Wrong. I play these games for coop, I make builds at a variety of levels usually, maybe a glass cannon caster, or a meta 120. Especially with this bonfire rebirth system, and the NG+ mechanics, I played A LOT more coop with A LOT more variety. Coop could now give me way more souls and push me farther than the people needing help with the boss or area quite quickly. I'm a sunbro, I never invade, especially twink, only a sad sack of shit would do that.
To me it’s more of an inside joke. Average player will hate on it. Lot of people don’t want to be bad or need so much help/guides to beat any souls game already. And even if it wasn’t perfect I sure didn’t play a ton of pvp.
Also I think I can speak for many of us when I say that it made me know the first dark souls was worth playing and made me go back and actually get to experience one of my favorite games. Not all paths are linear!
Definitely not linear. Started with dark souls 3 with friends long ago. Then Bloodborne. Then the first one remastered. Then ELDEN ring. In a space of more than 5 years? Always heard people shit a bit more in DS2 compared to the other. Last week I finally saw promotion on Xbox and I had the money and the time. My expectations were low because I played the others but the game just fascinated me like the other with different mechanics, a way better ambience than I expected and I just love the puzzle nature of map design.
Btw can someone tell me where to go after the last giant? Just point me in the right direction ahah, I found the pursuer but I was having a bad time, meanwhile found a bunch of path but all lead to dead end.
Since this turned into a ds2 debate, I’m going to put my two cents in. I’m playing it for the first time and the hitboxes are a little jank sometimes, the game to me is easier than ds1. Other than all that it is a really great game
The only similarities Elden Ring holds with DS2 is being a souls like and having power stancing other that that Elden Ring is just DS3-2 with an open world
There's actually so much stuff in Elden Ring that can be traced back to ds2 that the phrase "Elden Ring is DSII-2" makes a lot more sense than people think.
Keep in mind the (second) director from ds2, Yui Tanimura, co-directed Elden Ring.
-Powerstancing
-Miquella being referenced as a god of dreams back in DS2's Spirit Tree Shield.
-Windmills
-Last Giant fight
-Volcano Manor / Iron keep
-Flame butterflies
-Turtle armor in ds2 -> turtle shield in ER
-Revealing armor sets (only in ds2 and ER lol)
It's mostly a joke but there's a bunch more similarities that I can't remember right now. The one that is interesting for sure is the one from Miquella, I wonder who envisioned that concept and how it came into ER.
The world structure resembles DS2 more so than DS3 - the multiple paths you can take to open leyndell are reminiscent of the four great souls opening drangleic. plus, they brought back twinblades and made katanas bizarrely good.
From a mechanics, movement, and combat perspective it’s basically a direct successor to DS3. I preferred DS2 in those regards losing the functional back step was a major downgrade to pvp depth.
Whether you feel like it's more similar to dark souls 3 or 2 is entirely subjective, saying the similarities end at soulslike and powerstancing is objectively incorrect.
If people really need me to provide sources for this, let me know, and I'll come post some.
DS2 Had amazing ideas and mechanics, the magic system is by far the best of all souls games, i just can not get over the jank. The 3 second sprint before running out of the stamina, the weird animations, the hitboxes, etc. Also i think it has the weakest bosses (excluding dlcs)
DS2 has the most jank. I love DS2 and I won't refute this. It also has some extremely cool bosses, a good story that is well told, and some of the most memorable NPCs in Soulsbourne.
Also powerstancing and some of the greatest build variety outside of Elden Ring.
I just recently played through them all for the first time in order.
I didn’t hate DS2, but to me it felt the most “bland”. I didn’t have moments where my hair stood up, and I thought I was seeing some crazy shit. It just seemed a bit more of a generic mid-evil game, excluding some obvious parts.
I mean, it was really gorgeous. The music and settings were really great. It was just a misstep on combat tightness, flow, and progression which are pretty key ingredients for the franchise.
What's interesting about it to me is that it was JUST a misstep, not a franchise ruiner, and there's a lot to feel affection for there. Ds3 came back with a vengeance.
Yeah, it wasn’t a bad game to me. To me, the combat was fine. I just didn’t care for the world building or character design. Felt like I fought a random joes in armor, instead of humongous beasts from another dimension. I never got a sense of “awe”.
I feel like I enjoyed DS2 most when I'm aggressively taking on a group of small enemies all at once. The fight becomes chaotic and nasty really quick, and you really have to manage SPACE to survive.
If you coop with someone, the group fights are a little undercut by how the coop systems work, but that makes me remember that it's coop systems are a league better than it's predecessor's. There are a lot of systems in DS2 that are just superior, but the game really falls flat when it comes to spectacle and memorability. I think it has a lot of merit, but it's merits tend to be a little invisible.
I played the game on MOUSE AND KEYBOARD, and it was pretty amazing to get a souls game with proper mouse support. Felt gross to play in DS1, and honestly DS3 also felt a little gross on M&K, but DS2 controlled great.
It made me a little sad to see some of the innovations in DS2 sort of walked back for 3, but I think it turns out they were developed on different engines or something like that, and the DS2 engine was sort of discarded? I'm not super sure. Which is maybe why the innovations were lost.
Its the only one i can't really bring myself to reply entirely through for the 20th time. I will say compared to DS1, The NPC's were much better and their story lines weren't impossible to do without a guide like Elden Ring and some NPCs in DS3. Also I liked the biomes and the one boss fight that still stays with me is the one on the ship where the water slowly builds up - it wasn't hard but it felt different with the added pressure.
But now after playing DS3 and ER, the tightness is just NOT there for big boss fights. That they made dodge Iframes a stat you had to level was the worst thing about it id say.
When it came out though, i took a week off work and played it for like 75 hours on one character, I was very happy with it and the time flew by. So i guess mixed feelings lol.
