Things this game did good despite the flaws

For a change, lets talk about the good things of this flawed gem.

In my opinion the worldbuilding and presentation (despite the lore being a total clusterfuck in the series) where an atmospheric marvel. The world felt just as, if not more, desolate and melancholic than dark souls 1, unless of course you were a summonbaby, it makes you feel truly alone in a vast ruined land filled with millions of things that are JUST out of your comprehension, a desire to know more that will never be fulfilled, on a quest that gives a clear end, but nowhere as clear context. In dark souls 3 you find yourself in a recently ruined world instead, where everything has a clear interpretation and you can find many answers to your questions, be it by descriptions or NPCs, quite a new thing for the franchise, but i feel this took away from what made the setting so great

what do you think?

you can wield weapons in your left hand

that's literally it

It runs better than 1 on my laptop

it was heavily inspired by king's field ancient city, especially the dlcs, so that was a plus i think

Best Souls 2: Remnant of the Ruined Franchise

>In my opinion the worldbuilding and presentation where an atmospheric marvel.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA

ikr

It took the older RPG systems more seriously.
If you were at elemental / weapon type disadvnatage, you would deal no fucking damage.
Meanwhile in the rest of the franchise, hitting a fire monster with a fire weapon would net you something akin to a 20% dmg reduction tops.

It had more variety on weapon move sets than 1

Please don't make threads like this here, it doesn't matter how good DaS2 is, you only get shitposting.
Let me enjoy this game in peace.

I like DaS2 but I think the environment is actually one of its weakest points, everything looks made of the same yellowish cement, there are few memorable areas.
The fog forest is a good example of inferior design in my opinion, in DaS1 it really looks like a creepy forest that you stumble upon but in DaS2 it just feels shoehorned in as if it's just part of some obstacle course, the whole game feels like an obstacle course instead of an actual world even if you ignore the nonsensical connections between levels.

Still a good game tho.

lol look at this brethren, i have about 300 hours raked in in singleplayer alone, how can people hate this game enough to not appreciate it like the others? its flawed like a true dark souls game yet shines on its own

It didn't utterly fuck up covenants... at least not as bad as 1 and , even if Blue Sentinels and Rats are fucking garbage

It improved over DS1 in all the ways that actually matter

Like yeah, the lore and worldbuilding were cool and nifty in 1, the way Lordran tied into itself was impressive, the characters were definately more interesting and compelling to care about, but none of that is really what matters in a game like Dark Souls

World design is shit. Locations are placed where they are because why the fuck not. The world has no coherent design.

Stats are absolute ass. Splitting one stat into 3 other stats because "it's the sequel to the hard game so we gotta make it hard". Same reasoning aplied to enemy placement. Bosses are either a joke or are unfair as fuck with their movesets and astronomical hp numbers.

It's shit. People are trying to convince themselves that it wasn't that bad but it was, in fact, absolute dogshit.

Because it's more flawed than 1. I also have 3-400 hours

while the materials themselves where repetitive and lacked distinctiveness, the structure and what you see vs what you get to visit really play along to make it seems so much bigger than it actually is, and in the end, it still a huge ass world, similar to how dark souls 1 accomplished and ds3 tried to do with background clutter

I liked the idea of Rats and Bellbros, it's a shame the execution was pretty shit.

>In my opinion the worldbuilding and presentation (despite the lore being a total clusterfuck in the series) where an atmospheric marvel

Yeah I like the part where you take an elevator from the top of a tower to a sunken fortress filled with lava. Great world building there.

most of the characters were carbon copies of Dark Souls 1 characters

DS2fags who defend that are like DS1fags who defend Bed of Chaos or Lost Izalith as a whole

Just because you like a game doesn't mean it doesn't have shitty parts

>In my opinion the worldbuilding and presentation (despite the lore being a total clusterfuck in the series) where an atmospheric marvel. The world felt just as, if not more, desolate and melancholic than dark souls 1, unless of course you were a summonbaby, it makes you feel truly alone in a vast ruined land filled with millions of things that are JUST out of your comprehension, a desire to know more that will never be fulfilled, on a quest that gives a clear end, but nowhere as clear context

You described what DS1 did, though.

Environments, environmental story telling, overall lore, story, NPCs - everything that's not hard 'gameplay mechanic' is better in DS1.

Read my post again, user. I was talking about DS1

I liked soul memory better, because not getting invaded by people with fully maxed equipment as SL1 was a fair tradeoff for making it slightly harder to co-op with the friends I don't have. Then again DS3 has the best system (for once) since it also limits matchmaking based on upgrade level.

>but none of that is really what matters in a game like Dark Souls

It absolutely does, and it's part of what really sets it above and beyond its sequels. It's exactly what makes Dark Souls Dark fucking Souls.

It's poorly represented, but the level is supposed to be in the crater of a volcano.

If that were the case, any of the other games that came afterwards aping the whole ''minimalistic storytelling'' bullshit wouldve overthrown DS already, and they haven't. DS is its gameplay 100%, everything else is a nice addition that is welcome and appreciated, but not necessary to enjoy it

Just recently beat this and it didnt remotely feel desolate with the fucking constant invasions from other players that shit actually got to the point were it was annoying the shit outta me

You're grossly overestimating how many people care or even noticed any of those elements. Most players got hooked because of the gameplay, not because of the obscure lore, incredibly easy to miss character quests and hidden shortcuts

>constant invasions from other players
Which platform? Game is pretty much dead on PC.

