Looking back at it, does Dark Souls 2 really deserve all the bullying it gets?

Looking back at it, does Dark Souls 2 really deserve all the bullying it gets?

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yes

Worst gameplay in the series. It's the only one I can't bring myself to finish

No, that would be Demon's Souls.
No poise on you or enemies, infinite R1 mash stunlocks, infinite heals, 90% puzzle bosses.

DS2 is easily the second best Souls game after BB.

No, but people are always going to bully it since it is the worst souls game. DaS3 on the other hand is overpraised and doesnt even feel like a souls game sometimes

DS3 is far worse than DS2, it's not even close.

before sotfs it was decent
no replay value tho even before

The only people who dislike DS2 are the contrarian kids who literally couldn't "git gud" at PVP and blamed the game

This, at least DS2 had some replayability and even added new encounters. DS3 is exactly the same boring shitty gimmick bosses

I still don't get how people can seriously hold DeS in the same regard as some of the other games when, like you said, almost all of its bosses are gimmicky trash which is something From has never quite executed well in any of their games.

Storm King is kind of fun though.

No, Dark Souls 3 is probably worse.
Everything is recycled/fanservicing dark souls 1.
We have duke archives 2.0, Andre back again, Siegmeyer 2.0, catcacombs again and so on.
Also poise and un-upgradable armor, less weapons and half of the bosses ar gimmicky shit.
I still like dark souls 3, but at the same time it feels like miyazaki couldnt care less about being original.

Storm king is the souls equivalent of a turret section.
You can also negate all damage by sitting next to the a wall in the area.

People that say DeS is a complete game and not rushed are retards, it dips severely in the final areas of each branch.

DaS3 is the only one where the base game actually has mostly good bosses.
>Champion Gundyr
>Pontiff Sulyvahn
>Nameless King
>Lothric & Lorian
>Soul of Cinder
>Aldrich
>Abyss Watchers
>Dragonslayer Armour
>Dancer
That's the one thing they got right with Dark Souls 3, it didn't need DLC like DaS and BB did to have a good boss spread.

Yes all the areas were boring compared to DS1 and DS3.

DS2 is shit

No not at all, compare player count over time between Dark souls 2 and 3. 2 is a great game with amazing PvP and online mechanics. The PvE is weaker at times but that doesn't stop it from being underated. It's better then the shit show that is Ds3

Dancer is retarded, Champ gundyr hitboxes are trash and to try to beat NK you have to fight against the camera and boredom of Storm King. It leaves you with 6 bosses out of 19.
That's just my opinion. I think the other you mentioned are some of the best fights in the saga, but if you add Yhorm, Wyvern, Deacons, Wolnir, Greatwood ecc i think the overall quality of bosses is on par with other games.

you didn't even make this sound like a real opinion that you have

It deserves more

I wish they didn't have the fight against the dragon either but as long as you don't lock on to the dragon and lock on to NK himself and stay in front of the dragon that fight shouldn't take more than two minutes since you can riposte the dragon after parrying him. The real enemy with this one is your depth perception.

Dancer is a great fight and the ultimate casual filter because most people don't realize you only need to dodge one of her attacks from her long strings and the rest won't hit you as long as you stay right next to her and just walk along her as she does her moves. Only bullshit thing about her is her grab attack during her first phase but that's something that unfortunately has been across all the games.

I'm not denying that DaS3 doesn't have gimmicky trash too but it has by far the highest amount of good bosses in the base game of all five games.

your gif is related
way better gestures too

if you like 2 more than 1 and 3 your first souls game is probably ds2.

