Yes! It's only obtainable after returning to the Asylum from Firelink Shrine. You'll need a key found in Firelink, which is on top of one of the ruins.
I have never left a game or decided not to play it except Dark Souls 2. Its horrible. specially on keyboard and mouse. Also when multiple enemies attack you it is hard to hit everyone and you just keep rolling and rolling and then attack and then repeat this shit. This is not enjoyable. Also the bosses are not that hard they are super easy but its the way to the boss that is hard. This game is not hard its annoying. you just need luck to clear this game. Some time you get the boss one time without dying along the way and sometimes you just get stuck. And no fancy moves in the game as well. specially the spider boss is where i quit the game. You have to cheese through every part of the game that is not enjoyable. We want bosses that counter attack and do other things, not continuously spamming same moves over and over again meanwhile its minions are attack you and poking the fuck out of you. Of course I can manage that but is it enjoyable? no not at all.
While I call it the worst of the Souls games, it's also somehow the one i keep coming back to the most. The changes to the game can make it frustrating as all get out, but once you get the hang of it you'll find a different but very intriguing and absorbing loop that will keep you coming back. Paradoxically, it is also the most free and flexible of progressions of all the Souls games. Hopefully I managed to explain myself well.
Ds2 is great despite it's flaws. Once you get used to its quirks you realize that it's just different more than anything. It isn't even my favorites of the soul series but I will still always defend this game.
4:45 is laughable dude. Terrible like genuinely TERRIBLE gameplay and a tremendous skill issue. Ds2 is my favorite game of all time but like you dont even get to have a positive opinion on it after witnessing that. Unfuckingbekievable.
DS2 defenders say silly things, but the silliest is “skill issue.” Most of the people who dislike DS2 have played and enjoyed other FromSoftware titles so are not averse to difficulty per se. What’s wrong with DS2 is what the game encourages the player to do in response to the challenges it creates - fundamentally, it’s boring. “Just use a bow lmao” This is boring to do for every enemy encounter - stop, manually aim the bow at a single enemy, shoot until it’s close, finish it off with your main weapon. Repeat until all the enemies are dead. THEN, you’re allowed to explore the level. There are numerous occasions that, if you want to avoid being ganked on all sides, you have to engage in this dull gameplay loop. We can all wave our you-know-whats around in the talk around difficulty - at the end of the day it’s all about fun, right? Well this isn’t fun. There are easy fun games, and hard fun games. Usually FromSoft is the latter, but not in DS2. It’s not necessarily harder than the others (the bosses lol), just more boring.
It's a great game, with certain issues. Most people that dislike the game haven't even played it. Make your own opinion guys, use something called critical thinking.
i saw this one so i figured id watch it too. some of this is prob a lil repeaty from my other comment, for that i am sorry. im glad you showed the degrade bugs specifically. its always the example i use to highlight how [i think] they wanted players to interact with the despawn system. because your items are repaired when resting at a bonfire unless they are fully broken, how you are meant to do this puzzle, which is how i look at it is as follows: kill the bugs till your gear is nearly 100% degraded. BEFORE it breaks, rest at the bonfire nearby, thus repairing all your gear. then kill them again. repeat 12 times to despawn them so you do not have to worry about them degrading gears before moving on. that seems so much more obvious to me than stripping down to punch them to death if im honest. i highly encourage you to look back on some of the problem areas in the game for yourself and genuinely ask yourself if those areas would be easier if you simply despawned even 1 or 2 enemies. i feel like so many players go out of their way to not interact with the despawn mechanics while at the SAME TIME, complaining about enemies placement. this is why i believe enemy placement was balanced around some spawns not being there, and why not interacting with the despawn mechanics feels overly punishing for some players in certain areas, specifically those players that rush thru areas. also, the fact you can change covs WITHOUT losing rank AND cov of champs brings back enemies completely for farming is another reason i believe this. the game people complain about the most bc of enemy placement AND runbacks quite literally lets you control how hard those are. and i still to this day dont understand why more people dont take advantage of the despawn mechanics, especially if they are struggling. idk if players just dont think to do this, dont register 15 runbacks to a boss means you could have despawned everything by then, thus saving supplies, or if its just straight up stubbornness. 