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So I played the first Half of Dark Souls 2 (Part 1)
11 months ago
Hey there :)
This is the first of two parts for this Dark Souls 2 review. This is about my general feelings about this game. The review of all maps and bosses of the first half of Dark Souls 2 is in part 2.
Part 2 can be found here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11016257/
I'm currently playing through the Dark Souls games in order. After starting and finishing Dark Souls 1 this year, writing a review on it, deleting said review and then make a boss tier list and mini review on it, it's time for me to review of the first half of Dark Souls 2, Scholar of the First Sin. In this review I'll write about the 4 main paths you can take to the 4 great lord souls to open the Shrine of Winter to enter Drangleic Castle. I will say, though, that I also completed Drangleic Castle and started the Shrine of Amana today. I also basically did 99% of all the stuff in previous maps that I have access to. Obviously I can't open the King doors yet and I can't enter any memories either. There's only one thing that I didn't do in the first half and we get to that later.
When making a review of Dark Souls 2, I really have to address the elephant in the room: Dark Souls 2 is considered the 'Black Sheep' of the Dark Souls franchise and of all the recent FromSoft (Soulslike) games. Many consider it the worst game in the franchise, some even straight up call it a bad game and some even one of the worst games ever made. While I can see why many people dislike Dark Souls 2, I think it's a large stretch to call it the worst game ever made. I mean, did it cause the crash of the entire western gaming industry? No? Well, then ET for the Atari 2600 remains the worst game ever (tee-hee-hee ^^).
From me playing the first half of the game, and wanting to play further until I finish it, I can say that Dark Souls 2 is not a bad game and definitely over hated. It has it's problems, but none of them are so big and major that I don't want to finish it. This could change later on and me liking my first playthrough and me playing DS2 for a second time are also two different things. While I will surely replay Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2 could be a game I can see myself skipping.
I could now go over many, many things that DS2 is criticized for that are just wrong one way or another, but this is my review of Dark Souls 2; not me debunking the double standards, misinformation and skill issues of Dark Souls 2 haters.
Just for arguments sake, I will take one thing that many DS2 haters complain about and explain why it's a non-issue: Lifegems. While I personally even disagree that Lifegems are that strong or OP, and neither the fact you can buy infinite amounts of them, this is actually not important. Lifegems are optional. Yes, you can stock up to 99 Lifegems anytime you visit Majula and have enough Souls. I can also nail my balls to a ceiling fan and turn it on. Just because I can, doesn't mean I have to. People that complain about infinite Lifegems being OP are doing the same as using Spirit Ashes in every Boss fight in Elden Ring and then complaining that the Bosses are to easy. You don't like Lifegems? You think they're to strong or even op? Then don't buy or use them. Lifegems are one of the biggest non-issues I've ever seen. A shovel falling over in Hamburg is more noteworthy.
I can give my opinion about other major claimed negatives of DS2, like Hitboxes, AI, Ganks and Adaptability that are either a non-issue, skill issue or a double standard when people want to. But I will say that I really want to play the version of Dark Souls 1 that all the DS2 haters seem to have been playing. You know, the version with the perfect hitboxes and flawless AI, where any and every fight is a fair 1v1. Fighting Ceaseless Discharge could be fun with correct hitboxes. And I won't need to summon Solaire again when I can fight the Bell Gargoyles one at a time. ^^
The best course of action for anyone trying out the Dark Souls games and/or wondering if they should play Dark Souls 2 that I can recommend is to just play the game for yourself and make your own opinion instead of letting me or a random youtuber tell you what to think.
I decided to make a review on only the first half of the game because I want to go over the maps and bosses in a bit of detail. I wont write 15 pages on each, but more than just a sentence like in the 'rapid fire machine gun' section of my DS1 review. Before I get to the rough outlines of my build and go over the maps n bosses, let me first write about general stuff.
