Another Hate Filled Critique About Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin

imagine you are playing an instrument like a guitar very loudly for everyone around you to hear you finally get to the hard part of the song and you play every note with perfect accuracy after you finish the song all you can hear is everyone adoring and complimenting your performance you're feeling like you're on top of the world it's amazing now what happens if you start playing very loudly like before and you just keep messing up and the loud out of tune guitar just keeps sounding like nails and a chalkboard now you're embarrassed for being so bad while everyone heard every mistake clearly you feel like you shouldn't have played anything at all however there is an alternative you could have just played quietly and then fewer people would have heard the performance regardless if it was good or bad if a game is hard it's like the instrument is set on full blast volume every time the game kills you and it's your own fault you appreciate the genius that went into the game figuring out how to kill you but when it's the game's fault you think wow you got me again i guess you wanted me to die there dark souls 2 is the hardest souls game by a lot when it comes to clearing levels so the volume of the instrument has never been higher unfortunately the volume of the difficulty is as high as ever but fromsoft is playing a lot of the wrong notes and the performance is terrible the original title for this video was why i don't love dark souls 2 but you might but then i actually replayed the game and all the dlc for footage and i changed the title i don't want to throw more fuel on the bonfire of hate that is dark souls 2 video essays but i really don't like this game i will outline every single thing that dark souls 2 does that is mechanically interesting or good in the boss design and level design and i will try my best to represent people who like this game but i will also thoroughly explain from my own perspective why i dislike this game more than any other game i've played in recent memory welcome to another hateful critique about dark souls 2. and what better way is there to start out my super negative critique than by listing all the positives and looking at where the majority of my compliments lie at the beginning of the game [Music] actually i lied we'll start this critique off with the negative the tutorial is bland not terrible but not nearly as ambitious as the amazing dark souls 1 tutorial that feels more like a level than just a boring learning exercise while still teaching the player everything they need to know dark souls 2 tutorial doesn't even have a boss and is completely optional it's a bland opening area but it's also completely skippable so i can't say that i personally mind too much as you can just run past it all in a second alright now i'll start talking about the positives when anyone starts their dark souls 2 adventure the first thing that they'll be guaranteed to notice is the change in enemy placement and level design gone are the days of tight corridors with just a few too many enemies for the player to ever be comfortable but not too many enemies to make the player feel like it's unfair dark souls 2 takes the enemy per square inch of the first game's tight corridor level design and expands both by five five times the space to fight enemies and five times the amount of enemies when i first played dark souls 2 i used lock on for about every single fight since it was what the first game taught me to do and i hated every moment of dark souls 2 combat and i completely blamed the game for this i do apologize guys i labeled this part of the video the good but i'm still being negative as all hell i promise this rant is leading to a part of dark souls 2 that i do actually enjoy alright okay i'm done apologizing back to blaming dark souls 2 for me not liking dark souls 2. combat in big open areas against a ridiculous amount of enemies only works when you're able to easily circle multiple opponents and get behind them once you get behind the enemy they need to fully turn around before they are able to attack again meaning that creating your own openings is much much easier when locked off dark souls 2 is so much more enjoyable when locked off that i would personally argue a dark souls 2 locked on only run is a challenge run comparable to a level 1 run and i'm only half joking here actually i'm pretty serious lock on is awful here which brings us out of the first positive point and right into another negative dark souls 2 lock-on mode inherits a lot of the [ __ ] from the first game for no real reason actually i'd argue it's worse in the first game you can't run sideways or backwards when locked on meaning the player knows for 100 certainty that using lock on for a boss that you need to run back from is a bad idea dark souls 2 allows you to run sideways but it's way slower than if you were locked off and it also allows you to run backwards but only after a long vulnerable turning animation where you can't roll so they change lock-on to make it so that if you use lock-on on accident and run backwards you can die from the lock-on system this is pure bs the first of many ways that the b team at fromsoft makes the game hard for the sake of being hard the changes that they made to the lock-on system look on the surface like an improvement because you can run sideways while locked on but they're actually deaths in disguise just awful lock on movement design okay so don't use lock on the game is good well that's not completely true because in addition to the change in enemy placement there is an arguably more divisive design decision in the gameplay feel dark souls 2 is slow like really slow after playing dark souls 3 and then playing dark souls 2 you will scream at your character just to roll out of the freaking way but why did i say dark souls 2 being slow is divisive rather than just good or bad it's because every time i hear someone who isn't crazy defend dark souls 2 they say combat is more deliberate they choose the word deliberate rather than slow this is because the enemies are very slow and so is the player so every single move matters similar to how mario 2 the lost levels was just mario 1 but harder dark souls 2 enemy design is just dark souls 1 but harder and you're slower i will say that sometimes this type of play works with an unlocked camera but do you guys remember when i said when i first played dark souls 2 i used lock on camera and i completely blamed the game for this the developers did nothing to teach me that lock on is bad in fact they taught me in the tutorial area to use lock on the worst part is that fromsoft literally has the solution in the game there are literally unlockable ghost enemies later in this game you were so close to teaching the player how to play the game why did they not actually teach me there's so much missed potential just put a couple of ghosts in the forest of fallen giants and then have a larger boss battle against a group of these ghost enemies similar to prowling magus in the congregation the early ghost boss battle will be really hard locked on but you can't lock on because they're the ghost enemy type so the player has to play the game as intended and learn how to fight multiple enemies