Honest thoughts on Dark Souls 2, 11 years later?

Had some really good ideas but was hampered by some really terrible downgrades from DS1. Mechanically it felt fucking terrible to play compared to the crispiness of DS1 and DS3. The colour palette was mostly pretty fucking terrible. It had probably the worst boss fights of any Soulsbourne.

Talking cat though? Majula hubworld being atmospherical with that kind of music? Lucatiel as a NPC story (although tying it to actually summoning was dumb)? The story theme of fragments of Manus representing different aspects of mankind and causing trouble? It was all really good stuff. Stuff that DS3 was lacking in comparatively. But it didn't come through because it was just an inferior game in terms of gameplay.

The best souls game to play with randomizer mod thanks to all the branching paths, and you need only like 2-3 key items to beat it.
Other than that its okay, it has certain things that does better than other rollslops and certain other that it does worse. I replay it every now and then trying different builds, it's still pretty fun.

Awful motion capture animations and floaty movesets that phase through enemies

Each enemy does a gay slide on feet slipping half a meter away

Horrible sound design with legitimately awful sounds all around and many glitches

Trashfire boss roster of extremely unremarkable basic enemies with limited movesets and general lack of hit stun

Lack of useful shortcuts and overreliance on many bonfires

Terrible weapon system where every buff is meant to used with infusion, making the distinction completely pointless in the first place and enforcing a ridicolous dps rush

Awful PC control and still no bind for mouse 4 and mouse 5

Terrible story and worldbuilding that is sloppily made, plot has more hole than french cheese

They played it first

How much was changed between the original PS3 release and the Scholar version?

I cant believe the madmen made a turn based souls game

Why didn't they use the DS1 engine?

Most innovative Souls game
Mogs DS3

every monster should be a quirky and epic lovecraftian abomination!!!

When everything is special then nothing is. You are a dumbass retard.

Nothing, it was a shit
Why is this considered a boss?

Worst takes ever. Dark Souls 3 has the worst gameplay aspects since poise is useless, every obstacle is solved by spamming dodge since you have infinite stamina and regen. All the RPG mechanics are watered down and the entire game feels like a failed action game. It just feels like the most bland Souls game ever. Also funny thing is you talk shit about Das2’s colour palette when Das3’s colours consist of washed out shades of grey and brown with greasy looking textures on every surface.

It’s literally a starter boss. No one really considers it good.

its funny how the same people who complain about dark souls 2 defend nightreign to death even though the latter has the same issues x10. people were seething about double boss fights in ds2 but when nightreign pits you against 10 enemies at once thats fine

dark souls 2 is an intelligence test, and a lot of people are getting filtered

And when nothing is special, only the cool poison dragon is special

for better or worse, by far the most experimental dark souls
maybe it's shallow but the aesthetic of the game and how "mmorpg" it all looks kind of puts me off, even the name of armors and locations sound corny, "drangelic" what the hell is that
that being said it's a game I love to hate

I feel like the good parts of the game are often being gatekept by the absurd difficult enemy placement of some areas.
All in all, a flawed gem worth playing at least once.

Dark Souls 2 has no good bosses, just dudes in armor swinging a big weapon

It experimented by making a whole game like Lost Izalith

Bravo

A bit rough in some parts, but easily the most memorable Souls game. I can easily remember every single area.

a billion times better than 3

bb>DaS>ER>DaS2>DeS>DaS3
sekiro is too different, feels inappropriate to have a rhythm game on the rankings

It has more twice the amount of bosses than other Souls games that’s you think like that. Also you are a soulless retard that is easily fascinated by kitsch garbage probably why you put Das3 on pedestal

that and the 5000000000 hidden mechanics that are pretty cool, it doesn't really matter but I think it's very cool

I like it, just a shame that it had so many ideas that were never implemented into the game. The gutter especially looked amazing. Really enjoyed power stancing and heavy weapons felt really good. Bosses are a mixed bag, I think you could discard like 10 or so bosses and nothing of value would really be lost.

better than 3, worse than 1

DaS3's endgame is 10x better than anything in DaS2 faggot

Save me Mitsubishi-san

It has more twice the amount of bosses than other Souls games

And none of them are good

Muh DS3

Obsessed

that and the 5000000000 hidden mechanics that are pretty cool,

Like what? The 12 meters phantom range in PVE?

Filtered idiot

midir and gael are comfortably the most overrated bosses in all of souls

ariandal and friede are okay

Better than DS1 and elden ring. Worse than Ds3. Best pvp on release but everything nerfed sucked the fun out. The PvE in souls games is irrelevant and always has been because only faggots wanna fight an Ai who barely fights back. Sekiro isn't even in the running and bloodborn is consoleslop. All fromsoft games are worse than Nioh2 in every way and all "soulslike" games are shit to begin with. Madeup genre for redditier chuds to feel good about themselves for beating a "hard game" because actually difficult challenges are too much for them.

wtf is this slowslop eurojank shit?

Worst takes ever.

Nah. Didn't even read the rest. You're stupid.