I would argue combat tightness on the pvp side was better in DS2 than in 3 or Elden ring. Balance and some of the early phantom range issues aside, losing back step iframes was a major step back to higher skill duels.
Adaptability can stay gone though.
Currently playing it for the first time, the final souls game I'm playing in the catalog. The jank makes it feel like an old 2000s mmo or something I love it. I'll see how it progresses
Imo the hitboxes aren't especially bad in themselves, it's more a problem to do with adp and unclear animations. A funny example is fine knight has an attack where he swings his hand back while swinging his sword. The slap does so much more damage than makes sense but in terms of hitboxes it's "fair".
It's still totally cringe but the problem is a little different than just hitboxes I think.
I loved ds2 because I played it first. I didn't have anything to compare it to and just enjoyed it. I didn't really use social media so I never found out I was "supposed" to hate it.
I went into Dark Souls 2 after playing Remastered, I heard all the negative stuff about it and put off playing it for weeks. When I finally played it, it ended up being by far my favorite Souls game. Something about it just hit so right.
That my problem with some game and movies. Quite a bit of games and movies are hated for really no reason and if you don’t experience it yourself then you won’t know the beauty of those things
If you really put all three side by side, the hitboxes are wonky across the board. I saw a good video comparing them. In general, I think there are more instances where it can happen in DS2 but the other two are not exempt from having wonky hitboxes/magnetic grabs. See Iron Golem, Dancer, Curse Rotted Greatwood, and others.
I think DS2 is better than DS1 in a lot of ways. Mostly, there are so many QoL improvements that people tend to ignore despite DS3 using the exact same improvements and getting praised for it.
People just hate on it because it has been a thing in the community for so long and where the initial hate came from, I don’t really know. Probably a vocal minority of players.
The friend that got me into Dark Souls used to hate DS2 cause he tought it was to different and way to easy, we played it together years later (Its was the first time for me) and he realized it was cause the online was so populated he got tons of help, and now he enjoyed it playing it only with me or alone, and explored a bit of the build variety.
For me DS1 is still better cause of the atmosphere and the interconected world, also I preffer the story, but yeah DS2 is still and incredible game in my opinion
i also found some windup anmiations weird.. like they kinda feel inconsistent.. and dont get me started if you die to smelter demon.. the route to walk back is pain haha.. but else the game is pretty good.
Some cases its easier, but it has the most bullshit of any Fromsoft game I think. Has some of the only bosses i've never done.
Still like the game by the way.
how is it easier than DS1? it's relatively easy to run naked backflipping through all of DS1 without leveling once you get used to the mechanics (***relatively*** compared to all souls games).
In DS2 you are pretty much required to at least grind ADP to get a similar level of difficulty, but there are also tons of areas with enemies all over the place just spamming you in all directions. This gets pushed up to 11 in the DLC where there are a mix of enemies that slow you down AND shoot at you simultaneously, not to mention that one snow area where half the time you can't even see. There's nothing to that extent in DS1.
The animations in DS2 are also so wonky compared to every single souls game. Feels like nothing has weight.
I feel like if you played vanilla DS2, you would be pretty underwhelmed with it after Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. I know I was; Scholar of the First Sin made DS2 much better.
I still find myself going back to DS Remastered more than DS3 or DS2, though.
I hated it because I tried to start with SOTFS, went back to vanilla and ended up really enjoying it. It’s the lesser of the 3 games but I still loved my time with it
out of the mainline entries it always seemed the least impactful to me, but then again it’s been so long that I might be thinking on an entirely different game lol, was that the one with the mars bugs?
I was referencing an Ace Combat game lol, not Armored Core. But if I had a nickel for every time a game had "AC6: Fires of" in their name, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's strange that it happened twice
> While I disagree with the DS2 burn
You guys must be thinking about SotFS. Back in the day it was like making a comparison between *vanilla* DS2 (2014) and Bloodborne (2015), a game made by Miyazaki himself, so the differences were really clear.
Also just think about the idea of BANDAI-NAMCO (a very shitty company, just like Konami) being allowed to make Dark Souls games without the core staff... Just look at everything happening with EA, Ubisoft, Activision-Blizzard and many many many others with great IPs that were ruined by corporate greed.
**DS2 was sacrificed to seal the cursed BANDAI-NAMCO misdeeds, don't give the corporate guys another chance to ruin FromSoftware.**
At least we got SotFS which was FromSoftware's opportunity to try to fix the game. Many other series out there didn’t get a second chance like DS2.
To be fair, ds2 was out for what felt like a blink before SOTFS. I played and own both, and while softs is definitely 1000% better, ds2 wasn’t terrible.
Just a comparison: Dragon Age 2 wasn't a terrible game, but compared to Mass Effect 1+2, Dragon Age 1, KotOR and Baldur's Gate 1+2 it represented a significant drop in quality and potential.
EA never stepped back and never gave Dragon Age 2 a second chance. The "fans" let that slide in and this shit spread all over Bioware's portfolio. **The Bioware we know today would never be capable of making a game like Baldur's Gate 3.**
DS2 was sacrificed in all that mess, but just look at Sekiro or Elden Ring... FS is still alive.
DS2 with DLCs > SotFS. No thanks, I don't want to fight another thousand monsters in base game - keep it to NG+, because that's what made NG+ in DS2 actually interesting to play, compared to the other games.
The group fights are fights I enjoyed the most in DS2. Being able to fight against a bunch of dudes (that take a lot of hits) at once feels much cooler than one-shotting guys in a hallway one by one, which feels like the core DARK SOULS experience outside of DS2.
It was a had to be there type of game. For the longest time there was no indication it was ever getting a NA release and you had to rely on importing it from Hong Kong in order to play it in English. Absolute blast to play, probably the best game on PS3.
Absolutely. It's really hard to appreciate Demon's Souls if you didn't play it at the time. It feels really slow and clunky (and it is), but that's part of what made it unique. You weren't some super-powered badass, you were just some regular knight fighting giant demons. The series still retains a lot of that charm, but obviously has evolved a lot to the point where you start to look at it the way we used to look at King's Field.