locked off or at least how i think it is intended the sad thing is that i only know how to use a locked off camera because of youtube video essays this is not a joke i can only enjoy combat with normal dark souls 2 enemies because i watch youtube essays that's just ridiculous i still want to sing dark souls 2's praises while i can because no one else can or at least when they do they praise the game and also insult dark souls 1 in a bunch of nonsensical ways it's obvious that this video needs all the positivity i can muster in the beginning because once we hit iron keep and shrine of amana positive feeble will be completely gone i did enjoy the locked off combat with multiple enemies in a lot of the earlier areas of this game like the force to the fallen giants and the lost bastille the deliberate style of play really starts to work with normal enemies i use positioning and baiting to trigger slow enemy attacks so that i can find an opening with my slow attack the reason this works so well is because everyone is so effing slow but the challenge comes from juggling multiple slow guys to find an opening with your slow guy it's actually kind of fun the reason why small but vocal minority of people like dark souls 2 combat so much is because it only works as a result of the game being way slower than any other dark souls game if the enemies attacked any faster you wouldn't be able to find an opening against 5 guys at the same time with any consistency making the game special in a way no other souls game really is in execution the extra slow combat speed plays like aligning your wind-up toy with the enemy's wind-up toy attacks the attacks are so slow they're similar to a wind-up toy that takes a minute to get going and then sits out in a direction for a long time that's what swinging his sword feels like in dark souls 2 but it's fair in the beginning of the game because the enemies are slow wind-up toys as well just like you the old feeble in his first run through dark souls 2 almost 7 years ago would be fuming with anger hearing me say a single good thing about dark souls 2 combat but the old feeble always played locked on the new feeble the new and improved man who watches video essays knows lock-on is for the weak if you're playing dark souls 2 that is a good late game area that demonstrates the fun of locked off combat is the gauntlet of enemies as you approach during leia castle if you use lock on this seems really unfair as it did in my first run but even in my level 1 run i actually enjoyed fighting all these enemies at the same time they were all slow and deliberate and i could use lock off circle strafing to find openings against multiple enemies in fun and creative ways despite this part of the video being called the good there are some issues that i have with a combat on a mechanical level even when locked off unlike dark souls 3 or elden ring where the player can charge an attack facing one direction then do a 180 no scope and let the swing hit an enemy that is behind the player in dark souls 2 the character just keeps facing one direction until you return to idol or walking animation to actually turn around i like the risk-reward style of play against multiples and other souls titles when you can turn around at the beginning of your swing and a game like dark souls 2 that's built around fighting gank squads it feels like the 180 no scope sword swing would have been fun to use here it's not terrible it's gone but i would have preferred it to be in this game another issue i have with combat is how rowling feels jank many other critiques have already commented on this by saying it's due to iframes during a role being tied to the agility stat and while i do agree i think there's more to it than that every animation is so slow that if you dodge back from a horizontal swing you will get hit even if you're pretty far away because the animations are so slow compared to a dodge roll that it feels like a lingering hitbox in order to match the slow sword swings every roll probably would need to be quite a lot slower and have more time invincible i believe the developers knew this but they also didn't want the dodge roll to look weird by putting it in slow motion to match the slow sword swings so instead they just said i guess a player can have as many frames of invincibility as they want if they stat for it having enough time invincible for this game to feel right all the time would essentially be max agility but then many other dodge rolls are too easy so the developers just said to hell with it and they turned iframes into a stat without actually having to deal with the fact that dodge rolling slow moving attacks feels like a lingering hitbox that hits you when it shouldn't i mentioned before that from a mechanical point of view dark souls 2 is slow but that has ramifications on more than just the game looking slow the game feels slow if dark souls 3 feels like you were swinging a mighty sword dark souls 2 feels like you are cutting bread with the butter knife everything is so slow the animations have very little impact it doesn't feel like i'm really hitting anything with a nice weighty sword but instead slowly slicing bread with my butter knife some people won't mind this but animations communicate wait for me and when the weapons feel so weightless the whole illusion that we are doing 10 sword fights is broken for me the way things look and feel is very important and dark souls 2 falls flat in this aspect is a natural consequence of everything being slow the upside to this complaint is that the hordes of gang squad enemies are more fair because the enemies are so slow but the consequence for this is a lack of weight in the attack animations already after pointing out a few negatives in the part of the video that is dedicated to positivity we are going to compliment dark souls 2 once more this might be a controversial thing to say but i actually think dark souls 2 has the best amount of bonfires out of all three dark souls games one considering how few shortcuts there are in each level dark souls 1 had too few bonfires and dark souls 3 had too many but dark souls 2 is somewhere between the first and second game even the areas where bonfires are too close to each other feel correct because there are usually no shortcuts in the level design and the player has to progress past a giant gauntlet of enemies to reach the next bonfire so it feels fair if anything i'd say dark souls 2 could use a few more bonfires in a couple areas or just make the levels have more shortcuts but as is i think the amount of checkpoints in dark souls 2 is probably the best in the series okay that was the last positive i wanted to cover i'm only joking as we haven't covered the best parts of the game because we're leaving the best for last in other words we are saving the dlc for last but before i go over the worst parts of dark souls 2 i'm going to instead cover the nitpicks tiny issues that by no means ruin the experience but definitely degrade my overall enjoyment and i wish that all of these issues were fixed but we both know that'll never happen [Music] the first nitpick is that stamina keeps draining for a second after i let go it's a bit too long to feel fair and he'll be walking while losing stamina at the end of every run that just feels like a small