Overall I thought it was pretty good, especially since its development was a shitshow. Definitely a step down from 1 in some aspects but it did a lot of stuff that I liked. Unfortunately it marks the point where From started listening to the wrong people and making CoD style balance changes based on people complaining about other people having unapproved fun. There's a lot of wild & wacky shit you could do at release that just doesn't work anymore and I think that's a shame since putting together stupid builds is, IMO, a big draw in ARPGs.

I'm not arguing with you dumb faggot, just post more DaS2 webm
overrated? 100%, but still some of the best bosses, and easily clears whatever was in DaS2, except maybe alonne?

this post, made by a 12 year old, gave me cancer

playing any souls games for their pvp

unfathomably retarded, play a real competitive game

no u

Okay retard. You piece of shit serf nigger. Cant wait until we can have feudalism back so i can enslave low IQ subhumans like you.

It didn't meet up to the expectations of atmosphere and exploration set by DeS and DaS, but having seen what came after we were too harsh on it.

Pure Dunning Krugers. It’s called over saturation. I don’t expect a cretin like you to understand such concepts.

Such as?

I had a lot of fun with Dark Souls 2 when it came out but I very vividly remember thinking "Why does this game look way worse and play worse than DS1?". Its the definition of a B team sequel but its still better in a lot of ways than the fanwank DS3

last giant

flexile sentry

covetous demon

poison medusa

congregation

freja

chariot horse

foreskin frog

totally not the hellkite drake

giant dragon

giant dragon #2: poison kalameet edition

Huh, it's like you're not even close to being correct.

I'm not arguing with you

I accept your concession. There's nothing experimental about Dark Souls 2. It was indeed safe as shit. Same enemy design of Dark Souls, learned zero lessons from Artorias of the Abyss, what he did unique was just stupid and wrong (like the motion capture animations and infusions and buffs) and treads safe waters while constantly failing to understand what the original did great and what it needed to improve

The Durability system is terrible, your weapons go to shit so fast through a single zone, you'd need either a repair resin, switch to another weapon, or equip the knuckle ring. Get a cool boss weapon? it competes with BotW with how fast it self destructs if you dare to use the fun ability.

holy shit dude. how did you even see the screen past your fedora?

It's the second game in the dark souls trilogy, but the 3rd game in the souls quadrilogy. I don't know how Elden Ring and Bloodbourne fit into this.

rollslop

this isn't 3...

You are so disingenuous and retarded i am not even bother explaining to you why you are wrong. Just check out the archives to see my posts citing everu single innovative ideas that DaS2 pioneered which were carried on with the entries that came after. Too bad they didn’t include most of them.

great post, sir, I'm sure all these anonymous posters are very impressed

le holy shit duuude

Absolute zoomer retard lmao

2 is a hot mess but there are clearly innovations. 4 rings, an additional spell type, adp (shit but still new), and healing items are just a few.

I do I'm peak immortal valorant. Gm ow2. Diamond 2 league. Divine dota 2. Platinum apex legends Diamond in siege GE CS:GO I've also hit the top of a few fighting games including SCV Type Lumina GBFVS SF5 and 6 and tekken 7 you're just a bronze nigger whos opinion is irrelevant.

the cancer is spreading too quickly. you have to stop posting

Ivory King is the peak of the Dark Souls trilogy

Get a life you samefagging subhuman. You will always be poor and retarded. You are the bottom of the barrel bio garbage..

nigga did you play DaS2

What's funny is that people complain about the bosses in armor or with big weapons but all the bosses on that list except for Flexile Sentry and maybe Last Giant are bad.

I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.

>last giant

Boring giant stomping its feet yawn

>flexile sentry

Slow dude swinging large weapons slowly but you choose its moveset

>covetous demon

Dark Souls 2 writers are capeshit retards that don't know what demons are

>poison medusa

Boring dude in armor swonging a weapon slowly except she is a woman without armor and throws a frag

>congregation

Dudes in a room, with literally nothing unique about them

>freja

Spider Demon but we really want you to use the torch gimmick

>chariot horse

Boring dude (horse) in armor swinging his head slowly

>foreskin frog

Boring dude in (foreskin) armor swinging his arms slowly

>totally not the hellkite drake

Unremarkable big fight of boss stomping its feet but he can't be attacked for half the time

>giant dragon

Fart attacks, one of the worst bosses ever made

>giant dragon #2: poison kalameet edition

Kalameet from wish but instead of the cool build up and arena from Artorias of the Abyss you get to suffer the shitty durability gimmick

i'm so smart you cretins could never

read what dunning krugers means again anon

Giving proles the rights to read and write was a mistake

Awful game

Truth nuke

All the non-dlc bosses in 2 are bad except mirror knight who gets a pass for looking cool and having an invasion element.

It's been 11 years?

your weapons go to shit so fast through a single zone, you'd need either a repair resin, switch to another weapon, or equip the knuckle ring

game introduces problem

game introduces multiple ways to solve it

this is a bad thing

I agree that they went overboard with it and some weapons can do like 30 swings before breaking, but I don't at all mind the idea of weapon durability being something that you need to keep in mind, having to think about which weapon you want to use per situation and weapon repair items and spells being something you might use more than once in the entire game. Punishing all those times you use a big weapon in a small area and bonk into the walls feels very DeS.

