"took down an unbelievably hard boss for the first time" taurus is in the beginning of a genre-defining game so it makes sense that he was satisfied by killing him 'for the first time'.
When you first play dark souls 1 the taurus demon is your first roadblock until you learn to beat it. Yes its trivial after playing the game but just searching youtube alone and your own beginning experience will tell you the boss was hard and caused many deaths until you overcame it.
"Both games are a little guilty of not having memorable tunes to go along with the beautiful visuals" then plays Ornstein and Smough's theme, and I'm like "THEN WHAT IS THIS, BITCH!"
He might not have known this but even then it was far more apparent in ds2 because of lower durability and it even provided a bar to see it mid battle.
+Mr Nightly Item durability in ds2 for whatever reason was originally tied to framerate. So early pc adopters and sotfs early on had way quicker item degradation due to running at 60fps. Some weapons would break so fast that you could barely get to a boss without breaking your weapon.
personaly i think the biggest flaw in dark souls 2 was how fast the weapon degradation was working. cause of that the putted a lot of bonfire. in ds1 when you reached a new bonefire it was a great relief a big reward. in ds2 it,s just normal. there is a lot of other flaw in the game, but it's the one i hated the most.
Weird how nobody talks about how much slower DS2 is in combat than in DS1. More stamina consumption for everything you do, really questionable hitboxes (made worse by ADP) and some super awkward enemy movement and tells. And a lot of the levels are designed to make you drag one enemy out at a time way way too often, which makes the trek to a boss that much more tedious. I'm talking the run up to Smelter Demon and even worse the run up to Old Iron King that can knock you into a death pit, unless you find the bonfire before him that I somehow missed because the ladder blended into the background.
I played it again recently and I really hated that you STOP to drink your Estus, that was a big bummer, can't believe I didn't notice it the first time
Diabolical dude i am currently playing DS1 right now (this is my second playthrough) and i can tell you that the trek to seath the scaleless is one of the most annoying treks
Diabolical the crystal enemies deal a ton of damage if you make a mistake and PLUS the invisible floor is pretty annoying (i fell twice ).Also there are like 8 clamoid enemies near the boss fog to seath .At least in DS2 you could clear out the enemies and have a clear path the boss,in DS1 that option isn't available
To be honest I loved Dark Souls 2. Admittedly it was the first souls game I played, but I never understood the hate that it got. Is it as good as the others? Not really, but it's still a great game. Also, in my opinion, it had some of the best lore in the series and the Last Giant is still one of my favorite stories from any Souls game. But nevertheless. To each their own.
Yeah for sure. People forget that you can still really like a game even if its not the best in a series. I still hold DS2 better than a lot of other games I've played!
It got hate because it wasn't half as good as the first or even Demon's Souls. It was just filler between Dark Souls and a game that actual effort was put into, Bloodborne. To name a few things that seriously suck in DS2; Bosses. It wasn't just that most were just unimaginative humanoids, it was the fact that all the designers did to make them difficult was to just add more. Ruin Sentinels, Belfry Gargoyles (6 of them? Fucking 6?), Rat Vanguard and Authority, Lost Sinner, Freja, two Dragonriders, (Who was already an earlier boss lol), Executioner's Chariot, Skeleton Lords and so on. Can't be fucked listing them all. Either way, it's lazy. The hitboxes can fuck off. The geography made literally no sense, a la Earthern Peak to Iron Keep. Just another lazy lack of effort. The amount of times I died because I got swarmed by 13 enemies from nowhere. A la........ Most of the game. The story sucked. It was literally; Hey, it's a cycle. The NPCs are boring. As in, in DS1, nearly every single NPC you come across has their own troubles or quests or wants. Siegmeyer is off on his final adventure before he dies and his daughter is out to stop him if he goes hollow. Big Hat Logan is out to learn the secrets that Seath the Scaleless uncovered. Rhea of Thorolund is on a pilgrimage to find the Rite of Kindling with her escorts. And so on. Whereas in DS2, you send the NPCs back to Majula and they literally just sit there for the rest of the game. The atmosphere is non existent. Literally zero immersion. It's way too linear. Some of the most awesome moments of DS1 is finding your way back to a previous area or a different part of a new area using some obscure door or other such means. DS2 was pretty much a corridor. Agility is just an inconvenience. Why remove poise then spam us with 10 enemies with 3, 4 or 5 hit combos? Piss off. Nerf it a bit sure, Havel Monsters were annoying, but don't make it redundant. Enemies spin on their heels mid hit for reasons. People say the addition of warping anywhere at any point was a welcome inclusion but I think it detracts from the decision making Dark Souls' system forced you to have. Go back now and level up, spend Souls and have to do all this again, or push on to get to the next area and risk all your shit? It made the game that much more satisfying when you pulled off the impossible of wrecking 30 enemies' shit with 1 Estus lol. I'm seriously just going on one now so I'll just say, TLDR; It's like the guys who developed DS2 took the template created and evolved by Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls and just made a """Souls""" Game while giving no attention to detail. They thought the template and the name would be enough to make a great game/sequel. They were wrong. As a game by itself and not compared to any of the other games in the SoulsBorne series, sure, it's good. But in a world full of Call of Duty games, endless sequels, zero imagination, zombies and zombies and zombies, endless clones, endless remakes, overhyped trash and so on, it's not difficult to be "Good" by the industry's standards anymore.
achilles7898 I respect your opinion, but Dark Souls is my second favorite in the BloodSouls series. The atmosphere, to me, was great... and I enjoyed thw story as well. It was far more than just "it was a cycle". It also had my favorite Boss in the series... Sir Alonne.
achilles7898 I stated that I respect your opinion becausr I do. No need to go and be a dick about it. In fact I even stated in my original comment that, to each their own. I loved DS2... and so did a lot of other people. Get over it. Also Alonne is widely considered to be a great boss... not sure where you got that it was boring. But again... I respect your opinion.
I know that people say DS2 is easy, but I played DS3 first, then BB and then DS2, and I found it extremely difficult at first. After finishing it, I went back to DS3, and found it stupidly easy.
The game you start off with is usually the easiest the you. For me, the first DS is the easiest, it started in. Then played DS2, it was easy, DS3, kinda impossible. And then when I returned to DS1, it was a cake walk.
Pve was definitly made better and more challenging in DS2 compared to all others. I'd say Bloodborne and DS2 have the best and most challenging pve. Ds1 was STUPIDLY easy and pretty much broken with backstabbing enemies and magic. And DS3 went back to alot of those weaknesses in DS1, enemies were again super easy to backstab(they no longer pivot as well as in DS2) and you dont get ganked as much so Magic is once again super game breaking, especially since it depends on a magic bar that refills instead of having a certain number of charges. Oh and Bleed, almost EVERY enemy and boss is weak to bleed.
Memeknight idk, you use alot less stamina in ds3, rolls are super quick, I frames are broken, phantom range is broken, you swing alot faster in ds3, Not really any penalty for death, parrying is super easy, and it's very easy to figure out where you are going in ds3 compared to ds2. Bosses and soundtracks I think ds3 wins at for sure, but difficulty would have to go to ds2 for me cuz of how unforgiving it is
I'm late to the party on Dark Souls, so I think that helped me like DS 2 more than a lot of people who rag on the game; I didn't have 2-3 years of waiting and anticipating and building hype for the sequel, I just jumped straight from one into the next. One thing I thought was interesting you didn't touch on was that the enemies stop respawning after you kill them enough in any given area. Most people seem to really hate this mechanic, but I was actually really fond of it; Because Bonfire Ascetics are the only way to replenish these enemies, and those are *extremely* rare until late game, Souls essentially become a finite resource. In DS 1 failing to reach a bloodstain that had a huge amount of souls in it only had the repercussion of a few hours of going back and grinding until you can get them back; enemies never stop coming, so as long as you go to an area you can survive, you never lose anything permanent. Getting back to my bloodstain in DS 2 has always been more tense and terrifying because I knew that if I lost those 80,000 souls, there might never be a way for me to get them back until I beat the boss and get to the next area... and if I'm 80,000 souls-worth of underlevelled for an area, I'm probably going to have a real bad time with that boss. This served another purpose in encouraging me to return to Majula more; I legitimately feel more connected to Majula than I ever did Firelink shrine; the combination of the warm, friendly (and absolutely stunning) Visuals, the slowly growing population of the friends i've met along my journey, and the regular return trips to level myself up made it really feel like 'home'. Firelink isn't a BAD hub area or anything, but it always just felt like 'that one center area where I pass through sometimes'. Majula really felt like a sanctuary. Another advantage of the enemy re-spawn limits was that you never quite hit the same sort of 'walls' as the first game. You continually feel like you're making progress. Some might argue this is a point against it, but I didn't feel like the game was holding my hand or making things easy on me, it just sorta smoothed out the difficulty, converting some of those hair-pulling frustrations of crazy-difficult areas into more strategic difficulties of 'how do I make sure I don't lose these souls permanently?'. This probably IS the easiest souls game, but being the easiest Souls game is like being the worst player on the team that just won the superbowl. The other complaint (aside from the bosses, which you covered here) I see a lot is that Dark Souls 2's difficulty mostly comes from mobbing you with multiple enemies at once, with the combat mechanics being geared specifically for 1v1s. And I agree; 2v1 and 3v1 fights are MUCH more common in DS 2, but the change to the stats and... I dunno, there's some Je Ne Sais Quoi about the animations and hitboxes in this game that makes it a lot easier to me. In DS 1, I would often swing huge weapons like halberds or scythes through hordes of smaller enemies, and would only hit half of them sometimes; they didn't really optimize the hitboxes for 1 vs many combat, but in DS 2 I've found my melee weapons hitting more enemies consistently when they gang up on me. Couple that with the ability to increase I-frames on rolls with the Adaptability stat, and just the smoother dodge rolls and easier cancelling from one action to the next (with tighter timing windows but more fluid motions), as well as a number of miracles, sorceries, and hexes that could potentially hit multiple enemies, and group fights are no longer as cheesy, but have legitimate difficulty to them. I found it HILARIOUS to see some of the comparisons of DS1 to DS2 claiming DS2 is just 'generic fantasy'. I literally saw a video say 'oh look, you've got the forest level. The swamp level. The dungeon fortress level. The church level. wowwwww' and my first thought was 'did you even play Dark Souls 1?' Darkroot Garden? the forest level. Blighttown? the swamp level. Sen's Fortress? Dungeon fortress level. Undead Parish? church level. DS 1 had the same exact tropes. I think the main reason the areas of DS 2 bleed into each other is just 'cause there's so many more of them overall. They ended up repeating a few 'tropes' like Forest of Fallen giants, Huntsman's Copse, and the Shaded Wood all being variations on 'the forest level', but what really struck me about DS 2 was the incredible vistas. I remember 3-4 times in DS 1 I stopped and just gaped at how gorgeous the landscape was. Standout example for most people, I'd imagine, would be Anor Londo, but I feel like the more linear nature of DS 2, while not as open-world feeling and interconnected, allowed the developers to take that notion to the next level. By the time I'd reached my second 'level' of the game (heide's tower of flame), i'd noticed a consistent theme of each area giving you a standing point to look out and get a GORGEOUS snapshot of the world. That literally became a thru-line in DS2 for me; each time I reach a new area, I try to find that lookout point to find that beautiful single image to portray that landscape to me. A standout one to me was Huntsman's Copse; the level is a little more generic overall when actually going through it, but I remember reaching the second bonfire in the area and standing out on the promontory, scanning my camera around to get my bearings, and I see the massive, crumbling silhouette of the undead purgatory looming against a cloudy green sky, the rickety bridge stringing from cliff to cliff overhead, the empty, misty ravine plunging down between me and this imposing structure, and the continuously receding line of black pine trees wrapping around the horizon. I may not remember the actual level design in Huntsman's Copse quite as much as, say, Darkroot Basin, but I will forever have a single, stunningly gorgeous snapshot of every level in my head that makes them memorable to me. I don't think it's ever going to be possible for any game to capture the magic of DS 1; like you said, the second game has some pretty big shoes to fill. But I think FromSoft's B-team really did a great job creating a unique experience with subtle gameplay changes that ended up having very complex impacts on the overall feel of the game. wowww that ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated. I've been itching to offload my thoughts on DS2 ever since I saw all the comparisons of the first two games bashing the second one all across the board. I don't think it's better than the first game necessarily, but if it's worse, it's by a fairly slim margin.
For anyone starting off completely new to the series, I would recommend DS2 first. It's still a decent game, but the other ones are just so much better. So start with the worst one and you won't be disappointed!
I was in the same baot as you for the most part. I picked up Dark Souls when it was free with Xbox games with gold. I beat it twice, then jumped into 2 right away and I hated every minute of it. I never finished 2 just lost any desire, I loaded up DS 1 again and beat another 5 times.
Son, please. The themes for Ornstein & Smough, Great Grey Wolf Sif and Artorias are freakin' legendary. The background music in the Ash Lask is goosebump-inducing, and the theme for Gwynevere's chamber is simply perfect for that moment (almost too perfect if you know what I mean). The games you've mentioned all have awesome soundtracks, but calling Dark Souls' music "acceptable" is just... I don't even know what word to use here.
There's more boss in DS2 yes, but a lot of them are filler. In DS1 nearly all boss have a purpose and have a history (even capra and taurus) that legitimate their prescence. And also most bosses of DS2 are bad copies of DS1 bosses. Nito vs The rotten, Najka vs Quelagg.... DS1 bosses are way more legendary
Wind Element Covetous Demon ? Google it, I think you don't know what boss it was. You know what ? cause most of them was forgettable. The ones that did a great impression on me was the ones in the sunken king, the pursueur (that nelo angelo type of character) and the glass knight. Most bosses were trashes : The giants, Rats, Dragon slayers, Old iron king, Smelters demon. Can't compare to DS, DS1, DS2 CSK, DS3, Bloodborne.
Sapher k some of them are bound to be forgettable with the sheer amount it has, doesn't mean they didnt have their purpose and story, my bad but taurus demon, capra demon, iron golem and moonlight butterfly etc etc are also forgetable as fuck, like i said, blind nostalgia.
"Nito vs The rotten, Najka vs Quelagg" they are both similar only in apperance and what do you mean by "vs"? It could suggest that one has to rival the another one? If so, I think rotten was way better than nito
DS2 feels different than DS1. It feels more like a dungeon crawler adventure game. DS1 was harder, and more non-humanoid enemies at times made it feel slightly survival horrorish. I have yet to try the DLC, so perhaps my opinion may change.
Blakkset DS2 DLC is bomb for its map design and amazing lore development. Unfortunately, the enemies are also mostly humanoid, safe for a handful of bosses.
Sorry but i must say that ds2 is more difficult than ds1. OR that they are not that different in scale of difficulty. Because when you play one or the other, you get BETTER at the mechanic and build a mindset to be ready for the upcoming challenges. I played Dark Souls 2 first and it kicked my ass really REALLY hard. After finishing it 3 or 5 times, i went to ds1... i steamrolled thru it like it was NOTHING! The only moment that i die were by the skeleton from the graveyard, the bridge with the 2 silver knight, Nito, Artorias (before i discover that i could stop his buffing), Calamity and Manus. Then i got back to dark souls 2 and it was again harder.
espite that DS 1 ( I PLAYED PREPARE TO DIE) has better graphics and , more variation AND LOT OF POEPLE SAY DS2 IS THE BEST , i prefer DS 1 FOREVER (PREPARE TO DIE) DS2 BORES ME . i stopped playing it cos I felt It was repetitive whithout an interesting history. My personal opinion : DS1 IS THE BEST INDEE. I would try ds3....
Dark Souls 2 had some really nice quality of life improvements, but I found that overall, it was a weak sequel. The biggest thing in dark souls 1 was how well the game flowed. Dark Souls 2 has segmented paths broken into jarringly different parts that don't flow into each other at all. I can see huntsman's copse leading to harvest valley realistically, but then taking an elevator at the top of a windmill (with nothing above it) and arriving in a giant keep surrounded by an ocean of lava? In the sky? What I miss from Dark Souls 1 is how connected everything was. From tomb of the giants, you could see ash lake. From Anor Londo, you could see the duke's archives. The paths were all interconnected, allowing you to go from firelink to drake valley to Darkroot, to Undead parish, or you could take an entirely different route. Go into blighttown from the depths, come out in drake valley, or just go in from drake valley if you find yourself there. This connection is lost in Dark Souls 2, and everything just feels like "a level", and not a real part of Drangleic. Nevermind the soul memory, created with good intentions, but taking away the fun of endgame pvp by constantly forcing you into new brackets, punishing you for investing in consumables instead of leveling up. I enjoyed the game, for sure, but I found myself wanting after finishing it up. Despite its improvements, the world itself wasn't likeable to me, and I can't keep playing a game if I don't much care for the environment.