'i can do this runback ive beaten ds1' type behavior [cut to them getting backstabbed at fog door] but what i do know is that if you interact with the despawn mechanics to any meaningful degree, you will notice a significant change in how you approach certain areas. while i disagree with some of these points, i do understand. i also agree with a lot of these, such as bonfire ascetics. and im glad i watched this one too. one of my semi dislikes myself is ADP/AGI. even tho i KNOW about it, and why its impactful, and even that it can give you MORE s than any other title. so while it may not be an issue really for me, because i know, players that dont know, will struggle more than they need to, and oftentimes not even understanding why. that i do dislike. i also dont super love soul memory, as it does really harm the co-op (and pvp) experience without really adding anything. anywho, this was equally as refreshing of a watch. i very much agree its ok to criticize things you enjoy, and that doing so doesnt in any way mean you enjoy said thing less. this is my biggest issue i suppose with the complaint about enemy placement, bc it seems to IGNORE the despawn mechanic every time its brought up. every time i watch one of these videos i am grateful i enjoy the despawn mechanic, which is one of the things i was originally hesitant about in my very first playthru, bc it meant you 'couldnt farm.' which i learned was also not true, bc of the cov of champs for example. anywho, im rambling, but i agree, dislikes can highlight the likes. a lot of things people dislike about the game, i enjoy. for me, the reason WHY i like them is bc how i naturally play ds2 is rewarded. i take my time, im slow, im patient, i enjoy farming, i enjoy exploring, i enjoy a jack of all trades build. all of those things are rewarded in ds2. where as someone with the playstyle of rushing thru enemies to the boss fog in heavy armor prob will be punished more so than they are used to in other titles. so anyways, my point i suppose, is that the flaw of enemy placement, TO ME, only highlights the importance of interacting with the despawn mechanics. i think what you will find is that the despawn mechanic is actually done fairly well, and makes a lot of the encounters over the course of the game much more manageable. or at least, thats been my experience. i certainly dont feel betrayed, thats silly. you have a right to your opinion the same as i do. neither one of us is right or wrong, we simply play the game differently, enjoy it differently. i have a better understanding of why you love this game, and which parts you dont love, and also the reasoning. maybe youll have a better idea of why i love the game and my reasonings from reading this as well. but most importantly, i agree we shouldnt dwell on the flaws. yes they are there, and should be acknowledged, but no i dont believe the flaws outweigh the positives. thank you. <3 one of my personal flaws is related to MnK. yes i play souls on MnK. anyways, when you boot up ds2, EVERY TIME, you will have to turn double click on and back off again for that session. i also very much dislike that the UI has all the console keybinds instead of the pc keybinds for example. it is not a perfect game, i doubt anyone is so blind. but it is my favorite, and i dont think thats ever going to change. thank you once again. both videos were a treat.
Ok there is a level of subjectivity to it, you may enjoy the grindiness more than others. But wouldn’t it not be better to remove the despawn feature entirely and just put the enemies in places that are not so obnoxious? Grind lovers can still farm as much as they like, and players who would get bored of that get to choose when they want to engage with enemies - win-win. Just like every other FromSoft title. Except that wouldn’t work in this game, because the whole reason it’s designed this way is to crank up artificial difficulty because otherwise it would be too easy. Shrine of Amana is an excellent example - they didn’t have the time to make a good/challenging boss, so they made the level an absolute chore to get through.
@@ShyGuyTravel i agree its subjective, which is why i dont WANT it to feel like every other fromsoft title. if you dont enjoy interacting with the mechanics you could just... play one of the other titles? imo they designed this game to a degree around the despawn mechanics, the thing setting it apart from the other titles. so no, to me, it would not be better to remove it. furthermore, players that choose when they want to engage with enemies oftentimes run past them completely. that sure is engaging! that is WHY ds2 is designed the way it is, bc that WAS such a common way to 'engage' with enemies in ds1. i dont consider it good design to be able to run past all the enemies in the area with no punishment. i think thats deranged truly. clearly if you give players the option of choosing when to engage, they simply never will, bc running past is far more efficient. that is WHY i appreciate ds2's mechanics. they tried something different, they tried to punish our habits from ds1. i very much disagree about shrine of amana as well. its one of my favorite areas. very pretty, amazing soundtrack. it does take some time getting thru, but i always enjoy that section of the game, its calming and serene. i also quite like demon of song. i dont really think its a good boss, but i do enjoy its design. i also think "they didn’t have the time to make a good/challenging boss, so they made the level an absolute chore to get through." is cope. blighttown, catacombs, and sen's all fit this description as well. i get that you may not enjoy some of ds2's mechanics and that we approach the game entirely differently it seems, but i hope this helped explained why some of us enjoy ds2 over the other titles. i would not ask they drastically change your favorite souls title to fit how i play. they didnt keep this formula so every other fromsoft title plays the same, feel free to enjoy one of those. it is ok to not enjoy ds2. BUT! it is also equally as ok to enjoy it.