You will not amount to anything. No woman will show you any affection or intimacy. You will not ever acquire any capital or financial power/independence. You will always be a cretin shitposting online while your peers are actually progressing in life with their fulfilling life styles. Scum like you shouldn’t even have access to the internet.

This is some serious mental gymnastics to convince me a horse and a giant frog are somehow humanoid knights with giant weapons.
If your point is that they're bad bosses I couldn't agree more.

Kill anyone that advertises it or anything after it by the degenerate company of rapists who infected the world with it.

Letting 11 year olds post on Anon Babble remains a mistake.

My favourite From title.

to convince me a horse and a giant frog are somehow humanoid knights with giant weapons.

Nigga they act exactly the same, they feel reskinned. Not my fault if B team couldn't make them unique at all

The last true souls game fromsoft made until they devolved into boss rushes with everything sped up tenfold
I like how you progress through the world and if you include the DLC then it's the best out of des/das1/das2 trilogy

your ass must ache pretty bad to post that

bought it in 2016, vanilla version for the xbox 360. played it for 3 months and sold it to a friend. I was a hater until I replayed it in 2023. it still managed to break my balls in a few parts but I enjoyed it and had more fun than I did back then. it's still the black sheep with a ton of issues but it's not the putrid shit that I used to consider it. there's a lot of charm in it.

you write like a 19 year old who found nietzsche and andrew tate a month ago, you're embarrassing yourself without realizing anon
consider that you're not as smart as you think you are
actual elliot rodger ass post

Just because they have basic shitty moves doesn't make them the same enemy. Show me at any point where the horse swings a sword at you.

they devolved into boss rushes with everything sped up tenfold

I love the way people out themselves like this.

I accept your concession

People say it's a "good game but a bad Souls game" but no it's legitimately the worst piece of shit game I've ever played in my entire life. Fuck Dark Souls 2 and fuck anybody that likes it.

You are seriously so oblivious to your own shortcomings, It’s really amusing because ironically you are the one that actually types like a premature baby.

It's OK. It's the worst souls game by a massive metric but at the end of the day it's still a solid 6 out of 10. With the DLCs it becomes a 6.5 or 7

Fuck I love ds3. I love the other games too. Show me your love by posting your

souls waifu

favorite weapon or spell

easily the worst in the series if you don't consider 3 to be a shameless rehash

still better than 99% of modern games

Easily the worst game in the entire series, and that series contains DS3 so its really bad.

How many premature babies do you see typing? That's gotta be a crazy life experience.

I replayed them all last year and it was more frustrating than I'd remembered.

anon, no one thinks you're cool, no one thinks you sound smart
look in a fucking mirror

No it’s not the worst at all. A single digit IQ subhuman that’s missing a huge chunk of his prefrontal cortex can’t perceive why it’s not a bad game. Because you lack the intellectual capacity to judge it’s merits based on a universal metric. You will always fall into fallacious biases and your own confirmation bias because when you are actually challenged with a direct confrontation all your delusions of grandeur will fall apart, revealing how much of a dimwitted brainlet you are.

on Anon Babble

how many premature babies you see typing

Well about that…

nta but

poise is useless

good. i shouldnt be forced to wear gay ass armor just to not get stunlocked.

every obstacle is solved by spamming dodge

if you mistime your roll during friede's or gael's combos, you die. even the tutorial boss teaches you this. either way, rolling > blocking. shields are for babies.

Best shitter filter Anon Babble ever came across. Want to know how shit someone's taste is? Just ask them about ds2.

As if i am seeking any validation from failed bio trash like you . Lmao

the best soulsclone to come out recently is the most similar to dark souls 2

based. boss rush retards could never

poise is useless

Stopped reading here. You're a fucking retard.

pvpnigger detected

Mediocre but fine.

Oh, so you understand how the poise system works but somehow can't figure out how to apply it to pve. Yea, you're a fucking retard.

A very bad game that tried really hard to be good. I really appreciate its attempts to genuinely improve on das1, but its failure to land scared FROM to be that ambitious again and the games theyve been releasing since only get more and more streamlined.

Great DLC, shitty base game
DLCs always had a really shitty issue of jacked up elemental defenses but thankfully there's a mod that disables them now

Its jank, my least favorite modern From game.

BUT, its still good and very fun once you get past the bad first impression, specially with the dlc, which i stand by having among the top10 level design in modern From. 7/10 would reccomend

he's onto us boys

the difference between us is that I'm going to be fine no matter what, after this thread is archived you'll still communicate like this, you'll still say hilarious shit like

Pure Dunning Krugers. It’s called over saturation. I don’t expect a cretin like you to understand such concepts.

do you realize how you sound? you're pathetic, I hope for your sake you don't do this shit irl you fucking autist
for the last time, look at yourself, and don't respond to this

That pile of shit is one of the worst and the devs fundamentally misunderstand the combat by attaching roller skates to all movesets

Because it doesn’t work beyond hyper armour in PvE, retard. Lmao It’s solely a hidden PvP mechanic in 3.

i liked it way more than ds1. i fucking hated ds1. it's such an overrated piece of dogshit. i cant believe ppl suck this game off for "le heckin interconnected world design" just because there are elevators that take you back to the hub area. fuck capra demon's arena, fuck the runback to nito's arena, and fuck having to literally memorize where the invisible bridges are in the runback to seathe's arena. this was the only souls that i didnt bother doing ng+.

dexfags always lose

It’s because you are so much of a retard to not even grasp such a simple concept. I wasn’t sure even trying to even come out as intelligent, that was your own strawman because you are actually a lobotomized retard.