way the developers wanted players to be frustrated another issue that i have is the punishment for death is just too much if you die your hp will fall to 50 which is way too low i'm already pissed that i died i don't need to be lowered to an unplayable amount of health i only have this listed as a nitpick rather than a giant knowing issue because there is a ring that caps the health loss to 75 my main gripe with this ring is that 75 hp should be the default minimum the punishment for death being having to play at half health is just obnoxious i get it i died i'm angry too stop punishing me more the third nitpick is one everyone has felt enemy hitboxes are bigger than they appear but my broadsword hitbox is pixel perfect or even less i see a tie knight lizard while i can't hit it i try to do a two attack combo and a nearby enemy i'm too far away for the second hit to land for some reason even though i swear those hits are landing for my final nitpick we will talk about another issue with combat backstabs and dark souls 1 backstabbing was a mechanic that was hard to master but gave i-frames trivializing almost all enemies with a slow turn radius as you could easily just chain backstab without being able to get hit while doing it in order to make the game harder in fights against multiple opponents dark souls 2 got rid of backstabs i wish i could say that they actually kept backstabs in as a way to kill you if you accidentally do a backstab when you didn't mean to because you don't have iframes for the vast majority of the animation this is terrible if backstabs are too good and you want to take them out i agree with that design decision however if you keep them in the game as a cheap way to kill the player as he's locked in the animation then that's just unforgivably bad design of course i never went for backstabs on purpose so i didn't mind too much but i still really dislike that your reward for a successful backstab is death some of the time these nitpicks all point to one issue fromsoft will make the game unforgiving for the player at every opportunity available to them while making the game extremely forgiving for the enemies this is wrong this is obviously wrong and bad okay the nitpicks are done actually no you can die getting stuck on an open chester climb ladder animation that gives no iframes and you can't break free of the animation okay now i'm done with the nitpicks before i move on to the terrible parts of dark souls 2 i should admit that i didn't cover everything that's good in the game which is mainly because i don't interact with every mechanic in a soul's game i can't tell you how good dual wielding power stancing attacks are because i just don't play the game that way but i'm sure that it improves the experience a bit i also never used ranged attacks in any of the souls games and many late game areas are probably better if you do there is one exception to that which is that i did use a crossbow on my level 1 run for the smelter demon boss run but from my very limited experience ranged combat in dark souls 2 is boring like every other souls game stand far away from the enemy and shoot them not much depth as fromsoft refuses to add better ai or level design to facilitate an interesting shootout system that could at least be a mediocre cover shooter there'd actually be more depth in a mediocre cover shooter than dark souls 2 ranged combat as it is currently the weird thing is it seems like the later areas were designed around having a ranged attack of some kind despite ranged combat not being mechanically interesting and that's a perfect segue that will bring us to the ugly [Music] the game falls apart at iron keep iron keep has hordes of melee enemies like in early areas of the game surrounded by hordes of ranged enemies and harder seemingly impossible to reach areas forcing the player to either use ranged attacks to pick off the ranged enemies in more boring ranged combat or lure the melee enemies in a long boring drawn out fight in the early area away from the archers or you can just alpha up and run past all of the enemies and go right to smelter demon but the fog wall doesn't have any iframes meaning there is probably over a 50 chance that your run was useless and you will die while entering the boss arena there is a giant issue with dark souls 2 combat and it isn't the combat itself it's the fact that fromsoft didn't realize they made a good combat system now i know this is a rather bold statement to make as i'm essentially saying the actual developers did not understand the game was fun but i sincerely believe this i don't even know if the developers played with a locked off camera i think that they might have put in so many giant gank squads in the beginning areas of the game just to kill the players [ __ ] done i don't think the b team at fromsoft realized they had a special combat system that was uniquely fun and slow deliberate feel i think that they made it slow just to make it harder and that it's accidentally fun when you're locked off and they didn't actually know that it would be fun this is because for every fun multi-enemy gauntlet i find there's another place like iron keep which is just so terrible all around or shrine of amana which is just so terribly bad it's almost like these areas are designed to kill and infuriate players more than to have fun with shrine of amanda took more time than any boss in my level one run it's the primary reason that i didn't want to come back and re-record the level one run for this video and it's terrible at a normal level too just watch the point is that for every great combat experience from soft through and some bs combined with the gank squads to make the average combat experience worse than it could have been too many far away ranged enemies are spell casters that are just here to make the game hard for hard sakes because dark souls is an extreme game for extremely masochistic players who like to die dark souls 1 usually rewarded patient play in areas like sen's fortress where you can scan for traps or even the bridge where you can see a smoldering black tar that indicates a fire trap could occur the fire trap being a freaking dragon but dark souls 2 seems to actively try to hide its archers so that you have to die no matter what it's trial and error it doesn't reward patient observation i heard scholar of the first sin which is the version i'm playing added more enemies for some reason maybe the base game of dark souls 2 would be more enjoyable but honestly i don't have the money to spend 40 on a dark souls game i already played basically so i cannot comment on the original version but i still imagine that i dislike iron keepers shrine of amana even if my hate is lessened by ten or twenty percent the level design of some late game areas is so bad that i genuinely couldn't figure out if i'm supposed to kill the enemies or just run past them i kept trying to fight only to die and then i try to run past only to die anyways are you supposed to be able to clear no man's wharf or just run past everything how about the catacombs or shrine of amana if h bomberguy's defense of shrine of amana is you can use summons then it's a poorly designed area nothing more to say and are you supposed to clear iron keep or just run past everything i genuinely couldn't tell and don't