Dark Souls 2 Critique 

glaive120 i killed pinwheel and ingward before finding the burg on my first playthrough smh

When I arrived at Tomb of Giants the first time, it was a "fuck no"

Just another black & white mickey Mouse yeah i lost all my souls from pinwheel instantly and rage quit for a few days haha

@@dickheadrecs *Obligitory Git Gud*

Hopefully you did that once they patched the skeletons to give you souls, otherwise I'm so sorry dude

It's actually 10 hours long.

Luce Belmont I’ve now watched this and hbomber’s but I could not fucking handle how utterly excruciating it was to try to listen to the last guy (Mauler?) I spent maybe 15 minutes before realizing it was hopeless

MauLer’s response to HBomberguy is, despite being 9 hours, one of the best and most in-depth commentaries I’ve seen on any game. People constantly shit on it for being long, but if you actually watch more than five minutes of it you’ll realise it’s long because he goes through HBomb’s every point and explores using evidence. It takes ages to be that thorough. Honestly that response is very impressive, probably the best thing MauLer has made and I really respect him for taking the time. Sadly, HBomb decided to be immature and kind of cowardly about it, desperately trying to make sure his fans didn’t take it seriously on Twitter. Sorry mate, your tactics didn’t work for all of us. He did this, despite claiming people making criticisms of him is a ‘good’ thing (he says this in his Bethesda video). I’ve never seen HBomb take criticism well. I used to be a big fan of him but this is one of a few things that’s slowly turned me away from the guy.

@@OQIF87NREU I could barely stand Hbomber smugness through that video, watching Mauler was 10x more bearable and entertaining.

D.C. Beckendorff if something Mauler made is the best anything you’ve ever heard I weep for you lmao

@Linda Niemkiewicz All the NPCs in DS1, 2, and 3 repeat themselves verbatim over and over once they run out of dialogue, with few exceptions in specific cases. That should be reworked

Shaffan Mustafa a journal in the inventory would sort that issue out. Essentially just for npc dialogue. Then the npcs could say everything once and then stop.

"Shut the fuck up! Do you know what shut the fuck up mean?!"

Honestly in DS3 firekeeper talks even more.

@Linda Niemkiewicz even better, deprecate the odds of even hearing dialogue depending on what's been cycles. maybe do it by having an array of ten random numbers, but once a number is chosen it can't be chosen again. So if there's 5 lines and 0 is no dialogue(this number can be repeated), it'd go something like 3, 0, 2, 1, 0, 0, 4, 0, 5, 0, and there it counts up to ten. After this, 5 is added to the max array size random number size, so it'd do it again but up to fifteen, and so on.

actually undead

So true....but...Giants exist. I don’t think doors will be too great...realistically at least. Dark souls wise though; yeah.

Noroi *hollow*

*YOU DIED*

i have humanity if you want

SO true :D

More like: Be-se-se-le

Really love that chanting from the nexus keeper while emerald herald just not enough character development

Flashbacks of emerald waifu..

@@dahkteromar749 what are you guys talking about?

Is that why he's so... crestfallen?

Is Hawkwood Crestfallen the Seventh?

@@SorowFame I mean

Who would this character be in Bloodborne?

@@giannieditsvideos id say its old hunter yamamura from the dlc but i think he was just a easter egg for sekiro

Demon's Souls was 11 years ago.

Man that was released 6 years ago. I'm turning hollow as we spea....

Elden Ring will be released 10 years from now.

sometimes i got to feel old even though its been couple months

hearing the tales of dark souls 2 in the post apocalyptic world of 2050 made me feel old.

Rest easy, Biscuit

F

I've never heard of the dude (just checked him up), but it's always sad to see someone go so early.

RIP

F

Lmfao ur lion avatar. When you don't have a tooth pick so you use your tongue.

this comment is GOLD

@Daniel Keller Game does a horrible job of explaining how it works though

No amount of ADP will help you when the game goes A HIT IS A HIT when they aren't even close to grazing you

@@onion69420 what do you mean?

@@wuwei473 there are times when it's a clear miss but the game still registers a hit

@@onion69420 like in any soul game tbh.

I must have missed this line, when was it

@@OtepRalloma 18:48

Thing in video game bad

@@graylyhen9490 yeah...

@@graylyhen9490 more, like, they easily could've done something with more flare and scope than just some rubble to motivate you to kill some of the most powerful badasses around. It's pretty bad, come on.

Pan Z or or or maybe it's cuz of the time breaking and reality breaking story

Lemmings-Gaming or maybe it's because the developers just didn't give a shit

Pan Z dude if they didn't give a shit they would have stop I mean this game almost went into development hell so chill and if the story explains a shit it's cool and my real problem with this game is that they put agility which controls how ur character moves behind a Stat screen and later on the game like dranlake castle too much enemies for those of us who don't use super ultra great swords that hit everything in its path and also if the story explains why it's like that it's okay

What the fucking fuck?

Pan Z I was giving multiple opinions in one comment

idk why this made me lol so much

With an improperly sized hitbox that's half as wide as the screen even though the sword itself will look like a thin piece of concrete veneer that's 6 inches wide.

But then a second pile of rubble comes

20 Large Humanoids weilding swords with hitboxes that are 20 miles wide and long. You need to use a shield, and you can only attack once every five minutes.

And then the pile of rubble pulls a Iudex Gundyr on you.

Lives on the sun

He really wanted the torch thing to work, didn’t he?

Tohab worked in bloodborne, did not in dark souls 2. Brightness aside

@RayneMoonfire You mean for bloodborne or dark souls 2?

@RayneMoonfire HAHHAHAH true true. DS2 devs prob back tracked on the torch mechanics hard at the last min

I can only imagine your reaction when you found out how the road to the castle was blocked off I almost hollowed when I found out

and when you go to him, he says "bring me that key, chop chop" What is this, a video game designed for kids? why is he confident that this random person will be the one to bring him the key, does he know that we're the main character? Its these little things that degrade the overall experience

If I have to guess, they were probably trying to be humorous with that one.

@@cobaltundead i didnt go down the path to drangleic and i instead stood in that room trying to find out how to be teleported since i genuinely thought there couldnt be any way that a bunch of rocks would be the thing blocking me from this games anor londo equivalent, so i didnt think drangleic was down there.

The way they keep you from getting back to the first bonfire in the Lost Bastille is really gratingly stupid too.

Worse than Ride to Hell fence logic

@@numaisreginald3671 don't diss the best game ever made, Dark Souls 2 will never achieve that level of autism

@Linda Niemkiewicz killing 4 of the most powerful beings in existence to surpass rubble is a bit more than a nitpick

@Linda Niemkiewicz look up when you're in blighttown next time you play, it's still daytime. besides that, ash lake's setting is consistent when you see it in tomb of the giants, that's not just a "sky" i think. even if what you said was true, none of that is really comparable or relevant to what happens in ds2. this is a problem with ds2 so why are you bringing up ds1?

@Linda Niemkiewicz Looking at a model viewer for the game everything is interconnected, your making no sense. (And what do you mean they did not get doors right? If an enemy if literally standing next to your character you can't even open it, you don't even get invincibility frames opening it until late into the animation, this also applies to ladders. Dark Souls 1 doors were FAR from having this issue.)

+Casper Dar Agreed. I'd still take it over New Londo Ghosthouse any day and every day.

"And when the player destroys them, as soon as they die let's make all of them respawn!!" "Yes!! That's the perfect fair challenge!" Fuck this game.

+Casper Dar Yeah stopped playing at that point, i was like fuck it, and went onto completing 1 again

+Casper Dar i just ran past it all, it's pretty easy once you know the path and use lifegems accordingly

+Reathonax X If I'm having to run through an area because the area is just shit, then that's not a good sign for the rest of the game.

Yeah I ganged by two NPC red phantom that throw lightning spears across bridge in those shitty graveyard area

The enemy placement and level design is awful in this game despite some are could be potentially so beautiful as example; the Dragon Shrine and Temple of Amanda could be optimised more

Play nioh

@MasterMoonfire Nooo yoU cAnT sAy that Dark Souls 2 iS gReAt ehm it has GrEaT PvP anD PowErsTanCing and ehm is orIginAl unlike DarK SoUlS 3

@MasterMoonfire I already did and it was really horrible st some points in the Game. So yeah Dark Souls 3 > Dark Souls 2

That's just DS2's modus operandi; be as unfair as possible.

@@CondemnedGuy That's true.

I love how Scholar of the First Sin doubled down on this by adding overleveled Red Phantom NPCs that invade you, even while hollow.