@@Laughingwithtravii yes exactly, this is why I moved on from DS2 to play better games. But you must expect from time to time that people are going to talk about games they didn’t enjoy and why, and that’s what this is about. I’m obviously not going to change history and make DS2 how I would like it, but it’s also ok to talk about how it’s busted. They didn’t design the game around the despawn mechanic - at least it doesn’t seem like it. It smacks of a later addition after testers complained about the boss run backs. It’s yet another example of reactive game design - they made an unbalanced game and had to compensate somehow with questionable additions to the mechanics. If I’m wrong about their motivations, it’s still a silly idea. Just put enemies in better positions. In DS1 there was already plenty of incentive not to run past every enemy - the souls for one, and then the items, secrets and shortcuts are easier to find if you actually engage with the enemies. The system was perfectly fine as it was, and returning to the same system in later FromSoft titles didn’t harm the experience of those games. The player usually only wants to run past the enemies once they’ve already killed most of them and explored the area as much as they want to, and they just want to have another go at the boss. I put it to you that Blighttown would not have been improved if it required you to defeat every enemy there each time you wanted to face Queelag. This wasn’t a thing that needed improving from DS1. And don’t you dare compare the Shrine to Sen’s Fortress, the latter being a masterpiece of level design, whose boss run back isn’t a cakewalk by any means but at least not the boring cheese fest that is dealing with Amanna’s enemies. You actually feel accomplished when overcoming Sen’s Fortress - when you get through the shrine, you think “Thank God that’s over.”
im just gonna go ahead and like/sub only 51 secs in. so im replaying the series myself after getting a friend into it. just finished up with int and faith builds in ds1. was a blast. now im onto ds2, my personal favorite of the trilogy. demon's is my actual favorite, but its bc it was my first experience with the 'series.' i think we are all a lil biased towards whatever our introduction was, and i think thats valid. ANYWAYS, thank you. you've alrdy made me happy cry from the intro alone bc i feel very much the same. ok back to actually watching, but i just wanted to say thanks for making this even if you feel like its just 1 of many. those few matter, bc those few are the ones that appreciate the game for what it is, instead of what it isnt. the whole reason i stumbled on this vid is bc i wondered while playing if the stigma surrounding ds2 has changed at all. edit: concerning enemies spawns AND some of the bosses. imma just get this spill outta the way. i think a lot of ds2's design choices were specifically meant to target habits ds1 players developed. things like s on levers and fog doors. things like running thru entire areas unpunished. things like spamming dodge roll instead of timing dodges (bc in ds2, stam econ is much more rigid.) anyways, i think all those things were meant to increase difficulty if you didnt adapt. what i mean by that is taking advantage of the despawn mechanic. how i think they WANTED you to play, is slower, taking out problem enemies, so your runbacks were either completely enemy free, or you made it to the boss with more supplies. one of the best examples of this i can remember are the degrade bugs in shrine of amana right next to a bonfire. you were clearly meant to despawn those before progressing. or for example, all the enemies surrounding strand. anywho, my point is, i think the balance of enemies is designed with some of those enemies being despawned by players. what that means for players who dont interact at all with those systems is they end up chased by a horde of enemies treating ds2 runback's like ds1 (or whatever other title.) i also think the reason bosses feel weaker as a whole is bc the area itself AND the boss are the 'fight' in a way. its a battle of attrition, of who can sustain longer almost. so i think the areas were made harder, while the bosses are oftentimes weaker. this is true for areas even in ds1, like blighttown, catacombs, or sen's for example. favorite areas: no mans wharf, shrine of amana, gutter, lost bastille, black gulch, drag castle, undead crypt, dragon aerie, dragons sanctum, and frozen eleum loyce favorite bosses: pursuer, chariot, looking glass knight, fume knight, and sir alonne this is SUCH a refreshing video, i cant even put into words how much i enjoyed this. life gems are my main form of healing generally. to balance out being able to get them early on i like to only buy them after ive lvled up. so say i have 15k souls, use 12k on lvls, then spend 3k on life gems. it gives those souls a use and also helps with not just having an overabundance of life gems early on. i very much agree even the negs are a part of the game as well, and you learn to appreciate or at the very least understand them.
enemy placement in ds2 is actually the thing that made it ny favorite souls game by far, yeah bosses suck, and some places are ass. but areas are actually difficult to navigate, and overwhelming if you try to face them head-on. other souls games are consistently predictable, fairly easy with some traps, in ds2 I know there is a "method" for basically every area to make it easy. the game has a massive pile of issues but I think a big part of why people hate this game is because they played it like dark souls 1 & 3
I love Frog's Wrath! It's in my top 5 battles from Everhood. I was thinking about mentioning it, but I figured it would've been better for a different type of video.