get me started on iron keep this level is just so terrible i mentioned it earlier but we're gonna go on a rant it's awful the worst actually maybe there's worse levels in dark souls 2 but that's saying something because this is pretty atrocious i think i like new londo level 1 more than iron keep at a normal level respawning invaders giant gank fest so many hidden archers am i supposed to run past the enemies or fight them i don't know if i'm supposed to fight them why are there hidden archers everywhere during the fight and if i'm supposed to run past why is there a turtle in the hallway blocking me right next to an i-frameless lever and i-frames only exist in the middle of the animation why so i'm supposed to run past enemies and get i-frames but to artificially inflate the difficulty we'll just not give some of the animation iframes just to make it a bit more likely for the player to die because they like dying right that's why we play dark souls because we're dumb masochists who like to die a lot in video games what is the developer's intended way to play the game am i supposed to play like it's a level 1 run and run past the enemies fog walls have no i frame so i should fight the enemies but there's literally 30 enemies chasing me around combined with 15 archers and spell casters hidden in random spots that i can't reach so should i fight them or run past them what are the developer intended ways to play i can't tell but that's when it hit me i figured out the riddle of dark souls 2 level design i am supposed to always run past all the enemies until i reach a place where i don't have iframes and i die while opening a door or a lever or freaking boss fog wall i memorize every eye frameless death and either kill the enemies near where i won't have iframes or i kite the enemies away so that i can run back to the thing and get deep enough in the animation to get iframes when they come back and hit me this is without a doubt the intended way to play dark souls 2. okay no it's not i'm lying the intended way to play the game is to kill all the enemies and every boss run and level all the gameplay indicates this is the intended way to play but it's not fun at all because the hordes of ranged enemies mixed in with the melee enemies is just awful dark souls 2 late game enemy design feels more like call of duty zombies round 30 knife only rather than dark souls combat except it's actually worse than that it's round 30 zombies knife only but half of the zombies have guns that shoot you from random spots where you can't see them or reach them or both there is a large counter argument to my complaint which is that they do have ranged weapons and dark souls too i can use a bow or magic maybe i need to make a full video on this subject but as i mentioned before the shooting combat in these games are mechanically unfun it's like bringing a gun to a sword fight against confused ai having to use ranged weapons to clear levels makes them easier and less bs but by no means does it make the game fun for me locked off melee only combat against multiple other slow melee enemies is fun shooting them from a hard to reach place is not fun because it's too easy and offers little in terms of mechanical depth you stand there and shoot and when they get to you you run away find another place and shoot them that's that's that's it dark souls has always been a series built around zelda-inspired locked-on melee combat really the evolution of it all of the mechanical depth of risk and reward with timing hits near enemies without getting hit all comes from this system dark souls 2 level design forces the player to be locked off and used ranged attacks i can forgive the locked off combat being necessary in this game as it does require mechanical depth even if i don't enjoy it as much as locked on combat and also it doesn't teach the player to use locked off combat but forcing the player to use boring ranged weapons that slow down the flow of combat tremendously in a dumbed down cover shooter or making the player deal with 10 ranged enemies at once is not fun it's downright terrible design dark souls 2 has enemy design created for a different game maybe a good melee ranged mix devil may cry combat system that has no lock on would make dark souls 2 enemy design fun but this enemy design into dark souls game seems like it was tailor made to kill the player as much as possible rather than be fun at all that brings us to the next point in the ugly the b team at fromsoft thought players liked the first game because they like dying so we need to kill the players a lot even the people who play patiently and are extremely observant will get gotten dark souls too because this is a hardcore game for gamers who want a challenge yeah no i don't want a game that kills me for killing me i want a game that teaches me how to survive in dark souls 1 i step on a switch and sends fortress and i die to crossbow bolts a bit unfair but i wasn't observant enough to see the switch as i approached i shouldn't let that mistake ever happen again dark souls 1 has its share of somewhat cheap deaths but the second game is so much worse every level just has a little bit of bowl sprinkled in to make me hate it even when i would have liked it exploding enemies ranged enemies that i can't see multiple invaders in a single level that respawn even after i kill them and no iframes when i need to open a door until 60ish percent through the animation it's just awful in dark souls 1 i felt real triumph clearing the harder levels or beating the giant bosses of course i did not feel triumphed in the first game when the game turned into super easy late game bosses with terrible boss runs but for some reason the b team at fromsoft designed an entire game around the late game dark souls 1 the part no one likes or very few people dark souls 2 has the worst boss runs in the entirety of all dark souls especially the dlc of course some people justify this by saying that they like having to do repeated combat with the enemies on every boss attempt and that if you do it enough they will disappear eventually but my counter argument is this if i can get backstabbed out of at trying to enter the boss room and the enemies disappear if i kill them a lot and there are bonfire aesthetics to respawn bosses and enemies surely i should need to kill them 12 times to get them to disappear this is too time consuming and is one of the large reasons i will never do another dark souls 2 level 1 run i don't want to have to kill all the enemies to smelt her demon 12 times it's not fun the iron keep and right before the executioner's chariot are some bad examples of this basically the strat is run past everything and pray because i don't want to kill every enemy 12 times i want to do the boss run but then i die when trying to get to the boss this is a time sink eldon ring got rid of boss runs for the most part and i say good riddance we get punished by losing our souls and our pride on each death we don't need to lose 20 [ __ ] minutes just to get back to blue smelter demon it's so weird on my invisible score for dark souls 2 that i will never reveal ever would go up probably two points if i just got iframes at fog walls and levers and chest and basically everything like the previous game it's sad that one line of code one simple