@@Pan_Z I know right? I mean, I feel like it was fair when in 1 that you couldn't be invaded while hollow, on top of not being able to summon. It felt consistent with the lore of the series.

@@Pan_Z Burning effigies doesn't even stop the NPC invaders either. There's no escaping Armorer Dennis and his OP sorceries.

it's not only the lighting that is responsible for this. It's poorly textured, you can literally tell when textures are repeating themselves. Othes souls games had that too but only in areas you're not supposed to be in and so rarely that it's easy to miss. In DaS2 it just jumps straight into your Eyes in almost every level. Also there is less stuff lying around. Less furniture to break, less rubble. Some Rooms even are completely empty. Compare that to every souls ever where the envoriment was so detailed that you could imagine what was going on before you arrived. DaS2 lacks that completely. And the sad part is that the Alpha previews looked way more detailed, better textured, better ligthing and had way more detail in them.

I think that dark souls 1 is straight up the best looking game of all soulsborne games. While obviously the objective graphical fidelity is better in dark souls 3 and arguably bloodborne, the way that dark souls 1 uses colors and contrasts in the world together with the very well succeeded artstyle and direction just make it so much better looking than any else of the games. Also hopefully this clusterfuck of a comment is understandable, english isn't my native language.

Arguably Bloodborne? The way the game plays with light is astonishing. Not a single object in the game looks out of place. I died several time because I was staring at the environment and didn't notice the danger. It looks better than DS3 (besides smoldering on the MC - damn, that looks awesome). When I played DS1 I actually disliked the way they used contrast and colors. For me it looks like bad, unfinished shaders, expecially on more 'shiny' objects. That being said, DS2 lighting is a joke and looks so flat. Worst looking game in the series (sunshafts are the best though).

BlaQ The retarded filters on bloodborne ruin the game's aesthetics for me right from the get go. And the artstyle doesn't really click with me, it feels overly . . edgy.

BananaSopuli Yea, I guess filters might seem a bit too try-hard to some people.

gotham hunters I hate the hitxboxes in dark souls 2

My absolute favorite is getting sucked into backstabs from another room.

Yep, happened a lot to me against Fume knight. Another glorious moment was when I saw that a chest was a mimic, I went behind it and started attacking it. The mimic then leaps forward (aka away from me) and I got teleported in front of it and got grabbed.

@@37metalgearsolid haha first time that happened to me I just shut my whole system down

This happens so much with the "grab" attacks

Nostalgia, cant wait for the remake!!

Bearer seek seek lest

@@edgarallanpwned6666 well... it came out

Wrong game

@@donatematchacookie 29:38

Your comment completely explains my love of the more novel bosses of demons souls, dark Souls, bloodborne, and sekiro. Criticising ds2 for this is also applicable to ds3 imo. Although I would still say 3 is a great game, just not a good souls game. Unlike what people say for 2.

@@Red-nl4lk I'd have to disagree with ds3 not being a good souls game. It is a blend of difficulty and challenge. Which is the core of the souls series.

@@turtlegrenade2757 personally I'd say it gets those elements right, but there are other bits that took it in a wrong direction. Stuff like world design, exploration, certain builds being nerfed without extreme stat and equipment investment, and the bosses. Not to say I dislike this game, I fucking love ds3. The level design, the art direction, certain bosses, the lore (for the most part). But there's a ton of things I'd criticize. And please understand that im a bit harsh on ds3 because I absolutely love fromsoftware and I just want them to be better.

@@Red-nl4lk ds3 was my first souls game so I kinda put it high up. But you do bring up the more outstanding issues with it. I kinda just forget about those issues when I play it lol because it's so fun for me. I think the one point I kinda disagree with is the exploration. It still has tons of the exploration from ds1 but it's held back by the linearity. But different strokes for different folks.

@@turtlegrenade2757 Hm. Yeah. There's still little branching paths like Arch dragon peak, irithyll dungeon, and cathedral of the deep. My biggest problem is the fact I never felt lost or wondering where I was. I appreciate that the team still took the effort to make the world still feel like it made sense for a fantasy setting, but that magic in previous games wondering where the hell you were just wasn't there for me. Also I know the generally accepted opinion is that the bosses are the best in the series but I might have to disagree. Still one of my faves though.

+satellite964 Yeah! That bothered the fuck out of me when I went back to replay Dark Souls 2. The movement is just really fucking floaty.

Demon's Souls feels at least twice as floaty and no one says a word....

+Jonathan Straka Because it doesn't look like a jarring mess, it looks fantastical and strange. DaS 2 looks strange and uncomfortable.

+Jonathan Straka First game in the series, it'll get a few more passes. There's going to be kinks. Problems. You name it. 3rd game in the franchise? There's no excuse for that. Especially after the first Dark Souls fixing a lot of what was wrong with Demon Souls mechanically. DS2 somehow regressed.

it doesn't tho

+Slug of Borg They've said in the designworks interview that most of the assets of the game were developed when they had other ideas in mind and they had to re-arrange everything because Namco pressured them.

It seems someone forgot about "Sealed by the Lord's Power"

Curious, whats your take now that you have seen both sides?

@@jackofnotrades4350 I still like Dark Souls 2, but now I respect Matt's opinion and now I'm taking every word of Hbomb with a grain of salt.

Especially the way he pokes fun at Matt for no reason other than to make him look like he knows nothing about Dark souls 2 is really infuriating.

@@sircallum Hbomb barely knows anything about the game himself. Didn't bother talking about adp and ignores so much lore. His video was rushed as hell. Mauler made a good response but be prepared it's long as hell.

@@thebuddah1253 mauler fucking massacred him lmao

Damn, fr? Good luck to him

@@0uttaS1TE yeah, all his patreon stuff is free if you want to keep up to date

Hope he does very well

I don't have Twitter so someone adding this underneath is super helpful.

And its name is Pagodamonium, uhh I mean Mushido.

I can't believe how accurately you described how I feel... Glad I'm not the only one.

Yep, feel the same exact way.

Same feeling

yep same for me too the level was so well made twisting on itself i felt like it was real same feeling

Well I'm not having a "freaking orgasm almost" whenever I find an item, but I am having a blast with DkS2. Different strokes.

Yeah, Dark Souls 1 definitely has better lighting effects than Dark Souls 2. It may not have better textures or render distances, but Dark Souls 1 overall still looks more realistic. It also has much more consistent art design too.

+Hark It's ridiculous, because Dark Souls 1 on my PS3 looks better than a maxed out Dark Souls 2 on my PC. Everything looks so bland. Objectively, the DS2 on PC versions would be the one with a higher resolution, more AA, better framerate etc., but none of these advantages are ever used properly. it just ends up as a bland graphical experience.

+Hark Look at SotFS. It's a whole lot better

+go fuck yourself Actualyl Dark Souls 1 has better textures than DS2. DS2 has probably the worst texture work of any game made by a "serious" company in the last 10 years. Earthen Peak still gives me shivers (bad shivers, not good ones :D ) dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/98051460/DarkSoulsII_2014_05_02_23_46_57_047.jpg

BubuSnow93 It's legit baffling how godawful that game looks -- like, from a design perspective I can understand it fumbling because Miyazaki was busy with Bloodborne, but they could have just used the DS1 engine whole cloth and had a better looking game.

@Linda Niemkiewicz The thing is, in 90% of the time those said groups are balanced and enemies can be easily fought. Undead burg and Undead parish's groups are consisted of REALLY weak enemies that can be dealt with in a matter of seconds, for example. In DS 2, on the other hand, you can be easily ambushed by a group of enemies which feel like they really were not designed to be fought in groups, which can cause a stunlock right to the state of death.

@@dorn7523 90% are balanced.. Like those giants guarding the ember in catacombs? Or 3 skele dogs who could 2 shot you and they were placed in a location with very little sight? How about bonewheels that wont stop inflicting damage unless they slide off you? How about copy pasted capra and taurus demon in demon ruins? How bout the pre patched dragon asses in lost izalith with boss like damage? Are those balanced? Also, about being ganked in any souls game.. Have you heard of a BOW, mate?