Dark Souls 2 is in many ways the 'outlier' of the Dark Souls franchise. And with Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne and Elden Ring being more like Dark Souls 1, DS2 is even more of an outlier as when it came out. It makes many things differently. In a way, the DS2 devs just threw like a million things on a wall and how much of it sticked has everyone to decide on their own. Dark Souls 2 is what I like to call a 'perfect sequel'. For me a perfect sequel isn't necessarily straight up always better at everything than the part that came before, but a sequel that takes risks and makes things differently. They could've just made Dark Souls 1.5, copy pasted maps, enemies, bosses, items, ect and just made minor changes and called it Dark Souls 3, uhm 2. But instead, they took risks and granted, they didn't pay off when the majority of players and Dark Souls fans are asked, but I find it still better than a copy pasta sequel à la Call of Duty, Fifa or Madden. And it's something that I consistently like and value. I think that Civilization 6 is a perfect sequel to Civ 5, because of all the risks that it took. And similarly do I love that Black Mesa isn't just 'Half Life, but the graphics are good', but an actual stand alone game that made huge changes to the original game it's based on.
Upgrading and infusions are way simpler and easier to do and understand. It's extremely easy to understand how and why to infuse your weapons and what the benefits and downsides are. No longer do you need to search a Wiki to see what the difference between Magic and Enchanted is, or between Divine and Occult in DS1, or between the Fire and Flame Affinity in Elden Ring. It takes 20 seconds to figure out that Magic scales with INT, Lightning with Faith, Fire with INT and Faith added together and Dark with what is lower between INT and Faith. My character has 25 INT and 10 Faith. You instantly know that Magic and Fire infusions are better for any of my weapons than Lightning or Dark. You only have one form of Titanite for your normal weapons (Shards, Large Shards, Chunks, Slabs), Twinkling Titanite for special weapons and armour and Petrified Dragonbones for Boss Weapons. And how many you need is also easy to understand. Like 1, 2 and 3 for each upgrade material until Slabs for normal weapons. So you instantly know that you need 6 Shards, 6 Large Shards, 6 Chunks and 1 Slab to fully upgrade a weapon to max level +10. And only 15 Twinkling Titanite or Dragonbones to upgrade their weapons to max (first 1, then 2, 3, 4 and 5 for max level +5). I would need to write 5 times as much to explain the same in Dark Souls 1 and it's 7 different colours of Titanite.
The UI looks a lot better than in Dark Souls 1. Especially the Inventory System and the Item Box are vastly better. In DS1 the Item Box is abysmally bad while in Dark Souls 2 the Item Box works as you think such a thing would work: What you have on one side, what is in your box on the other. Just click to move the item in or out of the box.
The game is a tad slower on multiple levels. First of all, it's a highly strategic game in my eyes, which I don't mind since I'm a huge fan of 4X Strategy games like Civilization or the Endless games. Because of the amount of enemies on each map and how easy they can aggro even from longer distances, it's better to take your time on each map and plan your moves carefully. I'm very happy that I upgraded a Bow to pick off/aggro enemies from afar. I gave my bow also a Fire infusion to blow up explosive barrels and light up oil/tar just with normal Wooden Arrows. Poison Arrows for some cheesy fun.
But the combat in of itself is also rather slow, with your character being rather slow and clunky at times. Many weapons have a small delay after each swing before you can swing/roll again, which I found rather annoying. I liked faster weapons more in DS1 and the same is true for DS2. But I feel in DS2 more weapons are to slow for my liking than in DS1. In DS1 most weapons were fast, only my BKS and Zweihänder were rather slow. But in DS2 most weapons feel slow except for the Fire Longsword. Despite getting access to stronger weapons, like the Drangleic Sword, I still used this basic Fire infused Longsword for pretty much the whole game so far. This feels worse with what I like to call 'Input Delay', while not knowing if that's the right term. In short: DS2 loves putting an extra attack to all my moves. This means that when I fight an enemy and I want to do 2 attacks and roll away, the game will make me do 3 attacks, often deplete me out of Stamina in the process, resulting in me getting hit. DS1 had that too, but in DS2 is a whole lot worse, especially with the slower pace of the weapons. Getting this input delay on my Greatsword is brutal. I even had moments where I was out of Stamina, the game waited like half a second until I had a bit Stamina again, only to then make an extra hit to deplete me out of Stamina again. This is some major bullshit and can be extremely annoying when it happens in the middle of a (difficult) fight. Things like these are why I can completely understand why someone might dislike this game completely and think it's a bad game that they didn't even finish.