boolean statement that any starting computer science major could code would make this game so much better it's a shame it's a damn shame to summarize many of the boss runs are just terrible and i don't like them but what about the one thing that i've neglected to mention up until now are the bosses any good [Music] it's time that i address the elephant in the room the boss tier list is notably absent from this video i will not make a boss tearless for dark souls 2 like i did for elden ringer dark souls 1. in dark souls 1 i feel very strongly about the bosses gargoyles are amazing cuilag is a great but slow-less in positioning and the bed of cass is the worst thing ever created and the lead developer should be five many strong feelings about dark souls one bosses for both the great ones and the terrible ones i cannot say the same for dark souls 2. a lot of the bosses are fine just fine whenever i replay dark souls 2 i find myself remembering bosses that i straight up for god oh yeah fat dragon slayer guy or qui lag again or ornstein again why would i bother making a dark souls too tearless if so many fights are just meh if the average boss of the game is at or below average then every boss would be c or d tier in the base game velstas the best boss so he should be eight here but i can't even put him above b tier because the quality of the dlc bosses is so much infinitely better than even the best dark souls 2 base game boss velstad running the script i just realized that i one of the most opinionated people i know couldn't form more than two strong opinions about dark souls two base game bosses that's really telling and how little of an impact they left on me that's not to say that i hated the majority of the bosses i just don't really care about any of them and on some level that's worse a common complaint levy that dark souls 2 is that all the bosses are just guys in armor and while that's true i don't think it gets to the heart of the issue the aesthetic of the fight doesn't matter as long as the fight is mechanically interesting but whether i'm fighting a knight in armor or a demon or the literal final boss every boss is mechanically identical my level 1 run of this game was weird because unlike the many diverse strats i explained in my dark souls 1 level 1 video there is basically one strat to beat every dark souls 2 boss locked off circle strafe the one tactic completely negates the challenge of almost every single boss as it's so easy to get around them without even having to roll it seems like these bosses were not designed around being played locked off which is weird because the level design is awful unless you're locked off just like before i'm asking again what are the developer intentions i know the developers didn't play these pusses locked off because the turn speed would be higher but you need to play locked off in order to clear the levels in a fun way did the developers play locked on and use magic to clear every level how the hell are you supposed to play this game a perfect early example that encapsulates this problem is in hyde's tower you trigger multiple slow giant knights at once forcing you to do a 1v2 if you play locked on then you won't really get any openings so in order to beat the fight melee you probably need to lock off in circle strafe but then i use this tactic on the boss and i win without any challenge i just circle strafe like a normal enemy and he doesn't respond to it at all really i think the developers wanted the player to die a lot and they played lockdown for the most part the developers didn't realize that there was a fun game in here if you lock off so they designed the game around an unfair lockdown combat system in other words the b team at fromsoft didn't realize that there is a good game somewhere in the mess that has dark souls 2. they didn't want to make a good game they wanted to make a hard game but then they balance the bosses around lockdown combat and if you use the tools that you need to beat the game then they're all a joke in addition to circle strafing easily winning every single fight i don't personally like the boss fights in this game the game is super slow and you can never get just one more hit in before rolling since you'll be punished some like this more deliberate slow type of combat fuel in the bosses but it does not appeal to me i like a bit more fast paced and risky combat it's a personal preference though i do understand why some people like the slow feel dark souls 2 bosses the slow feel of combat works a little bit better against groups of multiples but it works a little bit worse against 1v1 boss fights just like the slow bosses healing is also very slow you heal so slowly that you can never estus at a risky mid-range because you'll just get hit kind of like elton ring however there is a faster healing option available life gems some people like life gem healing because it's less stressful and it allows you to have a constant regen effect if you spam it enough so that it's very hard to die i don't think that this is good to feel like you cannot die in a souls game the point of these games is that mistakes are lethal and life gems take away from the signature souls feel of having limited resources here's another bold statement life gems were not in this game initially until no one on the development team could clear any levels i bet there were more esta shards or healings similar to kindling bonfires and dark souls 1 but when the developers realized they made every late game level awfully unfair they had to introduce an infinite healing system to make the levels playable i believe this is true because bosses are usually easy and can be beaten without life gems except for smelter demon who is a pain with estes only but for the most part the bosses don't demand life gym use at all really the levels however are a different beast entirely and without life gems way fewer people would ever even get close to beating this game all in all life gems are a band-aid solution to the giant amount of gank squads that demand infinite healing to have a semblance of fairness but they make the bosses too easy [Music] i had no real place to fit this in the critique earlier because i was focusing on combat and boss design but let me give a real hot take on the world design of dark souls 2 that no one has ever heard before in their life it's bad all right i'm just joking well actually i'm not but i'll talk a wee bit more about it dark souls 2 has a world connected through nonsense some don't mind but i do i love the interconnectedness of the first game and i love it just as much when it reappeared in elton ring i do not love the world of dark souls 2 it doesn't feel like a real place just a bunch of shitty boss runs strung together to torment me but that isn't my only issue with the world design the game's world is also ugly dark souls 2 lacks beauty dark souls 1 is beautiful when it wants to be as well as ugly at times dark souls 3 follows this trend perfectly dark souls 2 attempts to recapture this idea with some genuinely pretty places as well as horrifically gross areas too the places that i just shown you i take no issue with i think that they look fine however i do take issue with the amount of areas that are just dull to look at static i would say that dark souls 1 had a