Yuck I am so tired of hearing about people bitching about Harvest valley to the Iron keep. You really can't understand that it is SUPPOSED TO BE JARRING? The huntsman's copse starts by showing the depths of the Iron King's depravity by the end of his rule. Rounding up undead to torture them in the chariot's arena and imprisoning them for them to be hunted down for sport by his court and their jailors. Harvest Valley then shows the effect on the land his rule had. His massive mining opperation creating giant holes of poison in the earth that corrupted everything, The workers, Creatures of the area, His admirer Mytha, and even the very earth and water of the area itself is poisoned. By the time you get to the mountain top you are very versed in what the Iron King's list of sins are. When you see this giant pit at the top of the mountain you see that he had no reign on his own greed. He seriously just dug straight into the mountain until himself and his very castle fell into the core of the mountain but refused to sink due to his immense power, Everything about the areas paints the portrait of who the iron king is and just how powerful he is supposed to be. Dark souls 2 has a more symbolic and artistic approach in the ties of it's level design. They might not make sense looking at them at first. But if you actually analyze the characters you find that it's really not an oversight or some mistake that things are displayed in the way that they are. While that might not be your cup of tea, Calling it worse design is utter bullshit.. Compared to the first game the areas have heavier ties to the characters in the story, the history, and symbolism.
Savage even the "good story telling" is shit at repersenting what it really means you think. Gonna stair at the floor walls and ceilings while I run through the easy bosses with no difficulty and almost no creativity
yeah the dlc really upped the game, I got the scholar of the first sin edition and good thing I did because without the dlc I probably would have saw it as just a cash grab, with it however it's actually a good game
***** yeah that was such a good dlc, before I posted it I was thinking it was alright, the other two dlc are alright but the snow dlc was great!!! I loved how similar the mapping was to the painted world or ariamas (however it's spelled)
***** it's not a copy and paste but it's very similar to an extent given it is larger, idk it reminded me a lot of it including a bit of how it was mapped out
Im a defensor of DSII. Everybody seens to hate the game a lot more than the game deserve. I still prefer the first, cause DSII have some big problems for me. First, the torch, they never tell you to use, cause dont need at all with the illumination the game chooses. And other problem is the invencibility frames, that are connected to a stat, that sucks a lot. And the game is bigger than it needs, there are some bosses without expiration, a lot more than in the first game. But I still love the game. Nice video and sorry for the bad english.
Everybody seems to hate this game a lot less then the (tfu!) game deserve. This sh*t is the worst a-rpg I've played, and First and Last are two of my favorite...
Abyssal Rayz dark souls always had I frame modifiers rings ds1 and then a stat in dks2 if you believe dark souls 2 is a bad action rpg you have a flawed opinion
Levelling up to increase invincibility frames was not a good direction. In fact it was unnecessary and really cheap. I like Dark Souls 2, but it's still my least favourite (but strangely the one I'd likely replay more). It had a lot of improvements I appreciated, but they also tried to make it more artificially challenging by increasing stamina consumption and delay, and increasing the amount of ganking and enemies you fight. This made combat feel less impactful or interesting (in addition to the strange sound-design), like you're fighting in water. If you didn't have a broadsword earlier on in the game, then getting through all that gank would've been even more tedious. At first I didn't appreciate the faster equipment breakage, but looking back, I did appreciate it a lot. It gave you another reason to equip more than one weapon at a time. And given that upgrading a weapon was easier, it's the only Souls game where I wanted to test out every weapon. Most of the bosses felt like filler and didn't have much of an impact. Some of them had you wondering why they even existed. Of course, there are still some pretty memorable ones, especially the DLC, even if they're drowning in some really poor ones. And the final boss was just horribly done. It was really a disappointment. I knew it would've been the Queen from the get-go, but she was unrecognisable during the battle, and just sorts of pops up.
I am really bad at Dark Souls. But my first experience was ds2, and I absolutely hated it to begin with because I was so bad. But then I learned how to git gud and I got pretty far in the game. Then I started ds1 and my experience changed. The bosses made me on my toes a lot and the atmosphere of the game itself it really beautiful. I recently got blood borne and I'm not used to the aggressive nature of it because of how much hiding behind my shield I did. But to sum this up, my favorite dark souls game has to be Dark Souls 1.
*sigh* I have the unpopular opinion that Dark Souls 2 was a disappointment. The map design sucked, because some of the areas made no sense in their placement- The Old Iron Keep is the most glaring example of this. Two, many of the bosses were just downright cheap. Choosing to just throw multiple things at you, instead of having movesets and shit- the Skeleton Lords is the worst of these, because one of them conjures six goddamned bonewheel skeletons. Six. Of one of the most difficult enemies to deal with in packs. Th weapon degradation thing bugged me but a couple reinforcements and abuse of the very common and easy-to-find bonfires made that moot- oh, and the limited amount of Titanite shards that the vendors had seemed like an arbitrary limit. The fact that the enemies die permanently after being killed 12-15 enemies is really arbitrary, eliminating grinding for rare items and making it easy to progress by just nuking everything. The story bits were nice, as they always are, but the Solaire pandering was strong with this one (note my use of conspicuous starwars reference SEE, WE'RE RELEVANT AND KNOW THE FANS). And removing Humanity kind of.. spat in the face of an overarching theme from the first one. Couple that with the mindnumbing abundance of lifegems and the extremely linear design, not to mention the fact that weapon upgrades only have a single barrier, Soft and Shiny was a really stupid addition not to mention annoying as hell, and finally the fact that so few weapons are available at first is just too damning. Besides which, there's no feeling of "oh, this place is just too hard, come back to it later."
+Jagar Alagoria Same, bruh. I also noticed a very, very, very weird new system in enemies animations. They move like... goofy pieces of butter sliding on a hot pan. They start slow and progressively accellerate, with a regular pace, until they walk you by. They are like... drunk or something. Plus, they are all so goofy, I can't stand their proportions, the long arms, the stature, the animations. They are no intimidating at all, just pieces of poligons.
saedt Yes, this is how I've been looking to describe DS2 as a whole and why I don't like it very much (I never even played the DLC and I'm a huge Souls fan). The whole game just feels floaty, and almost cartoonish. It's almost too smooth, and that really clashes with jarring moments like how long it takes to use your Estus and the massive amount of time it takes to heal. The art is great, with fanatic environments and definitely some memorable views that made me say "wow" and eventually come back to it after beating it, clashes directly with some things. The armor isn't as gritty and defined as the rest of the world, and the summoning signs are just far too cartoonish. Overall I think floaty, maybe inconsistent even, are the words that really describe DS2 as a Souls game. It's STILL a very solid game on it's own.
The main purpose of the stone tunnels that connect the areas together was to hide load times, while still giving the player a way to physically walk from place to place rather than be entirely disconnected, the way demon's souls was.
I never understood the hate for dark souls 2. The game improved on so much with the base game and then again with Sotfs. Dark souls 1 and 2 are by far my favorite games. I think with all the hate for the second game, we got a dark souls 1 sequel, rather than a dark souls 3.
I liked Dark Souls 2, I would say it's my least favorite of the souls games I still really enjoyed it. Though it was great in some ways and terrible in others, I'd still give it an 8/10
I may be a bit late to this, but I have to agree that DS1 was the better game. Overall, they were both great, but I felt that some of the boss fights in DS2 felt a lot more haphazard, where they would just throw enemies at you for the sake of it.The boss fights of DS1 felt more like 1 on 1 scenarios, where it was just you and the boss in a dramatic face-off (with the annoying exception of Gravelord Nito). Some like the Capra Demon did implement other enemies too, but they really just added to the tension of the fight as they were usually rather easy to beat. In DS2 however, there were sometimes so many that taking on one at a time felt more tedious as you got repeatedly shot/stabbed in the back. From a level design perspective, DS1 also takes the cake as the world was never built around fast travel (at least not until you reached Anor Londo, and even then it was only ever to reach one or two isolated locations), whereas DS2 began with fast travel unlocked for the player, ironically making each area feel more separate despite the fact that you were never more than a few buttons away. DS3 also has this problem, but for whatever reason I never notice it as much. tl;dr - DS1 is better
Pooky-Raed I think Dark Souls 2 improved upon Dark Souls quite abit.. It took a couple steps back as well, But Dark Souls 2 is definitely a worthy sequel..
For me dks 1 was one of those games that I fell in love with. Something about it endeared itself to me. Dks 2 felt soulless. This guy liking the map in dks 2 pretty much invalidates his opinion to me.
-Expanding on my opinion cause I don't wanna seem like I'm being a dick- dks1 map layout felt ingenious, it felt real and was interconnected in ways I hadn't expected. 2 was too linear and I absolutely hated it. It took away that "oh cool!" moment you experienced when unlocking a shortcut. I also felt like getting lost and stumbling into an area you weren't probably supposed to go to yet was a great way to encourage exploration and practice. The fast travel option in 2 took away the inevitable grind you'd have to make from your last bonfire. It was inconvenient, but I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. fast travel felt cheap. I just really felt like the game came off feeling hollow(no pun intended) and sterile. I could go on but I'll stop there.
I pretty much agree with you in this...the map in Dark Souls 1 (which I'm currently playing again now after finishing a few months back Dark Souls 2, still have to play the third) was incredible and was something that you couldn't even imagine at first. Before playing the game I thought the world was full of tiny maps like multi-zone areas, and then while playing it blew my mind. Also I like more the pace in Dark souls 1, the physics and how everything felt (heavy weapons, armor, etc) compared to the movements and how speeded up Dark souls 2 was. I disagree a little with fast travel tho...I wish the first game had it as well since sometimes (when "farming" was not needed) it felt more of a waste of time to go back to certain places even if you had some shortcuts here and there. Dark Souls 2 is great and fun, the coop experience worked and works great, but Dark Souls 1 was and still is special to me and as you said, I also felt in love with it. Can't wait to play the third (a good mix of both as far as I could tell) but I'm waiting for those DLC's to come out and get the "full package" as I did with 1 and 2. ;)
You know, it was the instant you said "I found ALL the bosses to be creative and memorable, just like the first game" that I gave up. Fucking really? Dragonrider, generic dude with a spear less-intimidating than the Old Knights who you have to get past to reach him? _Twin_ Dragonriders, the same dude twice, only this time one of them is sniping you with a bow? Prowling Magus & Congregation, _a room full of fucking normal enemies?_ This is the point I realised you're not "critiquing" DS2 at ALL, you're just gushing about it. You _praised_ the game's biggest flaws, for god's sake (while ironically failing to point out the things it actually DID do better than DS1, like the improved stats and equipment balance, Power Stance and PvP).
Oh spare me! See, this right here is the difference between me, a Dark Souls _fan,_ and you, a Dark Souls _fanboy!_ Before I even _start_ with you, I'm calling you out on your bullshit accusation that I "rag on ds2 like it's the worst game in the world". I did _nothing_ of the sort, that's a load of fanboy wank. I _like_ Dark Souls 2, but it is a considerably flawed game, probably the weakest of the series (Demon's Souls and Bloodborne included) and a big part of it was how it was crammed with crappy filler bosses until it was padded like a flat girl's bra! You want me to name more than 2 bad bosses? Fine, I will. So many of DS2's bosses are either normal enemies (or a group of normal enemies) with a health meter slapped on them, rehashes of bosses from earlier games, or even rehashes of bosses from the _same_ game, that it's easy! The alphabetical list (DLC included) of DS2 bosses I would consider mediocre _at best_ (and _absolutely awful_ at worst) goes: Afflicted Graverobber, Ancient Soldier Varg and Cerah the Old Explorer; Aldia, Scholar of the First Sin; Ancient Dragon; Belfry Gargoyles; Covetous Demon; Dragonrider; Duke's Dear Freja; Giant Lord; Guardian Dragon; Lost Sinner; Lud & Zallen, the King's Pets; Nashandra; Old Dragonslayer; Old Iron King; Prowling Magus & Congregation; The Rotten; Royal Rat Authority; Royal Rat Vanguard; Ruin Sentinels; Scorpioness Najka; Skeleton Lords; Smelter Demon (Blue rehash); Throne Watcher & Defender; Twin Dragonriders; Velstadt; Vendrick. That's _26 bosses_ out of 41, over _half_ of the game's excessively-bloated roster, who are forgettable, disposable, uncreative, disappointing, anticlimactic, or just downright _garbage._ Hell, after releasing the unquestioned least-impressive end boss in the franchise with Nashandra (unless you're splitting hairs by counting True King Allant as the "end boss" of Demon's Souls rather than False King Allant), they took another go at it by offering an alternate secret end boss in SotFS Edition- only for said boss, Aldia, to be _worse_ than Nashandra! Compare with Dark Souls 1 where the list of bosses I would consider mediocre-to-bad goes like this: Bed of Chaos; Stray Demon; Demon Firesage; Centipede Demon; Taurus Demon; Moonlight Butterfly; the Four Kings; Seath the Scaleless; Capra Demon; Pinwheel- and that's me being _harsh_ (most people would pillory me for considering the Four Kings a poor fight)! That's 10/26, and several of those are at least serviceable- it's _because_ there are fewer bosses in DS1 than DS2 that a sub-par one is easier to forgive (although Bed of Chaos is still inexcusable). Either way, I rate 16 good DS1 bosses to only 15 good DS2 bosses- so despite having way MORE bosses, DS2 still doesn't even have as many good ones as DS1! I never said DS2 had NO good bosses. I never even implied it. But when this reviewer _specifically said, in exact words_ "I found ALL the bosses to be creative and memorable", implicitly including the Dragonrider, the Twin Dragonriders, the Royal Rat Vanguard, the Prowling Magus & Congregation, and the Covetous Demon in that assessment, I called him out on it. And I'm perfectly justified to do so.
Despite his heated tone I have to agree with ArcaneAzmadi. The bosses are definetely the weakest of a long list of weak points in Dark Souls 2. I remember my first boss was the Last Giant, I saw him and thought "oh man, I'm so f*cked!". And then 15 seconds later as he fell dead at my feet I thought, "wait, is that for real?". I actually expected him to have a second phase because that fight was too pathetic to be true. That's when I realized that all the hatred towards DS2 was justifiable, and my expectations with the game went absolutely downhill.
ArcaneAzmadi Didn't Dark Souls make you fight the tutorial boss, then fight him with a bigger health pool and AoE attack, then light him on fire to fight him in the late game. And don't start me on the SEVEN TAURUS DEMONS at the entrance to Lost Izalith and there's also one or two Capra Demon's there as well.
Okay, first of all, those two Asylum Demon clones don't take up the majority of DS1's boss roster like the countless humanoid enemies in DS2. Second, Dragonrider gets re-used twice, only this time there's TWO of them! Oooo, so innovative. You're also forgetting Smelter Demon, who was re-used in the DLC in one of the worst bossfights I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing, with a constant slog through poisonous hazards and enemies every time you die to him. And you completely missed the point of the Taurus Demons encountered in Lost Izalith, and also blatantly lied about them. They were NOT bosses, they were regular enemies. Although their stats remain similar to the boss versions, they were by no means a chore to fight. By that point the player was stronger, and they could take them on with no problem. They were put there to show the player how far they'd come, and how much stronger they've gotten. Even if they were as powerful as the original though, they still aren't bosses. There's no boss health bar, no music accompanying them, and no fog wall to get through in order to fight them, so no, they are not bosses. Next time you want to try putting DS1 down just so you can make your precious DS2 look better, try not to blatantly lie about the games, okay? While we're on the subject of bosses coming back as regular enemies in droves, the Ruin Sentinals (yes, I looked up their names just now, because the majority of DS2's bosses just blend together) were lazily re-used in Drangleic castle where they all just bullrush the player while they're trying to fend off a drove of knights at the same time. The Taurus Demons served a purpose in the overall experience, and were there to not only give the player a tougher challenge before the next boss, but to empower them when they realise they're on even ground with them more so than the first one. The Ruined Sentinals were just thrown in there, without any thought put in to them other than "Let's make it difficult" , and were not rescaled at all in terms of how much damage they both delt and received. And don't get me starded on the PURSUER, a boss Fromsoft's B-team loved so much that they wanted to shove him in as a miniboss at every opportunity they could get. I ended up just flat-out ignoring every encounter I could with it, because I just didn't care to fight the same boring enemy. You wanted to talk about DS1 reusing the same boss three times? Well I just gave you plenty more examples in DS2 where they did the same thing, but worse. It may not have been three times, but it was with a hell of a lot more bosses, and executed much more poorly. Oh, and Did I forget to mention Elana, a boss that summons 2 other bosses in one of the most artificially difficult Souls boss fights ever released? Not even Maneater from Demon's Souls was that unfair. Actually I'm sorry for comparing that turd to Maneater, at least those bosses were original and in an actually good game.