Another kinda annoying thing is how fast enemies can be with their swings combined with the fact that Poise is an almost purely cosmetic stat in this game. I'm running around with rather high Poise and still get stumbled by 90% of the attacks thrown at me. In fact, as long as I'm not attacking, any and every attack stumbles me, even when I would have 200 Poise. And the attacks can stagger you for so long that enemies can attack you again. This can result in some really bullshit feeling deaths. And that most enemies swing faster than you is also rather annoying. From the Forest of the fallen Giants until the Shrine of Amana, I could find enemies that swing faster than me despite me using a basic Longsword.
In general can I say that Dark Souls 2 is way more annoying than Dark Souls 1. In DS2 I yelled at my screen way more often than in DS1 from what in the heat of the moment felt like a completely bullshit death or situation. While I would describe Dark Souls 1 as 'Hard but Fair', I would describe Dark Souls 2 as 'Hard but Unfair'.
I played offline, even when I had to block Dark Souls 2 via my Firewall since I couldn't do it via the settings in game.
There is one last thing I have to address before getting to my build and the maps n bosses n blah. And that is that the game is literally unplayable with Keyboard and Mouse. I played Dark Souls 1 with Keyboard and Mouse and never used the lock on camera in melee fights. I did the same with Dark Souls 2. In both Games I didn't really have any problems, I'm managing rather well despite my 'handicap' of playing with KBM instead of a controller. Except for one thing: The double click feature in Dark Souls 2. This feature is bad. Really bad. Really, really bad. Even worse than the AUX Power in Half Life 2 and EP1. Yes, that bad. The feature in of itself is already awful. When you click fast enough, the double click gets triggered, if it's bound to something or not. I didn't have it bound on anything, which meant that my character wouldn't do anything if I clicked to fast. Like when I tried to attack with the Dagger I found at the start of the game. With the double click turned on, you're basically locked out of like 90% of the weapons because only when the weapon is slow enough you can use it without triggering the double click. Of course, you can deactivate this feature. But when you close the game and start it again, the double click feature is turned on again. But the settings say that it's deactivated. So you have to activate and then deactivate it every single time you boot up the game...
This is unacceptable. Straight up, no ifs or buts or shoulds or coulds, just straight up unacceptable. Of course some complete fuckwits far gone from reality will now try to say something like "Just use a controller" but for me this is out of the question. I haven't used a controller in literally 12 years. The last time I used one 'regularly' was 17 years ago when visiting my cousin once every few weeks or month to play on his PS2. I never owned a console and if I were to buy myself a controller to play Dark Souls 3, DS3 would become the first game I would start, play and finish on a controller in my 30 years of life. People that are telling me to get a controller simply have no idea how little I played with one and that I have literally 0 muscle memory for it. With a controller I would need like 10 hours just to reach Majula. I don't even know what to look for when it comes to buying a controller. KBM Controls on Dark Souls and other Console games are exactly for people like me. And we need not forget that money is a limited resource. While I can easily afford a thing or two, others might blow their monthly budget on Dark Souls 2 only to learn that they need to blow another monthly budget to get a controller to play the game they just bought for PC.
I ended up installing a mod to fix this for me so I don't have to fiddle in my settings every time I boot up the game. While this solution works perfectly, it's still unacceptable. Because for me it's easy. I've used and installed mods since way back when on games like CnC Generals, Portal 1, Portal 2, Civ 5, Civ 6, Civ Beyond Earth, Half Life 2, ect. I know more about modding than to just press 'subscribe' in the Steam Workshop. But other people might feel uneasy searching for a mod online, also for safety reasons because they might also download a virus alongside or instead of the mod. Having to install a mod for the game to be playable is unacceptable. This alone forces me to make two scores for this game. When this would be fixed, this game is a good solid 7/10 so far. But I would give it a 4/10 simply because of this mistake they could fix with one patch that's less than 50 KB in size. Since that's exactly how big the mod is.
