RE: "RE: 'In Defense of Dark Souls 2'" - Objectivity 

Anyone who throws around that shitty take is either just parroting it from someone else blindly, or just got lazy and tried to skip mobs and got punished.

LoL, really? The Bonewheels in the Catacombs do not aggro on you all at once, unlike all the aggro-linked ganks in DS2. And the Bounding Demons in Lost Izalith had their aggro-range greatly reduced in one of the first patches way back in 2012, so you are parroting a complaint that has been out-of-date for over a decade. Meanwhile, the gankery in DS2 was made worse by SotFS edition which added more enemies where there had previously been less. Hey, tell my why the Blue Cathedral needs a fire-spewing wyvern right in front of it when there was none in vanilla? Tell me how that improves gameplay.

​@@shiroamakusa8075if you look through my Vanilla vs Scholar videos you will see that Scholar reduced the number of ganks and made several runbacks easier. I also don't understand the complaints about Heide's Tower. The main path is still the same and after defeating the Dragonrider the area turns into a mid-game area. It's now a lot more interesting than the empty feeling the optional half had in Vanilla.

Or you could just use a spell-parry shield like Golden Eagle Kite and bitch slap their spells right outta the air.

Well, you need all you can get for 2 hours footage

Its not like there some OPTIONS to wiggle to adjust your settings. Hmm...

Dynamics are an objective flaw in music. The volume should be 100% all the time for maximum objectiveness. /s

Agree with everything except pumping ADP early. The early game of DaS2 is very friendly to avoiding damage via strafing, positioning, and evasive rolling (i.e. to move yourself out of harms way) so having i-frames out the ass is very much overkill, and that's on top of the fact that you're impeding your learning experience with a crutch AND reducing the amount of spells, armor, and weapons you can use. ADP is a very low priority stat unless you've been conditioned into linear "press B to win" problem solving from Dark Souls 3, or something.

"DS2 is largely defined by disparity and variety." Thats one of the main reasons I love it (both mechanically and in its narrative), and just a perfect way to put it.

@@roguetwice469 I see your point but given that this was my attempt at giving some “new playthrough basics” I do think it’s fair to give out newbie advice for newbie players who are probably used to the other games.

"Please stop spamming me" while he aggroes every enemy at the same time is just peak comedy

​@@Domo3000mauler is such an interesting specimen of the Dunning Kruger effect

I honestly think it's because of his accent and the speed of which he speaks. You sort of just knod your head in agreement and if you aren't familiar with the game their gameplay seems fine. But when you mute the audio and watch the movements you question their decision making. I've never seen so many complaints levied at the beginning area of a video game. You don't have to wake all the enemies...

OMG I just realized that it probably is the fight club spot because of the fact that if you beat it it means you’re actually good (the dragon covenant doesn’t hurt)

@@JellyJman FYI, the Iron Keep bridge literally IS the fight club (good PvP spot) of DS2

Funnily enough, DS2 was my second Souls game after DS3 in like 2017-2019. I ended up rage quitting on Iron Keep… 1 year later two of my friends were doing a coop run through DS2 and asked if I would join. It was some of the best multiplayer I had played right up there with DS3. Wouldn’t you know it 2 weeks ago I played DS1 for the first time and decided to replay the other two. I haven’t gotten to DS3 yet because I started working on 100%ing DS2 while having a blast! I even first tried Iron Keep with no sweat due to it being so ingrained in my mind of how to deal with the area. This might be a hot take, but I really like DS2 :)

DS2 has an hidden gameplay, cancels, jumped attacks tracking, even backstep dodges are not enough used by players as intended. Proof : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-i4U_Q-buu2A.htmlsi=tnmYAYhARGmOHF0I 🙃

@@zubroskadamien5883they are used as intended. Backstep s increase with agility like rolls do. Proof: domos comparison video

@@IvyDoll-jf3gmI mean Backstep dodges work as intended, but peeps don’t use them and continue to dodge with roll even if it’s slow, the don’t have the intended DkS2 experience IMO. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-i4U_Q-buu2A.htmlsi=w-nnOPLvu7knEvQU

Yeah it’s really weird seeing a fandom doing these things to themselves

Well, more than that, those other strategies aren't even necessary in DS2. I've played through the game sl1 melee only and never felt that I needed any of those things. You can do just fine without it People really overblow how "hard" it is to play melee only without a shield, it's not that much harder if you're smart about it

​@@frazfrazfrazfraz I agree. The problem is people that aren't good at that playstyle ignore all the other options the game gives you, and then call the game bad.