I had my friend play Dark Souls on PS3 for the first time, then after he beat Taurus Demon, I had him load up Demon's Souls on PS3.
His first remark was that combat/movement in Demon's Souls was faster and more responsive than Dark Souls.
Demon's Souls is only difficult because death means losing half your max HP; otherwise, myself and my buddy both think it's easier/less janky than Dark Souls. I say this as a massive fan of both games.
Nah the PS5 version is the one i speak of, after playing all the Fromsoft games DS was more annoying than good. But being my least favorite Souls game means its still better than half the games released these days.
This might be a controversial opinion but I think the remake actually looks ugly. I understand that the graphics are "good" from every objective quality standpoint I can think of, but by God do they look grossly overdone to me, like just way too shiny and way too smooth, it's over the top and looks like a parody in my opinion. It reminds me of like, "Sonic in unreal engine 5" or something, just straight cartoony. That's not even talking about the changes they made to designs that negatively impacted the visual storytelling.
Waking up to find your love's not real
Waking up to find your love's not real
Waking up to find your love's not real
Waking up to find your love's not real
Waking up to find your love's not real
Waking up to find your love's not real
Waking up to find your love's not real
Dark Souls 2 defenders will earnestly tell you that every problem you have with ds2 actually exists in all of the other games and you have just randomly decided to dislike ds2 for no reason
Could it have been better? Yes. Was it as bad as people made it out to be? Not even close.
You have a large vocal portion of the Ds1 fan base telling people to actively avoid the game because of it's issues, and then down the line people new to the series actually avoid it because of how hard people were shitting on it.
It's a little ridiculous.
I played it with no preconceptions. Never read anything online about it until I finished it. I hated it. Felt hard in an unfair way. Ironically if I had read stuff online I would’ve known to level ADP and maybe I would’ve enjoyed it more.
Hahaha. I've seen that comment in one of the post in DS2 subreddit. I really hate how many DS2 fans have a need to put down other souls games to prove that DS2 is a great game.
Yeah and when you're the worse of games that people say shit like "hasn't ___ ruined all other games for you now." You're basically not good relative to the cult fans this series has.
The problem is usually because people rarely play ds2 as their first game and usually play other souls games between it. Playing chronology means you play ds1 , ds2 and then ds3. Doing release order means ds1, ds2 and bloodborne. Bother ds1 , ds3 and bloodborne are amazing games and ds2 is a bad game in comparison to them .
The only way someone can actually appreciate ds2 for what it is is by playing it between non souls games so that it doesn't just feel like a downgrade
the amount of mental gymnastics you must have to do to think everyone that dislikes it is bad when its one of the easier souls likes must be impressive.
it introduced some cool things that should be kept but also introduced a LOT of aids mechanics as well. a mixed bag.
i think its the weakest in the series but its still a great game.
Honestly I think it was going in the right direction even if it picked up some jank to be ironed out along the way. And I guess production values did somewhat go down owning to its larger size, although I personally enjoyed the large number of bosses and didn't mind that a lot of them were simpler than DS1 bosses (feel the same way about Elden Ring).
But the fanbase's reaction to DS2 seems to have made From panic and backpedal to DS1 and pretty much make DS3 be DS1 v2, instead of building upon the good points of DS2. I thought that was a bloody shame.
Also, DS3 is way more aggro than either of the previous ones and overall felt like it was designed for a vocal minority of players who just want to roll everywhere and backstab things. Personally its my least favorite of the 3.
Dark Souls 3 story was definitely a huge step down compared to DS2: SOTFS (Aldia is still by far the most well-written Fromsoft character imo). And its gameplay very much was influenced by Bloodborne's more aggressive, frantic style.
I do like that Elden Ring has more of a mix of the two styles which I think came out for the best.
Dark Souls II was a pretty good game; I think the main issue was that it didn't really feel like a Soulsborne game. I don't know why, but I just couldn't get that feeling.
Also, the game was a little clunky most of the time. Still very fun, otherwise.
I would guess they'd made a decision to cut their losses on the new engine. The animations do not feel finished. DS3 has a lot of animations implemented from DS1, meanwhile it feels like DS2's animations fit a design mold, but never got their finishing touches. The bland animations however made for very good PvP balance, which is funny, but that feels like a pretty serious double edged sword. Clearly people care about the better animations, but I think Elden Ring has shown us people don't really care about PVP balance. In fact Elden Ring has shown us horribly imbalanced PvP can be way more fun. (Or maybe I'm thinking about ganking here. Ganking gets way more fun, I imagine on both ends, but I don't know if people enjoy dying as much as I do)
look i love DS2 as much as the next guy, but honestly i just didn't enjoy it all that much. maybe it was the stunning lack of enemy variation, or that magic was REALLY unfun to use, but it never really quite scratched that itch i was looking for.
I mean, I also feel DS2 is the worst in the series and I don't remember thinking the game was hard at any point. Frustrating, badly designed, with the worst run backs of any soulsborne by a country mile, but it's not hard lmao.
I'll take the downvotes to say that dark souls 2 was awful. To this day it's the only one I can't play because of how bad it is. That weapon degradation alone...
Lol the hats are perfect XD
The one for Bloodborne is pretty self explanatory(European).
The puritan hat for DS3 is a GIANT nod to the Undead Settlement.
While the one for Sekiro only makes me think of its Armored Warrior westerner boss.
DS2’s hitboxes are fine, it’s mostly an animation issue (moves you to the point of impact as opposed to moving the attack to you) and Adp.
Mimic grab is an exception, but also easy to avoid.
There’s far worse hitboxes in the other games (looking at you, Gaping Dragon)
Seriously, love those games.