@@farlonmuentes6004 Have you also heard of 90% of giant enemies in Dark Souls 2, like those rats with mamoth giants in Doors of Pharos, or maybe you should visit fucking Heide's Tower in SoTFS after you kill Dragon Rider, when FOR NO FUCKING REASON AT ALL every knight awakens and starts killing you with INSTANT attacks and stunlocks, instant 180 degree pivots that SURPASS A FUCKING SHIELD and are supported by a giant knight at every turn as well? Or should I remind you of DLCs in general? Like Dragon Sanctum's dragon asses (Yes, they are also in "PERFECT" DS 2), Brume Tower's ridiculous placement of enemies which can deal up to 80% of your HP in a SINGLE SERIES OF 3 ATTACKS, while also being in numbers of 7 IN A SINGLE ROOM, while being supported by ranged enemies? OH I REMEMBER, how about super sanics in Crown of the Ivory King? Which can kill you in 4 seconds JUST BECAUSE YOU FUCKING STAND NEAR THEM. About the bow point...I have never felt being forced to use a bow in Dark Souls 1, but Dark Souls 2 literally is built around bow, so if I want a pure melee, I can suck a dick? Way to give "Options", From Soft, nice.

Yeah, large groups of weak enemies is a very different beast from a group of large enemies, whose attack radius is huge and tends to interlock with their friends.

Oh, and THE FUCKING BELFRY GARGOYLES. There's not a single boss fight I hate as much as them right now.

Matt says bonfire warping was probably added early in development, but I don't know if that's right. The Copse bonfires make way more sense if warping was added almost as an afterthought halfway through. Or maybe the level designers just forgot about warping while designing some areas.

***** You can create builds endlessly by farming soul vessels from giant memories and you get an astetic each time too and adding more enemies instead of improving their AI is just lazy. Learn the game you filthy noblemen.

Boss fights don't need new enemies to be hard... want proof? *cough* *cough*... Artorias. They also said that they improved the enemy AI and that was just plain fucking lying.

***** New Game + was certainly better than DKS 1 where it just felt tacked on but nobody plays these games to smack the ai over the head over and over so just adding more enemies to every area didn't serve to make it more entertaining but it definitely gave the opportunity to make them tedious. Case in point the road from Huntsman's copse to the arena gets double the number of guys sitting on pillars. They can all be aggro'd and picked off with bows just like they could in new game it only takes longer. The single greatest moment of new game + was seeing Freja appear out of her arena and the life bar appear. This was a completely new encounter and you didn't know what to do. The game needed more of that. Just off the top of my head instead of adding pyromancers who have no lore or plot related reason to be in the Sinner's Rise just give the Lost Sinner the ability to put out the torches. Give the Demon of Song the ability to swing at you while its face is covered so you can't just bait it out over and over. Replace the Old Dragonslayer with the Giant Ornstein version from Dark Souls. When you encounter the Pursuer he should actually pursue you throughout the forest of giants not despawn. Have one of the flying Dragons in Dragon Aerie attack you early on so you no longer feel safe. Replace Nashandra's queen model as she sits on the throne with her skeletal form. All of this would take more planning and effort than lolmobs but it would have made the game far more satisfying for a second run through.

***** Wandering Black Phantom Black Knights, ones that exist even without being gravelorded. Now that would be one heck of a surprise for New Game Plus. Unless such already exists. Dunno, since I'm still preparing for New Game Plus instead of starting it.

wait wait wait so my weapons feel like sticks because of frame rate?!!?!?!!?! after seeing darklurker i got so pissed off at this game. can't find a decent excuse to say it's not a disappointment

"This rotting cesspool of oldfolk and Degenerates" Is a perfect sum-up of the DS3 community.

Bless you both

@Linda Niemkiewicz Because that's the point of a hunter.

@Linda Niemkiewicz cause that's what hunter do. No further explantion needed.

@Linda Niemkiewicz Yeah that's fine. They are portrayed as a speck of dust in the cosmos of things.

Actually, most of the bossess have too much reach to reliably do that. They basically made you focus on boosting your invincibility frames during a dodge roll to negate the heavy tracking and compounded that by making it extremely nebulous as to what exactly increases those frames. I got to level 104 thinking the game just had atrocious hit detection. Granted, the game DOES have janky as fuck hitboxes, but the lack of agility makes it all the more unmanagable. It makes you feel like some of the attacks are just designed to cheat you out of health to make the boss fight more difficult and with the agility mechanic I get the idea that was intentional.

@@blizzardregulus Yeah, without agility the game is significantly more frustrating, but the game also doesn't make it clear how dodges are affected by agility, which makes for an unfortunate experience for anyone who doesn't read the wiki. I played through the entire game without ever leveling my adaptability because I assumed it was similar to the resistance stat from DS1, which was entirely useless. Turns out, the most useless stat in DS1 is now the most vital in DS2. How was I supposed to know? On my second playthrough I leveled my adp right away and had a much more agreeable experience, but I still have a bitter taste in my mouth from that first playthrough. Plus, even with high adp, the hitbox issues are still enough to be infuriating at times.

@@jakeinator21 Everything you just said applied to Dark Souls 1, try to get someone to play the game without the wiki, NOTHING is explained.

@@thechugg4372 I played DS1 blind without the wiki for my first playthrough and it was still a manageable experience, despite the relative obscurity of its stats, because it doesn't place gameplay elements as vital as i-frames behind a stat value. Granted my experience with DS2's stats may have been different had I not played DS1 first, I may not have written ADP off as quickly were that the case. But the fact of the matter is I played DS1 blind and I loved it, and then a I played DS2 blind and I hated it. And lack of understanding of ADP was at the core of my distaste. And I'm not alone in that, I see new threads on the DS2 subreddit all the time from people saying they are frustrated that they take damage during rolls when it seems like they shouldn't. The fact is, DS1's obscurity simply doesn't have the same effect on the gameplay experience as the obscurity of ADP.

@@thechugg4372 I got the Claymore, felt nice and looked cool, saw Strength made it stronger, went Strength, beat the game no problem with a +15 Claymore. Literally nothing unclear there.

Bruh moment

They all are fan fiction and a terrible one at that. Disney could've paid $100 quintillions, but when the movies are less competent and knowledgeable about lore and universe than some teenage fans in their fics, there is just no way to seriously see them as canon.

@@n.k.63 yeet

@@n.k.63 i saw an article thats states every single plot hole and lore change and the conclusion was that you literally can't have the new trilogy be cannon while the original trilogy is. You have to choose one , they do not work together.

True that. There were parts of the DS2 story that felt like a fan fic, but there were certain parts that were very good. The same can't be said about the new Star wars films unfortunately.

Victor Viridian Then what's the point of weapon degradation at all? I hate my only decent weapon breaking on me as much as the next guy, but can't help but feel this is yet another missed opportunity. There could have been certain weapons with very low durability but some powerful special abilities or stats in general, allowing (but not forcing) some weapon variety in melee only builds without gimping yourself. As it is now you can just pick your favourite all-rounder and never have to worry once about durability unless you go rolling in that orange gunk, never even thinking about using something else because you'd have to invest a bunch of souls and materials into making it worth using.

NabsterHax Right. Not to menton te fact that if they wanted the weapon degradation to be so important as a mechanic they should have made the road to the boss battle more easy to cheese. The way they made it looks like they WANTED us to fight our way to the boss over and over. I'm not upgrading 2 weapons just to have a spare sword.

NabsterHax this could simply be fixed without the bonfire "weapon fix", i think its stupid that a weapon can't survive a boss fight even if you don't use it before that specific fight (I'm talking about after the first play-through ... , in the first game run i didn't have problems at all). if the weapon didn't automatically fix herself wen you rest, and the durability would be extended to 2 or 3 times the original, having to fix it trough magic/items would make a a good option, the mechanic would be logic and not cheap

NabsterHax Add to that PC bug with 60fps that makes weapons degrade two times faster as the game was build around 30 fps. \o/ B-team for the win.

Tomasz Zakrzewski Add to that the fact that SoTFS didn't fix it. The only thing SoTFS did was up the graphics to unnoticable levels and kept adding more enemies as if that wasn't one of the core complaints of the fucking game. SoTFS could've redeemed my faith in the B-Team but completely destroyed it instead.

I AGREE WITH U 100%'i sadly knew this would happen

Yeah, FromSoft just hornet ring bs'ed us and looked skyward afterwards.

+Hunter Folyer Exactly. I agree with almost every criticism in the video, yet here I am playing the game and enjoying it.

+Hunter Folyer I know right, I don't enjoy Dark Souls 2, and would rather just play 1, but I don't think 2 is all that bad.

+Hunter Folyer I think it's a bad game. Not just bad for a Souls game, just plain bad.

+Son of Tiamat I'd have to disagree with you there. Dark Souls 2 is still a hell of a lot better than most of the usual drivel being released, even if it paled in comparison to the other games in the series.