Muh 4 rings

Just because they have basic shitty moves doesn't make them the same enemy.

Yes it does lol. They have the same poise, the same moves, the same size and speed
They are the same. Even base Dark Souls, without advanced combat mechanics like a proper universal stagger system, still did its best to diversify its roster. Cutting tails forces an animation, and enemies will move around the arena while attacking or use lava. Dark Souls 2 boss fights were clearly made in complete isolation from each other and meant to be placed almost anywhere. There's nothing unique or striking about how they fight, it's really just an entire game worth of shitty filler

ER > BB > DS1 > Sekiro > DS > DS3 > DS2
And ds2 ain't that bad of a game

Because it doesn’t work beyond hyper armour in PvE

Retard

And ds2 ain't that bad of a game

But elden ring is

Still in a laughable state.

"save me, Mitsubishi-san"

pretty bad but I still played it a lot because the pvp was funny

How did Dark Souls 2 even run on Xbox 360 and PS3?

moving the goalpost this hard

Yeah they're all identical except their moves, looks, animations, health, boss arenas, status weaknesses, number of souls dropped, and general behavior. Remember that time the ancient dragon pulled out his halberd and did a windup thrust? Or the time the pursuer flew up in the air, attached to the wall, and breathed fire on the arena?
Totally no differences whatsoever

Pretty good adventure game with some serious flaws. Doesn't deserve the name Dark Souls.

Yet it’s not even that noticeable when you can sinply wear equipment that is lightweight and still tank the same attacks in the webm. Also try to do tank most boss attacks which will simply get interrupted since they are designed to poise break you no matter what. It’s funny how you think this cherrypicked garbage proves you right. Poise is almost entirely useless in PvE outside of a few starter enemies.

The combat feels clunkier than ds1, and that's a big issue.
Aside from that I liked it a lot and I'm convinced most people only hate it because their idea of playing souls games is to run through the levels avoiding enemies to go cheese the bosses, so to them having to actually fight your way through just to reach a mid boss must be a nightmare.

Serious graphical downgrade and it barely does. I have it for PS3 and the framerate is fucking rough, worse than the first game.

Only after gutting the lighting, rolling back the level data to a somewhat stable pre-alpha state and lying to the consumers.

The combat feels clunkier than ds1

Spell combat is a big improvement though. Could've been even better, they walked back on several cool features.

it barely did
I played it on PS3 and it was pretty atrocious

Inferior to DS1 and DS3 but far superior to Elden Ring.

this is the last (You) you'll get from me
you missed the fucking point because you have no self-awareness and don't realize what you sound like
I can absolutely fucking guarantee that you're autistic, and I mean by definition
I don't care that you're misusing Dunning Krugers and that you think you're very smart
it's HOW you talk that I was making fun, it's pseud garbage and it's obvious you have issues with self-worth
I couldn't care less if you're a retard or not, but I can guarantee that people around you think you're "special" just ask around and you'll see I'm right
do yourself a favor and don't try to respond to this with some insecure sounding shit like "you're a failed male and I'm super comfortable with my self-worth", it's embarrassing

Pure sovlfvl kino, the best souls game ever made...

I'll take this over bosses that spin around and do 30 moved in 5 seconds every day.

QRD on the downgrade?

The mechanics are better, the technical aspect isn't.
A lot of the animations just feel bad.

it even has unlocked framerate on xbox. screen tearing out the ass but it's above 30fps most of the time.

All wrong

The fact that you are getting pissed this much tells me a lot about of your self projection here.

So good that elden ring copied its ideas

level design is terrible, first two DLCs are quite good, third was a letdown
no intention of ever replaying it but would happily replay 1 again

I still think it is markedly inferior in most ways to every other souls game
still pretty good though

I have not played nightreign and probably won't so I can't compare it

it ran like dogshit on garbage consoles so they had to butcher it
further proof that shitty consoles held back gaming

I thought I really hated it but after finishing SOTE I decided to do a replay of the trilogy and surprisingly found 2 to be way more fun experience with its slower and more methodical combat compared to whatever they decided to go with in ER

Aggressively mid. Most of the hate comes from locking essential tools behind stats. I would have enjoyed the game more if I knew certain things when it released.

It's a solid 6/10 if you go in blind. A 7/10 if you do research and do what's required.

Unfinished and disappointing game, but then so is everything Fromsoft have made since. Doubling down on the slow methodical combat was the right direction instead of the rollspam slop we get in 3 & ER. By far the best PVP in the series.

