and find unfair but I still love it... DS3 is still superior in almost every way
Recently went through the entire trilogy and DS2 was my favorite. Some of the issues people had with DS2 are worse to me in DS3. But I liked all three games.
Agreed, Ds3 imo is the worst of the series although Elden Ring may be another contender. Ds2 is underrated extremely. People just don’t want to learn how to play it, plus it’s atmosphere and rich environments are stellar.
@@dylanschmeichel2008 bruhh what the gale fight just makes ds2 obsolete i barely remember any bosses from ds2 😖
@@dylanschmeichel2008 Agreed. Didn't like DS3's over emphasis on action, shameless fan service references to the first game, and limited playstyles. I hear Elden Ring is DS3 but more over the top. And most of the issues people had with DS2, didn't bother me. AGL stat is still dumb though.
@@Obbie40 funny, I hear tons of people saying elden ring is so much like ds2
@@iwanttodiebutimtoobigofacoward I've heard something similar. I'm guessing this is because they initially tried to make DS2 an open worldish kind of game.
I just took everything as a challenge and overcame it with at least 6 characters. The way you play rushing and getting every enemy on you at once and calling it a negative isn't right. I played every game multiple times through and I just see it and play it as it is without trying to compare. I like them all
Did you even watch the video? He explains why he does this, because he doesn't want to fight them all every single time.
@@JKurayami agreed. It's not fun to kill every enemy in each play through.
@@JKurayami so the game is bad because he didn’t want to actually take the time play the game (or learn and try different strategies to make the enemies easier to handle)… ok
@@ByzantineDarkwraith If you've ever played any of the Fromsoft Souls-like games, you are able to at a point, evade enemies to get to certain sections. And yes, you can adopt the easiest method of dealing with enemies. Which is only effective so long as you're assigned stats are good enough to do the thing that you're supposed to do. And you'd have to do it 12 times in a row to make sure they stop spawning. He also mentions many other reasons why the game sucks. You should watch the video. I know it's longer than the average tik tok, but if you pay attention, you'll notice his list of things.
After watching your gameplay it's obvious that you really gimped yourself by opting to run past everything instead of trying to be methodical, like bro you only have a +3 weapon and NO RINGS as far into the game as iron keep, no wonder you were struggling. It's like you watched a speedrun of someone running straight to all the bosses and thought that's how the game is actually supposed to be played lmao
At the 10 minute mark you complain that the attack animations are much slower than the dodge roll, which results in you getting roll-caught. My guy, if you're trying to roll attacks and still getting hit, it's because YOUR TIMING IS OFF. I can't.
This dude definitely made this game harder for himself.
I bet he loves Bloodborne
@@victorprati7908what’s wrong with bloodborne
Ds2 players when game is criticized but they can only reply "level ADP!!"
@@isaiahwebb3743 bloodborne fans are usually really annoying and always consider it the best and most flawless fromsoftware game
even elden ring fans aren't as annoying as them
@@isaiahwebb3743 nothing wrong with it very cool game actually. It's just that he's complaining about ds2 speed so he'll probably really like BB cause it's very fast (although the game throws a bunch of enemies at you too)
Metallica’s live performance of one at Seattle 89. The best concert ever 🤩
I love Metallica so much! I saw them live about 2 years ago, what a great day! They played all my favorite songs (Fade to Black, One, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Nothing Else Matters, Master of Puppets etc.)
I see some of your points. Respectfully disagree with most. Still a good video. Helped me understand why some people don’t like Scholar.