For a recap of my playthrough and a review of all the maps and bosses, read part 2: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11016257/
This is the first of two parts for this Dark Souls 2 review. This is about my general feelings about this game. The review of all maps and bosses of the first half of Dark Souls 2 is in part 2.
Part 2 can be found here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11016257/
I'm currently playing through the Dark Souls games in order. After starting and finishing Dark Souls 1 this year, writing a review on it, deleting said review and then make a boss tier list and mini review on it, it's time for me to review of the first half of Dark Souls 2, Scholar of the First Sin. In this review I'll write about the 4 main paths you can take to the 4 great lord souls to open the Shrine of Winter to enter Drangleic Castle. I will say, though, that I also completed Drangleic Castle and started the Shrine of Amana today. I also basically did 99% of all the stuff in previous maps that I have access to. Obviously I can't open the King doors yet and I can't enter any memories either. There's only one thing that I didn't do in the first half and we get to that later.
When making a review of Dark Souls 2, I really have to address the elephant in the room: Dark Souls 2 is considered the 'Black Sheep' of the Dark Souls franchise and of all the recent FromSoft (Soulslike) games. Many consider it the worst game in the franchise, some even straight up call it a bad game and some even one of the worst games ever made. While I can see why many people dislike Dark Souls 2, I think it's a large stretch to call it the worst game ever made. I mean, did it cause the crash of the entire western gaming industry? No? Well, then ET for the Atari 2600 remains the worst game ever (tee-hee-hee ^^).
From me playing the first half of the game, and wanting to play further until I finish it, I can say that Dark Souls 2 is not a bad game and definitely over hated. It has it's problems, but none of them are so big and major that I don't want to finish it. This could change later on and me liking my first playthrough and me playing DS2 for a second time are also two different things. While I will surely replay Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2 could be a game I can see myself skipping.
I could now go over many, many things that DS2 is criticized for that are just wrong one way or another, but this is my review of Dark Souls 2; not me debunking the double standards, misinformation and skill issues of Dark Souls 2 haters.
Just for arguments sake, I will take one thing that many DS2 haters complain about and explain why it's a non-issue: Lifegems. While I personally even disagree that Lifegems are that strong or OP, and neither the fact you can buy infinite amounts of them, this is actually not important. Lifegems are optional. Yes, you can stock up to 99 Lifegems anytime you visit Majula and have enough Souls. I can also nail my balls to a ceiling fan and turn it on. Just because I can, doesn't mean I have to. People that complain about infinite Lifegems being OP are doing the same as using Spirit Ashes in every Boss fight in Elden Ring and then complaining that the Bosses are to easy. You don't like Lifegems? You think they're to strong or even op? Then don't buy or use them. Lifegems are one of the biggest non-issues I've ever seen. A shovel falling over in Hamburg is more noteworthy.
I can give my opinion about other major claimed negatives of DS2, like Hitboxes, AI, Ganks and Adaptability that are either a non-issue, skill issue or a double standard when people want to. But I will say that I really want to play the version of Dark Souls 1 that all the DS2 haters seem to have been playing. You know, the version with the perfect hitboxes and flawless AI, where any and every fight is a fair 1v1. Fighting Ceaseless Discharge could be fun with correct hitboxes. And I won't need to summon Solaire again when I can fight the Bell Gargoyles one at a time. ^^
The best course of action for anyone trying out the Dark Souls games and/or wondering if they should play Dark Souls 2 that I can recommend is to just play the game for yourself and make your own opinion instead of letting me or a random youtuber tell you what to think.
I decided to make a review on only the first half of the game because I want to go over the maps and bosses in a bit of detail. I wont write 15 pages on each, but more than just a sentence like in the 'rapid fire machine gun' section of my DS1 review. Before I get to the rough outlines of my build and go over the maps n bosses, let me first write about general stuff.