2 is the last game From software made with slower and more methodical combat, and they'll never make one again as they've given in to mass appeal

The truth is all 3 of them are aggressively mid on an equal scale. They all took 2 steps forward and 3 steps back in different regards.

light was going to play a major part and they showed off a fancy new lighting engine that looked very similar to how dark DS1 is

then they just randomly gutted it and completely removed it from the game, people say mods "fix" it or that SOTF reimplements it, but they do not. iirc it even had dynamic reflections on certain things, that's why the mirror knight and preceding area (with all the mirrors) looks so awful

It was originally meant to be a next gen game before the higher ups decided that the game should be released on the PS3/Xbox 360 instead leading into pruning things that couldn't be ran on inferior hardware

that's not true though

garbage

You can blame the lastgen console integration at the time. It was a mistake to release them on those consoles. But of course those greedy rats at Bamco wanted every buck they can latch their hands on.

I forgot to include the image. Took me 6hrs on fotoshop.

Shit

Completely false. Every single boss attack does a poise damage from 10 to 130
The absolute majority of those values can be achieved easily with heavy armor or with medium armor and Wolf+3
With heavy armor you can even trade with sword weapon arts

It is if you truly become honest to yourself but most people are incapable of thinking with an unbiased mindset.

Huh? Are you claiming to be me? Really funny

I am you, just older and richer. From the future.

PC was going to be the lead platform that every other version was based on

had no plans for a next-gen version since for some reason they "saw some untapped potential" in X360 and PS3

the whole game ran like Blighttown on them and according to the guy who wrote the official guide and had access to the beta the performance wasn't measured in frames per second but seconds per frame

a total panic mode, some roll backs and a gutted light engine later it somewhat ran on those shitboxes

PC now wasn't the lead platform anymore and also got gimped thanks to consoles and retarded decisions/devs

Now try doing the same without that weapon art. You are simply cherry picking using the same weapon art which is infamous for its poise boost.

It isn't at all.
Dark souls 1 and 3 both utterly mog 2 and all three of them are some of the best RPGs in recent history, their impact on the industry has been immense

It was originally meant to be a next gen game

it fucking wasn't

vg247.com/dark-souls-2-a-lesson-in-painfully-balanced-gameplay

In closing I wanted to quiz Miyazoe on the possibility of Dark Souls 2 on next-gen formats. There are - naturally - a lot of questions around the game's March 2014 release and its proximity to both PS4 and Xbox One. I suggested that the game could eventually come to both formats as either a port or digital download of the current-gen build.

He replied, "At this point no. We haven't discussed ... or we haven't made any decisions about next-gen. I think right now we want to concentrate on providing the game strictly on current-gen consoles as well as PC. We feel that with PS3 and Xbox 360 there's a lot of potential we weren't able to cover for the first Dark Souls, so we want to really capitalise on every aspect of current-gen consoles and get the game to players as soon as possible."

Yeah they're all identical

Yes

Now try doing the same without that weapon art.

Why would I do that?

using the same weapon art which is infamous for its poise boost.

Weapon arts have no poise boost

By far the best PVP in the series.

this but unironically

I am not even going to bother wasting my time explaining why you are wrong to a prole like you. But the funny thing is almost every QoE life change that was introduced in 2 was used in 3 and ER. It’s just so convenient for you to ignore all that. You are simply a biased serf that cant even be honest, not even for a moment.

weapon arts have no poise boost

They do in the form of hyper armour. The poise you have simply reinforces your hyper armour in 3. You are making dishonest arguments over and over again. That’s quite pathetic.

Losing consumer trust and confidence by releasing exclusively on a platform they don't own

Fucking over your sales because you want the game to be what you want

They made the right move, but not one we liked. Don't betray your customers and they'll inevitably become your promoters. It's worked well for Fromsoft and Nintendo. Personally, I don't think a better looking game could have saved the Souls slop that Darksouls 2 became.

I really hate how fast enemies are getting in recent games. I'll take 2000 year delayed attacks over the insane attack spam that's normal now. I think I would rather go back to Code Vein than have to deal with Elden Ring again.

I never suggested there weren't any qualities unique to 2, just that it doesn't measure up to 1 or 3. Everything down to the art design has an incoherence to it. There's a reason more people are playing 1 and 3 to this day

I played it right after ds1 and I hated it. It felt weird, the world didn't give me that feeling of going deep into a dungeon then having to crawl back up, and it was much harder than ds1. I beat the game and dlc and put it down. I played ds3 at launch and liked it at first, but grew to hate it with each passing day. Gave ds2 another try during covid and loved it.
I think part of why this game filtered so many people is because builds that were good in ds1 are awful in ds2. I would say most players ignored adp and put 40 points into str/dex because weapon scaling was so good in ds1. The way to go is to throw a couple points into adp for agility, pump hp and stam, and go raw. Uninfused weapons 99/100 times are useless. Armor protects you much less in ds2 and wearing it requires sacrificing too many skill points.
I don't think it's a coincidence that more people were able to get into the game now that we have better guides.
ds2 has the best build variety in the series. Ds1 boils down to buff + power within + grass crest + high poise havels ring min max. In ds3 armor doesn't matter, r1 is king, and most rings are bad. In both cases the variety is primarily from weapons. ds2 is much more flexible with stat spreads. Hex scaling with int and faith + spices allow for all kinds of shit. There are a bunch of unique weapons that are viable. All infusions are available to you early and at once. Armor has unique effects in ever slot not just headwear. Four ring slots with many good rings to choose from. Planning your build is extremely fun. And because the game isn't linear like ds3, you have a great time finding all of the pieces that make up your build. You even get to reexperience this in the late game with dlcs. In ds1 your build is generally completed by anor londo. ds3 every piece of gear is easy to find or just gated by linear progress. The good dlc rings are just +3 versions of the already good rings. Ds2 just has so many more moving pieces for you to play with.

honestly its the best in terms of content variety+souls feels but it aged worse than ds1 somehow

open DS2 thread

butthurt DS3fag spamming the same webms again

Why are they like this

I tried replaying ds3 and after elden ring I couldn't do it

What are the things that DS2 did better than the other games in the series?