Bufudyne I didn't say that the Asylum Demon clones took up most of the boss roster and while humanoid enemies do in the sequel, the beastial bosses weren't *really* good until Bloodborne when they reacted to your individual hits and had more reasonable stamina, yeah Sif limps but it's zero to a hundred, and the bosses that weren't humanoid were handled really well like Freja and Demon of Song. Nor did I say the Lost Izalith demons were bosses, I just pointed out how annoying it is to see bosses become regular enemies as yes it shows your strength but it also shows a slight lacking in diversity (the biggest perpetrator of this that I've played being Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, my favourite DS game it may be but a lot of enemies are literally just pallet swapped versions of earlier ones) by all means it annoyed me just as much when going into Dragon Aerie to fight three of the boss I literally JUST fought (Guardian Dragon) but I found it so alarmingly dismaying to see seven Taurus Demon's all in a row. (And another reason I found this terrifying is I have only ever gone there once just after defeating Quelaag so those stats vs seven Taurus and a Capra if I'm careless and you'd see what pissed me off. I've never been able to beat Ornstein and Smough because of reasons ranging from Ornstein charging through Smough to my camera getting stuck on his hammer, I haven't been able to even get in Izalith due to that golden fog crap. This point in the game (Anor Londo) is the only one I'd say I'm biased against, I just wanted to point out that DkS2 isn't the only one copying and pasting.) And also on the topic of copying and pasting, the Pursuer in Scholar of the First Sin Edition is true to his name and lore, he pursues and punishes the Bearer of the Curse. I have really no rebuttal for the Ruin Sentinels, that is pretty bad I'll admit but in response to Elana, every souls game has bad bosses for artificial reasons, at least once: Dark Souls: Bed of Chaos Dark Souls 2: Elana Bloodborne: Defiled Chalice (I was gonna put Nameless King but that was more tedium of fighting the dragon than artificial difficulty) I wasn't even trying to put down the entire game as a whole, it may be by far my least favourite (contested with Demon's Souls) but for totally different reasons, I just think what's good for the goose is good for the gander (sorry for that grandma metaphor I just don't have any other way to say it).
I just recently got into this series and have only finished the original (never played the others, sadly) and I still just can't put my feelings for the game into words. I think you put it best: it gives an experience unlike any other in gaming. I particularly love the enigmatic storyline of Dark Souls. Unlike some games that just slap on some random BS and call it a story, this one felt smart, calculated, as if the creators knew precisely what to reveal and when, and how hard it should be to find each fragment of the story. It was very artistic in its approach. ...Damn, I freaking adore this game. PRAISE THE SUN!
HarujiSubayama they did it in demons souls so they had a starting point and didn't really improve much in terms of story actually down graded it from demons imo as demons has a very very complex story
So I was going to bed watching some UA-cam before this and then I watched this and the DS3 vs BB and I haven't beaten DS3 yet so instead of going to bed I'm going to play some Dark Souls 3
***** well if it wasnt made by from soft it would be called a dark souls rip off..in dark souls there is bonfire which serves as a checkpoint and in bloodborne there is lamp which also serves as a checkpoint.. and the lamp look like a reskin of a bonfire.. anyway just call it souls game.. the difficulty the engine the bosses the health system the inventory system is same as dark souls
You've just earned a sub! It's so refreshing to finally find someone who doesn't completely diss DS2. The game has its flaws but I'm so tired of all the harsh critisism surrounding it... I really appreciate your positive perspective. Thank you for the video.
Finally someone who talks more objectively on DKS v DKS2 comparison. I was starting to get tired of everyone talking with nostalgia and the lovely rosey glasses. I pretty much agree with everything you said, pretty much my same opinion.
I thought you did pretty damn well. As Sliferx said, hearing -broken records- people go on and on about how DkS never did anything wrong, while DS2 was just a complete mess gets old. Both games did different things equally well, and equally wrong. Both are great games, for different reasons.
+Sliferx Tbh I don't think this was a very objective comparison. It was more positive in DS2's light and seemed a bit one sided if you're trying to decide which one is better based on his video.
Chris Anderson Been a long time since i've watched the video and i won't start watching again just to tell you that you are wrong. From what i remember this video did it justice. There is no need to decide which game is better because both are great as each other but in different things.
@@xsliferx94 5 years late, but he has a point. Some things that people appreciate from DS2 are things that I hate and many others do too. The health going down after you die, and the disconnected map feel even WORSE now that DS3 has fixed these issues w/ a more sensible layout and embers. By more sensible layout, I mean that the game is a linear path until midgame, with easier to access DLCs than in Scholar.
I love this franchise, Dark Souls felt to me like it had a perfect mix, good story, good characters, GREAT combat, I felt like Dark Souls 2 was pretty amazing too, only dropping the ball with the characters (lucatiel, vengarl and benhart were amazing though) and the level design.
I do think Dark Souls one is the better game but there's a lot of things I love about Dark Souls 2 and I hate how people always shit in Dark Souls 2 its not perfect but still a hell of a game
Welcome to the comment section. Here we can observe casuals compensating by trying to sound as elitist as possible as they talk smack about Dark souls 2.
Cool video! I'm a bit surprised on how forgiving you are with the maps and explorations in Dark Soul 2. After I heard (from many people) of those flat and straightforward areas, leading to a boss and a bonfire (basically the opposite of the amazing vertical maze of shortcuts in Lordran), I just lost my interest in even buying the game. Because exploring and getting lost in that maze was 80% of my amazement at Dark Soul 1.
YOU ARE AMAZING!!!! I swear every time i watch your videos it inspires me so now im gonna try out dark souls because you have a great talent for making videos and advertising!!! thank you soo much for this you earned a subscriber keep up the good work and i will stay active (if homework doesnt kill me before that :D
Humanity also raises your defense in dark souls 1. With 99 humanities you get an extra 50 or so defense across the board. At low level pvp it makes a huge difference.
Having played Dark Souls 2 first for months, and now just starting Dark Souls about a year later, I liked the controls in Dark Souls 2 so much better. That may have to do with framerate as well? But in Dark Souls I feel like a tank that takes a second too long to respond when I want something to happen. Dark Souls 2 I felt totally in control.
Yeah Dark Souls 2 is 60 fps while DS1 is only 30, so it probably felt a lot more fluid. I agree that combat is less clunky, but my one gripe with DS2 is that you have to stop completely to use your estus flask, so this ended up getting me killed more than I'd like to admit :(
funny thing, i feel it's the other way around. ^^ Example: try to change your right hand weapon while drinking Estus, in DS1 it works, in DS2 nothing happens. You have to wait for the animation to finish. Or if you want to change your hotbar item (D-Pad down), you have to carefully monitor if DS2 actually registered your input. Don't know, stuff like that infuriates me. =P ~ Also, maybe try to unequip your armor & weapons in DS1 and roll around, maybe there's that feeling you were looking for?
The atmosphere of 2 is beautiful. Maybe it's partially due to playing 2 on PS4 Pro at 1080p60 and 1 on a 360 at 720p10, but there were moments in 2 where I just had to stop and marvel at the spectacle, while I don't think that ever happened in 1. The areas in DS1 favored function over form. Some exceptions are the roof where you fight the gargoyles and of course Anor Londo. In 2, even the hub area is beautiful. The first time I saw the giant ocean with its huge, rolling waves I thought it was a hand-painted background, and then I saw it was actually moving.
I don't think I agree with the statement that the controls are unbelievably smooth, especially in the first game. Imo the first game had the worst controls hands down. Bloodborne had the best.
+Isiah Barnes how do you figure? because the gameplay is fluid and not chopped up Legos? because the boss fights were developed with thought and dedication? because over everything it's just the most fun? what about dark souls 2 makes you think it's anywhere near as good as 3? 3 is a masterpiece. 2 is like a failed dark souls 1 that tried really hard and did nothing but make shitty bosses and environments. I'm really looking forward to your argument.
While I agree that DS2 had the most poor boss designs; 3 is anything but a masterpiece. It is the epitome of fan service with returning characters and areas for no other reason than "the first game had these, so people will love it again!" there was no reason to include Andre again, he had no place in this new world. The removal of proper dual-wielding and powerstancing in favor of the dual-weapons was an awful decision; you can't dual wield massive weapons or any unique weapons together viably, and there are so few unique dual-weapons, instead a good majority of them are just two of the same weapon paired together. The game is even more linear than DS2, there are practically no branching paths, and any paths that do branch off tend to lead to a dead end with maybe a new item/secret or a boss, and then you just go back to the normal path. Finally, the build variety is complete shit; sorcery is worthless and any build that isn't a quality build is just pointless; if you make a pure strength or dexterity build it will almost always be completely outclassed by a quality build. I enjoyed DS3 my first time through, but calling it a masterpiece is completely over the top.
Memorable soundtracks: DS1+DLC: Asylum demon, Gaping Dragon, Ornstein & Smough, Gwyn, End credits(Nameless), Iron Golem, Four Kings, Abysswalker Artorias. DS2+DLC's: Ruin Sentinels, Sir Alonne, Burnt Ivory King, Executioners chariot, Longing. I'll admit that Ds2 had fewer memorable tracks IMO, but the Dark Souls music in general is very memorable.
I loved both. Dark Souls 1 had an amazing story, enemy and level design, and Dark Souls 2 had amazing weapons, armor and spell diversity. I'm currently at my 58th playthrough of Dark Souls 2. Still not getting boring. Also, no Invaders with endgame gear, thanks to soul memory. I don't care what you say, but I love the concept of soul memory. Whenever somebody bitches about it, it turns out they are playing Dark Souls only for easy PvP kills. Man up.
Dark Souls 1 had weapon and armor durability too... Only then you had to actually spend Souls (never a lot, but still) to repair them rather than just autmatic when you rest at a bonfire.
Disagree a bit on the map being easier. I think cause I had to walk everywhere in Dark Souls 1 I became super familiar with the map and layout. But in dark souls 2, there were many times I had no idea where I was supposed to go because I was teleporting everywhere from the start. Had to start systemattically going through each area taking hours of extra time not progressing just to find out "oh, I missed a door in the shaded woods" or whatever. Also in DS1 when you finally CAN teleport, it feels like the nicest thing the game could have possibly given you, your reward for completing the first quest you were given. I like ds2, but I definitely prefer the interconnected, shortcut riddled map of dark souls 1.
The problem with DS1 and not having a fast travel is because it waste your time. DS1 isn't fully interconnected, just the first part of the game is. Sure you learn the levels because you have to do a lot of backtracking, but the problem is that YOU HAVE to backtrack. Some parts of the game is outright broken just because you are forced to backtrack in DS1, the blowdart guys never respawn because it will be impossible to backtrack if they did. The argument where you learn the levels is equally true with DS2, the more you play the levels the more you learn them. The difference is that in DS1 you are forced and in DS2 you are not. Have you ever been in Anor Londo and figured out that the weapon you have sucks and you found another weapon you want? Do you know what that means? That means you have to backtrack to the start through Anor Londo, past Sens fortress and back to the blacksmith to upgrade your new weapon. I sure hope you bought enough materials to upgrade the weapon with or otherwise you can enjoy going back through Sen's Fortress again that really isn't designed to be backtracked as you are at that point supposed to unlock fast travel. It is a nightmare.
I remember when I first played Dark Souls 2, it was the first Dark Souls I played so I got fucking Pwned a lot of times before even getting through the Eide's Flame Tower "Wait a second, this is just so hard! I'll take a little peek at the guide... Fuck this is not the first zone, goddamit!". Anyways, when I got used to the game's difficulty I literally stopped playing anything else besides Dark Souls until I completed the three games, when I realized that happened I could just say one thing to myself "This is an ARPG Masterpiece"
There are some major design differences in ds2 that I think ruined it for me. first the lock on in ds1 you could lock on to any enemy. See a guy hanging off a bridge waiting to attack, good kill him and move on. I ds2 you cant lock on so you have to manually aim then there is the forest which is proof the game is geared towards heavily armored enemies. That is my second point bows and magic got such a heavy nerf that anyone wanting to play a ranged character could not nearly as easy as a heavy one. DS1 also had a design around enemies respawning so each of the areas was smaller and had more paths to win in DS2 it seams like they expect you to grind then remove enemies as soon as you know there moveset. there are many more thing like thee I guess I feel that DS1 was way more fair than DS2.
I finished DS2 awhile back, but didn't get a chance to dive into NG+ or the DLC until now. As I'm replaying it and going through the DLC, I'm realizing how much I'm enjoying it. While I agree with a lot of the vid's assessment, I'm going to be a stickler about one: sound and music. The lack of music in the Souls game is deliberate, and it gives room to listen to the environment around you. Not only that, but the sound in both games is fantastic to the point that you can often detect things you can't see just by listening -- this helped a lot in the damn Frigid Wastes where you could hear the killer reindeer before you could see them, or the grunts of an ogre. As for memorable music during bosses, I'll admit nothing really stood out as much as Lord of Cinder from the first game, but that's okay - I don't really play DS for the music anyways.
I should have hated Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin but I ended up liking it way more than I ever could have expected, despite all the bad mechanics and stupid design choices the team made.
+jude m In Demon's Souls your world and character tendency effect how much life you lose. The closer to pure black tendency the lower your health in soul form. The closer to pure white tendency the higher your health in soul form.
@@galaticwars When I wrote this I did, I have hence gained a bit more appreciation for DSIII, but I have to say that overall I respect DSII and what it tried to do a lot more than I will ever respect DSIII so ultimately yes, I would still say I like DSII more, just not by as high a margin as I used to. Either way they're all phenomenal games, not much of a reason to argue which is better.
We going to say the map design is better in DS2? How cleverly interconnected everything was in DS1 was a masterclass of level design, and part of the reason I love the game. The fast travel was a result of how the world was designed, not vice versa.
I think fast travel is a big strength in Dark Souls 2 becsuse you could get to stuff you needed much faster like a weapon infusion, boss weapon, buying poison moss. And yeah backtracking was great in the first Dark Souls, but sometimes it got to be stupid. For example trying to get to the dlc, the doll, the rusted iron ring, and running out of poison moss in Blightown were examples. Dark Souls 1 was my first one so obviously there was bias, but I think Dark Souls 2 is underrated and has a pretty nice world as well. It's just Lordran came first and sticks in people's minds.
your not the only one ds2 was my first souls game i ever played i never knew what dark souls is but ds2 sucked me right in and i love the souls games now there the best i beat ds2 multible times and i still love it i just dont know how to explain the feeling that i got when i played ds2.
Drangleic is Vinheim. The dragon rings were crafted in Vinheim, at the Dragonschool and the one ring I found said they were made in Drangleic, so Vinheim. But I may be wrong, it is Dark Souls after all.
@Jeremiah Pheasant For melee build, just buy the resident key and take the gold pine resin. After cleaning those archers, use the resin and do the plunging attack strat but only for once. That alone could take away half of Taurus's health.
@Jeremiah Pheasant seems like someone used guides for their first playthrough... Also a dragonslayer spear? We are talking about the Taurus Demon on the towers wall, there is no way you had a +10 dragonslayer spear at that fight.
Jeremiah Pheasant I dropped DS2 while I was still able to get a refund and only played it a bit after I was able to borrow it from a store,didn't finish it though because it had so many fcking issues. As for the Demon Souls,I am excited for the remaster,but I am not a console player so I am hoping it will release on PC as well. As far as difficulty goes, 3 is hardest than 1 for sure,but I only played 1 offline back in the day and only started playing online 3 10 days ago. In fact,I would dare say that DS as a series (apart from 2) isn't so much hard as it is rewarding.
Who spends 1k on a PC? I bought mine for 750 on sale. I always wait on sale for my big buying sprees. Original cost like 1150-1250. Can't remember correctly.
The tunes thing killed me, I love dark souls but the original is sometimes butt ugly, it's more that the visuals can't keep up with the music. Or apparently Brown and grey textures in both games are just better than o and s theme, all one theme, pinwheel theme, gwyns theme, gwyndolins theme
Also there's similarities between earthen peak and sens fortress earthen peak is the only place with an arrow trap and it fires 3 arrows . It has the same trap design and amount of arrows fired as the ones in Sens fortress . Also harvest valley is supposedly undead burg so this could make sense .
"Dark Souls 2 IS a really good sequel." FINALLY a review that's not full of bullshit bias hatred or blind rejection of this games genuine evolutions in great gameplay
Dark Souls 2 is a really good game... But is a really bad Dark Souls. Shitty Level Design Shitty connection between areas Shitty Bosses Design, even if Velstadt, Fume Knight, Ivory King, etc. were good, they are humanoids, so.... Shitty Artistic Design (No originality there, just humanoids..) Artificial Difficulty (Shrine of Amana for example) The combat is not as fun as Dark Souls 1 Let's talk about the DLC's Ivory King: -Good Lore -Good level design but the textures feel so empty -Artificial Difficulty -Worst Area in the entire franchise (Frigid Outskirts) -Recycled boss (Lud & Zellen = Aava) Old Iron King: -Good Lore -"Meh" level design -Artificial Difficulty (yeeeeiiii) -Recycled boss (Blue Smelter Demon) -Shitty enemies design Sunken King: -Good level design -Good Lore -Shitty bosses (Elana the Squalid Queen, Gank Squad, and Velstadt who is summoned by Elana) I don't know, I think Dark Souls 1 is better...