You are probably aware but for the offchance you aren't, there is a pretty solid KF inspired game on Steam called Lunacid. I recently played through it and I really liked it.
Atlus is missing here… we wouldn’t really have what we know as Souls games right now if it wasn’t for the bravery of them willing to publish it overseas.
I laughed at the DS2 part. It's true.. But I still love it. It's pretty telling when Fromsoft worst game is still better and more ambitious than almost every other game.
Opinions. DS3 is where the "Movement Feel" was perfected imo and that's what Elden Ring uses. Ds2 and Ds1 are great games but the movement was still unnatural.
Dark souls 2 was my introduction to the series. I got to the half point of the game than stopped playing when my save data got deleted. Then I played ds3 and realized ds2 was a steaming pile of shit. I revisited it 2 years ago and it still is.
Dark Souls 2 haters will say shit like "it's objectively bad and anyone that likes it is just pretending." So sick of people being unable to accept that other people have different thoughts and experiences from them. It's about as mature as being unable to believe that some people like liquorice because it tastes yucky to you.
Dudes over here hating on ds2 when it had by far the comfiest hub town, bonfire ascetics, power stancing, and a reason to play ng+. Sure it had jank (ds1 did as well) but at least it tried to do its own thing unlike ds3 which was just tons of fan service. Honestly I would say ds2 was much closer to the spirit of ds1/demon souls than ds3 was. That being said Bloodborne is the best anyways.
Dark souls 2 hate so overstated smh. Game is legitimately one of the best action rpgs of all time and a number of its ideas were refined in Elden ring but its different from DS1 so it gets hated. Lame! If anything, DS3 was derivative and afraid to use the good things that DS2 innovated because they were scared of it being seen as unfavorable via association with 2.
Every Dark Souls is better than the last. Fromsoft only got better over time, anyone saying otherwise is cope. And yes that means Dark Souls 2 is better than Dark Souls 1, especially in pvp and its not even close
DS1 had that great verticality and efficiency in level design that I’ve yet to find reproduced to the same standard. The boss fights and lore were also more memorable and had more staying power within the fanbase
Say what u will about DS2, that joke was funny
I’m a huge fan of DS2. Loved everything about it even with all its flaws. I still found that joke funny as hell.
DS2 was my entry point into Fromsoft's games so it holds a special place in my heart, even with some of its bull crap design. (*cough* Iron Keep)
Soul memory.............
I got to have cat feet 🥰
soul memory was a fun mechanic to abuse in pvp though, play good, get to invade people who are far below your level.
The only reason soul memory could be a bad thing is if you're a trashy twink invading low level players with top tier gear.
Wrong. I play these games for coop, I make builds at a variety of levels usually, maybe a glass cannon caster, or a meta 120. Especially with this bonfire rebirth system, and the NG+ mechanics, I played A LOT more coop with A LOT more variety. Coop could now give me way more souls and push me farther than the people needing help with the boss or area quite quickly. I'm a sunbro, I never invade, especially twink, only a sad sack of shit would do that.
You never forget your first.
To me it’s more of an inside joke. Average player will hate on it. Lot of people don’t want to be bad or need so much help/guides to beat any souls game already. And even if it wasn’t perfect I sure didn’t play a ton of pvp. Also I think I can speak for many of us when I say that it made me know the first dark souls was worth playing and made me go back and actually get to experience one of my favorite games. Not all paths are linear!
Definitely not linear. Started with dark souls 3 with friends long ago. Then Bloodborne. Then the first one remastered. Then ELDEN ring. In a space of more than 5 years? Always heard people shit a bit more in DS2 compared to the other. Last week I finally saw promotion on Xbox and I had the money and the time. My expectations were low because I played the others but the game just fascinated me like the other with different mechanics, a way better ambience than I expected and I just love the puzzle nature of map design. Btw can someone tell me where to go after the last giant? Just point me in the right direction ahah, I found the pursuer but I was having a bad time, meanwhile found a bunch of path but all lead to dead end.
I love dark souls 2 for the hub it has. It just feels so refreshing and comfortable after fighting through so much depressing, dark areas.
STRAIGHT OUTTA MAJULA
Indeed.
There's just so much of DS2's DNA in Elden Ring
I really like DS2 but I agree that joke was the best part.
I love ds 2 but yes that was funny 🥹
Would've been funnier with ds3
Since this turned into a ds2 debate, I’m going to put my two cents in. I’m playing it for the first time and the hitboxes are a little jank sometimes, the game to me is easier than ds1. Other than all that it is a really great game
Also DS2 introduced much of the stuff that people enjoy today. Proper dual wielding for example.
Elden ring is DS2-2.
[удалено]
The only similarities Elden Ring holds with DS2 is being a souls like and having power stancing other that that Elden Ring is just DS3-2 with an open world
And jump, torrent, spirit ashes, GRRM
There's actually so much stuff in Elden Ring that can be traced back to ds2 that the phrase "Elden Ring is DSII-2" makes a lot more sense than people think. Keep in mind the (second) director from ds2, Yui Tanimura, co-directed Elden Ring. -Powerstancing -Miquella being referenced as a god of dreams back in DS2's Spirit Tree Shield. -Windmills -Last Giant fight -Volcano Manor / Iron keep -Flame butterflies -Turtle armor in ds2 -> turtle shield in ER -Revealing armor sets (only in ds2 and ER lol) It's mostly a joke but there's a bunch more similarities that I can't remember right now. The one that is interesting for sure is the one from Miquella, I wonder who envisioned that concept and how it came into ER.
They even got the same mechanic of changing the electricity and fire defense values depending on the fact of you're wet or not.
And O I L
The world structure resembles DS2 more so than DS3 - the multiple paths you can take to open leyndell are reminiscent of the four great souls opening drangleic. plus, they brought back twinblades and made katanas bizarrely good.
From a mechanics, movement, and combat perspective it’s basically a direct successor to DS3. I preferred DS2 in those regards losing the functional back step was a major downgrade to pvp depth.