otherwise theres no reason to like it more

Dark Souls 1 is much worse actually, for a number of reasons.
1. Demon's Souls, every weapon had an infinite, or some basic target combos aside from DBS and Gaxe (Gaxe had a Direct Hit 3-hit combo that was sort of flukey to pull off). In fact Estoc is the best weapon in the series because it has 4-hit combos that comprised of 4 different attacks with various starters in both stances and with an off-hand. This should have been the standard for every game, but it wasn't.
Either way, every weapon type had a very, very strong representation except for Daggers.
In comparison, Dark Souls has the WORST movesets. Whereas Estoc had 4-hit target combos with multiple buttons and various stances... Dark Souls 1 had no combos.
In DeS, Katana had 2-hit target combos, infinites with it in the off-hand, and a very good okizeme game. DkS1 katanas had no combos and jist spammed a frametrap.
DBS had zero combos in DeS, but most of it's moves had hyper, and it was very, very strong tempo game, and the best okizeme, (strongest weapon in the game aside from Estoc), and could be used in one-hand to great effect. In DkS1, all the Zwei had was a r1 mash infinite... The moves were terrible and it was useless in one-hand.
DkS1 making every trend continues for Small Axes, Short Swords, Asian Swords, Great Axes, Knuckle, etc.
The only weapon that improved were Claymores -- and even then the old Claymores were strong poking, space-control, and tempo weapons while DkS1 Claymore was really stubby and had just confirm into infinite.
The point is, every weapon was good because it had an infinite or target combos, or it had a superb poking-spacing game, or hyper. In comparison only a couple weapons have infinites in DkS1, and they're all top tier along with frametrap high-dps weapons (DMB3 Falchion/Katana) where you literally smash R1.

cont.

2. Poise.
Poise made the bad weapons (Daggers, Rapiers, Short Axes, Short Swords, Knuckle, etc) worse. Worse to the point of near unusability and made the better weapons even more degenerate.
It also fucked-up spacing, punishing, timing, etc, and made BSes even worse then DeS. Fucked up the whole game and there's a reason it never came back.

3. Kick was garbage compared to shove.

4. Dumb shit like whiffs animations on poles and scythes causing your character to have ultra slow recovery, making the those weapons feel like garbage.

I could go into depth on all these and more (hit-stun tied to upgrade level, hit-stun tied to upgrade tree, different weapons that share a class having different recovery speeds), but let's jist agree that DkS1 has shit gameplay compared to DeS.

I don't like Dancer. Imo has one of the worst AI of the game making her too easy. You hug her booty during first phase and then let her spin randomly during the second. Easy win.

Imo DS2 has the highest amount of good bosses in the base game, but probably just because has a shitton of bosses. So on 40 bosses 10 being good is not a great achievement.

Also i think that the majority of good bosses of DkS3 are better than the best bosses of DkS1 and 2 combined.

The problem, for me, is that it doesn't feel fresh.

Dks1 was the first, so even in the worst areas it was new.
DkS2 tried new things and new concepts, like an Area set in an Harbour, the "first" Archdragon Peak, a Castle sunked in lava and cool settings and design through the whole game + dlcs. (I dislike areas like Gulch, but they are somewhy new and visually appealing).

Meanwhile in DkS3 i had this feeling that i had seen everything, except for a couple of areas like Castle of Lothric or Undead Settlement.

>DS2 has worse combat than DaS and DS3
>second best game in the series
No, no chance. DS2 is not a bad game, and it gets undue hate, but it has more real issues than any other game in the series, the only people who think it was the best are people who play these games for the PVP, and it's no surprise that those people are the most insufferable, delusional faggots of the entire fan base

All your "positive points" for DeS are just reasons why it's easymode and why fast weapons destroy everything because they stunlock everything besides most bosses.

There's a reason From dumped all the garbage that didn't work in later games.

yes

god damn, I hate it so much

DS2 is great because it followed the DS1 balancing of limiting your stamina, even moreso.
That why there's way less R1 mashing and way less roll spam.
Combat wise it is the pinnacle of anything From has done.

Yes, without a doubt.

For everyone who criticizes Dark Souls 2 there's another person who will defend it, so yes, it does deserve what it has.

Yes.
youtube.com/watch?v=mc4k_iiivH0

Not having stunlock is fine.
The thing is DkS1 is garbage because the best weapons actually have stunlock and obliterate everything else. It least in DeS everything was consistently broken. Also, the best two weapons in DeS don't have infinites at all (DBS and Estoc).
The weapon thing is just one point.
Poise makes DkS1 the worst game easily.

>I'm right you are wrong blah blah blah

>love every Souls and every From games
>don't understand how you cannot not like their games

am I alone here?

Yes.

ok that part was bullshit.

>gets hit 2 times
>expects to make it

That gate is intended send phantoms in the alt route, it's only accessible by the host if you don't suck shit like the fag in the webm.

he made it to the gate with space to spare, you dumbass

>dark souls II comes out
>Sup Forums loves it
>matthewmatosis video is released
>Sup Forums suddenly hates it

>space to spare
>sword would not fit in

hmmm

No, the second the gate moves it's closed.
He got hit 2 times and then roll 2 times pointlessly instead of running.