K1llerTunes My thoughts exactly, it's not BAD, it's just not a good souls game.

I agree with you 100%. If there is a game for new souls players to get into it would be dark souls 2. But for the veteran souls players who played both Des and Dks extensively putting in hundreds or even thousands of hours this game is a real disappointment.

Don't try to label anyone who likes the game as someone who isn't familiar with the series. That's a low and invalid claim. Many people really enjoy Dark Souls II and they might have put a lot more time into Demon's and Dark Souls than you did. Don't think that just because you don't like it, anyone else familiar with the series also does not. I'm not saying Dark Souls 2 doesn't have flaws, but it did address a bunch of them regarding PvP.

Zevvion Thanks for the comment.

You are correct. Only people that have never played any souls game would take interest in this game. It really is a poorly designed game. The only people that I've seen that really enjoy the game are those whom subscribe to EpicNameBro.....the biggest sellout of them all.

Zevvion Did you pay any attention to my statement? Never once did I label "anyone who likes the game as someone who isn't familiar with the series." What I said was, " I honestly don't see how a person who has invested a lot of time into either, Des or Dks, CAN IGNORE THE FLAWS IN THIS GAME." As you can see, I never once said anything about the degree to which a person enjoys the game or not. My statement was about experienced players and ignoring flaws.

Probably thats why Dark Souls 2 Scholar of The First Sin is hands down the best Dark Souls game in the franchise.

@@KapitanPazur1 gr8 b8 m8

@@KapitanPazur1 LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

@@KapitanPazur1 You mean the game with an issue on screen literally at all times, with horrifyingly braindead design and no story? Ok boss.

@@KapitanPazur1 Hell no, your telling me they re-release the game and they don't: (And yes, this is going to be LONG, I am pissed off that they re-released it like this) -Remove ADP and just give the player normal Estus drinking speed and normal I-frames on roll -Make some new enemies instead of placing an undead horse in the kings castle for no reason Not patching the changes in Scholar in the original because if you do that people have less of a reason to buy the re-release version. -Falconer Run Cycle...I rest my case on that one... -Giving more NPC's actual quest lines. -Changing the Old Dragonslayers location and giving him a bigger role as a proper send off to Ornstein instead of.....A tiny building with an idiot that talks down to you with a single bonfire that is for the guy there then for Ornstein. -Removing that bloody screen effect on bosses...Its literally just taking a texture off, a modder did it himself with little difficulty. Here is proof: www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/181 -Allowing you to move in 360 degree movement instead of like 8 directions... -Making more tactical enemy placements instead of...Spambushes. -Adding meaningful shortcuts. -Giving you 5 estus to start but removing lifegems and most healing items except small things like Divine Blessings (Also being able to carry 1 divine blessing at a time not 99 of them) I would go on but you guys might think I am desperate or something, so I'll leave it here.

Which is a very good and healthy mindset. Alas, most people lack it.

Same

@Bazerker nah thats an objective flaw, pressing X/A 4 times to skip dialogue rather than having it play in the background is just time wasting on the player side. Oh look DS3 has reverted back to how it was in Ds1 and Demon Souls, hmmm seems like Fromsoft agrees with Matthew's sentiment. Geez what is it with most DS2 lovers hating anybody criticising their "Magnum Opus"

10:30

Bazerker funny then that despite it being a nitpick. FromSoftware went out of their way to fix the dialogue so it runs in the background. Meaning it matter enough to be changed.

***** What? But if you die, doesn't it break and vanish like in Dark Souls? Hold on, I gotta check this......Oh god no. No. Really?? Just... ... ... wow. I never knew that. Thank god I didn't, I guess.

Dr Famine Yep, doesn't vanish, just repair that sucker, and whole game is pretty much broken.

***** Have you played Sotfs? The ring of sacrifice costs around 15K souls to repair now.

Lavos YT I haven't, but in base game it was a joke.

Lavos YT Does Scholar of the First Sin change the game in many positive ways? I've seen some of the new enemy spawns, and pretty much "NOPED" immediately due to obvious emphasis on hard, frustrating fights, rather than interesting ones.

Exactly this. I knew things were going to be bad once I saw the death counter in Majula. It was so completely unnecessary.

some games for you store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Casual/

@@jacobsb374 aaaaaand you can go fuck yourself bud

@@devynmalu lmao only simps get all sensitive about that simple fact

Black Haze ohhhhh got em. nice job try harder next time

There's been a weird backlash against Dark Souls 2 criticism.

Because DaS2's """"enjoyers"""" genuinely believes themselves to be gigachads who can appreciate a single thread of gold in a pile of shite.

@@nigrum_angelum6655 Having beaten both the original and remix versions of DS2, there is so much good in these games that it is completely disregarding them as bad that reveals a lack of sense for design. FromSoft is not a perfect studio, Dark Souls 1 is half flaws, half qualities. Yet it is easy to see it's a masterstroke of a game still right? That's because you managed to understand it there and yet got filtered here. It's fine. Most souls fans today would bounce off of Kingsfield hard for example, because it does many different things and its flaws can be very in your face. Yet those are revered titles in their own genre all the same. And you'd be a fool to claim them bad.

@@dopaminecloud that's a lot of words just to somehow say that I have a skill issue. The fact that I agree with Matthewmatosis in general regarding Dark Souls 2 vanilla, and to an extent MauLer' with his defense/review/critique of the SotFS should tell that I understand the game enough to recognize that it's still far too flawed when measured against the standard that was Dark Souls 1 and even the OG Demon's Souls, no?

@@nigrum_angelum6655 There is no skill issue when you can't see qualities. The ability to experience the good parts of a work is something nebulous, often more relying on your mood at the time of play than any past experience or capacity for discernment combined. I'd say measured against dark souls 1 that dark souls 2 is overall a lot more consistent yet highlights different qualities of the dungeon crawling experience. That is to say, many of the things it does are neither better nor worse, only different. All I can tell you is that dark souls 2 highlights elements that elevate it in parts above anything dark souls 1 managed to deliver in how it handles progressing through dungeons and as that is essentially the core gameplay if you aren't invested in the multiplayer or pattern-grinding of the few bosses that require it, it remains a truly fantastic action rpg. I am only now playing through Demon's Souls so I can't comment on that though I can see the ways in which DS2 is much more like it than DS1 is.

fkin casul

***** Thats an issue with lag, not hitboxes then.

pc version has even weirder lighting compared to console I swear it but I think it looks pretty great after getting used to it. it's very clear cut and smooth, lacks all of the shitty blur techniques in other modern games

You can thank the 8 year old consoles for the "shitty torch mechanics". The game was actually supposed to look like the first gameplay trailers (which were played on a powerful pc), but during the beta tests on consoles they found out that the machines couldn't handle the graphics and constantly dropped below 20 fps (sometimes it was "seconds per frame" even). They had to make sacrifices with the graphics in order to make the game playable on consoles. There is a mod flying around for the pc version that brings back the graphic filters used in the original gameplay trailers, it changes a lot of things including how the depth of field effect is rendered to bring back the dark and gloomy environments that you actually REALLY needed a torch to safely traverse.

***** The PS3 Demo had the orginal torch mechanics and lighting. I'm pretty sure they removed it for gameplay reasons(being forced to limit your playstyle in all areas doesn't sound fun) but I can be wrong.

A true fan doesn't blindly defend what they love. A true fan should harshly critique what they love so developers can fix flaws in a patch or sequel

***** Like this video?

Dan S Exactly what i think, sir.

***** Indeed. I saw a lot of thing that i didn't know about the first games and even learned more about gameplay. :)

Why do I have to have a counter argument? I like Dark Souls 2. I'm not angry that he doesn't. Look, the funny thing about critique is that its an eye of the beholder thing. It can be a valid point to one person, and not matter at all to another. I think this is one hell of a well thought out piece though, even if I disagree with most of it.

Nick! :D

It's been a really refreshing rewatch recently with how often "Dark Souls 2" goes trending on Twitter from people calling it an "underrated masterpiece" and so forth. Nothing against people who enjoy it (I don't hate it myself), but it feels like one big gaslight, lol.

Calling it a gaslight feels incredibly right lmao. I used to fanboy the hell out of this game and rabidly defend it, but now I realise how stupid that was. Many fans of the game are way more vocal now and try to push some critiqued things as genius design and stuff.