Ironically this seems to be Hbomberguy (noted DS2 enjoyer that Mauler is responding to) exact position 😂. Shields are bad because Bloodborne ditched them etc.

​@larrywalker1371 imagine disliking one different game for not following the design principles of another different game, especially a game that came AFTER ds2 and was in production along side it.

Unless it's Elden Ring, where leveling health is more mandatory than leveling ADP ever was in DS2, then they stay silent

Elden ring mentality

Good to hear that I'm not the only one that dislikes the shaky running in DS1. To me the straight running in DS2 immediately felt like an upgrade

@@Domo3000 Aha, and the movement in general. People call it cluncky, i sort of understand what they mean, but i disagree, in DS2 you can move stick in circle and circle around an arrow, nor DS3 nor DS1 are able to do that. That's defienely upgrade, and then downgrade with DS3.

Durability in DS3 is just something that exists without any impact, unless someone casts Acid Surge in PvP. DS2 is really the only one where it has an impact on weapon choice and such.

That is my point

@@Domo3000 I'd say it had an influence in DS1 as well, but I wouldn't call it good there. Basically in DS1, durability was the point where people might have dropped the game. If you went into Blighttown without buying the repair kit (which I doubt most people did at this point in their first playthrough), it can easily happen that your weapon will break in Blighttown and you are stuck there. Well, technically, you are not stuck, but it's hard for players without knowledge to get out of the zone. So basically, if your weapon broke in Blighttown, it ended your first playthrough. Which is the only time I think it mattered in the game and I am not sure many people would consider that to be a good thing.

​@@Modiedon't forget the durability destroying slime of Gaping Dragon. First you run back out of the Depths to deal with the curse, and then you have to do it again to repair your equipment. DS2 really removed so many frustrating moments by adding teleport from the start and automatically repairing non-broken equipment when sitting down at a bonfire.

@@Domo3000 Well Dragon weapons and the katanas can break pretty fast in DS1 but the undead merchant in undeadburg sells infinite repair powders so its nowhere near as importan but its still there.

But you see, DS1 lazily putting 5 Taurus Demons in an open space with lava is a masterful design choice, unlike DS2, which places around weak enemies who don't wake up until you go near them that is just lazy B team design

Also DS1 not having had enough time to finish the game and just spamming hordes of Taurus Demons, Capra Demons and Dragon Legs in the Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith is something we can look past. Two areas that were rushed with a recycled boss and the worst boss in the series are acceptable. But DS2 not having had enough time to implement a longer tunnel after Mytha's boss fight is inexcusable because the tunnel up to Iron Keep is a bad transition, even though most people do not even notice it. This small non-issue obviously much worse than several unfinished areas in DS1.

​@@Domo3000i only noticed the dodgy Earthen - Iron Keep transition after it was pointed out by a RU-vidr I was watching

​@DarkSouls2_Enjoyer it's not even that immersion breaking, behind the windmill is a rock face, you also don't go up the windmill but go through it from which you get to the elevator. The only reason it "feels" like the transition doesn't make sense is because the devs didn't want to have it take an hour of elevator riding to reach iron keep for "realism"

He clearly has no idea how the vast majority of mechanics he complains about work nor that the vast majority of issues he claims to be unique to DS2 work the same in every Souls game, but he is still narcissistic enough to think that he's an expert on Souls games and that his personal opinions are objective facts.

I'm more focused on getting rid of the Ranged Staff Lord first, who happens to also be the Bonewheel Lord

@@Domo3000 awesome still think I got that trauma form da1 bonewheel that I dread fighting them lol even in ds3

maybe himself :3

​@user-kb1su7mg1g OK I know he's video is an absolute slander burger but deleting himself is a bit much Deleting that Jupiter sized ego however....

He should delete his massive ego problem lol

So should matthewmattosis and his hot air of garbage collection. Most game channels have no clue what they're talking about (game toolkit, writing on games or whatever). People are easily swayed if you have an accent. It's the lab coat problem. The air of authority makes people believe even if there is no sense or substance.

​@@normalguycap What's wrong with GMTK and architect of games? Unlike mauler, they mostly talk about things they think games do well and offer constructive ideas about how games systems can be used in interesting ways. I've found their content insightful.

Welp respect to your opinions but ive played the game and thought most if not all his criticism was valid lol you can like the game and admit its not good bro

It's really funny when the fans coming in and spout this nonsense to defend the videos. I really don't like DSII I think it's really bad but not for the reasons he provides.