somewhat static feel to its walls and textures but dark souls 2 takes it a step further i know there's a subjective point that many love the game couldn't care less about but it just always irks me every time just this feeling of boredom i feel bored looking at dark souls 2. i know there is an older version shown off that looks better before the game's release and that unreleased version of the game would probably increase whatever arbitrary score i'd give this game by at least one point i know some people don't care that many rooms look static and i know this is true because dark souls 2 does have some supporters but i just can't get over it just looks too boring static flat almost worse than if i did hate the graphics a 5 out of 10 score for the textures is worse than a 3 out of 10 because at least i feel upset with the lower score i feel so meh looking at dark souls 2. it just comes across as nothing i just want to congratulate anyone who loves dark souls 2 for making it through that part of the video and anyone who does really like dark souls 2 and they're still here they're probably here to see my reaction to the dlc so let's see if dark souls 2 dlc can make dark souls 2 great again [Music] it's kind of embarrassing for someone who is a souls vet like me to admit it but i've never really done the dlc for dark souls 2 until now i know this is kind of weird because the community keeps telling me it's the greatest thing of all time yet every time i beat dark souls 2 i just feel like i've had enough and i want to play something else and honestly if it wasn't for this video i never would have played through the dlc ever probably that means that of all the souls games dark souls 2 is the only game where i went hollow where i gave up not even at a boss mind to you just at a random place in the crown of the sunken dlc but i have a duty i have a duty to anyone who has ever loved dark souls 2 to finish the dlc for this video and make dark souls 2 great again okay i just reused that joke all right let's get into it just like at the beginning of this video we will start with the positives of the iron king dlc this dlc has some of the best level design in the series it tells a real story in the level something that the base game lacked in just about every area on a mission to cure the undead curse you the chosen undead venture across a frozen chain connecting two skyscrapers on a star wars volcano planet in a desperate attempt to reach the bottom of the impossibly huge tower when the player looks down towards the bottom at the tower all that stares back at them is the abyss you'll never reach it and what is at the bottom of this tower what secrets does it hold through amazing interconnected level design we descend the tower and activate the elevator system to explore the dark depths contained here only to finally reach our goal a bed of ash and at its center is the greatest boss in dark souls 2 fume night one word i never think when playing dark souls 2 is masterpiece that is unless i'm fighting fume night i was happy when i didn't win third try because i wanted to see phase two one more time this fight is amazing also he has no boss run almost like hard boss runs aren't fun but looking at fume knight on a mechanical level he has more depth than any other dark souls 2 boss by so much that we've seen so far in phase 1 he whips out a fast dark souls 3 boss speed with his long sword but then he also has slower dark souls 2 like animations in his greatsword so you can circle strafe behind him and wait for his greatsword combos to finish and since his greatsword reaches so far you have to dodge it even when you're behind him unlike many other bosses in the game once you get to phase 2 he throws away the long sword buffs the great sword and switches it up he has a fair explosion attack a jumping gap closer and a really cool delayed swing that does high damage and might have killed me for rolling with it only for this to be his ultimate weakness roll forward left into his delayed swing and you will win this is the only s-tier dark souls 2 fight and the most fun i've had with the game by a lot it's been hard getting through dark souls 2 but fighting fume knight reminded me why i play these games in the first place after beating fume knight i thought the b team at fromsoft learned from their past mistakes to make an amazing dlc no no they did not sir alone is terrible i'm confused he even made it into the game there's a great ars tier fight in here somewhere but the experience as it was shipped might be one of my least favorite parts in dark souls 2 or any dark souls game the boss run is awful and there is one guaranteed healing opportunity if you run back as he prepares the sword charge where you heal as he charges into you if your timing isn't 100 perfect you will get hit and that's the only healing window because this is a super fast boss that wasn't designed for such a slow healing speed like all the base game bosses were just to make it worse sir alone has one of the worst boss runs in the series how the hell did this get into the game i have a theory fromsoft asked the qa they enjoyed fighting sir alone and they naturally replied no of course not this game sucks and then the b team took that as a good sign because they were killing the qa team a lot so they doubled the enemies in each boss run because players like it when their time is wasted we love it when the boss runs harder than the boss and then there's blue smelter demon i beat him many years ago on my first run and i won't do it again i don't care it's not worth it a re-skinned boss with the worst boss run the series i feel like this game was designed by idiots sometimes one small step forward in boss design and level a million steps backwards in boss runs and gank squads that's how i'd summarize the old iron dlc the worst part of it all is that i enjoyed fighting smelter demon answer alone but fromsoft made me hate it i will never fight sir alone again after this video despite enjoying the fight when i wasn't trying to heal and that's a damn shame also the level design is improved but the gang squads are only marginally better there are way less ranged enemies thank god but the gang squads and melee enemies are turned up to 11. there are still some areas where i don't know if the developers even want me to beat all the enemies because there's so many or just run past and memorize the iframeless switches where i actually need to fight or kite enemies away from the switch i don't love clearing dark souls 2 dlc levels but i don't hate it like the iron keep and the interconnected level design is really good which leaves me conflicted still the iron king's dlc is better than anything else in the base game by a lot following the trend of good level designs set by the old iron king dlc the crown of the sunken king also blows away anything we saw in the base game the new mechanic introduced of moving buildings in the city vertically by hitting switches is really cool and it's utilized pretty well you need to figure out a mini puzzle to get to the bonfire with the switches and i like that i do dislike these ghost enemies and layer of the imperfect more like layer of the imperfect hitboxes i don't know how i died here the enemy placement is actually pretty fun here it's a lot more manageable than