Look at the second half of dark souls 1 and it has all of those glaring issues. Do you think second half of Dark Souls had good level design? Hell look back at the Lost Izalith and youll find its just an ass load of recycled bosses scattered about. Hell there are 3 fucking Asylum demons scattered throughout the game itself. Lets move onto artificial difficulty though, did you forget about the bed of chaos? What about your forced death at Seath the Scaleless? Graveloard Nito with its ass-loads of Skeleton spam (Dont think its artificial difficulty myself but if you really think skeleton lords are then this should fit your definition)? Capra demon with its two ass rushing dogs? Four kings the dps test? Look I love Dark souls 1 but don't let nostalgia goggles blind the flaws to the game, it made some improvements to demon souls but its not perfect.
my whole soulsborne list (not including demon souls) is 1. dark souls 2 2.Bborne 3.dark souls 3 4.dark souls idk why but i didn't really like the original dark souls
+This Guy i liked bloodborne alot but after all ds 2 was my first game and this was the only game that i played for multiple times and still enjoy it. i didnt played demon souls as well so i dont know any thing about it. but dark souls 3 was fun for the first time but then i didnt want to play it anymore. but actually i dont own a bloodborne game because i dont have a ps4 console, so i play it at my friends house. so maybe if i would own this game myself it would be my favorite. and i just didnt really like the original dark souls for some reason.
+This Guy same list,only mine would be(as someone who played all and only played DS1 DLC and reached Orphan/Laurence)-1:Bloodborne -2:Dark Souls -3 Dark Souls 3 -4 Dark Souls 2. No ties.
Don't even call DS2 an improved version. The controls are stiff and much more clunky compared to DS1, and the level design is so poorly thought-out. The enemy AI is rigged in the AI's favour every time, making each fight a chore to go through. The Bossfights are all forgettible and too similar to each other to be considered good or unique with a few minor exceptions, and the art direction and world itself is just as contrived and nonsensical as a Mario world map.
Thank you for appreciating DS2. So many cry babies talk trash about this well thought out game. I’m referring to the SOTFS version as I never completed the original
My first souls game was DS1 then Bloodborne, Dark souls 3, Sekiro, Elden ring, DeS Remake. I went back to play this one since I want to experience every souls game and even after playing all the others, I think this one is definitely unique. And with all the knowledge I have with the gameplay mechanics of the other entries, this one is pretty damn tough.
Dark Souls 2 completely raped me Even after Demon's Souls and first Dark Souls. I had hundreds of hours on both and still struggled with ds2. DS3 I had a very OP knight with heavy armor, shield and longsword and I hardly even died.
i can't help but dissagree with most of this video. that is to say, i don't think you were hard enough on dark souls 2. half the things you list as pluses are things i find to be huge detriments to the series. they added so much stuff that made the difficulty seem arbitrary and shallow in dark souls 2, and overall the mechanics and rules that govern dark souls 2 are so totally UNpolished, and unbalanced, that it makes for a really frustrating and unsatisfying experience in dark souls 2.
Hehe that's okay! We don't have to agree, thanks for voicing your thoughts. After watching some other reviews and people's comments, I do see some more downsides, but it never detracted from my experience with the game. I still loved it, but it's all good man! That's the beauty of this world, is that we can actually have differing opinions and still respect each other. EVEN on the internet :)
All I'm gonna say is we can all agree Gravelord Servant was a waste of time and only useful for an early sword and NG+ was meaningless until DkSII added new enemies and a big surprise in Brightstone Cove, but then in BB and DkSIII they messed it up again.
Great video, both games are great, some people hate DS2 but I guess it's because the first one was so good they were expecting something different. I love DS2 and I'M currently on NG3, looking for that platinum
Nice video. I’m one of those late comers to the series and trying to figure out how it’s different because I came in at 2 and haven’t played 1 yet... can’t wait for the remaster!
Doctorf 17 I know this is a lot later but here are the songs I remember Ds1:OnS, Gwyn, Seath, and moonlight butterfly, title theme Ds2: majula and ruin sentinels BB:Hypergan gaol, LUDWIG(THE best theme in the entire series), Maria, Main title/intro Ds3: Soul of Cinder, Nameless King, Sister Friede, Dragonslayer armour, firelink shrine, Ludex Gundyr, Vordt, Pope gankers
yea man , that majula feeling , the music when you see and fight Vendrick , plus that atmosphere the tune brings in the dragon memories. The music really did it for me in Ds2
i have a theory about dark souls 2. maybe the lost bastile is the undead asylum and drangleic was built after the asylum was cleared out by the chosen undead and the kingdom was built on the grounds of the asylum that we dont see
Indead it is... because they're all different and they all has an unique style to each other! of corce they feel different... exept dark souls 3 becos it is just an (dark souls 1 fan service game that cant afort environnement props so they use the ones in bloodborne) EDIT: The point that i am trying to say is that dark souls 2 should not be treated like shit when 90% of the complaint is just nonsense like Thiago comment.
The new healing system was a shot in the dark and could've been done better, Fromsoft's original team (Miyazakia in particular) out-right did not allow Dark Souls 2 to use much lore from the first game. I quite liked the world though.
I always see ds2 as the ds ripoff that was made by a guy who heard of dark souls and knew it was hard and just through some enemies into random areas knowing it would be hard
I personally liked dark souls 2 over dark souls 1. dark souls 1 felt a lot easier than 2. everyone hyped the four kings for me but I beat them fairly easily.
Only just found out what the Company of Champions covenant does from this video... my first playthrough I joined it not knowing what I had just done. Wondered why the game was so hard lol, took me hours to get through FotFG. Defeated a few bosses while still in it as well, in fact I might have been in the covenant for more than half the game lmao.
Wow, you're way more optimistic about 2 than about 100% of people. Almost all the bosses are just rehashed and inferior versions of the bosses in the first game, and some are either boring as fuck or bullshit. Levels are straight lines and boring looking and derived from areas in the first game. There are only a few bosses in the entire game I can even remember, and they're all in the DLCs, and the boss themes are completely forgettable, save for one. Just one. Just. One. Dark Souls 2 is boring, repetitive, lazy, short, linear, and nowhere near the first game in most aspects.
I can't say my time with the game was overall memorable, not nearly as much as 1. The controls in 2 felt stiff at first. I Get why: you need to be sure of what and where you're swinging. You get used to it, slowly. Parrying was a big change. I welcomed the idea of being able to parry human bosses, and parrying is much harder for me in 2. In Dark Souls 1, you can basically fight everything up to the Taurus Demon with Parry (excluding the rat, and Asylum Demon, obviously). Looknig at it that way, it's more acceptable, but such a drastic change made me not even want to invest the time into learning it. One of my favorite strategies in 1 was sound. Lob an arrow, strike a wall, use Demon's Pra... umm Aural Decoy, tread softly for a backstab.. It was great for checking corners, or luring something you couldn't pick off, or avoid getting ambushed. In 2 though, so many of my encounters felt triggered. It's cool that enemies ar e a tad smarter, and if you shoot 1 in a group they all aggro, but when I'm being sneaky, getting close to them from behind and to the side, and BAM the whole horde is hot on my trail, it feels shoehorned. As for story, I read a fair bit of item descriptions, and so many of them don't seem to make a spit of difference. The only items I can mention are ones that mention DS1 characters, long forgotten. Take the Ring of Blades: There;s two countries formed by one guy, then they went to war. Are those countries mentioned again? I don't recall them. The Prince and Princess then the Queen whatsername from Earthen Peak was about as good a story as I remember. Oh well. Dark Souls 2 did lots of good and bad. Dark Souls 1 isn't perfect either, even if we ignore everything below Blighttown, and even Blighttown's Fps drops.
Heck there's proof of enemy triggers in No Man's Wharf (base game). After going up the stairs, and to the left into the house, there's a guy tossing Oil, a guy hiding in front of a door... thing, and a guy with a dog further back in a house. If you aggro the guy in back, and go back into the house (with the ring of Protection) he should lose aggro, and return to his spawn point. From there, you can walk right up in his face andjust stare at you. Maybe he's just overcome that I killed his dog.
This is one aspect where they really messed up. There were framerate issues late in development especially regarding the lighting so they had to downgrade them sloppily in the last stage of development. The end result was the really flat and ugly lighting that we got in the finished game.
Just know that Drangleic was a kingdom that had many names before people started calling it Drangleic, even Straid said once "So this is what they call it now, Drangleic?" or something like that to you, the player.
so, no story and lore are different things, the story of ds 1 is simple and straightforward, motivations of characters other than you may be uncertain, but the objective is clear, ds2's story is a fucking mess
@@giantotter319 He literally says "go up or go down lol" and he says that he still has PTSD from when he went down to Blighttown, so it directs you to go up, and there's literally only one staircase that leads upwards.
3:35 and 5:10 a disagree for the use of estus flasks. Sure the dark souls 2 exploration is more important because of estus shards, but in the first game, you explore for more short cuts and weapons, so I don't see much vantage on this point. Become human is most explored um ds2, but the first game uses this question to the life of players, consegue the difficulty decreases, like, in another way, in dark souls 2, being a good a good reason for become human. The life shards is the most wrong part of the sequence, because on 5:10 you say that you have to take care of estus before it ends, but is actually a vantage because it's one more thing to you learn with your errors. Not just boring farming gold for buying those life shards. *Dark souls 2 trades equally the mechanics with dark souls 1, but is in the seeing if each player if it's good or not that's really matters*. Incredible review 👍🏻
I have to say, the environments are so beautiful and diverse in the second game. The first game had diversity, but 2 BY FAR has the best looking armor sets and environments. The fashion souls in that game was endless. and not to mention something nobody ever seems to talk about, the dual wielding stances with any 2 weapons of your choosing was the best thing They could have added, I loved it. I had a spiked mace in one hand and a Morning star in the other. It was menacing! i was disappointing that they removed powerstancing in the 3rd game... it was just sad. it was so good. But the 3rd game has the best soundtrack of the series and the combat is more fast paced (bad or good) it was a fresh feeling. But: Parrying.. Oh Parrying what did they do to you. It used to be skill based and timing related like hit the parry button right at that split second before the weapon hits you and then you get rewarded. Now parrying in the second game was broken and nearly impossible because it was like you hit the parry button.. Wait a second... then (if you get lucky enough the delayed animation works) you parry. The third-game is less ridiculous than the second with its parry's but Parrying died in Dks2
I am a souls fan but i started with ds2. You might think thats a praise but no, i almost shelfed the series because of how boring and bad i found the game, only really playing it because a friend of mine really wanted to play it with me. If it was not for some DS1 lore videos i ran accross i would have never played ds1 or followed through to bloodborn and ds3 which are among my favorite games. To me ds2 is not just a bad souls game, its a bad game.
Dark Souls will always be my favorite. It was my first taste of the series & it never gets old. The level design is fantastic, boss fights like O&S, Artorias, Kalameet, Manus, Gwyn (if you decide not to parry). I didn’t feel the same way for DS2. The level design didn’t feel as grandiose or connected. Bosses felt half-assed, Covetous Demon? Really? Prowling Magnus & The Congregation? lmao, I don’t need to continue. The series definitely saw a return to form with DS3 & BB in terms of quality of content. I can’t slam DS2 completely though, Sir Alonne & Fume Knight are very key exceptions.
“Incredibly difficult boss”
*shows footage of Taurus Demon*
@Yamnihc Ebmilaw just read its name lmao
@Yamnihc Ebmilaw thats taurus not capra
Wdym I died
"took down an unbelievably hard boss for the first time" taurus is in the beginning of a genre-defining game so it makes sense that he was satisfied by killing him 'for the first time'.
When you first play dark souls 1 the taurus demon is your first roadblock until you learn to beat it. Yes its trivial after playing the game but just searching youtube alone and your own beginning experience will tell you the boss was hard and caused many deaths until you overcame it.
"Both games are a little guilty of not having memorable tunes to go along with the beautiful visuals" then plays Ornstein and Smough's theme, and I'm like "THEN WHAT IS THIS, BITCH!"
Honestly, this guy (not you) is too soft on ds2. Both games have great tunes. Even ds3 had great music.
Wuss.
What do you mean "Even Dark Souls 3...", Dark Souls 3 has the best music in the series.
You said it bro, it's just that DS3 just came out, and I didn't hear everything yet.
Mr. Nobody Forever Ah, my bad.
Let's not forget about The Lord Of Cinder, please
durability was in DS1, it wasnt a new feature in DS2
He might not have known this but even then it was far more apparent in ds2 because of lower durability and it even provided a bar to see it mid battle.
+Mr Nightly Item durability in ds2 for whatever reason was originally tied to framerate. So early pc adopters and sotfs early on had way quicker item degradation due to running at 60fps. Some weapons would break so fast that you could barely get to a boss without breaking your weapon.
^That's still true for SotFS, at least on pc.
personaly i think the biggest flaw in dark souls 2 was how fast the weapon degradation was working. cause of that the putted a lot of bonfire. in ds1 when you reached a new bonefire it was a great relief a big reward. in ds2 it,s just normal. there is a lot of other flaw in the game, but it's the one i hated the most.
it didnt have half the impact it had in the second game
Weird how nobody talks about how much slower DS2 is in combat than in DS1.
More stamina consumption for everything you do, really questionable hitboxes (made worse by ADP) and some super awkward enemy movement and tells.
And a lot of the levels are designed to make you drag one enemy out at a time way way too often, which makes the trek to a boss that much more tedious.
I'm talking the run up to Smelter Demon and even worse the run up to Old Iron King that can knock you into a death pit, unless you find the bonfire before him that I somehow missed because the ladder blended into the background.
I played it again recently and I really hated that you STOP to drink your Estus, that was a big bummer, can't believe I didn't notice it the first time
WHAT THE F**K ,have you forgotten the trek to seath the scaleless ,OR the four kings
Brian Moya They didn't have a crap ton of unavoidable enemies that were bullshit to deal with in groups.
Diabolical
dude i am currently playing DS1 right now (this is my second playthrough) and i can tell you that the trek to seath the scaleless is one of the most annoying treks
Diabolical
the crystal enemies deal a ton of damage if you make a mistake and PLUS the invisible floor is pretty annoying (i fell twice ).Also there are like 8 clamoid enemies near the boss fog to seath .At least in DS2 you could clear out the enemies and have a clear path the boss,in DS1 that option isn't available
To be honest I loved Dark Souls 2. Admittedly it was the first souls game I played, but I never understood the hate that it got. Is it as good as the others? Not really, but it's still a great game. Also, in my opinion, it had some of the best lore in the series and the Last Giant is still one of my favorite stories from any Souls game. But nevertheless. To each their own.
Yeah for sure. People forget that you can still really like a game even if its not the best in a series. I still hold DS2 better than a lot of other games I've played!
Same
It got hate because it wasn't half as good as the first or even Demon's Souls. It was just filler between Dark Souls and a game that actual effort was put into, Bloodborne. To name a few things that seriously suck in DS2;
Bosses. It wasn't just that most were just unimaginative humanoids, it was the fact that all the designers did to make them difficult was to just add more. Ruin Sentinels, Belfry Gargoyles (6 of them? Fucking 6?), Rat Vanguard and Authority, Lost Sinner, Freja, two Dragonriders, (Who was already an earlier boss lol), Executioner's Chariot, Skeleton Lords and so on. Can't be fucked listing them all. Either way, it's lazy.
The hitboxes can fuck off.
The geography made literally no sense, a la Earthern Peak to Iron Keep. Just another lazy lack of effort.
The amount of times I died because I got swarmed by 13 enemies from nowhere. A la........ Most of the game.
The story sucked. It was literally; Hey, it's a cycle.
The NPCs are boring. As in, in DS1, nearly every single NPC you come across has their own troubles or quests or wants. Siegmeyer is off on his final adventure before he dies and his daughter is out to stop him if he goes hollow. Big Hat Logan is out to learn the secrets that Seath the Scaleless uncovered. Rhea of Thorolund is on a pilgrimage to find the Rite of Kindling with her escorts. And so on. Whereas in DS2, you send the NPCs back to Majula and they literally just sit there for the rest of the game.
The atmosphere is non existent. Literally zero immersion.
It's way too linear. Some of the most awesome moments of DS1 is finding your way back to a previous area or a different part of a new area using some obscure door or other such means. DS2 was pretty much a corridor.
Agility is just an inconvenience.
Why remove poise then spam us with 10 enemies with 3, 4 or 5 hit combos? Piss off. Nerf it a bit sure, Havel Monsters were annoying, but don't make it redundant.