@@Freeseraphim why you dont like it?, not trying to judge or anything, just wanted to know :)

@@akashthadani22 the big lines are: I think the game is tedious more than anything else. Theres of course many things sprinkled around. I tried my first power stance run recently. The "recovery" animation between each strikes was so long it completely ruined its potential for me. The enemies are not especially deadly except for a few, and they just take too long to kill. The bosses are the same issue. Note that I never finished the DLCs, but from my experience they were just not really fun and didn't even have memorable music. I can't really comment on my impression of the areas. It was my first dark souls, so they're all pretty well etched in my mind. Yet, I don't think any are as striking as some that were in the original

@@Freeseraphim There is no world where enemies in ds2 take "too long to kill", especially not in relation to other games in the series and genre. It sounds like you used large, slow powerstance weapons and based your opinions of the entire system off that.

My only issue with the subjective/objective struggle is that, while you're correct that art is only experienced subjectively, critique of art is kind of pointless if we don't at least try to have some kind of objective measure to hold it to, even if that's ultimately impossible. I'm a fan of music and music criticism, but I also acknowledge that most music criticism has very little value to it because it's ultimately "I like/dislike this" Recall a bad game, if you will. The worst game you've ever played. What makes this game bad? If we only value the subjective, then you kind of can't critique the game without someone else saying "actually I liked it, so it can't be bad!" I don't hate that Mauler does try to measure art up to an objective standard, but he completely undermines himself by declaring that his opinions and preferences determine objectice quality. And ultimately, any objective standard would have to be something that most of us can agree to.

@@larrywalker1371 Compelling comment. I dig what you’re saying here. “Any objective standard would have to be something that most of us can agree to.” I agree, but objectivity is not determined by consensus. It is either a truth or it’s not. And nothing in art is truth. There are no rules by which we create or experience art. I too dig music criticism (Robert Christgau, hell yeah). I see where you’re coming from with what you want criticism to be or to mean, but, really, it is a case of, “I like this because…” Criticism of art can never be anything else, at least when it comes to an objective standard, because there is no standard. I view criticism as a medium to enlighten aficionados/haters/whomever of different aspects/themes/motifs/etc. present in whatever art. It can be an exuberant celebration, or it can be a calamitous takedown. I go with the most creative writers who are also the most captivating thinkers. All things considered, criticism is just an extension of the art it is analyzing: Entertainment that can make you think.

@@larrywalker1371”the critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. … Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.” Oscar Wilde. There really isn’t objectivity. It’s just comparing and contrasting what people at large refer to as good elements and bad elements of art, games in this case. Nothing is innate about a given element except when it is given a reference point, like a similar element in another game. A critic is just someone who articulates more than “I like/dislike this”, but ultimately, a person who says they like a game and doesn’t elaborate and a critic who says they like the same game and writes about it, are doing the same exact thing. You’re right about it being wild for someone to try and compare their thoughts to an objective standard.

@@AppleIndianFTW Those are awesome quotes. Hell yeah, what a thoughtful, eloquent discourse. I appreciate you both. @larrywalker1371

@@larrywalker1371 I think this is kind of a solved issue tbh. There doesn't need to really be an "objective" standard that games need measured to, as much as there needs to be a consistent and agreed upon standard. Think of it like this - I am, in this hypothetical, a book critic. I believe that in order to have a good book, characters need to be faced with a core conflict that they overcome. This is a standard I've set - one that is ultimately subjective, but agreed upon enough that it still holds value. Further, it's also a standard that can be more or less objectively applied. Does this story have a conflict that the characters overcome is in most cases a straightforwards yes/no. Thus, even though there isn't such a thing as objective artistic quality, I can absolutely set out a series of standards and in many cases test to see if something objectively meets them or not. I mean, think of something as basic as a game being broken or not. There are broken games that people think are good despite being broken, broken games that are intentionally broken, broken games that people value because of their broken features. You can absolutely say objectively "The developers did not intend for this," but weather or not that's a bad thing is down to a lot of other context, and the player in question. The benefit of doing any sort of criticism this way is that it gives you an easy and straightforwards way to talk about more subjective things, or things others might disagree with you on. Rather than saying "enemy placement is objectively bad" and just trying to argue that for example, one could say (in more quality writing likely) "The game features areas full of enemies that can swarm the player if they aren't careful, which I see as a bad thing because of my expectation of souls games allowing players to run through after initial explorations." This way, not only are you giving your framework of judgement and solid reasoning, you're also pushed into more neutrally portraying game qualities that another person (one who prefers planning, environmental gameplay or strategizing) might actually see as a good thing. You know, rather than saying "this pie tastes like garbage," you can say "this pie is raspberry flavor which I dislike" allowing a raspberry fiend to know just where to look. The whole world could hate raspberry and I still think this would be a better system tbh In short, I really don't think you need an objective standard to measure up to, you just need a well thought out consistent standard that most people find agreeable.

