I've played through dark souls 3 10+ times and now going to play dark souls 2 for the first time

I've played through dark souls 3 10+ times and now going to play dark souls 2 for the first time.

What are the gameplay/mechanics differences that I should be aware of?

One sucks more than the other.

Everything is slower. Stamina recovery in particular will be noticeable right up front. More open world and more choices on where to go. Hollowing is annoying but can be mostly negated with a ring so no big deal. Lots of forgettable boss fights. Although some are notable due to how remarkably unremarkable they are.

lol its a souls game they're all the fucking same

No you aren't.

lifegems are hilariously overpowered and give you total 49500HP healing power per one full stack of them, making you virtually unkillable, you can also move while using them and majority of mobs are shit at punishing backpedalling
blunt damage is retarded in pve and makes an already easy game even easier
stacking up large amounts of armour activates hyperarmor akin to innate large weapon hyperarmor of ds3
level up adaptability unless you enjoy looking at broken dodge hitboxes
game loves samey gank encounters, get yourself a bow and bait some enemies into attacking you instead of walking into them
bosses can't deal with running behind their backs for shit with only a few exceptions

I actually am though. 3 was my first.

Combat is much, much slower.
More build variety.
More choices of where to go.
Duller boss fights.
But less gimmick boss fights.
Better DLC.
Some really cool mechanics and I'm fucking mad that they weren't in DaS3.
Best NPC ever created.

The bossfights are 10 times worse, shit is slower and you actually need to spend points in iframes while leveling up.

But if you're just pull enemies out of the group to fight them solo you make the game a lot more boring to play. Especially in Amana.

Weapons don't really have any wind-up frames so when you attack in one direction and then in the opposite your character either attacks to his sides first or keeps attacking in front of him, ignoring your inputs.

>lifegems are hilariously overpowered and give you total 49500HP healing power per one full stack of them, making you virtually unkillable, you can also move while using them and majority of mobs are shit at punishing backpedalling

Stop telling people this shit. This is why everyone dies playing Dark Souls 2.They're going to walk backwards and pop a lifegem and die before it heals anything. It's really not a reliable healing item in the moment and you're really not supposed to 'backpedal' from attacks. You're just supposed to get close enough to lock them into the animation, and do whatever you want with that knowledge, some people backpedal, some people attack, some people use estus.

there's nothing that can reliably punish an actively backpedalling player aside from some caster enemies and they are shitters
the power of lifegems is that they stack on top of each other while being incredibly easy to pull off
you can stack up to 4 of them at once for hilarious overhealing
and that's just normal lifegems, not even talking about the better types that can be farmed

>the power of lifegems is that they stack on top of each other while being incredibly easy to pull off

Except it's not unless you have way too much ADP.

poise doesnt exist for enemies and the whole game is a big boring waste of time

you leap alot farther when you jump

>poise doesnt exist for enemies

yea the fact that i beat the game by spamming r1

anyone who doesn't get 20-24 adpt immediately is a massive moron who enjoys playing in a broken-ass game
actually, that's anyone who plays in ds2 but that's a topic for another day

what does adaptability do?
t. faggot that never played ds2

rolling isn't "don't take damage: the button"
estus is slower
controls are most likely worse (I can only speak for the pc version)
far more replay value but a less exciting first run and less exciting boss fights

>ironclads
>heide knights
>old knights

Some of the first goddamn enemies in the game, but okay.

You don't need any more than 95 AGL unless you're a massive fucking scrub, I'm sorry. It's plenty of iframes and plenty of healing speed. Roughly on par with Bloodborne.