@@derpi3438 Oh, absolutely. It's dumbfounding, for example, how often you'll see defenses of the illogical world design/harsh transitions between areas as being "intentionally dream-like to reflect the crumbling world of Drangleic". In reality, it's because the devs were under strict time constraints and were lacking key designers present for DS1/DeS. The idea of a distorted world is a great one, but there's no indication that the designers intended for the levels to reflect it - humans are the ones constantly alluded to as deteriorating, not the world itself. The Earthen Peak elevator is not some big-brain design, it's an elevator that was likely supposed to go down and not up (and into an area believed to originally belong beneath the fiery pit in Forest of Fallen Giants, no less). On that note, what's most frustrating is how many fans "defend" the game by just... mocking the most-repeated criticisms. Making fun of people for bringing up the EP elevator, stuff like that. Because the more people say it, the more ridiculous a criticism it is, I guess? It's so weird. There's nothing wrong with being okay with/ignoring these things as a fan of the game, but so many people feel the need to try and critically defend things instead of just accepting that they're flaws and not minding. I can understand wanting to fight back against the idea that DS2 is a downright terrible game (because it's not), but there's a very vocal portion of the community that seems more concerned with overhyping it than anything.

@@NoahRichard The phenomenon you touched on briefly where people repeatedly and wilfully mock valid criticism is one of my least favourite human behaviours in general. Basically what those people are doing is trying to create a stigma around mentioning said criticism. They know it's valid, and as a result they also know there is no way they can counter it in good faith. So instead what they're trying to do is disarm you intellectually by making you feel embarrassed to use it against them. It is extremely weaselly.

?

@@iamnotinvolved1309 A whip is a rope that you hit someone with.

DS3 is the worst of the the entire franchise. DS1 > Bloodborne > Demon Souls > DS2 > DS3 For PvP it's an easy.... DS2 > DS1 > Dogshit > Flaming Dogshit > Flaming Dogshit that fucking heals when you try to extinguish it > Bloodborne > DS3

nice bait

@azio91 True..true...

+Arsch Dee His voice is far more stern than usual in this video, that's more than likely why.

Nah check Metal Gear Solid 4... I had a go at him, because he was being far too negative.....

P K not really, he was pretty understanding with that game. He only sounded pissed when he talked about Johnny.

I'd sound like that too considering how shit of a game Dark Souls 2 is.

That's a nitpick. Maybe use less equipment and Cloranthy's ring for better stamina regen and stop being greedy. I don't wanna sound rude or annoyed, but it's that simple.

​@@chaoticstarfish3401 More stamina doesn't help. You are right, it is a nitpick, so why are you commenting on it? And why do people get so defensive about a damn video game. I didn't even say I don't like the game!!! I just made a nitpick. You said it yourself. So why do you have to make something of it and get so damn defensive about this game. If there is anything is TRULY DO HATE about DS2 it is THIS type of problem, where the community is extremely defensive. You do sound rude. You do sound annoyed. It is obviously an opinionated topic. If you start arguing with other people's opinions you are being rude and annoying. If you find yourself annoyed by other people's opinions about a game, you are rude and annoying.

@@BrendonArt Now you're the one sounding rude and annoyed. I know everyone has different opinions and I'm not trying to change that, I just said there are solutions to your problem. Sorry for the inconvenience.

@@chaoticstarfish3401 Sorry. I'm having a very bad ... year. I'm sure you can understand :( But I think it's silly to comment on comments sometimes. I was just venting. You are right. Hard work and smarter efforts will make the game easier. But sometimes that's not always what we want to hear.

The DLC bosses of DS2 are the only good bosses.

@bored weirdo He's basically the best

@@SinHurr the best at lying and purposefully ignore valid critisism because it wouldn't work with his narrative

@@SinHurr The best at filming his girlfriend being banged by numerous other men.

Because Hbomb is a fucking hack

That's his MO

+burningfajitasalt After dealing with that bs multiple times now, seeing other people bash that decision is almost therapeutic.

+burningfajitasalt For me the most stupid thing i've seen in souls is The Black Gulch area, every part of it.

+Mondestrasz Hey, at least it ends quickly enough.

***** The problem isn't that there are mummies, it's that you unlock a vendor that can easily be killed by the mummies. I'm pretty sure that spawning at that bonfire aggros them too, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

***** They don't aggro? Huh fair enough I guess. Still though, did they really have to program Straid so near to the door? I was hoping that he'd just go to one corner of the cell after you revived him. Even if they're easy to deal with, they still shouldn't exist in the game. They only serve to fuck up a player's day. Especially since they do tons of damage, and its easy to forget about them. Straid isn't exactly someone I visited frequently, and I assume some people's experiences were similar.

***** wut?

***** I believe there has been a big misunderstanding on your part.

***** What my first comment was initially taking about was some of the rude and un-constructive criticism he was getting from select few, i.e. things like "lol shut the fuck up and enjoy the game".

***** your sad just so sad!

SageofToads He made many good points, though. Ok, I disagree with a few points he made... but that certainly shouldn't put the other points down as well. Which points made you feel " sorry" for him?

thanks for mentioning the sliding as the video didnt, having your 2nd/3rd swing miss enemies entirely because they have butter under their feet are frustrating as hell

And they have double down in Elden Ring.

​@@illseeyaonthedarksideofthemoonthat they have lol. Malenia hovers in the air for a few seconds and can spin 360 degrees in place before waterfowl dance. Even regular enemies can change 180 degrees mid jump attack.

@@Thomas.c4647 The worst example in my opinion is Morgoth and his cane.

THANK you.

***** I never got this, to be honest. When I played through for the first time years ago, I came upon that section and recalled people mentioning how BS it was, though they didn't tell me why. I tried blocking the massive arrows first, which clearly didn't work well and I retreated. Then I just sprinted through and made it, a tactic that has never failed me in each run. That said, I've had the left knight shoot his arrow through a section of wall and knock me off while engaging the other, so... @Majora's Mario: Regarding badly designed bosses in DaS1, no game is perfect and the director already apologized for these mistakes. The issue is, that the team who worked on DaS2 didn't learn from this. Indeed, they seemed to embrace bad design in order to create difficulty. Basically, DaS1 had occasional cheap moments, while DaS2 seems to be built around them. I don't think DaS2 is a bad game or sequel, though I do find it less fun overall due to these decisions.

Majora's Mario Dark Souls 1 has some of the most amazing clipping and collision detection I've played in a game. And by "amazing" I mean godawful. That one ledge in The Great Hollow? The one by the first set of ladders where if you try to get back on the ledge no matter how fast you run or high you jump there is an inexplicable invisible wall blocking you? And only with dumb luck do you manage to get back on. Enemies that can damage or kill you with their weapons clipping through solid walls (unfortunately you the player don't get this "benefit")? Dead bodies that fall through the floor? (rats and the manta frogs are a couple of the most notorious for this). And though it's rare I can say _twice_ I died because _I_ fell through the floor. Both times it happened when an enemy successfully parried/riposted me and suddenly I was falling through infinity. Those stupid tiny ledges you have to run around (the one by the ladder leading to the Darkroot Garden, the aqueduct in Firelink Shrine where you find the corpse with the Ring of Sacrifice and that merchant who thought that would be a smashing location to sell wares for some reason). There's no reason to be precariously running sideways while running forward into a wall because of small ledges, it's not that they're difficult to get around, but they're really stupid and unnecessary. And the geometry of some walkways are highly questionable, whether a tree branch where you get stuck running in place, jumping and then falling to your doom, or that stupid sloping walkway in the Crystal Cave where you slide off near the end and need to make a running jump on the ledge to get your bearings. I have a feeling they put so much effort into the art design in some levels and forget to make some of the levels palatable, mechanics-wise Some of the lore in DaS1 made no sense either. I wouldn't care so much about this but everyone raves about how well thought-out the lore is and how integrated it is into the gameplay when a lot of it is "because magic" or is just a big gaping hole. Why does a tiny remnant of a rusty prison shackle allow you better footing on water? Because magic? Why make Seath blind? I know they're trying to give his character as many reasons to have an inferiority complex as possible but if he's blind how the fuck is he able to read all those books and create crystal zombies, octopus people and an immortality crystal in the process? Are the books in Braille? Dragon Braille? They look like pretty ordinary books to me, I dunno. Add to the fact that neither a Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring nor a Hush spell makes a damn bit of difference when fighting him, as he can sense where you are no matter what, then the idea that he's blind I call bullshit on. He may be an albino, scaleless paraplegic, but he's definitely not fucking blind. The Painted World of Ariamis is also just a stupid idea for a level. It's a world in a painting. Is this Super Mario 64? And it's a snow level. Because we needed one. Bloated-headed toxic zombies, harpies, the phalanx from Demon's Souls, the enemies don't even make sense being in this world. I also love the touch of sleigh bells you can so faintly hear in the background. I was expecting "Jingle Bell Rock" to bust out any moment. The camera also sucks and the lock-on system is busted (it is so particular with how much the enemy has to be in view with you, even if you're standing right in front of it, that it won't lock on unless you meet the demands of its million-dollar ransom note). And now I'm nitpicking but since the fanboys think the game is so perfect when it's far from it, fuck it, this game needs nitpicking because who else is going to do it. Not the ragequitters, they have their own problems with the game. I'll also say the transitions between some areas can be jarring, in a bad way, in terms of lighting. From the Valley of the Drakes into Blighttown for instance, you can clearly see ahead of you but everything must go INSTA-dark the moment you step in even though there's a big shaft of light behind you because, well, we want you to know you're in big spoopy Blighttown. and the words "Blighttown" appearing on screen just aren't good enough to let you know that! Now I haven't played the sequel so I don't know how many of these issues carry over but if it improves on ANY of these in any way then it's far from a failure. I'm really just illustrating how flawed the first Dark Souls was that people don't want to or can't acknowledge in any way. It's a divide between people who hate the difficulty and, worst of all, the "git gud scrub" fanboy MLG basement dwellers all of whom should be blindfolded and executed point blank on their knees for using 4chan terms like "git gud" in a serious, non-ironic fashion.

