Dark Souls II

Honest thoughts on Dark Souls II?

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I thoroughly enjoyed when I played it, for about 600 hours. But after playing DaS3, it's impossible for me to go back to the floaty controls and gameplay of DaS2.

Fucking gank squads everywhere, PC port completly busted fuck this game.

DLC is literally places without a story.

Best plot in the series, best waifu in the series, buried under shitty design and a rushed release.

Not too bad. It's still a good game, just not as good as DaS1 or DeS in design.

best souls game period.
fight me faggots.
pro tip:
Im already at the bonfire

Great game with a lot of replay value and the best PvP in any souls game, along with the funnest Co-op runs
Only negatives it had in my eyes was the art direction going into a more generic fantasy.

>best waifu
wut

i enjoyed it. i'd love for them to go back and finish//remaster dark souls 1 and 2 to the state they would have been if it wasn;t so rushed and unifnished

Unironically best in the series due to the best combat mechanics all around. Proper dual wielding and functional poise is the reason the balance in this game feels just right. I could never get into DS3 properly due to how drastically different it was, compared to DS1, yet DS2 felt like an actual evolution of the DS1 mechanics, not a fucking revolution, which was the case with 3.

my personal favourite of the series

>dark souls
>story

Shanalotte is the cutest.

The cat is the cutest.

for all of its faults the game could have been well received if they simply removed soul memory.

A good sequel made much worse than it should have been due to Bandai pandering to XDSOHARD faggots.

Base game is just as good as the first one
DLC is the best souls content to date

nop

>just not as good as DaS1 or DeS in design.

Why not?

Great ideas, terrible execution.

I'm still kind of miff'd that DaS2 barely got any love in DaS3 lore, but at least the weapons and such weren't completely ignored along with a few of the cast

"DLC" isn't short for "Dark Souls"

>DLC is the best souls content to date

Artorias of the Abyss and The Old Hunters?

The bosses suck

Nice hipster opinion, fag

>best combat mechanics all around

>attack in one direction in DS1 and then immediately in the opposite one
>character flips on the spot and hits behind him
>do the same in DS2
>character either rotates around, attacking to the sides first or simply ignores your input like with the BKGS

>Artorias of the Abyss
Overrated shit.

>and The Old Hunters
Not Souls.

I actually liked most of the bosses. I had more trouble with the blue smelter than I had trouble with O&S.

not them, but I'd hold DaS2 DLC up to that regard. And even if we can't agree on that, we can agree that it blows DaS3 DLC out the water, right?

comfy music
gameplay is okay
nice characters

>it's not casual enough, like DS1!

They're all boring

Time your inputs properly instead then

>not Semen_of_Dong.jpg
Smh.

>character flips on the spot
>good

I loved the PvP and its a fucking shame they went out of their way to make invasions so obtuse
my best memories of the game were making cosplay characters and helping terrible players kill bosses

I think it's better than DaS3 simply because it isn't a linear piece of shit
It legitimately has really good DLC though

People shit on it so much that when I finally got around to playing it my expectations were so low that my experience left me surprised because overall it was a fairly enjoyable game with a lot of content.

But then again, I don't get the widespread acclaim of souls games in the first place. I went through them all and enjoyed them but I'd say they're all just 'Okay' games that mostly do the same thing over and over again, but it works because that repeated formula is pretty fun. Maybe I don't get it because I played them too long after they were released.

I disagree.
It's better than DaS3 for a few other reasons too, like bonfire ascetics, not being limited to having your fucking respec being 5 per playthrough or less if you change your appearance. Power stancing > weapon arts, and just better variety for builds

The level designs are a bit lackluster compared to the previous games, they're not necessarily lazier just more linear with less exploration and secrets. Bosses as well just don't feel right, I can't quite put my finger on it but a lot of them just didn't have the feel or memorability of the previous games.

It's the best Souls game and the only people who agree are Sup Forums and gamefaqs, which is basically the same thing.

>N64 graphics
>Darkness mechanic axed at the last second (thanks consoles)
>Poor level design.
>Laughing pots.
>Soul Memory
>B-team didn't even know the lore
>Dynasty Souls: every room has 80 enemies
>Lightning bolts making left turns because net code is just hat good

Every souls game had its flaws but DS2 is the black sheep of the series by a large margin

Demons Souls remains the best title so far.

Miyazaki hates DS2.

Aren't these the same guys who gave Dragon Age 2 a 9/10?

>all ds2 enemy movesets are horizontal rotating slashes just to make dodging more fun
>but it does not matter since i frames are tied to a stat
I enjoyed the game, i have 400hrs in it but ADP really rustled my jimmies.

Source?

It's enjoyable but tends to leave a bad aftertaste. Lots of small flaws to keep it from being something I'm fond of, but still enough content and simple functional gameplay for it to be a good coop experience with friends.

This is the reason I will never buy any of his games again after the shitshow that was 3. The fucker has exposed himself as a complete hack and has basically proven that From had barely any involvement in the making of Bloodborne and that it was almost entirely by Studio Japan due to how drastically different quality wise are DS3 and Bloodborne. It's like Hackazaki tried to copy Bloodborne with DS3, but failed, because he didn't make it in the first place.