Enemies spin on their heels mid hit for reasons.
People say the addition of warping anywhere at any point was a welcome inclusion but I think it detracts from the decision making Dark Souls' system forced you to have. Go back now and level up, spend Souls and have to do all this again, or push on to get to the next area and risk all your shit? It made the game that much more satisfying when you pulled off the impossible of wrecking 30 enemies' shit with 1 Estus lol.
I'm seriously just going on one now so I'll just say, TLDR; It's like the guys who developed DS2 took the template created and evolved by Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls and just made a """Souls""" Game while giving no attention to detail. They thought the template and the name would be enough to make a great game/sequel. They were wrong.
As a game by itself and not compared to any of the other games in the SoulsBorne series, sure, it's good. But in a world full of Call of Duty games, endless sequels, zero imagination, zombies and zombies and zombies, endless clones, endless remakes, overhyped trash and so on, it's not difficult to be "Good" by the industry's standards anymore.
achilles7898 I respect your opinion, but Dark Souls is my second favorite in the BloodSouls series. The atmosphere, to me, was great... and I enjoyed thw story as well. It was far more than just "it was a cycle". It also had my favorite Boss in the series... Sir Alonne.
achilles7898 I stated that I respect your opinion becausr I do. No need to go and be a dick about it. In fact I even stated in my original comment that, to each their own. I loved DS2... and so did a lot of other people. Get over it. Also Alonne is widely considered to be a great boss... not sure where you got that it was boring. But again... I respect your opinion.
I know that people say DS2 is easy, but I played DS3 first, then BB and then DS2, and I found it extremely difficult at first. After finishing it, I went back to DS3, and found it stupidly easy.
That's just because you got gud.
The game you start off with is usually the easiest the you. For me, the first DS is the easiest, it started in. Then played DS2, it was easy, DS3, kinda impossible. And then when I returned to DS1, it was a cake walk.
Pve was definitly made better and more challenging in DS2 compared to all others.
I'd say Bloodborne and DS2 have the best and most challenging pve. Ds1 was STUPIDLY easy and pretty much broken with backstabbing enemies and magic. And DS3 went back to alot of those weaknesses in DS1, enemies were again super easy to backstab(they no longer pivot as well as in DS2) and you dont get ganked as much so Magic is once again super game breaking, especially since it depends on a magic bar that refills instead of having a certain number of charges. Oh and Bleed, almost EVERY enemy and boss is weak to bleed.
sackbot10 because you got gud
Memeknight idk, you use alot less stamina in ds3, rolls are super quick, I frames are broken, phantom range is broken, you swing alot faster in ds3, Not really any penalty for death, parrying is super easy, and it's very easy to figure out where you are going in ds3 compared to ds2. Bosses and soundtracks I think ds3 wins at for sure, but difficulty would have to go to ds2 for me cuz of how unforgiving it is
I'm late to the party on Dark Souls, so I think that helped me like DS 2 more than a lot of people who rag on the game; I didn't have 2-3 years of waiting and anticipating and building hype for the sequel, I just jumped straight from one into the next.
One thing I thought was interesting you didn't touch on was that the enemies stop respawning after you kill them enough in any given area. Most people seem to really hate this mechanic, but I was actually really fond of it; Because Bonfire Ascetics are the only way to replenish these enemies, and those are *extremely* rare until late game, Souls essentially become a finite resource. In DS 1 failing to reach a bloodstain that had a huge amount of souls in it only had the repercussion of a few hours of going back and grinding until you can get them back; enemies never stop coming, so as long as you go to an area you can survive, you never lose anything permanent. Getting back to my bloodstain in DS 2 has always been more tense and terrifying because I knew that if I lost those 80,000 souls, there might never be a way for me to get them back until I beat the boss and get to the next area... and if I'm 80,000 souls-worth of underlevelled for an area, I'm probably going to have a real bad time with that boss.
This served another purpose in encouraging me to return to Majula more; I legitimately feel more connected to Majula than I ever did Firelink shrine; the combination of the warm, friendly (and absolutely stunning) Visuals, the slowly growing population of the friends i've met along my journey, and the regular return trips to level myself up made it really feel like 'home'. Firelink isn't a BAD hub area or anything, but it always just felt like 'that one center area where I pass through sometimes'. Majula really felt like a sanctuary.
Another advantage of the enemy re-spawn limits was that you never quite hit the same sort of 'walls' as the first game. You continually feel like you're making progress. Some might argue this is a point against it, but I didn't feel like the game was holding my hand or making things easy on me, it just sorta smoothed out the difficulty, converting some of those hair-pulling frustrations of crazy-difficult areas into more strategic difficulties of 'how do I make sure I don't lose these souls permanently?'. This probably IS the easiest souls game, but being the easiest Souls game is like being the worst player on the team that just won the superbowl.
The other complaint (aside from the bosses, which you covered here) I see a lot is that Dark Souls 2's difficulty mostly comes from mobbing you with multiple enemies at once, with the combat mechanics being geared specifically for 1v1s. And I agree; 2v1 and 3v1 fights are MUCH more common in DS 2, but the change to the stats and... I dunno, there's some Je Ne Sais Quoi about the animations and hitboxes in this game that makes it a lot easier to me. In DS 1, I would often swing huge weapons like halberds or scythes through hordes of smaller enemies, and would only hit half of them sometimes; they didn't really optimize the hitboxes for 1 vs many combat, but in DS 2 I've found my melee weapons hitting more enemies consistently when they gang up on me. Couple that with the ability to increase I-frames on rolls with the Adaptability stat, and just the smoother dodge rolls and easier cancelling from one action to the next (with tighter timing windows but more fluid motions), as well as a number of miracles, sorceries, and hexes that could potentially hit multiple enemies, and group fights are no longer as cheesy, but have legitimate difficulty to them.
I found it HILARIOUS to see some of the comparisons of DS1 to DS2 claiming DS2 is just 'generic fantasy'. I literally saw a video say 'oh look, you've got the forest level. The swamp level. The dungeon fortress level. The church level. wowwwww' and my first thought was 'did you even play Dark Souls 1?' Darkroot Garden? the forest level. Blighttown? the swamp level. Sen's Fortress? Dungeon fortress level. Undead Parish? church level. DS 1 had the same exact tropes. I think the main reason the areas of DS 2 bleed into each other is just 'cause there's so many more of them overall. They ended up repeating a few 'tropes' like Forest of Fallen giants, Huntsman's Copse, and the Shaded Wood all being variations on 'the forest level', but what really struck me about DS 2 was the incredible vistas.
I remember 3-4 times in DS 1 I stopped and just gaped at how gorgeous the landscape was. Standout example for most people, I'd imagine, would be Anor Londo, but I feel like the more linear nature of DS 2, while not as open-world feeling and interconnected, allowed the developers to take that notion to the next level. By the time I'd reached my second 'level' of the game (heide's tower of flame), i'd noticed a consistent theme of each area giving you a standing point to look out and get a GORGEOUS snapshot of the world. That literally became a thru-line in DS2 for me; each time I reach a new area, I try to find that lookout point to find that beautiful single image to portray that landscape to me. A standout one to me was Huntsman's Copse; the level is a little more generic overall when actually going through it, but I remember reaching the second bonfire in the area and standing out on the promontory, scanning my camera around to get my bearings, and I see the massive, crumbling silhouette of the undead purgatory looming against a cloudy green sky, the rickety bridge stringing from cliff to cliff overhead, the empty, misty ravine plunging down between me and this imposing structure, and the continuously receding line of black pine trees wrapping around the horizon. I may not remember the actual level design in Huntsman's Copse quite as much as, say, Darkroot Basin, but I will forever have a single, stunningly gorgeous snapshot of every level in my head that makes them memorable to me.
I don't think it's ever going to be possible for any game to capture the magic of DS 1; like you said, the second game has some pretty big shoes to fill. But I think FromSoft's B-team really did a great job creating a unique experience with subtle gameplay changes that ended up having very complex impacts on the overall feel of the game.
wowww that ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated. I've been itching to offload my thoughts on DS2 ever since I saw all the comparisons of the first two games bashing the second one all across the board. I don't think it's better than the first game necessarily, but if it's worse, it's by a fairly slim margin.
For anyone starting off completely new to the series, I would recommend DS2 first. It's still a decent game, but the other ones are just so much better. So start with the worst one and you won't be disappointed!
I was in the same baot as you for the most part. I picked up Dark Souls when it was free with Xbox games with gold. I beat it twice, then jumped into 2 right away and I hated every minute of it. I never finished 2 just lost any desire, I loaded up DS 1 again and beat another 5 times.
Randy Randalman if this is the worst, i can't wait to play the rest
Randy Randalman salt
Has anyone told you about Company if Champions nullifying respawn limits yet? Just so you know, it does.
not having memorable tunes?
lmao
majula and title screen
+Nobushige i kinda felt uncomfortable on Majula.
Elias Henrique i kinda felt completely confused in firelink shrine, and so bored at firelink shrine ds3
Son, please. The themes for Ornstein & Smough, Great Grey Wolf Sif and Artorias are freakin' legendary. The background music in the Ash Lask is goosebump-inducing, and the theme for Gwynevere's chamber is simply perfect for that moment (almost too perfect if you know what I mean). The games you've mentioned all have awesome soundtracks, but calling Dark Souls' music "acceptable" is just... I don't even know what word to use here.
There's more boss in DS2 yes, but a lot of them are filler. In DS1 nearly all boss have a purpose and have a history (even capra and taurus) that legitimate their prescence. And also most bosses of DS2 are bad copies of DS1 bosses. Nito vs The rotten, Najka vs Quelagg.... DS1 bosses are way more legendary
all bosses of ds2 has purpose and story behind them, but maybe your blind nostalgia for ds1 overshadow it?
***** I agree :)
Wind Element Covetous Demon ? Google it, I think you don't know what boss it was. You know what ? cause most of them was forgettable. The ones that did a great impression on me was the ones in the sunken king, the pursueur (that nelo angelo type of character) and the glass knight.
Most bosses were trashes : The giants, Rats, Dragon slayers, Old iron king, Smelters demon.
Can't compare to DS, DS1, DS2 CSK, DS3, Bloodborne.
Sapher k some of them are bound to be forgettable with the sheer amount it has, doesn't mean they didnt have their purpose and story, my bad but taurus demon, capra demon, iron golem and moonlight butterfly etc etc are also forgetable as fuck, like i said, blind nostalgia.
"Nito vs The rotten, Najka vs Quelagg"
they are both similar only in apperance
and what do you mean by "vs"? It could suggest that one has to rival the another one? If so, I think rotten was way better than nito
DS2 feels different than DS1. It feels more like a dungeon crawler adventure game. DS1 was harder, and more non-humanoid enemies at times made it feel slightly survival horrorish.
I have yet to try the DLC, so perhaps my opinion may change.
I haven't tried any DLC either, but I've heard DS2 has some great DLC
Blakkset DS2 DLC is bomb for its map design and amazing lore development. Unfortunately, the enemies are also mostly humanoid, safe for a handful of bosses.
great dlc but with much harder bosses, more agresive and they have tons of hp
Sorry but i must say that ds2 is more difficult than ds1. OR that they are not that different in scale of difficulty. Because when you play one or the other, you get BETTER at the mechanic and build a mindset to be ready for the upcoming challenges.
I played Dark Souls 2 first and it kicked my ass really REALLY hard. After finishing it 3 or 5 times, i went to ds1... i steamrolled thru it like it was NOTHING! The only moment that i die were by the skeleton from the graveyard, the bridge with the 2 silver knight, Nito, Artorias (before i discover that i could stop his buffing), Calamity and Manus.
Then i got back to dark souls 2 and it was again harder.
espite that DS 1 ( I PLAYED PREPARE TO DIE) has better graphics and , more variation AND LOT OF POEPLE SAY DS2 IS THE BEST , i prefer DS 1 FOREVER (PREPARE TO DIE) DS2 BORES ME . i stopped playing it cos I felt It was repetitive whithout an interesting history. My personal opinion : DS1 IS THE BEST INDEE. I would try ds3....
Dark Souls 2 had some really nice quality of life improvements, but I found that overall, it was a weak sequel.
The biggest thing in dark souls 1 was how well the game flowed. Dark Souls 2 has segmented paths broken into jarringly different parts that don't flow into each other at all. I can see huntsman's copse leading to harvest valley realistically, but then taking an elevator at the top of a windmill (with nothing above it) and arriving in a giant keep surrounded by an ocean of lava? In the sky?
What I miss from Dark Souls 1 is how connected everything was. From tomb of the giants, you could see ash lake. From Anor Londo, you could see the duke's archives. The paths were all interconnected, allowing you to go from firelink to drake valley to Darkroot, to Undead parish, or you could take an entirely different route. Go into blighttown from the depths, come out in drake valley, or just go in from drake valley if you find yourself there. This connection is lost in Dark Souls 2, and everything just feels like "a level", and not a real part of Drangleic.
Nevermind the soul memory, created with good intentions, but taking away the fun of endgame pvp by constantly forcing you into new brackets, punishing you for investing in consumables instead of leveling up.
I enjoyed the game, for sure, but I found myself wanting after finishing it up. Despite its improvements, the world itself wasn't likeable to me, and I can't keep playing a game if I don't much care for the environment.
Virus610 Love you Virus
Yuck I am so tired of hearing about people bitching about Harvest valley to the Iron keep.
You really can't understand that it is SUPPOSED TO BE JARRING? The huntsman's copse starts by showing the depths of the Iron King's depravity by the end of his rule. Rounding up undead to torture them in the chariot's arena and imprisoning them for them to be hunted down for sport by his court and their jailors.
Harvest Valley then shows the effect on the land his rule had. His massive mining opperation creating giant holes of poison in the earth that corrupted everything, The workers, Creatures of the area, His admirer Mytha, and even the very earth and water of the area itself is poisoned.
By the time you get to the mountain top you are very versed in what the Iron King's list of sins are. When you see this giant pit at the top of the mountain you see that he had no reign on his own greed. He seriously just dug straight into the mountain until himself and his very castle fell into the core of the mountain but refused to sink due to his immense power, Everything about the areas paints the portrait of who the iron king is and just how powerful he is supposed to be.
Dark souls 2 has a more symbolic and artistic approach in the ties of it's level design. They might not make sense looking at them at first. But if you actually analyze the characters you find that it's really not an oversight or some mistake that things are displayed in the way that they are. While that might not be your cup of tea, Calling it worse design is utter bullshit.. Compared to the first game the areas have heavier ties to the characters in the story, the history, and symbolism.
Virus610 m
Savage even the "good story telling" is shit at repersenting what it really means you think. Gonna stair at the floor walls and ceilings while I run through the easy bosses with no difficulty and almost no creativity
i have a theory for the harvest walley leading to the iron keep maybe it could be a illusion does anyone agree?
I loved DS2, it may have been easier but the dlc more than made up for it.
yeah the dlc really upped the game, I got the scholar of the first sin edition and good thing I did because without the dlc I probably would have saw it as just a cash grab, with it however it's actually a good game
***** yeah that was such a good dlc, before I posted it I was thinking it was alright, the other two dlc are alright but the snow dlc was great!!! I loved how similar the mapping was to the painted world or ariamas (however it's spelled)
***** it's not a copy and paste but it's very similar to an extent given it is larger, idk it reminded me a lot of it including a bit of how it was mapped out
+Josh Derenburger DS2 is great,even without the DLC (never played the DLC)
***** I did go down there.
The dlc want a copy and paste but it was very reminiscent of the painted world, perhaps I worded it wrongly before
Im a defensor of DSII. Everybody seens to hate the game a lot more than the game deserve. I still prefer the first, cause DSII have some big problems for me. First, the torch, they never tell you to use, cause dont need at all with the illumination the game chooses. And other problem is the invencibility frames, that are connected to a stat, that sucks a lot. And the game is bigger than it needs, there are some bosses without expiration, a lot more than in the first game. But I still love the game. Nice video and sorry for the bad english.
Everybody seems to hate this game a lot less then the (tfu!) game deserve. This sh*t is the worst a-rpg I've played, and First and Last are two of my favorite...
Marcus Vinícius invincibility frames? Dark souls invincibility frames were shit. So it was good that you can increase the frames.
Abyssal Rayz dark souls always had I frame modifiers rings ds1 and then a stat in dks2 if you believe dark souls 2 is a bad action rpg you have a flawed opinion
jdr ok did you not read my post properately? I was complaining about the lack of adaptability stat. Not the whole franchise.
Levelling up to increase invincibility frames was not a good direction. In fact it was unnecessary and really cheap. I like Dark Souls 2, but it's still my least favourite (but strangely the one I'd likely replay more). It had a lot of improvements I appreciated, but they also tried to make it more artificially challenging by increasing stamina consumption and delay, and increasing the amount of ganking and enemies you fight. This made combat feel less impactful or interesting (in addition to the strange sound-design), like you're fighting in water. If you didn't have a broadsword earlier on in the game, then getting through all that gank would've been even more tedious.