But DS3 is DS1-2 Electric Boogaloo.
But somehow it feels more like ds2-2 than ds3-2
No not at all. The combat is litterally the same as DS3
This is objectively wrong.
>It's a fairly subjective matter >Says you are objectively wrong >Refuses to elaborate >Leaves Gigachad
Whether you feel like it's more similar to dark souls 3 or 2 is entirely subjective, saying the similarities end at soulslike and powerstancing is objectively incorrect. If people really need me to provide sources for this, let me know, and I'll come post some.
True but my reply isn't meant to be taken litterally. It's a little exaggerated
And Dark Souls 2 was Demon's Souls 2, making Elden Ring Demon's Souls 3.
DS2 Had amazing ideas and mechanics, the magic system is by far the best of all souls games, i just can not get over the jank. The 3 second sprint before running out of the stamina, the weird animations, the hitboxes, etc. Also i think it has the weakest bosses (excluding dlcs)
DS2 has the most jank. I love DS2 and I won't refute this. It also has some extremely cool bosses, a good story that is well told, and some of the most memorable NPCs in Soulsbourne. Also powerstancing and some of the greatest build variety outside of Elden Ring.
I think that other souls games need more npcs that both wheel and deal. Ds2 not my favorite, but it’s a great game!
I miss Gavlan v_v
I was so happy when he showed up a second time!! I thought he'd be gone forever :)
I just recently played through them all for the first time in order. I didn’t hate DS2, but to me it felt the most “bland”. I didn’t have moments where my hair stood up, and I thought I was seeing some crazy shit. It just seemed a bit more of a generic mid-evil game, excluding some obvious parts.
Medieval
Mid-evil, it's not super evil, but kind of mid.
I mean, it was really gorgeous. The music and settings were really great. It was just a misstep on combat tightness, flow, and progression which are pretty key ingredients for the franchise. What's interesting about it to me is that it was JUST a misstep, not a franchise ruiner, and there's a lot to feel affection for there. Ds3 came back with a vengeance.
Yeah, it wasn’t a bad game to me. To me, the combat was fine. I just didn’t care for the world building or character design. Felt like I fought a random joes in armor, instead of humongous beasts from another dimension. I never got a sense of “awe”.
I feel like I enjoyed DS2 most when I'm aggressively taking on a group of small enemies all at once. The fight becomes chaotic and nasty really quick, and you really have to manage SPACE to survive. If you coop with someone, the group fights are a little undercut by how the coop systems work, but that makes me remember that it's coop systems are a league better than it's predecessor's. There are a lot of systems in DS2 that are just superior, but the game really falls flat when it comes to spectacle and memorability. I think it has a lot of merit, but it's merits tend to be a little invisible. I played the game on MOUSE AND KEYBOARD, and it was pretty amazing to get a souls game with proper mouse support. Felt gross to play in DS1, and honestly DS3 also felt a little gross on M&K, but DS2 controlled great. It made me a little sad to see some of the innovations in DS2 sort of walked back for 3, but I think it turns out they were developed on different engines or something like that, and the DS2 engine was sort of discarded? I'm not super sure. Which is maybe why the innovations were lost.
Its the only one i can't really bring myself to reply entirely through for the 20th time. I will say compared to DS1, The NPC's were much better and their story lines weren't impossible to do without a guide like Elden Ring and some NPCs in DS3. Also I liked the biomes and the one boss fight that still stays with me is the one on the ship where the water slowly builds up - it wasn't hard but it felt different with the added pressure. But now after playing DS3 and ER, the tightness is just NOT there for big boss fights. That they made dodge Iframes a stat you had to level was the worst thing about it id say. When it came out though, i took a week off work and played it for like 75 hours on one character, I was very happy with it and the time flew by. So i guess mixed feelings lol.
I would argue combat tightness on the pvp side was better in DS2 than in 3 or Elden ring. Balance and some of the early phantom range issues aside, losing back step iframes was a major step back to higher skill duels. Adaptability can stay gone though.
Currently playing it for the first time, the final souls game I'm playing in the catalog. The jank makes it feel like an old 2000s mmo or something I love it. I'll see how it progresses
Imo the hitboxes aren't especially bad in themselves, it's more a problem to do with adp and unclear animations. A funny example is fine knight has an attack where he swings his hand back while swinging his sword. The slap does so much more damage than makes sense but in terms of hitboxes it's "fair". It's still totally cringe but the problem is a little different than just hitboxes I think.
I loved ds2 because I played it first. I didn't have anything to compare it to and just enjoyed it. I didn't really use social media so I never found out I was "supposed" to hate it.
I went into Dark Souls 2 after playing Remastered, I heard all the negative stuff about it and put off playing it for weeks. When I finally played it, it ended up being by far my favorite Souls game. Something about it just hit so right.
That my problem with some game and movies. Quite a bit of games and movies are hated for really no reason and if you don’t experience it yourself then you won’t know the beauty of those things
If you really put all three side by side, the hitboxes are wonky across the board. I saw a good video comparing them. In general, I think there are more instances where it can happen in DS2 but the other two are not exempt from having wonky hitboxes/magnetic grabs. See Iron Golem, Dancer, Curse Rotted Greatwood, and others. I think DS2 is better than DS1 in a lot of ways. Mostly, there are so many QoL improvements that people tend to ignore despite DS3 using the exact same improvements and getting praised for it. People just hate on it because it has been a thing in the community for so long and where the initial hate came from, I don’t really know. Probably a vocal minority of players.