+Majora's Mario I'd say Dark Souls 2 is the best game since Dark Souls. And that's kinda a massive issue.

+Majora's Mario I agree with this. There were plenty of good moments in DS2, and the DLC had some of the best level design in the series imo. It's no Dark Souls or Demons Souls PvE wise for sure, but it was still a lot of fun, and the PvP (minus the dumb matchmaking) in MUCH more fun in Dark Souls 2

Sskcdeceddcedvvdeevd Sandvevwevevers Can't agree there. Soul Memory kills what little PVP there is and the poise system is a mess in DS2.

Yeh, pointing to other Fromsoft games such as for, example, Dark Souls 1 is a great way to see what 2 did wrong, what it lacked and why people didn't like it. Unfortunately, some people don't understand that and just think that because you liked Dark Souls 1 you hated 2 because you expected it to be the same, which is not the case.

Yea no this game is just kind of shit.

I would definitely say it's a bad game. The issues with the controls and lock-on combined with constant spamming of enemies makes it really hard to enjoy. Combine that with ADP, bad level design, nonsensical world design, long aggro ranges, subpar animation etc, I got nothing but frustration from it. In my opinion it fails at nearly every aspect that made Dark Souls and Demon's Souls such great games. Maybe the DLC would change my mind, but I'd have to mod it heavily to fix the most egregious technical issues.

boo hoo

Hbomber guy response was so laughable and filled with personal attacks and lies that the response will always be disproportionate. Theres no arguing with idiots, only obliteration

xD

valid

Based

Understandable.

Ikr, like it's not a horrible game but some of these DS2 defenders will say that it's the best in the series

@@nikthedestroyalator6796it is

😡

@@zakariamoustatia3034 Lol

It’s the worst game objectively but it’s my personal favourite

***** Nearly all the humanoid creature animations in Dark Souls were motion captured at IMAGICA Corp Studios. And Dark Souls isn't difficult; it's just a matter of learning the animations. Since the AI can't interrupt the attacks once the animation starts playing, all you need to do is wait for a long animation to start playing, and you can attack safely. There are lots of games (even MMOs) with procedural animation and sequence blending, where the AI (and players) can interrupt or modify animations (ex., interrupt a spell cast to dodge instead, or change the direction of sword swing by moving right after starting the attack). It forces players to pay more attention (because the enemy can change its attacks dynamically), and feels much more responsive. Pressing a button and having to sit there for 4 or 5 seconds while the game plays a pre-recorded animation feels pretty primitive, in 2014.

***** I've played through the game six times (NG with 4 different characters and NG++ with one of those, then I got bored). And you can check the credits or read any of the articles written while the game was in development. Several of them mention the motion capture studio. But that's not the real problem, anyway; you can use motion capture as the basis for a dynamic animation system, or you can create manual animations and make those impossible to interrupt. The issue is the way the game gives predefined _animation sequences_ priority over dynamic _control_. I didn't mention a specific game because nearly _every_ other game developed in this century allows interrupting and modifying animations. TERA, GW2, etc. (to mention just combat-orientated RPGs). You press a button and things happen within half a second. In fact, in the few cases where they don't (ex., GW2 used to make your character get stuck if you were picking up some object, and still makes your character get stuck if you're trying to revive another character), people complain about it quite loudly. The notion of getting stuck in an animation for 5 seconds or more (as happens frequently in DS) just feels like something out of an old game (like those early motion-captured EA sports games I mentioned). It's obviously much harder to code a game where pressing a key in the middle of a predefined animation _changes_ that animation in a believable way, but it makes a huge difference to how realistic combat feels, and how challenging it can be. Maybe if From Software had focused on a more dynamic control system (and more dynamic AI), they could have made a game that was more challenging to DS players. Instead, DS2 just feels like a bigger and "shallower" version of the previous game(s). It's still a good game (with lots of places and items to discover, etc.), but not really innovative or challenging enough for people who played through DS.

But sequels, especially direct sequels are meant to improve and tie up all the lose ends and mechanics of the previous. At the very least, not to make it worse. And if he finds grips that are present in the current game and where better in the other two, then the new failed in that regard. The gameplay may be slow in the previous, but it's how it was done that makes the game good or not. Speed isn't an viable excuse to defend the game.

brucenatelee I don't know any sequel that ties up all the loose ends and improves all the mechanics of the previous one. Sequels tend to either be more of the same (i.e., same game, new maps), polished remakes (same game, same maps, with better graphics), or try to change the gameplay in some way to appeal to a new audience. I find that making the game more responsive _is_ an improvement over the previous games (though it's still not responsive enough for my taste). As is making the game world bigger. As is adding more items and more types of customisation. Several things in DS2 _are_ better than in its predecessors. Unfortunately, the game feels a lot blander in many ways (a lot of areas are very similar, a lot of bosses are almost identical, etc.). It's as if they didn't really have enough ideas to make a bigger game, so they just tried to stretch and repeat things. And they didn't want to bother to code a system where animations could react to commands in real time, so they kept the pre-recorded animations and just made them a bit faster to make the game (very slightly) more responsive. It's not a horrible game, but it loses one of the main assets of the previous one(s) (the atmosphere) and doesn't improve enough on the predecessors' weakest aspect (control).

wow Rfc, what a way to say that dark souls 1 sucks and that people who play it are lame. The original game had a unique world and was difficult, but the enemies had the same rules that you did. Yes, the AI could be exploited but that's true for any game, that's why pvp is popular. You'll never know how good you are until you test you skills against other players. The base game was there for you to learn how to play, and get your butt handed to you time and time again while drawing you into the world, the pvp......that was where the game opened up. I remember a feud i had with one character. He was in the cov. that let you place a marker on the ground so that you could summon him, and we started chatting in messages. I changed my weapons/armor/play style so many times fighting against him, as he changed, adapted, got better. By the end of it, we were both much better players and able to handle many situations as he never knew what i would bring to the fight, and i never knew what he would bring. The fairness of the game, that's what appeals and has a long lasting effect in demon/dark souls 1. That there is always a way to win without having to do everything perfectly. Sometimes you just have to be smarter then the situation that you face.

It’s actually the team behind King’s Field making a King’s Field esque game rather than a Dark Souls one. Drawing comparisons to Demon Souls was already a dumb idea when the literal lead director of King’s Field was directing Ds2

@@monkeman5895 But Dark Souls 2 actually brings many mechanics back from Demon's Souls though? Infinite farmable healing, HP reduction on death, main hub you teleport back to to level up, upgrade and purchase items that branches out into various dead ends, to name a few

@@filipmajewski8382 Don’t ask me, I’m not the moron saying Ds2 was made by people who haven’t played “either” dark souls games (there was only 1 game at that time wtf was OP smoking)

@@monkeman5895 He said „either of the Souls games” as in Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. That makes 2, read OP’s comment again

@@filipmajewski8382 well OP is a moron then because these 2 games don’t even play exactly the same as each other. Most of the inspiration behind Ds2 came from King’s Field anyways

​@Linda Niemkiewicz It is 100% possible. The large ember is in the depths and the very large ember is in New Londo. Run through Undead Burg to Undead Parish, snag the basement key just past the boar, head to Lower Undead Burg, fight Capra Demon, unlock the depths, steal the large ember from the butcher's chest, then take it to Andre. Next run to New Londo, make your way to Ingward, murder the poor fuck, take the key to the seal off his corpse, #draintheswamp, head into lower New Londo, snag the very large ember from its hiding place at the top of the spiral stairs, take it to Andre. Farm large titanite off the giant leeches in Blighttown, farm the darkwraiths in New Londo for all the chunks you need, then if you didn't get a slab off the darkwraiths head to the undead asylum again and kill Stray Demon. Congratulations, you've got a +15 weapon. Now go and wreck the gargoyles.