I'm actually re-playing it now for the first time in nearly three years.

With the deadzone mod, the game feels a lot better than it did at release, but the main thing that keeps me from embracing it fully is still the gameplay. It just feels so much slower than anything else in the series. There's huge delays at the end of every attack animation visually that just make it feel like shit when chaining action together. Dark Souls 3 might have taken this too far in the other direction with how easy it is to mash roll out of anything, but I'll take a game that is overly responsive over one that isn't responsive enough.

The thing I'll say in it's favor is that it is somewhat refreshing to play a game that feels like it has some area variety over Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne. I don't think many of them are designed particularly well, but having some places be just old as opposed to rotting, still on fire battlefields with a grey color palette is nice.

Overall, 7/10. Good game, doesn't stand up to the others in the series and is arguably a bad sequel to Dark Souls in some ways. Had some interesting ideas that maybe the subsequent games should have carried over, but if you read about the development history of it it's easy to see why they decided to just bury it. If Tanimura got a chance at directing a game straight off the shoot instead of cleaning up someone's mess, I would be interested.

>after the shitshow that was 3.

Was it THAT bad?

Just because you don't know them doesn't mean they don't have lore, user.

A mixed bag. The game is a 7/10 for me, not very good but not bad either.

Things that I dislike:
>The game feels weird to play (can't really explain this, it's just how I personally feel)
>Too many mediocre and straight up awful boss battles, especially in the main game
>Completely forgettable soundtrack
>Ganks everywhere
>Too much difficulty memeing
>World and boss designs are both downgrades from the first Dark Souls as well as Demon's Souls
>Some of the worst areas in the entire series like Frigid Outskirts and Shrine of Amana
Things that I like:
>SotFS has a lot of content
>New enemies on NG+ add replay value
>Being able to respec your character and easily experiment with different builds
>Power stance
>Bonfire Ascetic
>Fast ladder climbing (seriously, going back to Demon's Souls ladders after DaS2 was literal hell)
>Despite most of the main game bosses being bad, the DLCs contain some of my favorite bosses in the series (Fume Knight, Sir Alonne, Sinh the Slumbering Dragon)

So yeah, it's kind of an even combination of good and bad. I'm probably always going to have mixed feelings about this game.

ADP was fine. Game makes you choose between mitigating damage through dodge rolls and light armor or heavy armor and blocking

There is no source because it isn't true.
Lol you have no idea what you're talking about. At all.

Personally, I hated it to the point where I didn't even play the final DLC, though I did buy AoA in the hopes that they might have improved the game, but nope.

>It just feels so much slower than anything else in the series. There's huge delays at the end of every attack animation visually that just make it feel like shit when chaining action together

The startup times for everything are instant though compared to Dark Souls 1 which was all that mattered for me but w/e, your taste is your taste

Solid 7/10, best game in the series

>it's another Miyacucki cultist claiming that "Studio Japan is j-just a p-publisher, I s-swear!"
hackazaki did not make Bloodborne, it is obvious to anyone who has played both BB and D3. Your icon is hack.

Not them but DaS3 shits the bed pretty hard for me.
>bad starting areas
>linear as fuck
>shitty build variety
>shit pvp
>shit DLC
>shit replay value that makes you groan going into ng+ more than anything

The only thing DaS3 has going for it, is it's art direction, controls and bosses. Everything else is pretty shit

>claiming that "Studio Japan is j-just a p-publisher
Where did I say this? Go on.

Basic actions in a video game should always lead to consistent results. A good dodge should be a good dodge, adding a stat based thing to that takes control away from the player, which is the opposite of good design when you have a combat system that revolves around player input.

It's a good game and doesn't deserve the amount of hate it gets

Decent, but overall a disappointment compared to it's predecessors.

The main problems are the:
>Inorganic world design
>Often pitiful area design
>Uninspired and often lazy boss designs that don't more often than not, don't really have any reason for being there
>duller, murkier graphics compared to DeS and DaS, which probably comes half as a result of the development issues with the lighting engine
>sluggish feeling combat, and hitbox issues
>soul memory ruining what could have been otherwise the best pvp system in the series

The game clearly had major developmental issues.

I wouldn't be surprised if the new directors/team combo had much grander visions for the game originally, both in terms of graphics and game design.

Even the DLC, improvements as they were, had enormous issues, no doubt related largely due to the tiny time frames they were constricted to.

>Empty feeling level design, involving repeated textures and single colour themes, especially amongst the walls, this is perhaps displayed within the pyramid in the sunken king location and the cathedral in Eleum Loyce
>Disappointing and unnecessary third bosses, the twin tigers, the gravedigger trio, the blue smelter

Dark Souls 3 felt like they gave up on any real lofty ideas to change the formulae for the "dark souls" ip and instead simply made a solid, great game, if perhaps suffering from several dips in quality that showed just how constrained the developers must have been under the release schedule.

Laughing pots?