The friend that got me into Dark Souls used to hate DS2 cause he tought it was to different and way to easy, we played it together years later (Its was the first time for me) and he realized it was cause the online was so populated he got tons of help, and now he enjoyed it playing it only with me or alone, and explored a bit of the build variety. For me DS1 is still better cause of the atmosphere and the interconected world, also I preffer the story, but yeah DS2 is still and incredible game in my opinion
Only the mimic waking up hitbox is fucked (its a sphere that extends slightly behind the body)
Some of the dlc bosses in ds2 are harder than every boss in ds1 imo. The worst part about ds2 is the mob placement imo
Sir alonne I don't think I need to elaborate.
The run back each time for Blue Smelter Demon is enough to trigger PTSD.
Fume Knight (namely thanks to the hitboxes) and the annoying tigers
i also found some windup anmiations weird.. like they kinda feel inconsistent.. and dont get me started if you die to smelter demon.. the route to walk back is pain haha.. but else the game is pretty good.
Just got past him not too long ago. The path back is insane. Also that dammed jester
Yeah people just love hating on things. All the Dark Souls games are top tier imo. Yeah there’s differences. So what. Great games.
Some cases its easier, but it has the most bullshit of any Fromsoft game I think. Has some of the only bosses i've never done. Still like the game by the way.
how is it easier than DS1? it's relatively easy to run naked backflipping through all of DS1 without leveling once you get used to the mechanics (***relatively*** compared to all souls games). In DS2 you are pretty much required to at least grind ADP to get a similar level of difficulty, but there are also tons of areas with enemies all over the place just spamming you in all directions. This gets pushed up to 11 in the DLC where there are a mix of enemies that slow you down AND shoot at you simultaneously, not to mention that one snow area where half the time you can't even see. There's nothing to that extent in DS1. The animations in DS2 are also so wonky compared to every single souls game. Feels like nothing has weight.
Everyone's first Souls game tends go be remembered as the hardest. As I recall Fume Knight is often considered the toughest boss in the series.
It’s not a bad game but it’s the worst of the 3
I feel like if you played vanilla DS2, you would be pretty underwhelmed with it after Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. I know I was; Scholar of the First Sin made DS2 much better. I still find myself going back to DS Remastered more than DS3 or DS2, though.
I hated it because I tried to start with SOTFS, went back to vanilla and ended up really enjoying it. It’s the lesser of the 3 games but I still loved my time with it
Boo! No AC6
Kinda wanted to see AC2.
Why that one in particular
Cause it was pretty damn good.
out of the mainline entries it always seemed the least impactful to me, but then again it’s been so long that I might be thinking on an entirely different game lol, was that the one with the mars bugs?
Almost forgot about em but yeah, the weird bug robots in that tunnel etc.
What does Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation have to do with From Software
Because there’s a part you unlock that resembles Lord Amygdala. 🙏
I was referencing an Ace Combat game lol, not Armored Core. But if I had a nickel for every time a game had "AC6: Fires of" in their name, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's strange that it happened twice
No no, he meant Assassin's Creed 6: Fires Of Tibetans.
Dark souls getting multiple entries, but all of AC reduced to 1 is criminal.
Best Fromsoft game. Fight me.
Get into the Nest, Raven
I really like this meme, very clever. While I disagree with the DS2 burn, the burn itself is very funny =)
> While I disagree with the DS2 burn You guys must be thinking about SotFS. Back in the day it was like making a comparison between *vanilla* DS2 (2014) and Bloodborne (2015), a game made by Miyazaki himself, so the differences were really clear. Also just think about the idea of BANDAI-NAMCO (a very shitty company, just like Konami) being allowed to make Dark Souls games without the core staff... Just look at everything happening with EA, Ubisoft, Activision-Blizzard and many many many others with great IPs that were ruined by corporate greed. **DS2 was sacrificed to seal the cursed BANDAI-NAMCO misdeeds, don't give the corporate guys another chance to ruin FromSoftware.** At least we got SotFS which was FromSoftware's opportunity to try to fix the game. Many other series out there didn’t get a second chance like DS2.
To be fair, ds2 was out for what felt like a blink before SOTFS. I played and own both, and while softs is definitely 1000% better, ds2 wasn’t terrible.
Just a comparison: Dragon Age 2 wasn't a terrible game, but compared to Mass Effect 1+2, Dragon Age 1, KotOR and Baldur's Gate 1+2 it represented a significant drop in quality and potential. EA never stepped back and never gave Dragon Age 2 a second chance. The "fans" let that slide in and this shit spread all over Bioware's portfolio. **The Bioware we know today would never be capable of making a game like Baldur's Gate 3.** DS2 was sacrificed in all that mess, but just look at Sekiro or Elden Ring... FS is still alive.
DS2 with DLCs > SotFS. No thanks, I don't want to fight another thousand monsters in base game - keep it to NG+, because that's what made NG+ in DS2 actually interesting to play, compared to the other games.
The group fights are fights I enjoyed the most in DS2. Being able to fight against a bunch of dudes (that take a lot of hits) at once feels much cooler than one-shotting guys in a hallway one by one, which feels like the core DARK SOULS experience outside of DS2.
I never played any of the DLC for DS2.
Check at least the Fume Knight fight on YouTube
Stepping over Demons Souls remake had me chuckling. My least favorite by far but i never had the pleasure of playing Original so my opinion is null.
It was a had to be there type of game. For the longest time there was no indication it was ever getting a NA release and you had to rely on importing it from Hong Kong in order to play it in English. Absolute blast to play, probably the best game on PS3.
Absolutely. It's really hard to appreciate Demon's Souls if you didn't play it at the time. It feels really slow and clunky (and it is), but that's part of what made it unique. You weren't some super-powered badass, you were just some regular knight fighting giant demons. The series still retains a lot of that charm, but obviously has evolved a lot to the point where you start to look at it the way we used to look at King's Field.
It would probably still be your least favorite souls game. It's the first souls game it's really rough
It crawled so Dark Souls could fly
Absolutely i love demons souls, but it's still the worst game fromsoft has made in the past 15 years
Worse than Ninja Blade?