It feels like a video game. The controls are light, the colors saturated and areas visually different, giving it an arcade-like feeling you can just jump into and dick around for fun.

Overthrown DS1 in what, story and lore? BB either has or came very close to it. The sequels haven't because they're flawed on numerous fronts.

A huge majority of players won't care and yet it's still interesting enough that people like Vaati make $5k/mo off of it.

Yeah not as important as the actual gamrplay but not negligible.

Ps4, I had been invaded on nearly every map it seems especially that lava castle places entrance bridge. I never would have guessed this was a dead game what with all the soapstone signs from others and nonstop invaders

You're mixing watching youtube videos with the purchase of a videogame. People will watch anything, specially if all it takes is clicking on a thumbnail

-NG+ has new shit to do, like black phantoms, different drops from bosses, and the Freya encounter
-bonfire ascetics
-interesting consumables, like the ones that restore spell uses
-attunement is useful for more than spell slots
-power stance
-good variety in magic

that's about it though

removing the power stance for ds3 was just lazy

It's not just about Youtube, it's to highlight that people like the lore and talking about it. It's never going to be more important than the gameplay but it's still important to the game.

DaS2 world building and presentation was fucked, the entire design philosophy was "prepare to die xD" and to fuck you over if you played a Souls game before which results in weird enemy behaviour like ridiculous hitboxes and turnspeeds (lizard.webm), also with a bit of jerking off fans of the two games before (Remember Ornstein? Remember Vinland?)
The way it tried to prevent twinking completely fucked the game, some covenants were interesting but most fell flat.

I think they were just way too ambitious with the game, they had many good ideas/planned executions but couldn't execute them properly and it shows. The world design is kinda fucked while the level designs itself was neat.
The network test for PS3 had also working lighting, so I guess they ran out of time to make that work too.

There is one thing it did great though
Fasion Souls
>-NG+ has new shit to do, like black phantoms, different drops from bosses, and the Freya encounter
Barely
>-bonfire ascetics
What?
>-interesting consumables, like the ones that restore spell uses
Not really, also why not just bring back mana at that point?
>-good variety in magic
How is it different from the other DaS games?

>Barely
Is a hell of a lot better than nothing in all the other games. I guess you could argue gravelord BPs in DaS1, but gravelords as a whole are terribly designed. Bonfire ascetics are cool because you can choose to go to NG+ for better loot or souls or whatever. I guess you have a point about mana. Restoring mana with spices accomplishes the same thing.

Magic in DaS1 particularly is very boring. Miracles are just a bunch of healing spells and a few varieties of lightning spear, but DaS2 has more interesting lightning miracles and some more interesting support magics. Sorceries are more than just a bunch of different flavors of soul arrow, even though most of them aren't any good. Pyro gets some interesting stuff too, and even a heal. Hexes being split into their own thing is good.

How the fuck do you guys have that many hours put into DaS2? 300 hours is over 12 days and it doesn't even have that much content, including DLC's.

>gravelords as a whole are terribly designed
It was fun, too bad they never tried to make it work better.

> Bonfire ascetics are cool because you can choose to go to NG+ for better loot or souls or whatever.
Come on

>DaS2 has more interesting lightning miracles and some more interesting support magics.
>Sorceries are more than just a bunch of different flavors of soul arrow
>Pyro gets some interesting stuff too
Like what? There a few spells like heavenly thunder or whatever it's called, but it was still mostly heals/buffs/lightning bolts, sorceries have very slow but tracking bolts or whtever but that was kinda like that attack from the butterfly in DaS1


If I'm not mistaken the hexes in DaS2 were the same as in DaS1

flame swathe, lingering flame, dance of flame, fire snake, and immolation(lol) are all new pyromancies, and even if you wanna argue that dance of flame and fire snake are just projectiles, they still have different applications and uses than fireball.

sorceries got soul; geyster, greatsword, shower, spear barrage, vortex, and flash
theres also focus souls but thats basically white dragon breath and soul bolt lol.

miracles new stuff all sucked, but it did have new stuff like the yellow soul shower, and heavenly thunder, splintering lightning spear along with denial and the best spell ever, unveil.

hexes that werent just stuff from das1 are dead again, whispers of despair, repel, twisted barricade, numbness, scraps of life, darkstorm, lifedrain patch, profound still, resonant flesh, promised walk of peace, dark greatsword, recollection, and finally dark dance.

1 - It let me summon, invade, and be invaded as I please after defeating a boss if I wanted to. I quite liked that

2 - rewards for doing deathless runs are appreciated, and going even beyond by adding a bonfireless run reward was great

3 - runs on any toaster you toss it on (at least in vanilla) which is a high plus in my book

4 - many weapons to choose from and even some reskins of weapons if you want a different look for an existing weapon class you like

5 - introducing spell parrying was a good way to implement what the silver talisman did in DaS 1's DLC properly

6 - so many small QoL improvements

I think this game had the best use of jumping. Jumping to items or shortcuts felt really good.
It has the most adventurey feeling with things like destructible walls, lighting sconces to reveal hidden paths, some hidden npc with an obscure quest and optional boss, etc.

PvP in my case.

Lightning Stake all day, every day