Replaying this for the first time since launch and holy shit. This is hands down the worst souls game...

Replaying this for the first time since launch and holy shit. This is hands down the worst souls game. What a fucking chore navigating this piece of shit is. The areas get worse and worse. I'm serious, the design regresses over time. The enemies are repeated throughout, and the worst part is that there just isn't a real sense of cohesion. It's just a bunch of mangled Fromsoft assets. How anyone could put this at the top is beyond me.

And for those who just love to shitpost about the third souls game — at least Dark Souls 2 did a few things right, like managing consistent theme and progression. More open in the beginning, too. There's a great build up to Vendrick and a fantastic reveal to what he actually looks like now. And the DLC is fucking top tier shit. The Dark Souls 3 DLC is going to be shit and you know it.

bait/10 famalam

The game is pretty meh until Irithyll, then it takes a sharp uptick until the end of the Grand Archives where it pretty much shits the bed entirely at the last bonfire. It's a shame there wasn't a final area, either, you just get warped to the final boss with no fanfare. The game was clearly rushed and it's so disappointing to cap off this series with such a weak final chapter.

It's consistently better than vanilla DS2, and pretty much only lags behind the DLC of those games in terms of quality, though people lump in Iron King as a good DLC when it would honestly be forgettable if not for the boss fights.

3 is pretty disappointing except for a few high points, and broken balance and poise suck a huge amount of replayability from the game than people typically recognize. It's better than 2, but that's not really saying a lot.

the sea of garbage you people produce

I agree.
DS2 had better boss and area concepts. Also better armor designs. DS3 should have improved upon what DS2 did rather than scrap most of it and simply improve upon what DS1 did.

It also felt very short compared to the other games.

DS2 had a lot of stupid bullshit like moss being everywhere and health gems and other crap like that but it was one really heavy polish away from being the best game in the series. If we had gotten what was advertised at E3 I don't doubt it would be the fan favorite.


DS3 had a better atmosphere than any game in the series though, it felt like a gritty adult version of Dark Crystal.

I feel like I agree with you mostly, but it's worth pointing out that the bosses in DS3 are almost all really great, and outshine the rest of the game.

I mean what I wrote 100%. You can think whatever you want but if you believe Dark Souls 3 is better than any other souls game and not hands down the worst entry in the series you've got NormalBoots-tier taste IMO.

>DS3 had a better atmosphere than any game in the series
The title of "best atmosphere" belongs to Demon's Souls.

You really shouldn't replay it. I did last week and it was ruined for me. Don't soil your memories like I did.

That's true. Some of the best in the series, especially Soul of Cinder, Gundyr, Pontiff, and Nameless King. Kinda was still fatigued from giant armor man syndrome from 2, so a lot of the stuff in 3 was still a bit tiresome, but they were the best giant dudes in the series by far. Nameless might have been as intense as O&S for me.

I liked that the gimmick fights returned a bit, too, like with the congregation and yhorm. I can't place why I felt so empty when I finished it, though. It wasn't a bittersweet ending to the Souls series, it just felt like another game.

I played it last October, that game is still great. Not sure what it's lost to you. Then again I haven't played Bloodborne so maybe it looks like a beta in comparison.

Honestly, I feel like Bloodborne is the best souls game by a mile...

And I've played them all except the DS2 DLC

You're correct, but the DS2 DLC is really good so you should play that.

>The game is pretty meh until Irithyll

People always say that but there's little good about the place other than nostalgia, which shouldn't be taken as any kind of actual plus point, and the initial scenery, which is irrelevant because shortly after you spend a lot of time indoors. Level layout is also Dark Souls 2 tier level of poor.

Ever noticed Demon's souls being the holy grail of souls games is a meme?

If anyone went and replayed it now they would ruin their forged memories of the game.

I wonder when the "DS3 is shit" meme started, feels like it happened all of a sudden. Sure it ain't perfect but it's still good

This.
DS2 had fucking terrible level layout which is a shame because the idea and imagery behind a lot of levels was amazing.

Imagine what the Looking Glass Knight and that entire castle could have been in the right hands.

>souls 2
>consistent theme
ayyyyyy

I played it a year ago and loved it. I'm not hailing it as the best overall, I'm saying it has the best atmosphere – and it does.

It had great atmosphere, and could have been used to bring the final act of the series to a nice conclusion. Instead it's jammed somewhere in the middle of the game and gets kinda forgotten. It's really cool to see the place taken over by blobman. Gameplay-wise I'll admit it's a bit dull.

Irithyll is one of the most complex areas of the game, but it doesn't loop, but instead acts like a hub for late game pathing. I'd say it's the enemy layout that's trash, and not the level design itself. The buildup to Pontiff is pretty sweet, and then fighting in what is essentially a warzone to discover Anor Londo was a pretty intense moment.

This. It has a consistent theme of cosmic horror and forces beyond human understanding, and that theme is woven throughout the entire game. God-Tier world building and atmosphere.

I think DS3 has made people realize that excessive giant armor man syndrome wasn't the exact cause for shitty boss fights in DS2, just that they didn't do anything interesting and relied on the same gimmicks.

I think all the souls game suffer in that respect actually.

Nothing feels like it was actually a civilization that had people living it it. I can't see people ever actually building any of the places you're in, most of them feel more like they're all just put together by magic or were simply always there. Every single game in the series gives me that feeling and I don't know why.

Demon's definitely felt like a real world, just a world that happened to exist to feed the hunger of a Lavos-like Elder God. The amount of detail in Latria, the swamp, and Boletaria is really impressive, though I'd say that Shrine of Storms is intentionally more dream-like than the others. Whether it's inconsistent or mythical depends on your point of view.

Stuff like Ash Lake and Painted World in Dark Souls is definitely dream-like and surreal, and that game definitely feels a bit jarring when you look at how they link together from blighttown and Anor Londo specifically. I think if you suspend your disbelief in magic and myth it would go a long way in helping you get immersed in those two games.

Dark Souls 2, though... Can't save that shit.

Very true. It's more about what you're doing in the fight, like if it's a significant gameplay challenge and shake-up. I think that 2 and 3 suffered from co-op centered balancing. My friends who played entirely solo seem to enjoy the earlier games more than the later entries. Just a thought though.

DS2 could have been the best souls game if it didn't look like an N64 game. If they just enhanced the graphics, sped up the movement and fixed animations it would be an 11/10 game for me. Even with its trash bosses and broken systems, I find it to the best "groundwork" for what could be an amazing game. DS3 is the other side of the spectrum, looks nice, seems promising, but do 1 playthrough and you realize how shallow it actually is.

What do you see in 2 that's so appealing? I can't seem to understand the love. It has great atmosphere in some places but the world building is a nightmare and so many environments are a catastrophe from a design standpoint.