As i told you, you are simply biased, since you are not honest enough to accept glaring universal qualities, because you actually tie your whole personality to the media you consume. You are nothing beyond that. Brands have replaced the religions in that regard but the fanaticism of the religions still remain in people.

nta but if you're posting on Anon Babble of all places you simply must know you're projecting

shut the fuck up

i really liked the first DLC, that was about it.
base game is an incongruous mess, I wasn't surprised to learn that it had a ton of problems during development where stuff was constantly being changed/ripped out

I'm convinced most people who hate this game didn't read what stats did, never leveled ADP, and tried to roll spam. I had no ADP but held a big shield the entire time and it was a completely fine experience.

The PvP was absolute kino and I spent hours in the arena. The game itself wasn't amazing.

I thought if you were used to shield-tanking everything in ds1 you'd have a harder time in ds2 because 1v1 fights are much more rare

nobody ever complains about the game being difficult though, it's just not as good

this is the tutorial boss that teaches you how important POSITIONING and TIMING is

bonfire aescetics

small shit like character being visibly exhausted when your stamina bar depletes or how you can roll-open and break doors

NG+ having some decent changes

game me tons of entertainment due to being messy and low quality - it's like The Witness of shit where once you notice all the off things you end up looking everywhere for them

I don't remember having that bad a time but I play like a huge coward so that probably helped
I never said it was difficult you retard

Weapon movesets
Stat balance

amazing UI

not op, but the worst part about poise in ds3 is getting clipped by an enemy and getting stunlocked to death by the twelve other enemies. poise is more important in ds3 than most people think, but it's still only hyper armor. there's no reason not to just r1 stun spam 99% of enemies in the game with fast weapons. and greatswords are so underwhelming in ds3 that the extra hyper armor feels like a bandage on a broken arm. in all of your autistically made webms you spam l2 blue attacks. have fun sitting afk with a simple ceastus after every single encounter.
bait used to be believable

i hate the level design and most of the bosses, it has nothing to do with heckin stats for me

what do you hate about the level design

something to do past level 60 in at least one skill. Elden Ring truly is its successor

sif is honestly a perfect example of why i like ds2 bosses more

oh finally a straightforward duel boss

*just one dimensionally roll forward or stay beneath enemy for every attack*

meanwhile i play DS2 with no adp and it feels a lot of fun because of having to actually dodge the hitboxes, roll in the right direction, etc. its just more engaging to play
you also get to have more duel style bosses like sif and smelter demon, without turning the game into bland souls 3 where no bosses have interesting arenas and its all the same twirly stuff

post scriptum
this is coming from someone that wishes more DS1 fights were like capra demon or bell gargoyles

Save me Mitsubishishsishiofasshi-samasansenpaichancoon

this

Good game on its own, but doesn't feel like a sequel to Ds1 the same way Ds3 does.

Dog 3 felt like a sequel because it reused assets and lazily copied ds1.

They do in the form of hyper armour.

Nope, hyperamor is either on or off, and poise health determines wheter it works or not
With the hyperarmor system you can poise tank a lot even the heaviest hits
This is NG+3 btw, you will never see a Dark Souls 2 build actually tanking like this, and this is without perseverance, or iron flesh, so entirely dependant on my poise stat
Git gud

It's a good souls game. The changes to rolling ds3 really changed how the game feels. 2 at least feels like 1.

R2s consistently hitstun a large variety of enemies

dark souls might have better dark fantasy atmosphere and level design (only metroidvania aspect of it, I'd say they're equally memorable in terms of art) but dark souls 2 beats it in gameplay, lore, bosses, pvp... emerald herald is superior waifu and majula is the best hub in all souls like games. dark souls 3 was a total downgrade, it had that call of duty 15 vibe around it, like some cheap imitation of something that was soulful long time ago.

its an ok jank, some shit parts and mechanics, some good parts, worth playing but not nearly as good
DLCs are much better than the main game btw

Dark Souls 2 feels like a foggy memory

I have almost no recollection of so many areas

I remember farming the Elephant dudes, being pissed at the first DLC zone and.....absolutely hating the Frigid Outskirts

It's the best
And i am not kidding, I loved it

Still baffling to me. Should we use the engine we have? Nah, let's remake it but make it feel like shit to play.

The world of DS 2 is a dream, tthey live in a memory/dream, a mixture of both, a land of dream, and in this land, they are destined to be forgotten, annihilation of past glories, of past events, being altered until they disapear.