But his friend played a loooooot of ds 1 and 3

He really said that veteran players are the ones using this ring. NO veteran player touches this ring, it's made specifically for new players learning the game.

@@under1702lol exactly, vets just don’t die and if they do they just play around it or use humanity since they probably don’t die enough to waste it

this is why mauler is an toidi

Or ranged attacks, or a shield that deflects spells, or just use the hundreds of consumable healing items to tank everything if you really want to. I definitely agree Shrine of Amana is a step up in challenge, but at that point the game assumes you're all geared up and ready. Every type of build has some kind of ranged option available for it.

Or maybe dont spam multiple mages that can shoot you across the map while having enmies that can see you across the map and come to melee you while your slow in the water shrine of amana is bad like blighttown was bad stop excusing bad game design

I didn't even need to change my equipment in my recent replay. The area provides plenty of cover, and you don't even need to be sprinting or rolling to dodge most of the attacks, running slightly diagonally alone can make a dodge easy, and the projectiles are surprisingly slow. My main ranged option was pyromancy, and because of the water it was not very viable here, but getting close to them wasn't a major problem. So long as you don't just run straight up towards them you're honestly fine, I died more times to falling into bottomless pits of water trying to dodge the Archdrake Pilgrims because I forgot where my footing was.

@@coolguychapman6685 Holy cope, Blighttown is a god tier zone and so is Shrine of Amana. I cleared both without using any ranged and enjoyed every second of it. "Bad game design" is codeword for "please put bright yellow paint on the pillars and tutorial message popups on how to line of sight spells".

That would be cool

I would like to see that :) Not because I hate that guy, I just think it would be amusing

I want it because of both! Its a two for one!​@@RavenGamingOverLord

@@sophieprime4669​​⁠ That’s alright with me, I don’t really watch his videos anyway. I have seen some of his Elden Ring clips and he acts like a moron lol

in ds3 u lose 30% of your hp when u die once...

@@AtreyusNinja It's actually about 23%.

Utterly bizarre

nah , he said in the video ''it was bad in demons souls and it is bad in dark souls 2''

And you can stack 99 humanities as well along with the 15 estus you can chug

well just because something may be bad in two things it just justify the other thing . lifegems are still implemented in a bad way because they are wayyy too easily obtainable

Did you know Hbomberguy didn't consider humanity as a "healing item" in his DS2 video? Yeah...

I hope you have a great time with it!

It's still a limited resource that you may find yourself without, especially at a hard boss.

Scholar is much more generous with human effigies compared to ds2. Same with ds1 on the latest patch. Old versions of both games were pretty stingy.

​@renatoramos8834 after demon of song, effigies are no longer an issue as you can pray at the fire and restore humanity for free unlimited amount of times if you have no effigies left.

@@Thornblooduser absolutely asanine.

@@renatoramos8834 It's not limited. You can easily farm it in infinite amounts in many locations. Also you can just help someone to defeat a boss and instantly regain your human form. If your skill issue is too high for even those 2 variants, you can regain your human form in the Rise of the Dead for free at any time (it works if you have 0 effigies in your inventory). Cope.

Yes he did

No, the clip was disingenuously taken out of context. Mauler talks about how inconsistent some of the sound mixing in DS2 is, and shows examples of similar, or even in some circumstances, the exact same sound effect has its volume changed anywhere from barely audible to "are your eardrums still working?".

⁠@@exeledusprince9165 It still doesn’t change how ridiculous it is to complain about it

​@@exeledusprince9165what is missing from the context? Mauler did not realize that Combustion sounds differently when it hits an enemy and he falsely accused that intended behavior of being a bug

@@RavenGamingOverLord he isnt conpmaining about it. Like the clip in question, the entire video is taken out of context. He uses this example of abhorrent sound design to punch holes in HBomberguy's point about good sound design.

Chloranthy Ring Third Dragon Ring Ring of Blades Stone Ring

Mine usually were Damage, Stone and Stamina. Dragon Ring made me sloppy most of the time, but made Twinblades and other stamina-focused weapons far better. I was the Twinblade God. As in Base Twinblade. I can guarantee there was no one better with it. Nobody ever bothered to use the poor thing. It has such low stamina consumption that allowed far too many mix-ups and combos that last far too long for their own good. I thought the only hurdle was parry fishers, but once I learned proper dead-angling and how to work around it they were easy as hell to beat. Then one of them went nuts and started to wear full havels and ring of giants with the Grand Lance. Then with that, there came to be the godforsaken duo of the Twinblade and the Offhand Grand Lance. True Horror to everybody else.