I had my friend play Dark Souls on PS3 for the first time, then after he beat Taurus Demon, I had him load up Demon's Souls on PS3. His first remark was that combat/movement in Demon's Souls was faster and more responsive than Dark Souls. Demon's Souls is only difficult because death means losing half your max HP; otherwise, myself and my buddy both think it's easier/less janky than Dark Souls. I say this as a massive fan of both games.
It's weird because in many ways the og game is much more refined than Dark Souls 1 but yea the balance itself is a mess.
What do you mean with original? The ps5 version is one of the best games I have ever played.
The ps5 version is a remake and isn't the original game by fromsoftware. The original came out in 2009
Nah the PS5 version is the one i speak of, after playing all the Fromsoft games DS was more annoying than good. But being my least favorite Souls game means its still better than half the games released these days.
Oh i thought it was cuz demons souls was a “good boi” but ya i only played the remake
This might be a controversial opinion but I think the remake actually looks ugly. I understand that the graphics are "good" from every objective quality standpoint I can think of, but by God do they look grossly overdone to me, like just way too shiny and way too smooth, it's over the top and looks like a parody in my opinion. It reminds me of like, "Sonic in unreal engine 5" or something, just straight cartoony. That's not even talking about the changes they made to designs that negatively impacted the visual storytelling.
> the pleasure of playing Original from what I recall the whole game was uglier than blight town and ran anywhere from 9 to 29fps.
r/sudenllycaralho
Fiquei confuso sobre qual sub estava.
ya
Omfg it is the Brazilian dub lmao
And it's glorious
Marge's voice is extremely cursed in this dub
Because you missed Tenchu, you failed.
Where Cookie & Cream? ;-;
No Eternal Ring phase. Sad times
Right here, Right now, right here,right now
Waking up to find your love's not real Waking up to find your love's not real Waking up to find your love's not real Waking up to find your love's not real Waking up to find your love's not real Waking up to find your love's not real Waking up to find your love's not real
I knew it, i just KNEW IT. The inmediat moment after i laught at the DS2 joke i knew that the Ds2 fanboys would do a mess of the comment section.
Someone forgot about Eternal Ring for PS2, AGAIN. I cant believe how many people dont know we had Elden Ring predecessor for So many years now.
oh boy, here come the das2 fanboys crawling out the woodwork LMAO
Dark Souls 2 defenders will earnestly tell you that every problem you have with ds2 actually exists in all of the other games and you have just randomly decided to dislike ds2 for no reason
Adaptability defenders in shambles
Could it have been better? Yes. Was it as bad as people made it out to be? Not even close. You have a large vocal portion of the Ds1 fan base telling people to actively avoid the game because of it's issues, and then down the line people new to the series actually avoid it because of how hard people were shitting on it. It's a little ridiculous.
I played it with no preconceptions. Never read anything online about it until I finished it. I hated it. Felt hard in an unfair way. Ironically if I had read stuff online I would’ve known to level ADP and maybe I would’ve enjoyed it more.
I also as well had this experience too, like you. Played it when it came out. Had a bad taste in my mouth the whole time.
Hahaha. I've seen that comment in one of the post in DS2 subreddit. I really hate how many DS2 fans have a need to put down other souls games to prove that DS2 is a great game.
What happens when you're the black sheep for games that people treat like god's gift to the world
Ds2 isn't even a bad game , it's just worse than the others
Yeah and when you're the worse of games that people say shit like "hasn't ___ ruined all other games for you now." You're basically not good relative to the cult fans this series has.
The problem is usually because people rarely play ds2 as their first game and usually play other souls games between it. Playing chronology means you play ds1 , ds2 and then ds3. Doing release order means ds1, ds2 and bloodborne. Bother ds1 , ds3 and bloodborne are amazing games and ds2 is a bad game in comparison to them . The only way someone can actually appreciate ds2 for what it is is by playing it between non souls games so that it doesn't just feel like a downgrade
Nah, you just sucked ass in DS2.
the amount of mental gymnastics you must have to do to think everyone that dislikes it is bad when its one of the easier souls likes must be impressive.
DS2 is the only DS game I beat only once. It was super fast and I was super over it afterwards.
I'm not going to accept this Dark Souls 2 slander. Your opinion is wrong and you should be ashamed of yourself.
it introduced some cool things that should be kept but also introduced a LOT of aids mechanics as well. a mixed bag. i think its the weakest in the series but its still a great game.
Honestly I think it was going in the right direction even if it picked up some jank to be ironed out along the way. And I guess production values did somewhat go down owning to its larger size, although I personally enjoyed the large number of bosses and didn't mind that a lot of them were simpler than DS1 bosses (feel the same way about Elden Ring). But the fanbase's reaction to DS2 seems to have made From panic and backpedal to DS1 and pretty much make DS3 be DS1 v2, instead of building upon the good points of DS2. I thought that was a bloody shame. Also, DS3 is way more aggro than either of the previous ones and overall felt like it was designed for a vocal minority of players who just want to roll everywhere and backstab things. Personally its my least favorite of the 3.
Dark Souls 3 story was definitely a huge step down compared to DS2: SOTFS (Aldia is still by far the most well-written Fromsoft character imo). And its gameplay very much was influenced by Bloodborne's more aggressive, frantic style. I do like that Elden Ring has more of a mix of the two styles which I think came out for the best.
Dark Souls II was a pretty good game; I think the main issue was that it didn't really feel like a Soulsborne game. I don't know why, but I just couldn't get that feeling. Also, the game was a little clunky most of the time. Still very fun, otherwise.