Look I generally dislike Dark Souls 2, but it is not worse than RE6 which is actual garbage

The enemies in the area literally do a better job teaching you that

worst game in the series

and the iron keep elevator-kun will still keep shitposting about "muh realism"

Frigid Outskirts is actual psychological warfare, FromSoftware saw people saying “game too easy” and went “okay bet” and unleashed that mess. The fog, the downtime between horse spawns, the copy-pasted reindeer enemies—it's like they tailored it specifically to make you question why you’re playing video games. And that Elephant dude farming? Peak DS2, just mindless repetition under the vague promise of a rusty coin or whatever. DS2 really does feel like a fever dream sometimes, like you dreamed a Souls game once and tried to explain it to someone.

best pvp by far.
and in many ways much better than dark souls 3 and elden ring in general.

never thought that 2015 was the last time from would release a good pvp game. always thought miyazaki never cared for it and this year he finally admitted to it.

dark souls 1 the 'mistake' that turned out well.

okay bet

You have to be 18 to post here

So true

DS2 is a good game.
SotFS is the best Souls game.

DS1 is still unsurpassed and had as much impact on the gaming as classic Doom

HOLY FUCK GET OUT OF THERE STALKER!

Its the pnly souls game i've never felt an urge to replay
Melee weapons just feel really floaty and lack a satisfying impact

ds2+dlc >>>> sotfs

1 has even more ganks and sheer number of mobs and in 2 you can buy the most efficient high stability shield right away making whole game into a joke and reducing all the combat to 'block-hit back' with no need to learn or time anything

bitching about ADP and

I rolled but still got hit! this game is unfair/shit

is the most common complaint about it

whats the difference anyways?

non-sotfs version has retarded enemy placements

Invaders can't heal so fuck you unless you have faith

No
Dark Souls 3 animations were such a massive step up

It's not quite as rolly polly as Bloodborne or DS3

It's still shit.

You start with the DLC keys in the original game

Good game. Best Souls multiplayer by far. 1 is still my favorite though, cuz singleplayer.

Thoughts on seeker of fire?
nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/978

I played through it and two of the DLC, but did it begrudgingly. In hindsight, I could've just dropped it and let others enjoy it.

today I will remind they/thems
youtube.com/watch?v=SRTfcMeqhig

I didn't know going into it that it was made by the B team but I definitely felt a quality drop compared to the first game. Mostly the lack of interconnectivity between the levels and the horrendeous run back to the bosses were where I was disappointed.

entire opening is just DARK SOULS IS HARD TEE HEE ARE YOU READY TO DIE?

Soulless

Yes I too watched the video from that ginger incel

I always hated that. The old ladies laughing and saying how I will die over and over and over again. Shut uuuup...when this trophy popped up the first time I played I groaned so loud. DaS2 is too aware of being a Souls game.

Coppercab makes vidya essays now?

not that anon, but I already formed my own opinion that Dark Souls 2 is not on par with the other 2 games the week I played it. Had nothing to do with Mr. Mitochondria's vifeo. Which wasn't out

game bad because of a cutscene and an achievement

holy fuck you guys are lame

my opinion of it hasn't really changed. for every good thing it does, it does two retarded things. i used to outright hate it but i don't anymore.

The game is bad for many other reasons but if the opening is just a lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge about Dark Souls being le hard then it sets a shitty precedent
And no, it didn't get better after that, the opening levels are pure anus in design

failing to understand what the original did great and what it needed to improve

But DS2 is a net improvement of game design over DS1 across the board. The world design and animations are a sidegrade but that's the extent of it.

it's the best dark souls game, but as a game in general, it's just alright. i hate the inconsistencies like the game randomly ignoring roll i-frames and the notoriously shitty hitboxes and collision detection

the game sucks because it's ugly as shit, has shit level design, shit enemy placement, shit movement controls with shit deadzones, shit mocapped attacks that look like shit and feel like shit with no hitstop, shit hidden mechanics like burning a windmill to get rid of a poison pool, shit covenants, shit HUB where every npc just sits around and becomes a merchant and never says anything new, shitty shit like ADP and soul memory, shit hitboxes. I could go one. The only thing DaS2 has going for it is that it tried some new stuff that they kept in other games, the lore was decent, and the 3 DLCs were better than the base game.

horrendeous run back to the bosses

thats DS1, DS2 runbacks are shorter and the bosses are so easy you barely need to retry them
and there are some hidden bonfires right next to the bosses

sekiro is too different

only a flouride-powered, slop eating npc would think sekiro is a souls game.

the game gives you more than enough resources to have like 5 top tier weapons on hand at any given moment, fix your shit or swap it when it breaks

All fromsoft games are worse than Nioh2

definitely not a statement the masses would approve of, but an objectively true one nonetheless

Shitty rant.

he probably followed some bait guide which recommends a mace that breaks after ~10 attacks

Damn look at all these Matthew Matosis memes that are quickly refuted by actually playing the game.

*glomps you*

you have nothing to say

I wish he never made that video. It's just used to dismiss valid criticism. Dark Souls 2 was the third Souls game I played after DeS and DaS1, so I know what they're supposed to be like. Dark Souls 2 feels like a chinese knock off.

I have to say the game

I played it last since I fell for the meme that it's le bad and it's the best one

I've been replaying it after Elden Ring and it's been fun. My only issue is I'm reminded how they gave players very little in the way of countering dodge spam in pvp.