the first dlc we covered there's less melee enemies there are some ranged enemies but they're never too far out of sight like in the iron keep or something this level also tells a really cool story just like the old iron king a dragon that slumbers in an ancient pyramid that you cannot quite reach so you need to venture through the city and descend another pyramid and open a chest that i kept dying at to get a stone that completes the bridge by the first bonfire that you see right away to get into that first pyramid so the level loops in a descending circle only to reach back right to the beginning that also leads to the final area that's really great level design very similar to the ring city actually now that i think about it the first boss with the woman is underwhelming and i didn't do the one-on-three fight sue me but the dragon's pretty cool unfortunately i did have a few issues with this fight first one being in line with classic dark souls 2 jank to try and ruin every cool moment my weapon almost broke sin doesn't even have much health how did my weapon break you guys are literally seeing me go into the menu and equip repair powder mid fight this is so dumb for some reason i actually still won this fight but it was just so dumb my only real problem with the mechanics of this fight is how sometimes sin won't stop flying and there's nothing you can do and his ai just doesn't feel like landing but usually this doesn't occur too frequently overall i would say that one sin isn't taking off to the skies for a vacation retreat this is probably the second best dragon fight in the series number one for me being madeir to sin and three calamite but if someone says sin is their favorite dragon fight above media i would also understand that perspective i just like that madeira lets you hit him more consistently rather than having to wait for sin to come down to earth for what feels like entire minutes only one dlc left and i saved the best for last actually i didn't again this is better than the base game but it's not as good as either of the other dlcs please let me explain why before leaving a dislike because i think people like the crown of the ivory king there is a good story being told here with a real voice actor this time rather than just level design although i do like it when the story is told only through level design this story it works really well you find a boss that is invisible and very hard to beat so you need to explore the level and find an item that allows the boss to be beatable on your way to get the item there are many blocked passages by thick layers of ice that not even my firebombs can blow up after getting through the level we get the item we can now return to see a visible doggo in a pretty fun fight which proves to the mysterious lady voice that you're actually worthy of doing the dlc mysterious woman breaks the ice that blocked our way before to open up new areas of the level we can actually fight the boss right away only to be assaulted by a swarm of enemy mobs so we need backup we have to travel through the level we already did and find the previously blocked off paths in order to get more knights who will fight a swarm of enemy knights as our troops as our reinforcements on the surface this sounds like a great idea and a great level but it fails for two reasons reason number one is that the enemy design is as genky as ever worse than the other two dlc's and some of the worst sections in the game which means that now more than ever i can't understand if i'm supposed to fight all the enemies fromsoft also brought back the spellcasters in hard to reach areas that points feels more obnoxious than shrine of amana which is a real achievement in bull crappery the worst part about all the issues with the level design is that there aren't too many doors or levers for you to die on due to a lack of eye frames which makes me think the intended way of playing is just running past all the enemies i believe this because i don't think anyone on the design team killed all these enemies on a melee character and no one wants to do a long drawn out cover shooter ranged fight in dark souls cause it's freaking boring this is peak dark souls 2 bad enemy design and it's not nearly as fun as the enemy placement and crown of the sunken king i really do think that the developers who played through this section just ran through it like i did i don't think they interacted with their own mechanics unfortunately there is another reason why this level fails i can't remember where any of the blocked off paths of ice were this might sound a little bit like it's my fault but honestly i don't think it is this is partially because there are way too many enemies to fight so i went through the area very quickly but it's also because the level isn't very memorable to explain what memorable level design is let's look at a great level that does this really well undead berg every dark souls gamer knows every inch of undead burg and you know why it's somewhat short and every square foot of the level is memorable crossing a tight bridge as bombers from an elevated wooden platform assault you only to find refuge in a cramped room as a shield enemy bursts down the door making the encounter harder than it initially appeared a hollow in a tower that shoots you unless you make him stop and then there's another hollow that throws a burning barrel down a staircase at you and there's the narrow staircase that leads to an alleyway with the black knight himself and i didn't even mention the iconic kick down ladder shortcut brilliant truly an amazing level and everything that i just stated is purely from memory i did not have to go through the level again i just know that for life because the level design is so good now let's look at the ivory king level lots of samey hallways and castle wall exteriors and by lots i mean lots this level is ginormous some parts stand out like this cave area that's unique but almost all of the blocked off ice paths that you need to remember are just in very forgettable looking interior runes if fromsoft designs a level that hinges on me memorizing the places i can't get to when i see it the first time which is very similar to metroid or zelda they need to do a better job of making the level memorable quality over quantity but that's not what we got here that's usually not what you get with dark souls 2 you get quantity over quality so we need to memorize samey looking hallways as we go through the first time or else we have to thoroughly explore through every gank festival level as we have to repeat the level the second time speaking of the samey looking hallways the graphics aren't any better in the dlc don't get me wrong many of the views and vistas are a lot better than the base game of dark souls 2 and they are very beautiful but when i say graphics i mean the interior zones all of them just look flat just look at these ivory king hallways it's just meh it looks like a ps2 wall texture there is beauty to be found in parts of the dlc that was lacking the base game but a lot of the areas that you spend the most time exploring still look as visually dull as ever which is the interiors of buildings and so we end what is the worst dark souls 2 dlc with a really amazing idea for a fight you and your army that was sworn by rushing