My favorite souls game. Nothing like doing a no death no bonfire run for the rings too. And my God the music! The PVP! The fashion! Sigh *Installs DS2 again*
I played dark souls II for the first time 2 years ago and hated it. Played it with kbm after i've finished DS1 before (as my first souls game ever). Especially the animation delay made it really unfun to me (so i used cheats just to get the story, lore stuff and completely abandoned challenging myself with its combat xd). Last month after playing dark souls 1, 3 and elden ring for hundreds of hours i thought i give it another chance and it clicked 100%. The game is really enjoyable when you know how to handle yourself. The pre experience in all the different souls games definitely helped me coping with most of the janky/ unfair stuff in ds2. Now i love it (almost as much as the other 2 dark souls games). Really enjoyed the whole story with all the different areas and even the dlcs. I still hate the coffin snow area with its endboss in ivory king dlc. xd
I think the worst part of the game is the bosses and their presentation. Either they are mechanically forgettable like the Iron King or really cool bosses like the looking glass knight, which didnt get a backround like a cutscene or something.
I've never seen this game before now, but you did a good job breaking down its combat and making it easy to understand for potential newcomers. I love guitar hero and rhythm/combat games so I might have 2 try it out
I played this game before ds3 came out, but after I beat bloodborne. Bb was my first fromsoft game. I remember beating it but not liking it that much. After bb I think it just wasn't what I expected. I just got the platinum trophy on dark souls remastered yesterday & I'll be starting my adventure to platinum dark souls 2 today. I'm really looking forward to it. I don't really remember anything from my first time playing through it, but I think I'll have a new appreciation for the game this time around
I've been thinking about going back to my original ds2 save and doing NG+. It's an original copy of the base game with no dlc. But I also picked up Scholar on a steam sale and was thinking about starting that, because I never played the dlc. Was wondering if anyone had any input on which version has a better NG+. I always had a soft spot for DS2 despite the occasional frustration with some mechanics, and only having played it through once
I got the elite knight armor set only to find out that the Astora Straight Sword and Crest Shield were never added!!! That’s messed up!!! Why would they do that??!! 😭😭
I knew people hated ds2, but I actually like ds2 from the looks of it. I think people hate it are some of the mechanics and I guess the HUD on screen, it looks out of place for some reason. I love the very different atmosphere in the outside environement, it gave it a pretty nice change of pace. The bright sunlit when you're outside seems great, although it looses that dark eerie atmosphere from the previous and ds3, it's different. I think people would look back at ds2 and might appreciate the changes/new things added. Ds2 seems like an experimentation stage, as I knew that Miyazaki didnt direct it. It may not work for a lot of people but considering fromsoft and Miyazaki experimented shows they care, instead of staying safe. You tend to fail first before actually improving.
Ds2 is my favorite one in the series and I just started playing 3 days ago that’s how much of an impression it left on me, Literally stayed away from it but then gave it a try because I got burnt out on Elden ring and Ds3 The adp stat i guess can be tedious but is by no means a hindrance
Oh my god thank you. Finally some proper criticism instead of someone just making shit up about hitboxes or ganks. I like DS2, though it definitely isn't my favourite From Software game, I've just really gotten sick of people lying about it, this is an amazing criticism.
I’m pretty sure people aren’t lying when they’re talking about ganks at least. Anyone who has played this game must notice numerous enemy encounters that amount to many mobs rushing you from every angle. Why people would collectively try to deceive others about what is easily verifiable is beyond me.
Took me 1200+ hours for both world and Iceborne platinum, I had really bad rng with crowns. But as hard as it was and how crazy it drove me. Looking back, I miss it, lol. Love this game and love that I have the platinums 😃 Kirin, Teostra and Lunastra were definitely the hardest. Especially kirin, killed nearly 200 of them and left over 300 other quests before i finally got both crown sizes