Dark Souls 2 is in many ways the 'outlier' of the Dark Souls franchise. And with Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne and Elden Ring being more like Dark Souls 1, DS2 is even more of an outlier as when it came out. It makes many things differently. In a way, the DS2 devs just threw like a million things on a wall and how much of it sticked has everyone to decide on their own. Dark Souls 2 is what I like to call a 'perfect sequel'. For me a perfect sequel isn't necessarily straight up always better at everything than the part that came before, but a sequel that takes risks and makes things differently. They could've just made Dark Souls 1.5, copy pasted maps, enemies, bosses, items, ect and just made minor changes and called it Dark Souls 3, uhm 2. But instead, they took risks and granted, they didn't pay off when the majority of players and Dark Souls fans are asked, but I find it still better than a copy pasta sequel à la Call of Duty, Fifa or Madden. And it's something that I consistently like and value. I think that Civilization 6 is a perfect sequel to Civ 5, because of all the risks that it took. And similarly do I love that Black Mesa isn't just 'Half Life, but the graphics are good', but an actual stand alone game that made huge changes to the original game it's based on.
Upgrading and infusions are way simpler and easier to do and understand. It's extremely easy to understand how and why to infuse your weapons and what the benefits and downsides are. No longer do you need to search a Wiki to see what the difference between Magic and Enchanted is, or between Divine and Occult in DS1, or between the Fire and Flame Affinity in Elden Ring. It takes 20 seconds to figure out that Magic scales with INT, Lightning with Faith, Fire with INT and Faith added together and Dark with what is lower between INT and Faith. My character has 25 INT and 10 Faith. You instantly know that Magic and Fire infusions are better for any of my weapons than Lightning or Dark. You only have one form of Titanite for your normal weapons (Shards, Large Shards, Chunks, Slabs), Twinkling Titanite for special weapons and armour and Petrified Dragonbones for Boss Weapons. And how many you need is also easy to understand. Like 1, 2 and 3 for each upgrade material until Slabs for normal weapons. So you instantly know that you need 6 Shards, 6 Large Shards, 6 Chunks and 1 Slab to fully upgrade a weapon to max level +10. And only 15 Twinkling Titanite or Dragonbones to upgrade their weapons to max (first 1, then 2, 3, 4 and 5 for max level +5). I would need to write 5 times as much to explain the same in Dark Souls 1 and it's 7 different colours of Titanite.
The UI looks a lot better than in Dark Souls 1. Especially the Inventory System and the Item Box are vastly better. In DS1 the Item Box is abysmally bad while in Dark Souls 2 the Item Box works as you think such a thing would work: What you have on one side, what is in your box on the other. Just click to move the item in or out of the box.
The game is a tad slower on multiple levels. First of all, it's a highly strategic game in my eyes, which I don't mind since I'm a huge fan of 4X Strategy games like Civilization or the Endless games. Because of the amount of enemies on each map and how easy they can aggro even from longer distances, it's better to take your time on each map and plan your moves carefully. I'm very happy that I upgraded a Bow to pick off/aggro enemies from afar. I gave my bow also a Fire infusion to blow up explosive barrels and light up oil/tar just with normal Wooden Arrows. Poison Arrows for some cheesy fun.
But the combat in of itself is also rather slow, with your character being rather slow and clunky at times. Many weapons have a small delay after each swing before you can swing/roll again, which I found rather annoying. I liked faster weapons more in DS1 and the same is true for DS2. But I feel in DS2 more weapons are to slow for my liking than in DS1. In DS1 most weapons were fast, only my BKS and Zweihänder were rather slow. But in DS2 most weapons feel slow except for the Fire Longsword. Despite getting access to stronger weapons, like the Drangleic Sword, I still used this basic Fire infused Longsword for pretty much the whole game so far. This feels worse with what I like to call 'Input Delay', while not knowing if that's the right term. In short: DS2 loves putting an extra attack to all my moves. This means that when I fight an enemy and I want to do 2 attacks and roll away, the game will make me do 3 attacks, often deplete me out of Stamina in the process, resulting in me getting hit. DS1 had that too, but in DS2 is a whole lot worse, especially with the slower pace of the weapons. Getting this input delay on my Greatsword is brutal. I even had moments where I was out of Stamina, the game waited like half a second until I had a bit Stamina again, only to then make an extra hit to deplete me out of Stamina again. This is some major bullshit and can be extremely annoying when it happens in the middle of a (difficult) fight. Things like these are why I can completely understand why someone might dislike this game completely and think it's a bad game that they didn't even finish.