Third dragon Ring, Flynn, RoB, Stone. Chloranthy ring swap with the stone ring against bosses.

I would even dare to say that it's an "objective" improvement that the durability is another resource just like everything else, and actually has a point to its inclusion. Instead of just being an occasional tax in DS1 that can softlock your playthrough if you forget about it in a bad situation. And like Domo said, some of the most powerful weapons in the game have low durability as a balancing factor. Encouraging you to invest in means of repair or only pull them out for bosses or tougher encounters.

Honestly I liked it as well! Early game doing a "deprived" character (idk what it's called off the top of my head for ds2) I played through the game and so much of the opening hours was just using every weapon I picked up, really being able to see the difference in movesets and damage right off the bat instead of going out of my way to experiment with potentially inferior options. Even by the time I got to a late game build, durability was still something worth building around as I was going with the old smeter-demon powerstance route. It's one of those mechanics that can feel a bit annoying, but adds enough to big sections of the game that I think it's worth it.

Thanks for reminding me. Here's the playlist: ru-vid.com/group/PLkei3Zc3mbYmcj_blebrY5rn7koclcYYs

Sick thank you so much

Sounds exactly like what under the mayo guy would do

I know someone personally who actually played like that. They told me that they looked up on the wiki on how to get the sunset staff, claimed that they were trying to get it and never bothered to level faith in order to get it. I also found them grinding souls in Iron Keep so they could get more damage out of the katana they had. Despite having more DEX than INT, they kept using sorcery to kill the knights until I mentioned that using the katana could do more damage. Once they beat the game, beating Nashandra on the first try, they complained that they "felt underleveld". After beating the game there main complaint was that "Nothing I tried to do worked" and thought it was the games fault the they constantly made choices that weren't just bad but just plain counterintuitive, constantly.

⁠@@nameofhearo1370 I think the Soulsborne fandom is the only fandom that I have ever seen doing these things to itself constantly lol. It just doesn’t make any sense why they keep being stubborn about not using certain items or weapons

​​@@RavenGamingOverLordit's not the only one, but it's pretty pronounced with Souls games. Sometimes it's just people being noobs and not understanding. But very often you have players that use self restrictions as a cope. It's easier to claim a game is unbalanced or broken than to admit that it's your own fault for not engaging with certain mechanics or trying different tactics.

⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@ReelBigFan Yeah I see ton of players act like it’s the game fault and not their own fault for not using the crafting system in Elden Ring or magic. I think I have done it too many times in fighting games where I blame the internet connection for not working properly instead of putting the blame on my skills

Mauler: Look how my character moves his pinky finger. it's objectively worse than every other game where the character doesn't move their pinky finger

Real Souls veterans don't step to the side to avoid projectiles. No armor, no magic, no shields, no tactics, running only, Final Destination

Spoke like someone who never played shrine of amana.

Lol

@@Domo3000 Sounds like Super Smash Bros Melee Fox only

You can see that sconce at 40:40 But based on how dark most of his No Man's Wharf and the Gutter footage looks I guess he never really utilized this basic gameplay mechanic

Not to mention spells and bows.

@@adamiadamiadami I guess I’m only one who likes using spells and bows lol

Actually, spears are great at dealing with groups of enemies, especially in narrow spaces, and some of them have sweeping attacks in their movesets. But I guess it's easier to google "best ds2 weapon" and grab the rapier (or the mace with its horrible 2h R1 lol) because some redditor said so, dump 60 points into dex/str, not upgrade armor, never raise a shield, trying to speedrun a game that's designed to punish blind speedrunners. Edit: I think you might've meant thrusting sword, I understood that as "thrust damage" weapons :^(

​​@@Yarsito I agree 👍 I was making reference to the fact that most of his "gank" footage he was using either the rapier or estoc's two-handed thrust attack. Multi-enemy encounters are definitely doable with this strategy but my point is it's not bad design if your narrow playstyle and lack of engagement of your multitude of other options (sweeping attacks, ranged attacks etc) results in a bad time.

​@@RavenGamingOverLordHaven't you heard that any other playstyle besides gassing through each area with a two-handed sword is cheating????

Lmao

The problem with most game critics these days. And ever.