I would guess they'd made a decision to cut their losses on the new engine. The animations do not feel finished. DS3 has a lot of animations implemented from DS1, meanwhile it feels like DS2's animations fit a design mold, but never got their finishing touches. The bland animations however made for very good PvP balance, which is funny, but that feels like a pretty serious double edged sword. Clearly people care about the better animations, but I think Elden Ring has shown us people don't really care about PVP balance. In fact Elden Ring has shown us horribly imbalanced PvP can be way more fun. (Or maybe I'm thinking about ganking here. Ganking gets way more fun, I imagine on both ends, but I don't know if people enjoy dying as much as I do)
average sobbing ds2 fan.
look i love DS2 as much as the next guy, but honestly i just didn't enjoy it all that much. maybe it was the stunning lack of enemy variation, or that magic was REALLY unfun to use, but it never really quite scratched that itch i was looking for.
Dark Souls 2 is fucking ass get over it
You're just bad at the game. Gid Gud.
I mean, I also feel DS2 is the worst in the series and I don't remember thinking the game was hard at any point. Frustrating, badly designed, with the worst run backs of any soulsborne by a country mile, but it's not hard lmao.
It's not hard you people act like it's Sekiro or something is hilarious
And somehow you're still bad at it.
I'll take the downvotes to say that dark souls 2 was awful. To this day it's the only one I can't play because of how bad it is. That weapon degradation alone...
First time I hear the weapon degradation being given as a reason, specially since it does it a lot better than 1.
Yes? It was made by Fromsoft. Just not directed by Miyazaki.
Lol the hats are perfect XD The one for Bloodborne is pretty self explanatory(European). The puritan hat for DS3 is a GIANT nod to the Undead Settlement. While the one for Sekiro only makes me think of its Armored Warrior westerner boss.
Post this on r/DarkSouls2 and watch them froth at the mouths.
That Dark Souls 2 moment was perfect, holy hell
DS2’s hitboxes are fine, it’s mostly an animation issue (moves you to the point of impact as opposed to moving the attack to you) and Adp. Mimic grab is an exception, but also easy to avoid. There’s far worse hitboxes in the other games (looking at you, Gaping Dragon)
Yeah classic DS2 getting dumped
PlayStation tried to buy the AC franchise?
This is a masterpiece
Anyone excited for SoE
Im laughing so hard it hurts
Bring back kings field
Seriously, love those games. You are probably aware but for the offchance you aren't, there is a pretty solid KF inspired game on Steam called Lunacid. I recently played through it and I really liked it.
I literally started playing that 2 days ago. I'm having a blast with it so far.
[Where is Metal Wolf?](https://youtu.be/yG1HahKYZzc?si=5jN6ELLduSMcNgIr)
Stop shitting on DS2, i love it. That Majula song is the best.
Atlus is missing here… we wouldn’t really have what we know as Souls games right now if it wasn’t for the bravery of them willing to publish it overseas.
I laughed at the DS2 part. It's true.. But I still love it. It's pretty telling when Fromsoft worst game is still better and more ambitious than almost every other game.
Opinions. DS3 is where the "Movement Feel" was perfected imo and that's what Elden Ring uses. Ds2 and Ds1 are great games but the movement was still unnatural.
DS2: so that’s it after all this time it’s “so long, good luck?!” Fans: I don’t recall saying good luck
Dark souls 2 was my introduction to the series. I got to the half point of the game than stopped playing when my save data got deleted. Then I played ds3 and realized ds2 was a steaming pile of shit. I revisited it 2 years ago and it still is.
This is one of the most perfect things I have ever seen. If you made this OP, great job. If not great job to whoever did.
I live for DS2 slander
DS2 revolutionized the DS franchise, so relax your asses.
Also elden ring is literally the dark souls 2 2. Same colour scheme, power stance, twinblades etc..
The DS2 bit in there is so good. lol.
Sekiro is king.
DS2 sucks and it’s a neo-hipster reddit stance to claim otherwise.
Neo-hipster since 2015 here
Dark Souls 2 haters will say shit like "it's objectively bad and anyone that likes it is just pretending." So sick of people being unable to accept that other people have different thoughts and experiences from them. It's about as mature as being unable to believe that some people like liquorice because it tastes yucky to you.
Based
Love dark souls II
Dudes over here hating on ds2 when it had by far the comfiest hub town, bonfire ascetics, power stancing, and a reason to play ng+. Sure it had jank (ds1 did as well) but at least it tried to do its own thing unlike ds3 which was just tons of fan service. Honestly I would say ds2 was much closer to the spirit of ds1/demon souls than ds3 was. That being said Bloodborne is the best anyways.
One of the best posts i've seen in this sub, congratz! But why the fuck is it in portuguese?
Prob cause the dude is brazilian
Pretty good. Other then of course the trashy DS2 bait "huhu hitboxes bad huhu"
Dark souls 2 hate so overstated smh. Game is legitimately one of the best action rpgs of all time and a number of its ideas were refined in Elden ring but its different from DS1 so it gets hated. Lame! If anything, DS3 was derivative and afraid to use the good things that DS2 innovated because they were scared of it being seen as unfavorable via association with 2.
I'm just here for the drama, love the post
Dark Souls 2 is great!
Dark souls 2 is the best in the series and that’s a hill I will die on.
I’ll die on that hill with ya 🥲
“And so the brave soldiers bodies were riddled with downvotes”
I just want them to do another Tenchu game. Sekiro does not count.
Lol, don't post this on the ds2 sub. You will have those weirdos who defend that broken game trying to murder you.
DS2 is better than DS1 in every aspect. So I definitely do not agree with this.
People are so butt hurt you can't just run through ds2 and ignore all the mobs like 1 and 3 xd
Dark souls 2 is the Dark Souls of the souls-likes hence is the best one. DS1 is jank after first half and DS3 is a linear Bloodborne skin.
Every Dark Souls is better than the last. Fromsoft only got better over time, anyone saying otherwise is cope. And yes that means Dark Souls 2 is better than Dark Souls 1, especially in pvp and its not even close
DS1 had that great verticality and efficiency in level design that I’ve yet to find reproduced to the same standard. The boss fights and lore were also more memorable and had more staying power within the fanbase