In Dark Souls II...
-your turn speed is limited
-roll distance is directly proportional to your equip weight %
-poise allows you to only get slowed down when taking a hit if you withstand it but the stuns from having your poise broken are MUCH more severe
-pure physical builds are not as powerful as magic school of choice based builds
-elemental weapons can be buffed and buffs are only really effective when applied to corresponding elemental weapon. ie. if you use magic weapon buff, you should first infuse your weapon into a enchanted of magic weapon
-weapons degrade very fast
-various actions including healing item use speed and roll i-frames are governed by agility. agility is governed by attunement and adaptability. reaching 100 agility is recommended. there is never any point in going over 105 agility.

makes your roll not suck

it gives you more rolling i-frames and hastens the speed of item usage
given that scaling in ds2 is awful, there's virtually no reason to not spend your first levels on it

I get bored of souls games after completing one run. I don't really get how you guys enjoy NG+ +++++++

you callin me a liar? i fucking did it garfield

theres some stat called adaptability or something like that, gotta lvl it a bit to have a decent roll. I forget the magic numbers tho

I haven't ever went above NG+, I have more fun doing a variety of builds.

There's a video that shows what having as much 95 agility does. Unless you're a fucking peon, you don't need any more ADP than this.

>This is why everyone dies playing Dark Souls 2.They're going to walk backwards and pop a lifegem and die before it heals anything.
not if you pop it while you have more than enough health to withstand a hit. it's an extremely reliable way to heal since even if you get interrupted or some of your health is taken away it comes back.
even estust can be abused this way very easily since the heal is gradual.

every dark souls 2 defender is too retarded to do this though.
this, it's easily one of the most important skills to get up to speed right away. early on it doesn't take a lot of souls either.

i enjoy ng+ runs in ds3 because ds3's dried finger makes you an invader magnet meaning there's almost always someone in your world
not so much in other souls games

dps racing just about any enemy is a smart way to play though. doing it on the slow enemies is very viable.

Improve animation speed and roll.
Kinda supposed to make you weaker in the early game. You should get the soft cap asap. Cant remember which, less than 30.
Dont be afraid to level up, as DS2 has no real community lvl cap. This kinda makes you broken in very late endgame, as you are a walking fortress around lvl 300.

>You should get the soft cap asap. Cant remember which, less than 30.
depends on your attunement. casters generally need 20-23 ADP and no more.

> builds
> you can max every thing out with grinding and just use different weapons as you NG+
so basically you hate increased challenge

>casters generally need 20-23 ADP and no more.
from what i remember casters can just dump everything into attunement and eventually hit more than 100 agility
especially because there's no community-imposed level cap and ng run alone pushes you into sl200 territory

Take in consideration the element of your weapons and the damage type (slash, thrust, strike).
Those are much more important on Ds2 than in Ds1 or 3. If you are using a weapon against an enemy with resistance to that kind of damage, expect to deal 1/10 of the usual damage. Thats why people get so butt bruised by the smelter demon.

spoken like someone who hasnt played one

You didnt faggot, a broad sword isnt havels fucking dragon tooth

eh, most things starting from sen's fortress were really resistant to slash as well
crush works pretty well against anything in 2 though, and mace moveset isn't too bad

2 took more of quantity over quality approach.

>I used a GS and Stone Ring the entire game

ARE YOU KIDDING ME DUDE??? ARE YOU BEING SERIOUS RIGHT NOW BRO??

I only finished 2 out of obligation.
It wasn't fun at all.

It's slower but better

Great clubs were actually pretty awesome to 2 hand through most of the early game. Since it was so easy to restat, you could wreck everything with any character until you got to the weapon you wanted to use long-term. It helped that shields weren't as useful, so it didn't cost you much to do.

Inferior rolling, netcode worse than 3 somehow, no more weapon arts(now you just get to duel wield), repetitive zones and bosses.

Red Iron Twinblades > All

dark souls 3 probably has the best netcode in the series(sadly enough) but it did come out last after all
the real issue with 2 is that the net code in many ways is worse than it was in 1

There are weapon arts in Dark Souls 2. They just work properly on R2 and aren't tied to an arbitrary meter.

>and aren't tied to an arbitrary meter.
They cost durability.

>They cost durability.

Not all of them. Powerstance moves typically don't either.