​@AppleIndianFTW most game critics: "how dare you say I'm wrong! I got background music that loops 5 songs, 10 hours of length, thousands of subscribers and a sexy voice, without those your evidence means NOTHING!"

Sorry, but having to copy the subtitles into the video editor would be too much trouble for me. Maybe if I get a better video editing tool in the future.

Imagine unironically complaining "running away from current enemies leading to these spambushes happens so often you can't not notice the pattern" without realizing that the pattern is your own bad decisions. I guess he was used to DS1 and 3 letting bad players get away with poor gameplay decisions more by granting you s as soon as you touch the fog gate that he started to assume that this is the intended way to play Souls games, even though all those games regularly teach you not to do this.

In recent playthroughs the only time I had a weapon break was when I was using the Foot Soldier Sword on my SL1 run, but that has only 20 durability. Seriously, I don't see how it is a problem if you use any regular weapon with 60+ durability.

​@@Domo3000many times my weapons (dragon tooth, rapier, red iron twinblade) went very close to be broken but never 2 of them at the same time. I'm a "kill all things in one go in an area at least once" so yeah if you don't care about that this will never happen, but it can But since I always had a second weapon of choice it was never an issue

The real reason the dogs can teleport

That person that accused me of lying by taking things out of context seems to be kinda confused. Have you seen the conversation where he accused me of lying about the Combustion sound effect? He can't even decide if it is bugged or not or if MauLer called it bugged or not. In one sentence he says that I'm lying and that MauLer never said that the sound bugged out, but in the very next sentence he says that I'm lying because MauLer showed that the sound bugged out. And then he accuses me of taking things out of context by not mentioning all the time that MauLer's video was a response to Hbomberguy. What difference is there between "MauLer falsely claimed that X is a bug that's unique to DS2" and "MauLer falsely claimed that X is a bug that is unique to DS2 in order to argue against Hbomberguy's video"? He seems to think that this context somehow changes anything about MauLer's false claims, which makes no sense at all.

@@Domo3000 Lmao, yes I saw those comments. My favorite one was, “Why are you trying to hide this from your audience?” I was watching your video and thought, I’m going to reply to that totally unhinged individual. I was laughing thinking of his comments. Started looking and couldn’t find them so I just did a general comment versus a reply. You have a lot of fans but apparently you have some very angry haters lol. These people honestly crack me up. The stuff they’re arguing is just asinine and ridiculous. Anyway, Big Ups Domo. I wish you the absolute best.

@@BlondeMcGuinnis it the user with the uppercase E and pink background? He likes to argue alot and honestly it's strange. He's making arguments about taking things out ot context when there is context. And fails to just see the counter argument. He also does that thing where someone could go into detail as a response and it evolves into one word sentence replies that accomplish nothing.

@@NobleAbsinthe I think that’s one of them lol. There’s another one equating the objectivity of the earth being a sphere with the objectivity of whatever game being bad. They both seem bitter.

​@@BlondeMcGuinn Wha...What? *Sorry for long rant but I kinda kept typing lol* Like I get people want to seem intelligent talking about their games, they want objectivity, but there's only a very limited scope you can apply objectivity to, everything else is subjective, and EVEN MAULER AGREES TO THIS. Which those Mauler fans seem to ignore, he even says in his own video, there's people who enjoy anything, like eating poo. So if that's the base case, what's even the point of arguing what is objectively good and bad in art is SO SUBJECTIVE, that a still image of poo can be considered good? It's just an exercise in persuasion! Like the only things I can place as "objectively good" is strictly from a coding standpoint. Because we have those. We have functional and non-functional requirements. Does the game crash gracefully when an error occurs? Does the game turn on? Do the controls work? Is it running at the desired FPS etc. But these people never argue that, because their tech illeterate, and think games come from trees, but instead they argue GAME DESIGN because just like Philosophy majors, it doesn't require any technical knowledge to make an argument! Like, the holy bible of Game Design by Jesse Schell says it's all subjective as we design games by viewing them through different lenses. "Does my game have enough surprises?" "Is my game encouraging curiosity?" "Is my game fun?" .... These people argue with no background in anything, and they subscribe to a guy who argues on feelings when that guy in question, references his feelings! Which is fine! But don't act like you're this automaton who is above feelings! Sorry for long rant, but seeing some comments just ughh.

I've actually seen people praises that mechanic in demon's but bashes it in ds2

Ah yes, Dark souls player worse nightmare is using more than one half of their brain cells to play the game and not mindlessly spamming

@@chizu.iscold Why lol?

so fricking true

​@@RavenGamingOverLord DS fans when you take the RPG part of souls games seriously: 😱😱

To be fair he said that he did not like it in Demon Souls and that DS2 should not have reintroduced it, which is a much better argument than those that never played Demon Souls and claim that DS2 is the only Souls game that does it.