Matthew"I lock on against multiples"matosis?
He's a smart one.

>People start unironically calling Micolash a good fight after he released the video where he said it was his favorite

Yes. Everything about it. Even new game+. Terrible animation and hit boxes. Shit level design, muddy graphics. Fractured story and lore. Worst and cheapest bosses in the series. More enemies doesn't equate difficulty.

Never heard of him.
DaS2 was pretty disliked when it was released because of shit invasions and no poise, and don't forget the shit looking areas for 80% of game.

DS2 has poise though, you're retarded.

Yes
DeS is still the best one, and DaS3 behind it
DaS-niggers need not to apply

DeS is utter garbage

Him getting hit doesn't matter because he didn't get staggered at all by the hits. He just ran into the wall like a retard.

Well ds1 was good and ds2 was technically an improvement with new features like powerstance
Also like some user already said it had the best pvp of all 3.
Ds3 took all that and threw it right into the garbage bin

If you're nigger with shit taste then sure

Everything DeS did was improved upon by its successors.

Not an argument.

>shit "first to stunlock wins" gameplay
>shit gimmick bosses
>shit broken as fuck magic
>but it's comfy

Still better then DkS1, which has even more broken magic, still has stun-lock, poise which just makes the game worse in every concievable way, and just overall shittier slower gameplay.

No. It deserves more for forever staining FROM's otherwise stellar output of games.

DS2 has the best gameplay, the only thing that I won't defend it on is visuals.

The gameplay is the strongest aspect of it. Only thing I wouldn't change, except for maybe the negative stamina duration.

Not really. I does do some retarded shit with durability and level design, but the quality is a hell of a lot more consistent than DS1, where you might as well stop playing once you get the lordvessel.

Or you could just go to Oolacile after you get the Lordvessel and end with Manus.

No. Sup Forums has "it's worst game in series therefore it's bad" autism. Sure, it's behind DaS1 for example but only by little. Things like PVP and covenants are best in series though. I thought they will be at least as good in DaS3, especially after Bloodborne lackuster (still my favorite Souls game though) but they aren't.

Dark Souls 2 grew on me over time to the point where I actually started to enjoy PvP while I do everything to avoid PvP in the other games. DS2 also had really nice atmosphere.

>shitty graphics
>retarded hitboxes
>clunky gameplay
>soul memory
>iframes dependent on a stat, have to get it to 20~ to get ds1 iframes
>no flippy ring
>SOUL MEMORY
>lightning spears gutted and left for dead
>all the cancer in pvp

I'd say it does.

I still haven't done the dlc, guess it's time to reinstall.

>iframes dependent on a stat
This is pretty stupid
>have to get it to 20~ to get ds1 iframes
This is not.

Rolling is way too good in all three games and trivialise a lot of the fights when you can just become invincible and move through attacks.

lightning spears weren't even good in the first game, not sure why that one came as a surprise

also
>needing iframes
get

>retarded hitboxes

They're fine. Better than Bloodborne's in fact, in SoTFS.

>clunky gameplay

That's your opinion. It's actually quite straight forward with what works differently from DaS such as attack cooldowns being longer on longswords than rapiers now, rotation limit for attacks, and jumps needing to be started earlier rather than later.

>soul memory
Not arguing this, and with Agape ring it has worse twinking than DaS. At least in Dark Souls they would just have better equipment, not be 20 levels higher AND have better equipment.

>iframes dependent on a stat, have to get it to 20~ to get ds1 iframes

You need 95 AGL, tops.

Check build calcs to see if it's 9 i-frames or 10 i-frames at the time, but it's still only 18 ADP on a pure melee build, with like 3 ATT.

Plenty of stats left.

>no flippy ring

Not in Dark Souls 3 either.

>lightning spears gutted and left for dead

Probably to teach you that Emit Force is better and so is Heavenly Thunder.

>all the cancer in pvp

There was a time when PvP had no cancer?

No
Now go away. This board is better without all the Souls spamming.

>No poise on you or enemies, infinite R1 mash stunlocks, infinite heals, 90% puzzle bosses.
Why does that make Bloodborne the best souls game?