At first I didn't appreciate the faster equipment breakage, but looking back, I did appreciate it a lot. It gave you another reason to equip more than one weapon at a time. And given that upgrading a weapon was easier, it's the only Souls game where I wanted to test out every weapon.
Most of the bosses felt like filler and didn't have much of an impact. Some of them had you wondering why they even existed. Of course, there are still some pretty memorable ones, especially the DLC, even if they're drowning in some really poor ones. And the final boss was just horribly done. It was really a disappointment. I knew it would've been the Queen from the get-go, but she was unrecognisable during the battle, and just sorts of pops up.
Dark Souls 2 is a good game, just not a good sequel for the original Dark Souls (i.e. not the sequel people were waiting for).
Thanks Nostalgia.
Yeah, it’s better
i'd say darksouls is a better sequel to demons souls than darksouls
I am really bad at Dark Souls. But my first experience was ds2, and I absolutely hated it to begin with because I was so bad. But then I learned how to git gud and I got pretty far in the game. Then I started ds1 and my experience changed. The bosses made me on my toes a lot and the atmosphere of the game itself it really beautiful. I recently got blood borne and I'm not used to the aggressive nature of it because of how much hiding behind my shield I did. But to sum this up, my favorite dark souls game has to be Dark Souls 1.
I felt the same. Both 1 and 2 where stressful and challenging, but Dark Souls 1 felt far more rewarding.
*sigh* I have the unpopular opinion that Dark Souls 2 was a disappointment. The map design sucked, because some of the areas made no sense in their placement- The Old Iron Keep is the most glaring example of this. Two, many of the bosses were just downright cheap. Choosing to just throw multiple things at you, instead of having movesets and shit- the Skeleton Lords is the worst of these, because one of them conjures six goddamned bonewheel skeletons. Six. Of one of the most difficult enemies to deal with in packs. Th weapon degradation thing bugged me but a couple reinforcements and abuse of the very common and easy-to-find bonfires made that moot- oh, and the limited amount of Titanite shards that the vendors had seemed like an arbitrary limit. The fact that the enemies die permanently after being killed 12-15 enemies is really arbitrary, eliminating grinding for rare items and making it easy to progress by just nuking everything. The story bits were nice, as they always are, but the Solaire pandering was strong with this one (note my use of conspicuous starwars reference SEE, WE'RE RELEVANT AND KNOW THE FANS). And removing Humanity kind of.. spat in the face of an overarching theme from the first one. Couple that with the mindnumbing abundance of lifegems and the extremely linear design, not to mention the fact that weapon upgrades only have a single barrier, Soft and Shiny was a really stupid addition not to mention annoying as hell, and finally the fact that so few weapons are available at first is just too damning. Besides which, there's no feeling of "oh, this place is just too hard, come back to it later."
Lul that's not an unpopular opinion whatsoever.
Oh good then it isn't just me x3 Course I also think Skyrim was a shallow disappointment and that Fallout 4 let down a lot of the series's features.
+Jagar Alagoria Same, bruh. I also noticed a very, very, very weird new system in enemies animations. They move like... goofy pieces of butter sliding on a hot pan. They start slow and progressively accellerate, with a regular pace, until they walk you by. They are like... drunk or something. Plus, they are all so goofy, I can't stand their proportions, the long arms, the stature, the animations. They are no intimidating at all, just pieces of poligons.
bruh the popular opinion is that dark souls 2 sucks
DevilIceHart
...really? I honestly kind of thought it was just me >->
The humanoid enemy argument was from ProJared heh
On a serious note, the character felt more floaty in DS2, controls felt less tight.
One thing I hated when playing it again recently is that you STOP in your tracks to use the Estus Flask, so its really easy to just get hit again
Part of the gameplay flow and a deliberate system.
ds2 movements were so much more fluids, i really find ds1 movements awkward and too slow.
saedt Yes, this is how I've been looking to describe DS2 as a whole and why I don't like it very much (I never even played the DLC and I'm a huge Souls fan).
The whole game just feels floaty, and almost cartoonish. It's almost too smooth, and that really clashes with jarring moments like how long it takes to use your Estus and the massive amount of time it takes to heal.
The art is great, with fanatic environments and definitely some memorable views that made me say "wow" and eventually come back to it after beating it, clashes directly with some things. The armor isn't as gritty and defined as the rest of the world, and the summoning signs are just far too cartoonish.
Overall I think floaty, maybe inconsistent even, are the words that really describe DS2 as a Souls game. It's STILL a very solid game on it's own.
@@snomangaming Didn't that happen in dark souls 1 as well?
The main purpose of the stone tunnels that connect the areas together was to hide load times, while still giving the player a way to physically walk from place to place rather than be entirely disconnected, the way demon's souls was.
I never understood the hate for dark souls 2. The game improved on so much with the base game and then again with Sotfs. Dark souls 1 and 2 are by far my favorite games. I think with all the hate for the second game, we got a dark souls 1 sequel, rather than a dark souls 3.
I liked Dark Souls 2, I would say it's my least favorite of the souls games I still really enjoyed it. Though it was great in some ways and terrible in others, I'd still give it an 8/10
I disagree. Ds1 was much better than 2.
I disagree. I think 2 was better for good reasons.
Ds1 is on par in many ways
I may be a bit late to this, but I have to agree that DS1 was the better game. Overall, they were both great, but I felt that some of the boss fights in DS2 felt a lot more haphazard, where they would just throw enemies at you for the sake of it.The boss fights of DS1 felt more like 1 on 1 scenarios, where it was just you and the boss in a dramatic face-off (with the annoying exception of Gravelord Nito). Some like the Capra Demon did implement other enemies too, but they really just added to the tension of the fight as they were usually rather easy to beat. In DS2 however, there were sometimes so many that taking on one at a time felt more tedious as you got repeatedly shot/stabbed in the back.
From a level design perspective, DS1 also takes the cake as the world was never built around fast travel (at least not until you reached Anor Londo, and even then it was only ever to reach one or two isolated locations), whereas DS2 began with fast travel unlocked for the player, ironically making each area feel more separate despite the fact that you were never more than a few buttons away. DS3 also has this problem, but for whatever reason I never notice it as much.
tl;dr - DS1 is better
That Guy I disagree entirely, but I'll post my reasons later I don't have time rn
Pooky-Raed
I think Dark Souls 2 improved upon Dark Souls quite abit..
It took a couple steps back as well, But Dark Souls 2 is definitely a worthy sequel..
For me dks 1 was one of those games that I fell in love with. Something about it endeared itself to me. Dks 2 felt soulless. This guy liking the map in dks 2 pretty much invalidates his opinion to me.
-Expanding on my opinion cause I don't wanna seem like I'm being a dick- dks1 map layout felt ingenious, it felt real and was interconnected in ways I hadn't expected. 2 was too linear and I absolutely hated it. It took away that "oh cool!" moment you experienced when unlocking a shortcut. I also felt like getting lost and stumbling into an area you weren't probably supposed to go to yet was a great way to encourage exploration and practice. The fast travel option in 2 took away the inevitable grind you'd have to make from your last bonfire. It was inconvenient, but I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. fast travel felt cheap. I just really felt like the game came off feeling hollow(no pun intended) and sterile. I could go on but I'll stop there.
I pretty much agree with you in this...the map in Dark Souls 1 (which I'm currently playing again now after finishing a few months back Dark Souls 2, still have to play the third) was incredible and was something that you couldn't even imagine at first.
Before playing the game I thought the world was full of tiny maps like multi-zone areas, and then while playing it blew my mind.
Also I like more the pace in Dark souls 1, the physics and how everything felt (heavy weapons, armor, etc) compared to the movements and how speeded up Dark souls 2 was.
I disagree a little with fast travel tho...I wish the first game had it as well since sometimes (when "farming" was not needed) it felt more of a waste of time to go back to certain places even if you had some shortcuts here and there.
Dark Souls 2 is great and fun, the coop experience worked and works great, but Dark Souls 1 was and still is special to me and as you said, I also felt in love with it.
Can't wait to play the third (a good mix of both as far as I could tell) but I'm waiting for those DLC's to come out and get the "full package" as I did with 1 and 2. ;)
You know, it was the instant you said "I found ALL the bosses to be creative and memorable, just like the first game" that I gave up. Fucking really? Dragonrider, generic dude with a spear less-intimidating than the Old Knights who you have to get past to reach him? _Twin_ Dragonriders, the same dude twice, only this time one of them is sniping you with a bow? Prowling Magus & Congregation, _a room full of fucking normal enemies?_ This is the point I realised you're not "critiquing" DS2 at ALL, you're just gushing about it. You _praised_ the game's biggest flaws, for god's sake (while ironically failing to point out the things it actually DID do better than DS1, like the improved stats and equipment balance, Power Stance and PvP).
Oh spare me! See, this right here is the difference between me, a Dark Souls _fan,_ and you, a Dark Souls _fanboy!_ Before I even _start_ with you, I'm calling you out on your bullshit accusation that I "rag on ds2 like it's the worst game in the world". I did _nothing_ of the sort, that's a load of fanboy wank.
I _like_ Dark Souls 2, but it is a considerably flawed game, probably the weakest of the series (Demon's Souls and Bloodborne included) and a big part of it was how it was crammed with crappy filler bosses until it was padded like a flat girl's bra! You want me to name more than 2 bad bosses? Fine, I will. So many of DS2's bosses are either normal enemies (or a group of normal enemies) with a health meter slapped on them, rehashes of bosses from earlier games, or even rehashes of bosses from the _same_ game, that it's easy!
The alphabetical list (DLC included) of DS2 bosses I would consider mediocre _at best_ (and _absolutely awful_ at worst) goes: Afflicted Graverobber, Ancient Soldier Varg and Cerah the Old Explorer; Aldia, Scholar of the First Sin; Ancient Dragon; Belfry Gargoyles; Covetous Demon; Dragonrider; Duke's Dear Freja; Giant Lord; Guardian Dragon; Lost Sinner; Lud & Zallen, the King's Pets; Nashandra; Old Dragonslayer; Old Iron King; Prowling Magus & Congregation; The Rotten; Royal Rat Authority; Royal Rat Vanguard; Ruin Sentinels; Scorpioness Najka; Skeleton Lords; Smelter Demon (Blue rehash); Throne Watcher & Defender; Twin Dragonriders; Velstadt; Vendrick. That's _26 bosses_ out of 41, over _half_ of the game's excessively-bloated roster, who are forgettable, disposable, uncreative, disappointing, anticlimactic, or just downright _garbage._ Hell, after releasing the unquestioned least-impressive end boss in the franchise with Nashandra (unless you're splitting hairs by counting True King Allant as the "end boss" of Demon's Souls rather than False King Allant), they took another go at it by offering an alternate secret end boss in SotFS Edition- only for said boss, Aldia, to be _worse_ than Nashandra!
Compare with Dark Souls 1 where the list of bosses I would consider mediocre-to-bad goes like this: Bed of Chaos; Stray Demon; Demon Firesage; Centipede Demon; Taurus Demon; Moonlight Butterfly; the Four Kings; Seath the Scaleless; Capra Demon; Pinwheel- and that's me being _harsh_ (most people would pillory me for considering the Four Kings a poor fight)! That's 10/26, and several of those are at least serviceable- it's _because_ there are fewer bosses in DS1 than DS2 that a sub-par one is easier to forgive (although Bed of Chaos is still inexcusable). Either way, I rate 16 good DS1 bosses to only 15 good DS2 bosses- so despite having way MORE bosses, DS2 still doesn't even have as many good ones as DS1!
I never said DS2 had NO good bosses. I never even implied it. But when this reviewer _specifically said, in exact words_ "I found ALL the bosses to be creative and memorable", implicitly including the Dragonrider, the Twin Dragonriders, the Royal Rat Vanguard, the Prowling Magus & Congregation, and the Covetous Demon in that assessment, I called him out on it. And I'm perfectly justified to do so.
Despite his heated tone I have to agree with ArcaneAzmadi. The bosses are definetely the weakest of a long list of weak points in Dark Souls 2. I remember my first boss was the Last Giant, I saw him and thought "oh man, I'm so f*cked!". And then 15 seconds later as he fell dead at my feet I thought, "wait, is that for real?". I actually expected him to have a second phase because that fight was too pathetic to be true.
That's when I realized that all the hatred towards DS2 was justifiable, and my expectations with the game went absolutely downhill.
ArcaneAzmadi Didn't Dark Souls make you fight the tutorial boss, then fight him with a bigger health pool and AoE attack, then light him on fire to fight him in the late game.
And don't start me on the SEVEN TAURUS DEMONS at the entrance to Lost Izalith and there's also one or two Capra Demon's there as well.
Okay, first of all, those two Asylum Demon clones don't take up the majority of DS1's boss roster like the countless humanoid enemies in DS2.
Second, Dragonrider gets re-used twice, only this time there's TWO of them! Oooo, so innovative. You're also forgetting Smelter Demon, who was re-used in the DLC in one of the worst bossfights I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing, with a constant slog through poisonous hazards and enemies every time you die to him.
And you completely missed the point of the Taurus Demons encountered in Lost Izalith, and also blatantly lied about them. They were NOT bosses, they were regular enemies. Although their stats remain similar to the boss versions, they were by no means a chore to fight. By that point the player was stronger, and they could take them on with no problem. They were put there to show the player how far they'd come, and how much stronger they've gotten. Even if they were as powerful as the original though, they still aren't bosses. There's no boss health bar, no music accompanying them, and no fog wall to get through in order to fight them, so no, they are not bosses. Next time you want to try putting DS1 down just so you can make your precious DS2 look better, try not to blatantly lie about the games, okay?
While we're on the subject of bosses coming back as regular enemies in droves, the Ruin Sentinals (yes, I looked up their names just now, because the majority of DS2's bosses just blend together) were lazily re-used in Drangleic castle where they all just bullrush the player while they're trying to fend off a drove of knights at the same time. The Taurus Demons served a purpose in the overall experience, and were there to not only give the player a tougher challenge before the next boss, but to empower them when they realise they're on even ground with them more so than the first one. The Ruined Sentinals were just thrown in there, without any thought put in to them other than "Let's make it difficult" , and were not rescaled at all in terms of how much damage they both delt and received.
And don't get me starded on the PURSUER, a boss Fromsoft's B-team loved so much that they wanted to shove him in as a miniboss at every opportunity they could get. I ended up just flat-out ignoring every encounter I could with it, because I just didn't care to fight the same boring enemy.
You wanted to talk about DS1 reusing the same boss three times? Well I just gave you plenty more examples in DS2 where they did the same thing, but worse. It may not have been three times, but it was with a hell of a lot more bosses, and executed much more poorly. Oh, and Did I forget to mention Elana, a boss that summons 2 other bosses in one of the most artificially difficult Souls boss fights ever released? Not even Maneater from Demon's Souls was that unfair. Actually I'm sorry for comparing that turd to Maneater, at least those bosses were original and in an actually good game.
Bufudyne I didn't say that the Asylum Demon clones took up most of the boss roster and while humanoid enemies do in the sequel, the beastial bosses weren't *really* good until Bloodborne when they reacted to your individual hits and had more reasonable stamina, yeah Sif limps but it's zero to a hundred, and the bosses that weren't humanoid were handled really well like Freja and Demon of Song. Nor did I say the Lost Izalith demons were bosses, I just pointed out how annoying it is to see bosses become regular enemies as yes it shows your strength but it also shows a slight lacking in diversity (the biggest perpetrator of this that I've played being Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, my favourite DS game it may be but a lot of enemies are literally just pallet swapped versions of earlier ones) by all means it annoyed me just as much when going into Dragon Aerie to fight three of the boss I literally JUST fought (Guardian Dragon) but I found it so alarmingly dismaying to see seven Taurus Demon's all in a row.
(And another reason I found this terrifying is I have only ever gone there once just after defeating Quelaag so those stats vs seven Taurus and a Capra if I'm careless and you'd see what pissed me off. I've never been able to beat Ornstein and Smough because of reasons ranging from Ornstein charging through Smough to my camera getting stuck on his hammer, I haven't been able to even get in Izalith due to that golden fog crap. This point in the game (Anor Londo) is the only one I'd say I'm biased against, I just wanted to point out that DkS2 isn't the only one copying and pasting.)
And also on the topic of copying and pasting, the Pursuer in Scholar of the First Sin Edition is true to his name and lore, he pursues and punishes the Bearer of the Curse. I have really no rebuttal for the Ruin Sentinels, that is pretty bad I'll admit but in response to Elana, every souls game has bad bosses for artificial reasons, at least once:
Dark Souls: Bed of Chaos
Dark Souls 2: Elana
Bloodborne: Defiled Chalice
(I was gonna put Nameless King but that was more tedium of fighting the dragon than artificial difficulty)
I wasn't even trying to put down the entire game as a whole, it may be by far my least favourite (contested with Demon's Souls) but for totally different reasons, I just think what's good for the goose is good for the gander (sorry for that grandma metaphor I just don't have any other way to say it).