Even Dark Souls 3 took the same idea and reframed it to feel less negative. Being embered is inarguably the equivalent of being in human form, but instead it appears as though you gain health instead of returning to your max. You still lose max health when you die while embered, but your health bar shows itself as being full so it feels less like you're losing health and more like you're returning from your boosted state. It's functionally the same, it just has a different effect on player perception. I think both systems make sense, but anybody who doesn't like the "lose health on death" system should have criticism for Dark Souls 3's embers in that case. Possibly even more, seeing as how Dark Souls 2 is 5% less health per death up to -50% which is halved with the Ring of Binding (which now only takes up 1 of 4 slots as opposed to Demon's Souls 1 of 2) compared to Demon's Souls instant -50% or Dark Souls 3's instant -30%

I’ve never heard this before but I wholeheartedly agree with it. Hell yeah, Tim Cain knows what’s up.

Agreed

So if something is bugged and dosent work and i review the code and see is bugged and therefore go to the developer and ask for a fix because its bad and dosent work i am narcissistic and nobody should listen to me?

@@View777Dragon The difference between the OP’s first scenario and the second is the use of the word “objectively”. Reporting a bug is a completely different deal. If you had reviewed the actual game (versus reviewing the code) and said that the *game* was objectively bad, that’s where this would apply.

@@BlondeMcGuinn So Tim Cain is wrong then.

ds1 movesets r sh1t

@@AtreyusNinja the only interesting moveset I can think of in DS1 is Priscilla's Dagger. But the cool moveset was wasted on a mid weapon with no remarkable features. Then you have the Majestic Greatsword powerstancing moveset in DS2, and it's awesome.

I hate that jump. On my first playthrough I missed it like three times in a row, because I was so used to the more accurate jumps in DS2

"Absolute incompetence," the irony of that statement

I never played anything pre Demon Souls. Would also be interesting to see the history of how their games evolved

@@Domo3000 they got alot of great games in that back catalog. kings field/shadow tower, armored core, echo night + all the unique one-offs like kuon or eternal ring. with Duck Station & PCSX2 (nightly) + vulkan rendering anyone can accurately emulate em too. if you ever want to mix it up and do videos on the classics i'd definitely be down, since im going through em too.

true

To me this Door is just more proof that the community never gave DS2 a fair chance. If it was in any other Souls game it would be hailed as such a smart level design, but as it was in DS2 it was just accused of being an unfair troll and nothing else.

Someone else said it well: the discourse around DS2 allows streamers to get away with poor gameplay If they just ran into a group of enemies in DS1 they would get told to get good. But if they do it in DS2 they can just complain how unfair that game is and no one will call them out for being bad. If they roll too early and get hit they can just blame the hitboxes for being broken. And that then causes a feedback loop where more and more people get convinced that the game is bad instead of paying attention to the fact that the critics are just blaming the game for their own mistakes, which would not work if people applied the same standards they have for the other games.

Yeah probably because they can’t come up with anything better than complaining about getting gank by bunch of enemies. That guy haven’t changed much since, he is still hating on random stuff

Nah, they go off matthewmattosis's horrendous review.

Nah, I go off on having played the game and hating every minute of it.

​@@shiroamakusa8075pretty much this. Its insane how DS2 apologists are, it's just "no it's good I swear!" And they just excuse the BS with nonsense.

​Pretty much every ds2 fanboy is like " game good if you no like game you bad or no play" like bruh i have nearly 130 hours in this game its fucking trash millions have played it and think the same too or are you gonna say that all those millions of people are just lying? Its fucking crazy lmao ​@@exeledusprince9165

You actually HAD to make that jump to get the ember that unlocks infusions in the OG release 😂 talk about brutal.