past a giant gank festival level now prepare for the final clash between armies that's pretty cool at first i was bad at it because i didn't really know how to play the summons since i never really summoned but after getting the hang of playing with split aggro i felt like a king doing glorious sword fights among his troops this fits in so well with locked off combat that it feels like the full realization of both the war we see in the giant's memories combined with the call of duty zombies amount of enemies the healing system works here too as infinite heals fits very nicely with the very long fight against multiple opponents before the real boss after competing in righteous combat we see sauron himself i mean the ivory king himself walk through a hellish portal of flame for the final battle and i've gotten so good at the fight so now two knight survived oh wait the ivory king is another knight too who is way stronger than both of my knights combined and is at full health you ruined it this could have been another masterpiece of a boss fight like fume knight there's no boss run an epic battle and a fun fight to do at the end but no if only one summon survives the ivory king doesn't get a summon but if two of your guys survive he gets a super strong pyromancer that's way better than your summons this is awful punishing a player for being too good at phase one if the b team thought a 3v1 was too much against the boss make one of my knights die i don't care i sound like an evil king right now but i mean it make one of my knights die don't give the ivory king a summon my knights do a speck of damage and have no health his knight can two or even one shot me this is such trash every time the b team stumbles onto greatness they find a way to ruin it it's still my second favorite fight in the game but having to make it so that only one allied knight survives is bogus i shouldn't be punished for being too good by making the game harder to match but that's dark souls 2 a game not designed around being rewarding or something you can learn and master with time but a game whose only goal is to kill you a lot [Music] the only area of the game that i haven't covered is the end the final boss one okay fight followed up by two disappointments i only got four to shorts during my whole playthrough but it didn't really matter i first timed all three phases of the final boss in dark souls 2 because it was designed around using lock-on well not phase 1 the 1v2 you need locked off but nashandra is a joke if you circle strafe the final boss is a joke did they even play their own game did the developers intend for everyone to lock off against multiple opponents then lock on against one opponent even though the game's easier locked off which is obvious from your time with multiple opponents the developer intended way to be dark souls 2 is a mystery even to this day i don't know how the game wants me to play it and i probably never will the development of this game was rushed without clear guidance until a new director stepped in to fix the mess that was dark souls 2. for the majority of development i bet every designer played the game way differently thus failing to design it for one good single experience the enemy designers did melee locked off the boss designers used lock on unless against multiple and a bunch of them used arrows to clear ranged enemies and bullcrap boss runs even though they knew it was boring they probably didn't actually do the boss runs and they're making the game they probably just made them hard and didn't play them actually who'd want to waste their time doing that at least this is my theory a game theory as i can't figure out how parts of dark souls 2 were even able to be considered as good let alone make it into the final release and re-release scholar of the first sin edition and after all the fan feedback why did they manage to craft even worse boss runs in the dlc and why did they add more enemies in scholar the first sin when the major complaint was that there were too many enemies did they learn nothing i know that there are a lot of people who really like and love dark souls 2 and i tried my best to understand it from their perspective at points i did have fun with the locked off group enemy combat but even when locked off there are so many other issues with this game between boring bosses and unfair cheap deaths and awful boss runs and just so much more i do think i know another reason why so many people enjoy dark souls 2 when it first came out and it's not because they were doing locked on or locked off combat that didn't matter it's because it was more dark souls the indie souls games weren't really a thing back then and fromsoft had only released two other souls titles the small but still growing niche of dark souls fans were starved with only two good options to satisfy their craving for more souls so when dark souls 2 came out about three years after the original this community wanted so badly to love the game unfortunately when viewed in comparison to either dark souls 1 or dark souls 3 this game ultimately falls flat in almost every way everyone says the same line about dark souls 2. it isn't a bad game just a bad dark souls game i disagree dark souls 2 is a bad game when a game is hard it holds itself to a higher standard the musician is playing the music loudly and when it's bad it's really noticeable either the player will learn new ways to interact with a mechanically challenging game that is a satisfying experience or in dark souls 2's case the player will realize that the developer intention was for them to die a lot no matter how much they try to learn which just isn't fun it's not good it's bad bad game design is heightened when you die to a cheap death and the penalty is a lot of time wasted dark souls 2 is a bad game the people who design dark souls 2 do not enjoy dark souls the developers guessed people like dark souls 1 because the game was hard and players died a lot since they didn't understand why anyone would enjoy such a hard game they just made a series of thoughtlessly easy boss fights with no mechanical depth and surrounded them with the worst boss runs in the series and made the player have no iframes to do anything just to kill them more dying a lot to a hard boss is fun and provides the player with the feeling of triumph but dying a lot to a hard boss run is annoying and only provides a sense of relief when the terrible experience is over not all deaths and hard games are created equal and dying in dark souls 2 is the developer's fault so much of the time that i didn't enjoy the game when the deaths were actually my fault i didn't enjoy this game at all but i tried i really tried and i really wanted to like dark souls 2 but i can't i hate dark souls 2 more than almost any other game i have ever played i probably hate this game more than i should to be honest and i know that because there are so many great ideas and moments spread throughout this game but the developers wanted to ruin each and every great moment with another cheap death there is a fun game somewhere in the mess that has dark souls 2. i just wish the developers knew that

Channel: Feeble King

Views: 510,035

Keywords:

Id: 6BgZ3dbqTos

Length: 57min 14sec (3434 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 29 2022