Another kinda annoying thing is how fast enemies can be with their swings combined with the fact that Poise is an almost purely cosmetic stat in this game. I'm running around with rather high Poise and still get stumbled by 90% of the attacks thrown at me. In fact, as long as I'm not attacking, any and every attack stumbles me, even when I would have 200 Poise. And the attacks can stagger you for so long that enemies can attack you again. This can result in some really bullshit feeling deaths. And that most enemies swing faster than you is also rather annoying. From the Forest of the fallen Giants until the Shrine of Amana, I could find enemies that swing faster than me despite me using a basic Longsword.
In general can I say that Dark Souls 2 is way more annoying than Dark Souls 1. In DS2 I yelled at my screen way more often than in DS1 from what in the heat of the moment felt like a completely bullshit death or situation. While I would describe Dark Souls 1 as 'Hard but Fair', I would describe Dark Souls 2 as 'Hard but Unfair'.
I played offline, even when I had to block Dark Souls 2 via my Firewall since I couldn't do it via the settings in game.
There is one last thing I have to address before getting to my build and the maps n bosses n blah. And that is that the game is literally unplayable with Keyboard and Mouse. I played Dark Souls 1 with Keyboard and Mouse and never used the lock on camera in melee fights. I did the same with Dark Souls 2. In both Games I didn't really have any problems, I'm managing rather well despite my 'handicap' of playing with KBM instead of a controller. Except for one thing: The double click feature in Dark Souls 2. This feature is bad. Really bad. Really, really bad. Even worse than the AUX Power in Half Life 2 and EP1. Yes, that bad. The feature in of itself is already awful. When you click fast enough, the double click gets triggered, if it's bound to something or not. I didn't have it bound on anything, which meant that my character wouldn't do anything if I clicked to fast. Like when I tried to attack with the Dagger I found at the start of the game. With the double click turned on, you're basically locked out of like 90% of the weapons because only when the weapon is slow enough you can use it without triggering the double click. Of course, you can deactivate this feature. But when you close the game and start it again, the double click feature is turned on again. But the settings say that it's deactivated. So you have to activate and then deactivate it every single time you boot up the game...
This is unacceptable. Straight up, no ifs or buts or shoulds or coulds, just straight up unacceptable. Of course some complete fuckwits far gone from reality will now try to say something like "Just use a controller" but for me this is out of the question. I haven't used a controller in literally 12 years. The last time I used one 'regularly' was 17 years ago when visiting my cousin once every few weeks or month to play on his PS2. I never owned a console and if I were to buy myself a controller to play Dark Souls 3, DS3 would become the first game I would start, play and finish on a controller in my 30 years of life. People that are telling me to get a controller simply have no idea how little I played with one and that I have literally 0 muscle memory for it. With a controller I would need like 10 hours just to reach Majula. I don't even know what to look for when it comes to buying a controller. KBM Controls on Dark Souls and other Console games are exactly for people like me. And we need not forget that money is a limited resource. While I can easily afford a thing or two, others might blow their monthly budget on Dark Souls 2 only to learn that they need to blow another monthly budget to get a controller to play the game they just bought for PC.
I ended up installing a mod to fix this for me so I don't have to fiddle in my settings every time I boot up the game. While this solution works perfectly, it's still unacceptable. Because for me it's easy. I've used and installed mods since way back when on games like CnC Generals, Portal 1, Portal 2, Civ 5, Civ 6, Civ Beyond Earth, Half Life 2, ect. I know more about modding than to just press 'subscribe' in the Steam Workshop. But other people might feel uneasy searching for a mod online, also for safety reasons because they might also download a virus alongside or instead of the mod. Having to install a mod for the game to be playable is unacceptable. This alone forces me to make two scores for this game. When this would be fixed, this game is a good solid 7/10 so far. But I would give it a 4/10 simply because of this mistake they could fix with one patch that's less than 50 KB in size. Since that's exactly how big the mod is.
For a recap of my playthrough and a review of all the maps and bosses, read part 2: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11016257/