OK, let's look at the facts:
>Studio Japan and From "cooperate" and make BB
>it's fucking amazing
>From makes DS3
>it's a shitty attempt at copying Bloodborne
>the game is shit
1+1=?

it's an okay king's field game, horrible dark souls game.

I don't mind ADP existing, but the base roll should have been at least functional. Sure Souls games always had wonky hitboxes but when the models don't even come close to touching and you still take a hit it's pretty frustrating. Even worse for the "grab" attacks where your model literally teleports back in the enemy's attack.


If adp made you roll faster and/or further it would have been a much better design instead of just going from "broken hitboxes" to "slightly more iframes".

Now who was the backing company for Dark Souls III? It was the same backing company for Dark Souls II, and Dark Souls. What do these three games have in common? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I want another B-team Souls

The curse jars

Honestly soul memory played a huge part in why DaS2 pvp was so good, and that's no one is tied down to some arbitrary soul level like 120 and instead could go full CURAZY with their builds

>it's an okay king's field game,

??

Okay but ultimately it can be sidestepped with upgrading, unlike Soul Memory where there is literally nothing you can do to loosen its grip on the game.

>I wouldn't be surprised if the new directors/team combo had much grander visions for the game originally, both in terms of graphics and game design.

Tomohiro Shibuya wasn't a co-director, that's Japan's way of saying that he was taken off the project because he was producing a turd, to the point where Tanimura is quoted as saying "We really had to go back to the drawing board and think once more about what a Dark Souls game should be." and "Ideally we’d start again from scratch but of course we were under time constraints so instead we had to figure out how to repurpose the designs in our newly reimagined game.".

This really gives some good insight into a lot of what went wrong with Dark Souls II

peterbarnard1984.tumblr.com/post/113163062955/dark-souls-2-design-works-translation

Yes

>Dark Souls 2 hitboxes
Not even once
youtube.com/watch?v=gRXm41sCQls

>feels slow and weird
>looks like a ps1 game
it checks out

No, it's not bad at all. NEVER listen to contrarians.

>a lot of what went wrong with Dark Souls II

Examples?

That clearly hit him?

It's SHIT

Dark Souls 2 is honestly the tightest, most polished game in the entire trilogy. It sports the best performance, best animation meshing, cloth physics, interruptible animations, non-invulnerable backstabs/ripostes, and other elements that put it above Dark Souls 1 and 3. Sure, its story is nothing to write home about, but the same can be said of the entire series, so this doesn't bother me in the slightest. Sure, the world layout makes no sense, but Souls games have never been known for consistency anyway.

If I have to be brutally honest, I think "hurrrdcore" Souls fans dislike DaS2 because it has the least space for "deep" fanfiction that excuses the game's flaws. YouTube fanfiction was a big element of DaS1's popularity, and it's nowhere as big or prominent for DaS2, IMHO for the reasons listed above.

I always knew Tanimura wasn't a lost cause. He needs another shot.

Tanimura Souls when

Not as bad as Dark Souls 2

Dark Souls 3 was his shot.

Spot on user

Only slightly below bloodborne in quality which everyone on Sup Forums loves.

Its the Dark Souls of sequels

>interruptible animations
Wait, really? I recall the animations being even more committed than in Dark Souls 1.
>but the same can be said of the entire series
This is incredibly untrue.
>so this doesn't bother me in the slightest.
But now we're in the realm of subjectivity and this part of your post doesn't matter.
>Sure, the world layout makes no sense, but Souls games have never been known for consistency anyway.
This simply isn't true.
> because it has the least space for "deep" fanfiction
>YouTube fanfiction
Now you're just talking about things you're ignorant about. Why even bother posting at all? Imagine being at dinner with people and rattling off something you're completely ignorant about.

It had a lot more expectations going for it and an even better development cycle, team, and launch trailer to boot, and it was still barely better made than Dark Souls 2.

It had to deliver on not one, not two, but three critically acclaimed titles by Fromsoft. Dark Souls 1 and 2, in addition to Bloodborne which is just an impossibly tight game.

It was worse in almost every way given how easy it would've been to deliver something better.

This post simply isn't true.

Fuck off idiot

It's a good game, but after playing DaS3 and BB I can't replay it. Its floaty as fuck and you feel like everything is underwater. Even DeS and DaS hasn't aged that badly. Shame since the DLC is GOAT

Willing to here rebuttals, friendo.

I mean, if you think being a woman automatically makes you "best waifu" then sure, Emerald Herald probably is the best. However, she's about as interesting as a rock and has literally zero personality so I wouldn't rank her very high in the waifu list. Even the cat is a better waifu than Shanalotte.

Not him but offhand rapier cancels every attack animation cooldown in the game. I paired it with my red iron twinblade.

I borrowed my rebuttal from since not only was it applicable, it also seemed acceptable to the original author, so why not?

>but offhand rapier cancels every attack animation cooldown in the game
Interesting. I'll keep that in mind.
Still
>willing to hear* rebuttals, friendo.

>Wait, really? I recall the animations being even more committed than in Dark Souls 1.
They are.
In 1 you have a "wind up" part in the attack where you can still chose the direction where you attack, in 2 you don't which results in

Fume Knight in a way is an entire boss designed around it.