I just recently got into this series and have only finished the original (never played the others, sadly) and I still just can't put my feelings for the game into words. I think you put it best: it gives an experience unlike any other in gaming. I particularly love the enigmatic storyline of Dark Souls. Unlike some games that just slap on some random BS and call it a story, this one felt smart, calculated, as if the creators knew precisely what to reveal and when, and how hard it should be to find each fragment of the story. It was very artistic in its approach.
...Damn, I freaking adore this game.
PRAISE THE SUN!
HarujiSubayama they did it in demons souls so they had a starting point and didn't really improve much in terms of story actually down graded it from demons imo as demons has a very very complex story
Ugh, you've inspired me to finish scholar of the first sin. I'm stuck in that glowing underground place right now after the mirror knight boss
Yeah I haven't played the DLC but everyone says its some of the best in the series
So I was going to bed watching some UA-cam before this and then I watched this and the DS3 vs BB and I haven't beaten DS3 yet so instead of going to bed I'm going to play some Dark Souls 3
Hahah it'll be worth it I promise :P
incredibly hard boss.shows taurus demon
HheheheHEHEhEHEEH
go to truthCOnteSTCOm< ReaRD The preSent
List of souls game made by from software
1.Dark souls 2.Dark Souls 3 3.Bloodborne
List of souls game made by ubisoft
1.Dark Souls 2
1.Demon souls
***** consider it a souls game then
***** well if it wasnt made by from soft it would be called a dark souls rip off..in dark souls there is bonfire which serves as a checkpoint and in bloodborne there is lamp which also serves as a checkpoint.. and the lamp look like a reskin of a bonfire.. anyway just call it souls game.. the difficulty the engine the bosses the health system the inventory system is same as dark souls
***** yeah yeah... but why not call it a souls game right?? when we talk about souls game it means the best games from from software.. except for ds2
+KenjiD5 nah Ds2 is pretty good
You've just earned a sub! It's so refreshing to finally find someone who doesn't completely diss DS2. The game has its flaws but I'm so tired of all the harsh critisism surrounding it... I really appreciate your positive perspective. Thank you for the video.
Appreciate it :) And hey, this vid is super old so hopefully you'll enjoy my newer videos even more lol :P
Finally someone who talks more objectively on DKS v DKS2 comparison. I was starting to get tired of everyone talking with nostalgia and the lovely rosey glasses. I pretty much agree with everything you said, pretty much my same opinion.
Thank you! Haha yeah I tried to be objective, but it's hard when you have such love for the series. Thanks for watching!
I thought you did pretty damn well.
As Sliferx said, hearing -broken records- people go on and on about how DkS never did anything wrong, while DS2 was just a complete mess gets old.
Both games did different things equally well, and equally wrong. Both are great games, for different reasons.
+Sliferx Tbh I don't think this was a very objective comparison. It was more positive in DS2's light and seemed a bit one sided if you're trying to decide which one is better based on his video.
Chris Anderson Been a long time since i've watched the video and i won't start watching again just to tell you that you are wrong. From what i remember this video did it justice. There is no need to decide which game is better because both are great as each other but in different things.
@@xsliferx94 5 years late, but he has a point. Some things that people appreciate from DS2 are things that I hate and many others do too. The health going down after you die, and the disconnected map feel even WORSE now that DS3 has fixed these issues w/ a more sensible layout and embers. By more sensible layout, I mean that the game is a linear path until midgame, with easier to access DLCs than in Scholar.
I love this franchise, Dark Souls felt to me like it had a perfect mix, good story, good characters, GREAT combat, I felt like Dark Souls 2 was pretty amazing too, only dropping the ball with the characters (lucatiel, vengarl and benhart were amazing though) and the level design.
I do think Dark Souls one is the better game but there's a lot of things I love about Dark Souls 2 and I hate how people always shit in Dark Souls 2 its not perfect but still a hell of a game
More than half the bosses in ds2 are ds1 spin-offs.
Welcome to the comment section. Here we can observe casuals compensating by trying to sound as elitist as possible as they talk smack about Dark souls 2.
Did you ever notice the magical elevator between Earthen Peak and Iron Keep?
hahah yeah i mention the disconnect there in my Top 10 Fire Levels video
Cool video! I'm a bit surprised on how forgiving you are with the maps and explorations in Dark Soul 2. After I heard (from many people) of those flat and straightforward areas, leading to a boss and a bonfire (basically the opposite of the amazing vertical maze of shortcuts in Lordran), I just lost my interest in even buying the game. Because exploring and getting lost in that maze was 80% of my amazement at Dark Soul 1.
YOU ARE AMAZING!!!! I swear every time i watch your videos it inspires me so now im gonna try out dark souls because you have a great talent for making videos and advertising!!! thank you soo much for this you earned a subscriber keep up the good work and i will stay active (if homework doesnt kill me before that :D
Humanity also raises your defense in dark souls 1. With 99 humanities you get an extra 50 or so defense across the board. At low level pvp it makes a huge difference.
Having played Dark Souls 2 first for months, and now just starting Dark Souls about a year later, I liked the controls in Dark Souls 2 so much better. That may have to do with framerate as well? But in Dark Souls I feel like a tank that takes a second too long to respond when I want something to happen. Dark Souls 2 I felt totally in control.
Yeah Dark Souls 2 is 60 fps while DS1 is only 30, so it probably felt a lot more fluid. I agree that combat is less clunky, but my one gripe with DS2 is that you have to stop completely to use your estus flask, so this ended up getting me killed more than I'd like to admit :(
funny thing, i feel it's the other way around. ^^ Example: try to change your right hand weapon while drinking Estus, in DS1 it works, in DS2 nothing happens. You have to wait for the animation to finish. Or if you want to change your hotbar item (D-Pad down), you have to carefully monitor if DS2 actually registered your input. Don't know, stuff like that infuriates me. =P ~ Also, maybe try to unequip your armor & weapons in DS1 and roll around, maybe there's that feeling you were looking for?
Oh my, I'm not the only one who prefers DSII over DS1. Woooooo~
I loved Dark Souls 2, but the atmosphere always felt slightly off to me, compared to the original.
I prefer it too mate I don't get the hate
Also my favourite part of ds2 were the npcs
The atmosphere of 2 is beautiful. Maybe it's partially due to playing 2 on PS4 Pro at 1080p60 and 1 on a 360 at 720p10, but there were moments in 2 where I just had to stop and marvel at the spectacle, while I don't think that ever happened in 1. The areas in DS1 favored function over form. Some exceptions are the roof where you fight the gargoyles and of course Anor Londo. In 2, even the hub area is beautiful. The first time I saw the giant ocean with its huge, rolling waves I thought it was a hand-painted background, and then I saw it was actually moving.
can i love both equally?
DARK SOULS and DARK SOULS II SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN AND DARK SOULS III are my favorite "Souls" games!
I disagree. The best ''souls'' game is obviously...
Lego star wars
I don't think I agree with the statement that the controls are unbelievably smooth, especially in the first game. Imo the first game had the worst controls hands down. Bloodborne had the best.
dark souls 2 is the worst one. still a pretty great game but compared to the other it sucks. demons souls even has it beat
+This Guy yeah I heard it was really good. and no, at that point I was just powering through so I could beat all of them
no, dark souls 3 is the worst of all of them
+Isiah Barnes how do you figure? because the gameplay is fluid and not chopped up Legos? because the boss fights were developed with thought and dedication? because over everything it's just the most fun? what about dark souls 2 makes you think it's anywhere near as good as 3? 3 is a masterpiece. 2 is like a failed dark souls 1 that tried really hard and did nothing but make shitty bosses and environments. I'm really looking forward to your argument.
DS2 only did the PvP and new PvE mechanics like Acstetic & powerstancing better than DS3. In all the other areas, DS3 just outshines DS2 imo.
While I agree that DS2 had the most poor boss designs; 3 is anything but a masterpiece. It is the epitome of fan service with returning characters and areas for no other reason than "the first game had these, so people will love it again!" there was no reason to include Andre again, he had no place in this new world. The removal of proper dual-wielding and powerstancing in favor of the dual-weapons was an awful decision; you can't dual wield massive weapons or any unique weapons together viably, and there are so few unique dual-weapons, instead a good majority of them are just two of the same weapon paired together. The game is even more linear than DS2, there are practically no branching paths, and any paths that do branch off tend to lead to a dead end with maybe a new item/secret or a boss, and then you just go back to the normal path. Finally, the build variety is complete shit; sorcery is worthless and any build that isn't a quality build is just pointless; if you make a pure strength or dexterity build it will almost always be completely outclassed by a quality build. I enjoyed DS3 my first time through, but calling it a masterpiece is completely over the top.
Memorable soundtracks:
DS1+DLC: Asylum demon, Gaping Dragon, Ornstein & Smough, Gwyn, End credits(Nameless), Iron Golem, Four Kings, Abysswalker Artorias.
DS2+DLC's: Ruin Sentinels, Sir Alonne, Burnt Ivory King, Executioners chariot, Longing.
I'll admit that Ds2 had fewer memorable tracks IMO, but the Dark Souls music in general is very memorable.
I love Dark Souls II But I DESPISE the Soul Memory system for Multiplayer.
I loved both. Dark Souls 1 had an amazing story, enemy and level design, and Dark Souls 2 had amazing weapons, armor and spell diversity. I'm currently at my 58th playthrough of Dark Souls 2. Still not getting boring.
Also, no Invaders with endgame gear, thanks to soul memory. I don't care what you say, but I love the concept of soul memory. Whenever somebody bitches about it, it turns out they are playing Dark Souls only for easy PvP kills. Man up.
Great opening post.
Dark Souls 1 had weapon and armor durability too... Only then you had to actually spend Souls (never a lot, but still) to repair them rather than just autmatic when you rest at a bonfire.
you have to use the same weapon for years or abuse special effects of mlgs or dragon weapons to break them
Disagree a bit on the map being easier. I think cause I had to walk everywhere in Dark Souls 1 I became super familiar with the map and layout. But in dark souls 2, there were many times I had no idea where I was supposed to go because I was teleporting everywhere from the start. Had to start systemattically going through each area taking hours of extra time not progressing just to find out "oh, I missed a door in the shaded woods" or whatever. Also in DS1 when you finally CAN teleport, it feels like the nicest thing the game could have possibly given you, your reward for completing the first quest you were given. I like ds2, but I definitely prefer the interconnected, shortcut riddled map of dark souls 1.
The problem with DS1 and not having a fast travel is because it waste your time. DS1 isn't fully interconnected, just the first part of the game is. Sure you learn the levels because you have to do a lot of backtracking, but the problem is that YOU HAVE to backtrack. Some parts of the game is outright broken just because you are forced to backtrack in DS1, the blowdart guys never respawn because it will be impossible to backtrack if they did. The argument where you learn the levels is equally true with DS2, the more you play the levels the more you learn them. The difference is that in DS1 you are forced and in DS2 you are not.
Have you ever been in Anor Londo and figured out that the weapon you have sucks and you found another weapon you want? Do you know what that means? That means you have to backtrack to the start through Anor Londo, past Sens fortress and back to the blacksmith to upgrade your new weapon. I sure hope you bought enough materials to upgrade the weapon with or otherwise you can enjoy going back through Sen's Fortress again that really isn't designed to be backtracked as you are at that point supposed to unlock fast travel. It is a nightmare.
The NPC design and the places are designed incredibly good in DS1 while in DS2 the gameplay and the variety of armor and weapons is really cool
I remember when I first played Dark Souls 2, it was the first Dark Souls I played so I got fucking Pwned a lot of times before even getting through the Eide's Flame Tower "Wait a second, this is just so hard! I'll take a little peek at the guide... Fuck this is not the first zone, goddamit!". Anyways, when I got used to the game's difficulty I literally stopped playing anything else besides Dark Souls until I completed the three games, when I realized that happened I could just say one thing to myself "This is an ARPG Masterpiece"
Yeah it's kind of addicting, like once you get it down you just want more!
I beat both games but i think back on darksouls 1 with nostalgia and darksouls 2 i just neutral.
Majula theme will forever be seared into my mind.
There are some major design differences in ds2 that I think ruined it for me. first the lock on in ds1 you could lock on to any enemy. See a guy hanging off a bridge waiting to attack, good kill him and move on. I ds2 you cant lock on so you have to manually aim then there is the forest which is proof the game is geared towards heavily armored enemies. That is my second point bows and magic got such a heavy nerf that anyone wanting to play a ranged character could not nearly as easy as a heavy one. DS1 also had a design around enemies respawning so each of the areas was smaller and had more paths to win in DS2 it seams like they expect you to grind then remove enemies as soon as you know there moveset. there are many more thing like thee I guess I feel that DS1 was way more fair than DS2.
+Curtis Jones It definitely is different. I still enjoyed my time with DS2, but DS1 definitely is better designed.
I finished DS2 awhile back, but didn't get a chance to dive into NG+ or the DLC until now. As I'm replaying it and going through the DLC, I'm realizing how much I'm enjoying it.
While I agree with a lot of the vid's assessment, I'm going to be a stickler about one: sound and music. The lack of music in the Souls game is deliberate, and it gives room to listen to the environment around you. Not only that, but the sound in both games is fantastic to the point that you can often detect things you can't see just by listening -- this helped a lot in the damn Frigid Wastes where you could hear the killer reindeer before you could see them, or the grunts of an ogre. As for memorable music during bosses, I'll admit nothing really stood out as much as Lord of Cinder from the first game, but that's okay - I don't really play DS for the music anyways.
dark souls is a really great story line in all 3 of them.. love the videos snowmaN cant wait to see more
Thanks, lots of Souls content on the channel, and other analytical content :)
I should have hated Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin but I ended up liking it way more than I ever could have expected, despite all the bad mechanics and stupid design choices the team made.
If I remember, the DkS2 mechanic of having your health decrease every time you die down to half health was similar to Demon's Souls.
Yeah it was similar, I think in DeS it just cut straight to half health right away when you died
Yeah it was just as tough. But you could also find a ring like the Ring of Binding in DkS2 to maintain the health at 75 percent.
+jude m In Demon's Souls your world and character tendency effect how much life you lose. The closer to pure black tendency the lower your health in soul form. The closer to pure white tendency the higher your health in soul form.
What about the elevator located at the top of a fortress that takes you UP to the base of a volcano? That made no sense.
The more I play Dark Souls 3 th more I love Dark Souls 2.
U like ds2 better than ds3?
@@galaticwars When I wrote this I did, I have hence gained a bit more appreciation for DSIII, but I have to say that overall I respect DSII and what it tried to do a lot more than I will ever respect DSIII so ultimately yes, I would still say I like DSII more, just not by as high a margin as I used to. Either way they're all phenomenal games, not much of a reason to argue which is better.
We going to say the map design is better in DS2? How cleverly interconnected everything was in DS1 was a masterclass of level design, and part of the reason I love the game. The fast travel was a result of how the world was designed, not vice versa.
I think fast travel is a big strength in Dark Souls 2 becsuse you could get to stuff you needed much faster like a weapon infusion, boss weapon, buying poison moss. And yeah backtracking was great in the first Dark Souls, but sometimes it got to be stupid. For example trying to get to the dlc, the doll, the rusted iron ring, and running out of poison moss in Blightown were examples. Dark Souls 1 was my first one so obviously there was bias, but I think Dark Souls 2 is underrated and has a pretty nice world as well. It's just Lordran came first and sticks in people's minds.
i thought i was the only one who enjoyed ds2 over ds1, plus i can make my character pretty in ds2
Never heard of ring of the dead?
your not the only one ds2 was my first souls game i ever played i never knew what dark souls is but ds2 sucked me right in and i love the souls games now there the best i beat ds2 multible times and i still love it i just dont know how to explain the feeling that i got when i played ds2.
Idk how a game full of bad hitboxes, artificial difficulty and filler bosses is enjoyable
Drangleic is Vinheim. The dragon rings were crafted in Vinheim, at the Dragonschool and the one ring I found said they were made in Drangleic, so Vinheim. But I may be wrong, it is Dark Souls after all.
"Took down an unbelievably hard boss for the first time." *shows Taurus demon*
Listen pal, if ds1 is your first souls game, taurus demon will more likely than not ravage your asshole.
You dont know how many tries i need only to defeat Taurus demon
@Jeremiah Pheasant For melee build, just buy the resident key and take the gold pine resin. After cleaning those archers, use the resin and do the plunging attack strat but only for once. That alone could take away half of Taurus's health.
@Jeremiah Pheasant seems like someone used guides for their first playthrough... Also a dragonslayer spear? We are talking about the Taurus Demon on the towers wall, there is no way you had a +10 dragonslayer spear at that fight.