@Linda Niemkiewicz Why do you even do that.

@Linda Niemkiewicz looks like someone is getting butthurt because he/she just accused someone lying and then got roasted badly.

@@youwouldntremembermeanyway7410 How did they get roasted lmao

***** Polyphony Digital. They listen to feedback and take it seriously.

Because matthewmatosis is talking about a game while mauler was going in depth on a 1 and a half hour long video

Because Matthew is a much better writer

Mauler really did blow it out of proportion, there’s really no reason to do a 7 hour long dissection of a single guy’s video, however faulty and outlandish Hbomber’s arguments were it’s ridiculous to respond like that.

@@lightbrand_ To be fair it was one of his first dissections

@@lightbrand_ It takes seconds to spray shit all over a room and hours to clean it all up.

Yeah well look at what happened with ds3 lmao

@@seaman_de_man That they actually bothered to continue the story of 1?

@@StephanuSneed they didn't continue it they just haphazardly threw in many aspects of 1 and some of 2 and called it a day

@@seaman_de_man No. They continued the story of the Way of White, Lloyd and Gwyndolin, having Lloyd be rejected by the WoW and Gwyndolin take his role, while building a city for the descendants of the gods, only to then be vored by one of them. They showed us what the legacy of Artorias became, with undeads devoid of purpose taking it up knowing full well they will end up like him. They showed us the end of the race of demons, with Quelana finally going back home and getting slaughtered together with what remained of her family. They showed us what became of Gwyn's childrens. They showed us the logical conclusion of the chosen undead being able to link the fire, which is a kingdom forming with the purpose of continuously doing it, as Lothric does, and building institutions to do so, like the order of Fire Keepers we see in that game or the shrines. And they showed us the logical end of a world where the flame is continuously being linked, that being a giant desert of ash. They didn't "haphazardly threw in many aspects of 1 and some of 2 and called it a day", they developed the world to its logical conclusion, continuing and finalizing character arcs and plot threads from 1. Which is what a sequel, especially the final one of the series, should do. Unless it's trying to do something unique like DS2 did, trying to tell a more personal story, which is why i can forgive the game for not trying to do what DS3 did. I'm just glad they brought by Miyazaki for the final installment.

Well, despite the third game retreading the same story again, I'm gonna be honest, what could Miyazaki have done in that world? I think he felt a little bit creatively pigeonholed by that game. I actually like the way ds3 has you killing the reincarnated forms of previous beings who have linked the fire before that refuse to do it again. Original? No, but still alright for what he could have done with dark souls 3. Ideally, you'd set each dark souls game in completely different settings with vastly different goals, but unfortunately that didn't happen...

Try NG+

adding black phantoms of existing enemy types doesnt change the fact there is a lack of variety. i can only think of 3 new enemies added in NG+, and two of them are only in boss fights and the other is only in the things betwix.

oxis77gas Done NG+, was still not that hard. And the phantoms weren't unique, they were like phantoms of Demon's Souls in that the were existing enemies with more damage/health. In fact, DkS2 feels more like a sequel in terms of game mechanics and such to Demon's Souls than Dark Souls. And even then, I'd say Demon's Souls was better.

giant dad Hey now, there's nothing wrong with liking a game, even though it has flaws. And don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of this game either.

Im not happy that they jam packed it with like 10 useless bosses. I feel like the excuse they were on a time limit is bullshit seeing as they unnecessarily made the DSII map so huge and packed with useless space that was unneeded. But even with all that. DSII is a good game. They should NOT have done what they did. But I make my peace with it. As I have no plan to ever touch the title again.

aldia doesn't give you a soul

Hey its that dude from DBD. Hi

@@gael9181 dude, what was that for?

I would agree with your point of fanboys seething 9 years later, but 9 years later and you're doing the same thing. Just from the opposing side. DS2 defenders vs DS2 rationalists are the same people, both annoying, just different view slightly

@@pentexsucks43 Disagree, I'm not down there in the kiddie pool writing 3000 word essays defending DS2 I came back to this vid while binge watching Matthewmatosis vids again and saw how many of the recent comments are still malding

Don bless the Longman.

​@ValkyrieMoonfire Same with Bloodborne. I doubt they'll ever do a sequel to it, and for a good reason. Then again I did absolutely love DS3 so eh.

This video eventually lead me to MauLer and EFAP :)

I really hope so. I'm just upset that Dark Souls II had to suffer because of it.

This bodes well. The working title of Dark Souls was Project Dark, and those screenshots--particularly the one that looked like a fog gate--very much hints at this being the next game in the Miyazaki Souls Series.

***** My GOD! Hope @ last! THANK YOU FOR LINK!!

How is centipede demon bad? I see people complain a lot but if you just go to the right you have a reasonably large area to fight him away from the lava

​@Linda Niemkiewicz Being told "you won't know why you're doing anything" isn't enough to create motivation. Like Matthew said in the video, this seems like the designers misunderstood how mystery was used (and how it wasn't) in the first game. And about the Pursuer, yes, you're transported to the Lost Bastille. But you have no idea what you're there for and, more importantly, you _still_ have no idea what you were doing in FoFG. The only reward you get is the very gamey feeling of beating a level (even the Drangleic set you're likely to miss if you use the nest straight away). You have no sense of accomplishing anything in the world until you kill the Lost Sinner and even then you don't know why this matters until you try going to Drangleic Castle. I'm not saying every area needs to have an important goal. Transit areas are fine (DS1 had loads) but you need to know *why* you're transiting through them. For comparison, in DS1 you're told that the second bell is in Blighttown "far below" so descending through Lower Undead Burg and The Depths (with *very* deliberately chosen names) feels like making progress. Then you're told than Sen's is the way to Anor Londo. Even in the lategame, it makes sense that to find "the First of the Dead" you should go through the area with all the graves and skeletons and The Witch of Izalith has been associated with fire and demons since the opening cutscene (+ you'll hopefully remember the name "Chaos Witch Quelaag") so going through the Demon Ruins makes sense. The Four Kings you're told directly are in New Londo. The only arbitrary one is associating The Duke's Archives with Seath. P.S. I don't think DS3 handled it terribly well either. The feeling I got arriving in Firelink Shrine was "you know how this shit works by now, get on with it". I haven't played Bloodborne but from what I've heard that approach is thematically relevant to that game + it makes sense in-universe because you're literally employed to hunt the monsters.

Robert R DS2 isn’t about mystery, it’s about the inevitable. I’m pretty sure this whole experience has gone several miles over your head if you agree with anything in this critique. Trying to argue DS1 is anything other than hugely vague is laughable I mean the way you get to lower undead burg is about the least intuitive bit of level/quest design I’ve played in a game post 2006. I mean if anything, what you’re told at the start makes you think you can get to both bells from firelink shrine (which you can’t without the master key) And that’s just miles from the truth. Basically what all these criticisms of DS2 come down to is; YOU don’t want to learn a new game and it’s mechanics. DS2 (with the dlc) has the best 2 bosses in any Soulsbourne game and the best level to boot. Also the design decisions made in DS2 carry through, almost completely, to bloodbourne which is widely regarded among critics and the informed public as the game of the generation/decade so I find it bizarre anyone has this much negative to say about its immediate spiritual predecessor!?