@@larrywalker1371hot take! But I like the OG ember placement, it makes sense to find it in a lava pit rather than right next to the blacksmith

And you can just bait them one by one it's not that bad. You have to kill them all to not get ganked yes. But there is the same thing before Sir Alonne and there is an even worse run: the run before the blue smelter demon. It's harder to bait them one by one and you're being shot by some unreachable mob

DS3 does in fact have A LOT of ganks, but you do have much more mobility and rolling ability to just get out of it to compensate

​@JellyJman I currently made 6 characters and working through them all. There are ganks everywhere that you don't see if you're on certain classes, and many enemies hit for 4 5 6 7 and even 8 times in their combo lol I used to think DS2 Sotfs was exclusively bad for it but it really isn't. Also enemies in DS3 are way more aggressive, and their movements are so rag doll like that when you try to run past them on a boss runback, they consistently hit you, and the game sometimes lags. That's a clear sign there are too many enemies on screen lol. Crystal Sage for example I ended up on some runbacks having to use a flask before attempting the boss again lol. The 3rd bonfire on the snow dlc (where the trees are to knock down) I counted around 25 normal enemies before you even make it in to the cave. Untended Graves is also a gank area on the side near the boss fog. There's at least 10 of those hollows iirc lol, and they all have a 6-7 hit combo with their daggers. One combo will kill you never mind having 3 or more of them ganking you lol. I aggroed them just to test

So you could jokingly say that in DS2 you get punished for running through new areas, while in DS3 you get punished for fighting your way through areas.

Ds3 is a game where whoever gets in the first hit will win.

Again, mauler didnt review DS2, he used all the shit it does horribly to deconstruct HBomberguy's abhorrent analysis of the game.

@@exeledusprince9165 ...An extremely poor deconstruction thats full of misinformation.

@@Revision-Harrowed not really. He has the game open and does everything he talks about for every point he makes.

@@exeledusprince9165 I would advise that you watch the series you are currently commenting under for a deconstruction of why Mauler's attempts at criticism are almost all horribly flawed and biased

@@Revision-Harrowed this series doesnt talk about what Mauler is even getting at, it just goes over his evidence (which is mostly accurate, btw)

See, you are doing exactly what I said. It's in DS1 so people excuse the lazy design of this encounter as they view that game through rose-colored glasses, while better designed encounters in DS2 get interpreted much more negatively. I'm pretty sure that if that encounter would have shown up first in DS2 we would only hear the negative arguments that I brought up and people would not try to come up with justifications to defend it. My main point here was the clear hypocrisy of the Souls community.

@@Domo3000 I don't think it is lazy design though, I also haven't said anything about DS2 (I actually agree that it has very well designed combat encounters).

​@@fastenedcarrot9570I didn't mean to say that you do that. I meant that the Souls community has these double standards. Sorry if I wrote that confusingly

Nor would they need to level ADP

I have a lot of experiance in DS2 on NG+7 (around 20 NG+7 playthroughs). Durability is only ever an issue in the dlc's, mostly during bossfights (Sihn, Ivory King, King's Pets). I consider the dlc's more of an endgame areas, so by then you already have an unlimited source of Repair Powder. As for early game one spare weapon is enough (in my experiance).

Sinh and Aava are not explained in-game, but they only deal double durability damage if you hit their body. Hitting their head let's you defeat them at higher NG levels without breaking your weapon.

@@under1702 depends on weapon. for example mace only broke in no mans wharf and in giant memories but rapier, falchion or katana break 24/7 in locations such as: iron keep, no mans wharf, lost bastiel, drangleic castle (vs ruin sentinels and stone solders) in giants memories and in a few more locations.

@@Domo3000 rly? didn't knew about that

@@SilverBoy-er4kbThere's a ring that increases weapon durability. Whenever I make cosplay builds like Domo uses in the videos coincidentally I wear that ring to avoid getting my weapons broken. That said, as said before, DS2 has plentiful upgrade items, and you can infinitely buy them at certain points, as well as farm them with relative ease. It isn't too hard to have at least two good reliably upgraded weapons in case one breaks.

True, I never really account for archers. They are often like background noise to me that I just forget about

Honestly the redeeming thing about Bloodborne is the rally mechanic. I wish they brought that back somehow. Maybe the DLC will add a weapon or ash of war that functions as the same thing as the rally mechanic. The blood vials also are like the Demon’s Souls grass mechanic but it heals your health for a flat 60% of your health so if you have more health it heals more.

The rally mechanic was already kind of experimented with in DS1 with weapons like Butcher Knife or Old Wolf Curved Sword and Pontiff's Left Eye in DS3. None of them were ever as viable as the rally mechanic and it would have been interesting if they went more in that direction.

@@JellyJman Rally works very well in BB because of how aggressive the bosses and enemies are. Id like to see it return maybe as a crystal tear flask passive. Im not a fan of grass or blood vials though (or lifegems for that matter) but im still glad BB has rally and DS2 has estus.

Obviously mauler

​@@holler_pit5243 petty critic syndrome: when you want to make a long rant video but don't have anything actually bad to justify that length, so bring up something no one sane gives a crap about and frame it negatively.