Jeremiah Pheasant I dropped DS2 while I was still able to get a refund and only played it a bit after I was able to borrow it from a store,didn't finish it though because it had so many fcking issues.
As for the Demon Souls,I am excited for the remaster,but I am not a console player so I am hoping it will release on PC as well.
As far as difficulty goes, 3 is hardest than 1 for sure,but I only played 1 offline back in the day and only started playing online 3 10 days ago. In fact,I would dare say that DS as a series (apart from 2) isn't so much hard as it is rewarding.
i may be a little late but did u ever notice thet darksouls has almost no background music. its almost only boss fights
"The controls felt smooth". Try PC, Mouse & Keyboard, with dsfix and mouse fix .
oof haha i just always used a controller
+snomaN Gaming Just play on console,lol
Jonh Price
Assuming everyone has one... or is willing to buy.
Τριαντάφυλλος Τσιακίρης Yeah,You re right,just because I bought a console by 500 dolars instead of 1k for a pc.
Who spends 1k on a PC? I bought mine for 750 on sale. I always wait on sale for my big buying sprees. Original cost like 1150-1250. Can't remember correctly.
The tunes thing killed me, I love dark souls but the original is sometimes butt ugly, it's more that the visuals can't keep up with the music. Or apparently Brown and grey textures in both games are just better than o and s theme, all one theme, pinwheel theme, gwyns theme, gwyndolins theme
Level Up easier? HAH u got me there boi
Also there's similarities between earthen peak and sens fortress earthen peak is the only place with an arrow trap and it fires 3 arrows . It has the same trap design and amount of arrows fired as the ones in Sens fortress . Also harvest valley is supposedly undead burg so this could make sense .
Also the texture of the walls and floor of earthen peak is very similar to sens
"Dark Souls 2 IS a really good sequel."
FINALLY a review that's not full of bullshit bias hatred or blind rejection of this games genuine evolutions in great gameplay
James Loucks amen
Dark Souls 2 is a really good game... But is a really bad Dark Souls.
Shitty Level Design
Shitty connection between areas
Shitty Bosses Design, even if Velstadt, Fume Knight, Ivory King, etc. were good, they are humanoids, so....
Shitty Artistic Design (No originality there, just humanoids..)
Artificial Difficulty (Shrine of Amana for example)
The combat is not as fun as Dark Souls 1
Let's talk about the DLC's
Ivory King:
-Good Lore
-Good level design but the textures feel so empty
-Artificial Difficulty
-Worst Area in the entire franchise (Frigid Outskirts)
-Recycled boss (Lud & Zellen = Aava)
Old Iron King:
-Good Lore
-"Meh" level design
-Artificial Difficulty (yeeeeiiii)
-Recycled boss (Blue Smelter Demon)
-Shitty enemies design
Sunken King:
-Good level design
-Good Lore
-Shitty bosses (Elana the Squalid Queen, Gank Squad, and Velstadt who is summoned by Elana)
I don't know, I think Dark Souls 1 is better...
not even worth refuting. same bs nonsense as usual.
Look at the second half of dark souls 1 and it has all of those glaring issues. Do you think second half of Dark Souls had good level design? Hell look back at the Lost Izalith and youll find its just an ass load of recycled bosses scattered about. Hell there are 3 fucking Asylum demons scattered throughout the game itself. Lets move onto artificial difficulty though, did you forget about the bed of chaos? What about your forced death at Seath the Scaleless? Graveloard Nito with its ass-loads of Skeleton spam (Dont think its artificial difficulty myself but if you really think skeleton lords are then this should fit your definition)? Capra demon with its two ass rushing dogs? Four kings the dps test? Look I love Dark souls 1 but don't let nostalgia goggles blind the flaws to the game, it made some improvements to demon souls but its not perfect.
Dice
Your videos are the kind where even re-watching it 4 years later feels fresh and excellent. Great job mate!
I read the title as "dank souls"
*insert air horns and overused memes*
DS2 ultimate guide : Just circle your enemies right or left, theyll never hit you.
Let's be honest here. Not the ds2 guide, the ''Complete dark souls trilogy guide''
my whole soulsborne list (not including demon souls) is
1. dark souls 2
2.Bborne
3.dark souls 3
4.dark souls
idk why but i didn't really like the original dark souls
+This Guy i liked bloodborne alot but after all ds 2 was my first game and this was the only game that i played for multiple times and still enjoy it. i didnt played demon souls as well so i dont know any thing about it. but dark souls 3 was fun for the first time but then i didnt want to play it anymore.
but actually i dont own a bloodborne game because i dont have a ps4 console, so i play it at my friends house. so maybe if i would own this game myself it would be my favorite.
and i just didnt really like the original dark souls for some reason.
+This Guy thanks for the advise
+This Guy same list,only mine would be(as someone who played all and only played DS1 DLC and reached Orphan/Laurence)-1:Bloodborne
-2:Dark Souls
-3 Dark Souls 3
-4 Dark Souls 2.
No ties.
Don't even call DS2 an improved version. The controls are stiff and much more clunky compared to DS1, and the level design is so poorly thought-out. The enemy AI is rigged in the AI's favour every time, making each fight a chore to go through. The Bossfights are all forgettible and too similar to each other to be considered good or unique with a few minor exceptions, and the art direction and world itself is just as contrived and nonsensical as a Mario world map.
Bufudyne So you want the A.I to be in your favour? Do you want them to just sit there while you hack away at them?
Thank you for appreciating DS2. So many cry babies talk trash about this well thought out game. I’m referring to the SOTFS version as I never completed the original
Sif, Gwyn, and O&S all have AMAZING music.
Misa Susaki also, Artotias and Kalameet.
My first souls game was DS1 then Bloodborne, Dark souls 3, Sekiro, Elden ring, DeS Remake. I went back to play this one since I want to experience every souls game and even after playing all the others, I think this one is definitely unique. And with all the knowledge I have with the gameplay mechanics of the other entries, this one is pretty damn tough.
Ds2 dlc is almost as big as the main game it self. That says something
Jelle Spierings the dlc is smaller dks2 is the biggest souls Bourne game
you're straight up lying
Dark Souls 2 completely raped me Even after Demon's Souls and first Dark Souls. I had hundreds of hours on both and still struggled with ds2. DS3 I had a very OP knight with heavy armor, shield and longsword and I hardly even died.
i can't help but dissagree with most of this video. that is to say, i don't think you were hard enough on dark souls 2. half the things you list as pluses are things i find to be huge detriments to the series. they added so much stuff that made the difficulty seem arbitrary and shallow in dark souls 2, and overall the mechanics and rules that govern dark souls 2 are so totally UNpolished, and unbalanced, that it makes for a really frustrating and unsatisfying experience in dark souls 2.
Hehe that's okay! We don't have to agree, thanks for voicing your thoughts. After watching some other reviews and people's comments, I do see some more downsides, but it never detracted from my experience with the game. I still loved it, but it's all good man! That's the beauty of this world, is that we can actually have differing opinions and still respect each other. EVEN on the internet :)
All I'm gonna say is we can all agree Gravelord Servant was a waste of time and only useful for an early sword and NG+ was meaningless until DkSII added new enemies and a big surprise in Brightstone Cove, but then in BB and DkSIII they messed it up again.
Great video, both games are great, some people hate DS2 but I guess it's because the first one was so good they were expecting something different. I love DS2 and I'M currently on NG3, looking for that platinum
I think that DS2 is better than 1.
*gets in cover*
Nice video. I’m one of those late comers to the series and trying to figure out how it’s different because I came in at 2 and haven’t played 1 yet... can’t wait for the remaster!
the music in dark souls 2 was soooooooooooooo good . at least compared to dark souls 3
imo you can't compare the music of ds2 to the one of ds3 , the music of dark souls 3 is too great to be compared to ds2
Doctorf 17 I know this is a lot later but here are the songs I remember Ds1:OnS, Gwyn, Seath, and moonlight butterfly, title theme
Ds2: majula and ruin sentinels
BB:Hypergan gaol, LUDWIG(THE best theme in the entire series), Maria, Main title/intro
Ds3: Soul of Cinder, Nameless King, Sister Friede, Dragonslayer armour, firelink shrine, Ludex Gundyr, Vordt, Pope gankers
yea man , that majula feeling , the music when you see and fight Vendrick , plus that atmosphere the tune brings in the dragon memories. The music really did it for me in Ds2
majula's theme can get really anoying
the only boss theme that i remember from ds2 is the ruin sentinels
i have a theory about dark souls 2.
maybe the lost bastile is the undead asylum and drangleic was built after the asylum was cleared out by the chosen undead and the kingdom was built on the grounds of the asylum that we dont see
I find DS2 the worst in the trilogy.
It doesn't feel like a Souls game.
Thats retarded.
Indead it is... because they're all different and they all has an unique style to each other!
of corce they feel different... exept dark souls 3 becos it is just an (dark souls 1 fan service game that cant afort environnement props so they use the ones in bloodborne)
EDIT: The point that i am trying to say is that dark souls 2 should not be treated like shit when 90% of the complaint is just nonsense like Thiago comment.
no... french Daaaaaa ಠ⌣ಠ
Edit: But for real... english is not my first language.
The new healing system was a shot in the dark and could've been done better, Fromsoft's original team (Miyazakia in particular) out-right did not allow Dark Souls 2 to use much lore from the first game. I quite liked the world though.
I always see ds2 as the ds ripoff that was made by a guy who heard of dark souls and knew it was hard and just through some enemies into random areas knowing it would be hard
I personally liked dark souls 2 over dark souls 1. dark souls 1 felt a lot easier than 2. everyone hyped the four kings for me but I beat them fairly easily.
Dark souls 3 is amazing and all.... but come on, a zombie apocalypse, MIXED WITH an invasion of giants?
That. Is. Epic.
Talking about Dark Souls 2....
That's not what it was at all the story says the gaints invaded after they where invaded and all of it is shittly repersented
Only just found out what the Company of Champions covenant does from this video... my first playthrough I joined it not knowing what I had just done. Wondered why the game was so hard lol, took me hours to get through FotFG. Defeated a few bosses while still in it as well, in fact I might have been in the covenant for more than half the game lmao.
THE SAME THING HAPPENED TO ME IT WAS SO FRUSTRATING
Wow, you're way more optimistic about 2 than about 100% of people. Almost all the bosses are just rehashed and inferior versions of the bosses in the first game, and some are either boring as fuck or bullshit. Levels are straight lines and boring looking and derived from areas in the first game. There are only a few bosses in the entire game I can even remember, and they're all in the DLCs, and the boss themes are completely forgettable, save for one. Just one. Just. One. Dark Souls 2 is boring, repetitive, lazy, short, linear, and nowhere near the first game in most aspects.
I can't say my time with the game was overall memorable, not nearly as much as 1.
The controls in 2 felt stiff at first. I Get why: you need to be sure of what and where you're swinging. You get used to it, slowly. Parrying was a big change. I welcomed the idea of being able to parry human bosses, and parrying is much harder for me in 2. In Dark Souls 1, you can basically fight everything up to the Taurus Demon with Parry (excluding the rat, and Asylum Demon, obviously). Looknig at it that way, it's more acceptable, but such a drastic change made me not even want to invest the time into learning it.
One of my favorite strategies in 1 was sound. Lob an arrow, strike a wall, use Demon's Pra... umm Aural Decoy, tread softly for a backstab.. It was great for checking corners, or luring something you couldn't pick off, or avoid getting ambushed. In 2 though, so many of my encounters felt triggered. It's cool that enemies ar e a tad smarter, and if you shoot 1 in a group they all aggro, but when I'm being sneaky, getting close to them from behind and to the side, and BAM the whole horde is hot on my trail, it feels shoehorned.
As for story, I read a fair bit of item descriptions, and so many of them don't seem to make a spit of difference. The only items I can mention are ones that mention DS1 characters, long forgotten. Take the Ring of Blades: There;s two countries formed by one guy, then they went to war. Are those countries mentioned again? I don't recall them. The Prince and Princess then the Queen whatsername from Earthen Peak was about as good a story as I remember.
Oh well. Dark Souls 2 did lots of good and bad. Dark Souls 1 isn't perfect either, even if we ignore everything below Blighttown, and even Blighttown's Fps drops.
Heck there's proof of enemy triggers in No Man's Wharf (base game). After going up the stairs, and to the left into the house, there's a guy tossing Oil, a guy hiding in front of a door... thing, and a guy with a dog further back in a house. If you aggro the guy in back, and go back into the house (with the ring of Protection) he should lose aggro, and return to his spawn point. From there, you can walk right up in his face andjust stare at you.
Maybe he's just overcome that I killed his dog.
Soumein
Man, graphics in 2 are pale in comparison
This is one aspect where they really messed up. There were framerate issues late in development especially regarding the lighting so they had to downgrade them sloppily in the last stage of development. The end result was the really flat and ugly lighting that we got in the finished game.
At least it runs waay smoother than DaS 1. DaS 1 has unacceptable fps drops on PS3 even if nothing is happening.
Frutson agreed and the graphics look ugly af.
Just know that Drangleic was a kingdom that had many names before people started calling it Drangleic, even Straid said once "So this is what they call it now, Drangleic?" or something like that to you, the player.
so, no story and lore are different things, the story of ds 1 is simple and straightforward, motivations of characters other than you may be uncertain, but the objective is clear, ds2's story is a fucking mess
Chueko Loyo it's the same mess dks1 is you have a motivation cure the curse find the king the rest is told in the world
"Objective is clear" You are supposed to ring some bells and you cant even tell where to go from firelink shrine.
@@giantotter319 the first NPC of the game (ok, second if you count Oscar) litteraly tells you where the two bells are.
@@giantotter319 He literally says "go up or go down lol" and he says that he still has PTSD from when he went down to Blighttown, so it directs you to go up, and there's literally only one staircase that leads upwards.
@@gu3z185 You are as late as you are presumptuous and Irish.
3:35 and 5:10 a disagree for the use of estus flasks. Sure the dark souls 2 exploration is more important because of estus shards, but in the first game, you explore for more short cuts and weapons, so I don't see much vantage on this point. Become human is most explored um ds2, but the first game uses this question to the life of players, consegue the difficulty decreases, like, in another way, in dark souls 2, being a good a good reason for become human. The life shards is the most wrong part of the sequence, because on 5:10 you say that you have to take care of estus before it ends, but is actually a vantage because it's one more thing to you learn with your errors. Not just boring farming gold for buying those life shards. *Dark souls 2 trades equally the mechanics with dark souls 1, but is in the seeing if each player if it's good or not that's really matters*. Incredible review 👍🏻
after looking at all of the bosses threw out soulsbourn i think my favorite boss has got to be the pursuer
The pursuer is the only boss in soulsborne series that took me like 2 FUCKING WEEKS to beat
he took me like todays and then he followes you i think thats a awesome macanic
I have to say, the environments are so beautiful and diverse in the second game. The first game had diversity, but 2 BY FAR has the best looking armor sets and environments. The fashion souls in that game was endless. and not to mention something nobody ever seems to talk about, the dual wielding stances with any 2 weapons of your choosing was the best thing They could have added, I loved it. I had a spiked mace in one hand and a Morning star in the other. It was menacing! i was disappointing that they removed powerstancing in the 3rd game... it was just sad. it was so good. But the 3rd game has the best soundtrack of the series and the combat is more fast paced (bad or good) it was a fresh feeling. But:
Parrying.. Oh Parrying what did they do to you. It used to be skill based and timing related like hit the parry button right at that split second before the weapon hits you and then you get rewarded. Now parrying in the second game was broken and nearly impossible because it was like you hit the parry button.. Wait a second... then (if you get lucky enough the delayed animation works) you parry. The third-game is less ridiculous than the second with its parry's but Parrying died in Dks2
the map in DS2 did not feel straight forward it sucked
Why is it when you have a group of enemies in DS1 their attacks go through walls and through them but you can't?
Because Myiazaki said so
I am a souls fan but i started with ds2. You might think thats a praise but no, i almost shelfed the series because of how boring and bad i found the game, only really playing it because a friend of mine really wanted to play it with me. If it was not for some DS1 lore videos i ran accross i would have never played ds1 or followed through to bloodborn and ds3 which are among my favorite games.
To me ds2 is not just a bad souls game, its a bad game.
Dark Souls will always be my favorite. It was my first taste of the series & it never gets old. The level design is fantastic, boss fights like O&S, Artorias, Kalameet, Manus, Gwyn (if you decide not to parry). I didn’t feel the same way for DS2. The level design didn’t feel as grandiose or connected. Bosses felt half-assed, Covetous Demon? Really? Prowling Magnus & The Congregation? lmao, I don’t need to continue. The series definitely saw a return to form with DS3 & BB in terms of quality of content. I can’t slam DS2 completely though, Sir Alonne & Fume Knight are very key exceptions.