​@@fioredeutchmark Trying to analyse other commenters' mental states or motivations is dickish and stupid but in this case I'm happy to return fire. If you think the PLOT, not the lore, of Dark Souls 1 is "hugely vague", clearly you don't understand the difference and this video went over your head. The main plot is a series of clearly expressed goals: immediately Oscar tells you to ring the Bell of Awakening. As soon as you arrive in Firelink, the crestfallen warrior tells you there are 2 bells, 1 in the church and 1 in Blighttown. After you do that, Frampt is waiting in Firelink and tells you to go through Sen's Fortress to Anor Londo. You then give the Lordvessel to Frampt (or Kaathe) who tells you who to kill for the 4 lord souls. Then you go back to the kiln to fight Gwyn and either kindle or snuff out the First Flame (which your respective serpent tells you to do). There's plenty of ambiguity in the *world* but not in the *player's goals* or what you're trying to achieve (note *trying* , not necessarily the outcome). _EDIT: I missed a bit of your comment so, to be fair, yes the path to lower undead burg is arbitrary and annoying. But as I said at the start, these sorts of things feel like mistakes or bad decisions in DS1 whereas in DS2 they feel intentional_ I haven't played Bloodborne so I can't comment on that but to say "the predecessor to a good game must be good" is idiotic. Exactly the same design principles and mechanics can be applied badly in one game and well in the next (Assassin's Creed 1=>2; Far Cry 2=>3; Just Cause 1=>2; ...)

​@@fioredeutchmark "I’m pretty sure this whole experience has gone several miles over your head if you agree with anything in this critique." Yeah, this is the sentence where you lost me, bud. It's fine if you wanna disagree with matthewmatosis, but pretending he doesn't have any valid opinions/facts/arguments/criticisms in this video, even if you think that Dark Souls 2 is the best in the series, is just plain ignorant. Also, what design decisions exactly are you referring to that were brought over from DS2 to Bloodborne? I find this argument confusing since Bloodborne was more a spiritual successor to Demon's Souls than DS2, especially considering that Miyazaki wasn't even involved with DS2 because he was heading Bloodborne during the entirety of its development...

DS2 has its fair share of cheapness, but so does DS1. Undead parish's hollow gangbang b4 gargoyles, lower undead burg's hordes of dogs and thieves, capra demon and his army of dogs, nito and his army of unkillable skeletons, Bed of instan-kill death traps, Duke's archive's mages & archers' endless sniping, the shell mobs b4 Seath fight that will follow u into the boss room the 1st time u go in, and the beloved Anor Londo archers... The list can go on, but u get the idea. im not gonna argue which one did worse, cuz i havent played DS2 for months and just recently finished DS1, so the frustrations from DS1 are still fresh in my head, but DONT U EVER say that DS1 is all about fairness.

Charles wang Compared to DS2, DS1 is fairer than a Vulcan court. I'll admit the Capra Demon boss and his approach has annoyingly lazy difficulty (seriously, fuck zombie dogs) but the rest of the game is nowhere near DS2. In DS2 there are tons of places were enemies ambush you with no visible signal whatsoever and most mobs aggro in packs rather than individually as in DS1. Anor Londo and the Dukes Archives (including Seath) was a cakewalk for me and my heavy-as-can-be tank build, same with Nito. Nito was actually very disappointing for me first time around, I beat him first try without taking damage (I love his design, cool as fuck) while Seath you can beat single-handily by just strafing counter-clockwise. I did have troubles with my second character, a light-armor katana-wielding sorcerer but still nothing as cheap as the stun-lock/perma-tracking enemies in DS2. DS2 does have some really cool bosses (pretty much everything that isn't an armored colossus with a giant sword), but the level design and enemy AI is just miles behind DS1. Edit: Also, you can't do the Caravella Shuffle in DS2!! Beating a hard boss is not the same without it! (Look up Giant Bomb's DS1 coverage)

Carl Bernroth ugh....my fking browser shut down and made me lose all my comments b4 i could post/save them, so i'll make it short: a lot of cheapness can be dealt with easily if u have a lot of poise and a high stability shield, but that doesnt make it less cheap. its ok to have unblockable atk, but not ok to have un-dodge-able atks in Souls games. the game should not force player to tank any hits or take any unavoidable dmg. i dont care for the AIs, and they are bad in both games.

The AI isn't bad in terms of player interaction and reaction, though it is bad in DS2 since multiple enemies can react from a single source (which is lazy design). When it comes to unblockable attacks, there are next to none in all three games. Sure you can't block an overhead butt-slam but you can dodge it assuming you're attentive. Having watched speedrunners kill every single boss naked with only a rapier without taking damage I know no boss "forces" you to take hits. Learning to read enemies while having full knowledge of all of your frame data is just part of the game. It's similar to competitive Street Fighter; if you don't know the start-up, activation and recovery of your moves you will get punished. In DS2 they just lazily circumvent this by adding multiple enemies in the same unavoidable fight.

i dont think multiple enemy encounter has anything to do with AI...but i dont care either way. no, u cannot dodge 4 kings homing magic atk, or manus' 360 degree dark magic blast. U HAVE TO USE A SHIELD (or the silver pendant for manus). either u give me a link showing some1 dodging those 2 atks without using any spell/shield/special item, or it did not happen. and u cannot reliably dodge the skeletons in Nito's room when there are 5 or 6 of them. and u cannot reliably dodge spells or arrows shot at ur back like in Anor Londo or Dukes' archives. surely some1 can maybe do it in one time out of 10 times, but u just cannot tell when the atk is coming if u cannot see the atker. that's what i mean by saying "unavoidable". ofc i can dodge any single enemy's atk when 1v1 at melee range (except the dogs. they have zero startup. u take dmg b4 u see the animation.)

An elegant mechanic, for a more civilized age

Yet for some reason peop,e misunderstand the difficulty of dark souls, these games are supposed to be challenging AND fair. But for some reason people defend the artificial cheap difficulty in ds2, and the devs had no idea what the fuck they were doing

Instead of making a hard but fair game, they made a frustrating game.

BRITO Ds2 fans are too stupid to understand that

@@virtuallyperfect7973 there's no such thing as ds2 fans nobody plays only one souls game lol you sound rather stupid

@@mgmmj6664 It's obvious what they meant dickhead.

+Clockwork Entirely unproblematic.

+Clockwork Really? I'd think you'd complain about the Brume Tower not Iron Keep

+Lars Thomas Bremnes If you enjoy the death of creative difficulty then yes, unproblematic.

Lars Thomas Bremnes not the difficulty, the creative ways it was difficult.

Lars Thomas Bremnes Its difficult like"Hur dur clump a bunch of difficult enemies together"

Another thing Matt mentioned that really bugged me is the feeling of restriction I get when playing DaS2. If I wanted to make a quick PVP character with a Zweihander, I have two tedious routes to go through in order to get one, one of which has a bit of a variation: 1. Heide's ToF >> Huntsman's Copse >>Harvest Valley >>Earthen Peak >> Iron Keep >> Chest near Smelter Demon's fog gate 2a. Forest of Fallen Giants >> Lost Bastille >> Sinner's Rise (to get Fragrant Branch) >> Shaded Woods >> Doors of Pharros >> Brightstone Cove Tseladora >> Farm spiders for Zweihander 2b. Heide's ToF >> No Man's Wharf >> Lost Bastille etc. Meanwhile, I'm wasting materials on weapons I don't even want to use just to get through these places a quickly as possible. I feel as if Dark Souls and Demon Souls did a MUCH better job at placing a wide variety of weapons in places players can reach with relative ease, which made PVP characters pretty easy to create. And with the addition of Soul Memory, DaS2 needed easily accessible weapons way more than its predecessors, seeing as a lot of people seek to avoid the SL 200+ hexing dual wield katana pokefests. Also, fuck whoever thought it was a good idea to make players open to attack as they go through a boss fog gate. I sure do enjoy having to kill every fucking enemy on the way to the Executioner's Chariot to save myself from getting my shit pushed in by five Torturers at the fog gate.

***** Yeah, that's nice, but in the future it should be automatic when it's in your inventory.

Maybe you shouldn't be playing Dark Souls if you go on a tirade over putting on a ring, a process taking less than 10 seconds.

***** Or you could just press a button like every other door. Didn't realize you could change it back immediately, thought the door might stop suddenly just to be trolly.

marcus moeby Let me reiterate, maybe you shouldn't play Dark Souls if putting on a ring for a few seconds bothers you. In fact, why are you even on youtube? I mean, it takes *so* long to search for youtube on google, and to find this video? That's at least 10 seconds! 'Annoying as hell' as you put it.

Unironically a skill issue, maybe learn to take on more than one enemy at a time. I'd expect you'd learn that by the time you get to the dragon rider.

SuperSupermanX1999 * "The gutter is the _turd_ time this setting had been used in _tree_ games."

SuperSupermanX1999 One of my regular customers at work is Irish, and I enjoy every conversation we have due to that amazing accent. :)

It's a trio now: Hbomberguy's video, this one and MauLer's response. An awesome watch.

@@NightWanderer31415 one of these things is not like the other