>Rolling is way too good in all three games and trivialise a lot of the fights when you can just become invincible and move through attacks.

You've left me at a loss for words with how stupid this statement is. This can only reasonably be bait.

>lightning spears weren't even good in the first game

You havent played ds2 have you? Otherwise you would know that lightning spears were actually very good before a patch came that drastically reduced their damage and the amount of them that you could use, making them shit.

i've only played sotfs but i've done a faith build in all 3 games and damage spells are universally terrible even at high level

This. I don't know what they were trying to do with combat but enemies being able to turn 90 degrees half way through a swing is questionable

They nerfed the spears because they were way too overpowered. You sound like DSP right now.

but you can do it too. with a ugs the crowd control options that kind of mobility gives you are awesome

Weakest game of the series from my point of view, though there were still parts of it that I liked. Fashion souls and PVP game were strong. Haven't played the DLCs yet, but I mean to get SotFS. The revised enemy/item placement seems better

The bosses sucked
The level design sucked
The music sucked
Soul Memory sucked

It had a few really good ideas, but there were too many fundamental flaws

No, all those armors were great addition to Skyrim.

DLC's are really good. Brume Tower may be my favourite area in the entire series.
Say what you will, but the music was great.
youtube.com/watch?v=NFrcmJQencc

>slower gameplay
Spot the ADHD button masher

>muh agility
>muh iframes
complains the casual who has never played monhun or any game that's not a casual shitfest like dark souls

I cant bring myself to finish ds3. Its absolute trash

>gimmick

I actually just beat it last night, easily third best in the series. The bosses are the best in the series and the levels are probably the most consistent while it doesn't have any as good as Central Yharnam or Painted World of Ariamis it doesn't have any that are Duke's Archive or Shrine of Amana tier either. Only major complaint is how linear your progression through the game is and that it needs to shove DaS references down your throat all the time and straight up retcons aspects like Gwyndolin not being killed.

My first souls game was ds1 and I think the worst in the series by far is ds3. Its absolute trash. Ds2 is at least fun even if its not a great game. Ds3 is basically god of war 4 with less health

Most linear soul.
No poise, armor upgrades, less weapons, no dual wielding.
Fan service everywhere (Andre, Siegmeyer, enviroments)
Half of the bosses are trash (Yhorm, Deacons, Wyvern).
FPS issues even on medium high tier PCs on Dreg Heap and Archdragon Peak.
No estus downside + a shitton of estus.

Truly the best souls, indeed.

DaS > DeS >>> BB > DaS2 > DaS3

And no it's not my opinion it's objectively

>Most linear soul.
DaS2 is more non linear than BB, guess it's better.
>Half of the bosses are trash
It has the highest amount of good bosses in the base game throughout the series. Twin Princes and Nameless King alone are better than the entirety of DeS and DaS bosses. The only one that comes close is Bloodborne but aside from Gascoigne, Logarius and Gehrman there aren't that many and it has absolute trash like Celestial Emissary, Witches, One Reborn and Micolash.
>FPS issues even on medium high tier PCs on Dreg Heap and Archdragon Peak.
Wrong.
>No estus downside + a shitton of estus.
Bloodborne gave you even more healing, you could buy unlimited Life Gems in DaS2 and unlimited grass in DeS and you could get up to 20 Estus in DaS.

DaS3 is better than both DaS2 and DeS by a good amount.

I think the point he was trying to make with DaS3 Estus is that it's the most unpunishable in the series. I can confirm since I've healed in front of straight sword users' faces and was able to block their next attack. DaS1 you couldn't walk plus it was kind of slow, DaS2 is impossible to use anywhere near the enemy because of how punishable it is, and in BB your healing can be parried with a gun so it was balanced. It's just fast in DaS3 with zero downsides.

I agree that DaS3 gives you too much healing and that DaS1 did it the best by forcing you to give up Humanity and doing per bonfire but BB absolutely suffers the same problem as DaS3. 20 Blood Vials, which can be as high as 24, is way too much health especially when the rally system is brought into account. No boss should take an average player more than ten vials, the only that took me more than ten was Orphan and I can definitely go back and do it with fewer. Both games don't punish sloppy gameplay as much as they should but only calling out DaS3 for it is retarded since both games are a bit too easy.

DaS2 doesn't feel good to play. The developers implemented a shitload of features meant specifically to slow the player down as much as possible and generally make things awkward
>deadzone in input movements makes the MC control like a drunk 18-wheeler wrt the other games
>ADP makes all player actions in the early game take 9999 seconds and rolling not work properly -- unless you want to gimp your character for the privilege of getting him to not be broken
>enemy spam out the ass but without the tools that BB and DaS3 give the player that avoid making enemy spam tedious as fuck
>Enemies can backstab you out of fog door animations
>SOTFS putting petrified nps everywhere because apparently open-endedness in the early game was a bad thing
It just makes the game awkward to play. Whenever I boot up DaS2 after playing DaS1, DaS3, or BB I immediately notice how all of my character's movements and attacks feel like they're being performed in a tank of molasses. It makes the game feel like shit.

Add to that some other really poor design decisions
>soul memory and no orbs fucking PvP outside of duelfaggotry, except rats and bells which are dead so the point is moot
>approximately 0 secrets, goodies, and shortcuts in any level of the game except Aerie and the Gutter, they're all straight hallways of differing paint jobs
>Fuck literally everything about Iron Keep
>Terrible aesthetics. In particular, Earthen Peak and Huntsman's Copse are among the ugliest levels I've ever seen.
>Shit/uneccessary boss spam just to pad out length.
>muh broken world
But I guess if you're one of those people who likes to pretend that Souls is a fighting game franchise it's OK I guess

>deadzone
use the camera to change the angle and suddenly you can go in any direction
>enemy spam
encourages a variety of tools instead of just running in with a longsword. use some kind of magic/ranged weapon and/or a large weapon for crowd control and this becomes a non-issue
>fog door animations
encourages you not to be a blindly fleeing tard. this only hurts sl1 players and it's not a big deal imo

>0 secrets/shortcuts
flaming windmill in earthen peak
lighting braziers in aldia's
king's crown in amana
hidden bonfires everywhere

>iron keep
fuck that place

>terrible aesthetics
also some of the best.
alonne's arena
majula

It's not the best, but it was good and I enjoyed the way it pushed me to alter my build/play style depending on the new challenges. It's not above criticism, but it doesn't deserve the hate from babies who think not being able to r1 spam their way through every area makes it a bad game.

>approximately 0 secrets, goodies, and shortcuts in any level
I bought this game recently and there's already been a few shortcuts within some levels. The very first one has that exploding wall near the bonfire. No Man's Wharf has a walkway to kick down plus a door to open from the other side. Huntsman's Copse has a gate to open.
There's also been some breakable walls so far and I'm sure those count as secrets+goodies.
This is actually the first time I've heard of a no secrets complaint for this game though I'm still pretty new to it. I heard there's some obscure shit in this game to find or figure out.

>Deadzone
Sucks, but largely affects nothing.
>ADP
A great idea.
>gimp your character
Impossible. Leveling in DaS2 is incredibly easy. You can blow 20 souls early game and still have enough mid-game to use any weapon.
>enemy spam
You act like this is fine in DaS3, when there's far more enemies. Probably because DaS3 is easy as fuck.
>Enemies can backstab fog door
Good. Run through a bunch of enemies and do something stupid, get punished for it. That's what the games are supposed to be built on.
>Petrified NPCs
There's exactly 1 NPC that isn't option and a trove of Fragrant Branches that are given for free.

The rest of your post is just dumbshit that can be applied to the other there entries as well.

there's a boss that you can't fight unless you find a hidden npc at 3 locations, join his covenant and pay him effigies to complete 3 different hidden areas which after completing the third one it throws you into the boss fight

Not really, its the best Dark Souls
Demon's and BB both completely shit on it though

>bloodborne is good meme
stop it
its the only one I don't replay because its BO-ORING

Ds2 was forced to innovate and be different than Dark Souls because it was made by a lot of different people. The thing I hate most about Ds3 is that it wallows in Ds1 so much and the new mechanics are bland,

>claiming superiority through video games

No fucking way, what boss is this?

>approximately 0 secrets, goodies, and shortcuts in any level of the game
You're mentally retarded.

darklurker

Except it's the contrarian fags who populate this board that like DS2
DS2 is the worst and deserves the bullying because of its cult of defenders