Elden Ring you have way more options to punish it, despite its entire pvp set up being far far worse than DaS IIIs.

you've lost it

and why did you like it over the others?

I played a lot of PVP and people say you can't chug in your opponent's face, but that was never true. I'd just take an extra chug while they're going for the backstab, and by the time I get up all of my HP is healed anyway. Easy ass shit. I later just started using that ring that prevents backstabs. The one with the ghost dude hanging on our back.

because he has to feel special. He a special boii.

because he gets contrarian hipster cred by pretending to like the game everyone hates

DS2 hate is completely forced. Yeah it wasn't as good as 1 but there's no valid reason to HATE it.

there is nothing intuitive about adp. animations dont get noticably faster. rolls dont visually change based on your iframes (something which was done in dark souls 1 and DeS so it genuinely feels like shit even though I think it is a cool stat

It's alright

It was never a matter of "Le B team quality". It's well known now that DaS 2 had a very very screwed up development cycle with the original director getting fired by Bamco for attempting to essentially make what Elden Ring became.

Tanimura was brought in to basically take what assets they had made and compile them into a playable game, all while Bamco suddenly demanded the game be made to run on Playstation 3 rather than 4 causing them to abort their lighting engine.

Despite all this, it ended up halfway decent.

Shit like saying it was designed by retards is disingenuous, the nonsensical level designs like the windmill elevator and all that shit used to lambast it for not being like DaS is all explained by the fact that they designed those areas to be like legacy dungeons in elden ring connected by an open world that was scrapped.

I think liking Dark Souls 2 the most is what's forced.

Scholars of the First Sin is practically necessary, and I wish that was the first version that I had played. I can't help but shake the feeling that I only came to appreciate it because of how shit DS3 was, because I only started liking DS2 after DS3.

I liked it the more I played. I went in with an open mind and think a lot of the hate was based on early revisions of the game and people not knowing about the stat that increases I-frames. Not many of the bosses are memorable but a lot of the levels are. It's not DS1, but that's okay, and it's not DS3 and that's a good thing.

It is basically true that you're invulnerable until you make an attack and those hosts that just do nothing but emote spam and wait for your attack elevate the issue to it's absolute limit.

They're basically going "I know If I attack you, I'm exposed, and you know that if you attack, you're exposed" and it becomes a western standoff.

All souls games sort of have this issue with neutral position being the best position (I.E there is a famous webm in elden ring of duelists dancing around like retards trying to bait each other into attacking), but in Dark Souls III it's basically at its worst.

It was never a matter of "Le B team quality". It's well known now that DaS 2 had a very very screwed up development cycle with the original director getting fired by Bamco for attempting to essentially make what Elden Ring became.

Dark Souls 2 has nothing in common with Elden Ring

Drangliec was going to be an open world as evident by the map in Majula mansion.

And that's a good thing, elden ring is dogshit

Dark Souls pvp was never intended to be shitty duels, that is why the games dont give a fuck about having you invade solo and shit later on. They are supposed to be vietkong style griefing tactics to pillage resources. Anyone who cares about the 1v1 pvp experience is kind of a gay. Dark Souls 3 pvp on release with a war of phantoms in the farron swamp was what dark souls 3 pvp was intended to be

I like DS3 because it's basically Bloodborne

Its the most fun souls game. DaS2 and DaS3 are the ones i have most hours in. DaS1 is the most tedious to replay, DaS3 is the mindless boss rush game, and DaS2 is the best mechanically. ER is too big, and lacks depth.

I played scholars and my friend has been streaming the original with the DLC and I honestly can't tell the difference besides Hiede lacking Hiede knights in the original.

I think most enemies have different placements as well.

DaS2 is the mindless boss rush game

Fixed

Bastards.

You're definitely mindless

Yeah the old ladies were mega cringe

the giant seed item was one of the things I liked about DaS2. Was pretty funny to use it and watch the invader panic.

Over 40 bosses and most of them are shit

Top tier bait image.

Yeah the giant seed was based. I was disappointed that I wasnt invaded much on release at all due to the lack of orb accessibility

shit deadzones

I literally dropped the game because of this and it feels like you’re moving through mud

Bamco suddenly demanded the game be made to run on Playstation 3 rather than 4

Fuck off with that shit already along with your dumbass "NARUTO SUED FROM OVER THE MANIKIN MASKS" rumors and whatnot.

Anon Babbleirgin in charge of understanding the terms they/them use

Mindless

I think if there's one thing I liked about DS3, is that it at least felt like the devs knew players were just going to spam rolls instead of turtling with shields.

DaS III is not a mindless boss rush. My most recent playthrough of it after beating BB exposed so much as I compared them.

DaS III has slightly less "sub zones" from its linear path than BB but they are ultimately very similar.

The main difference is BB levels are usually almost all "1 lantern" levels where every part of the level has a short cut leading back to the lantern.

DaS III on average has about 2 not including the boss bonfires, with the second usually being slightly harder to find. The levels have short cuts but not as many because they're built on 2 bonfires rather than one (Irythil dungeon being an exception).
I think the "Bonfire Spam meme" stems solely from one area, Castle Lothric, which has an excessive number of bonfires for such a small zone.

I just got to Drangleic. The bosses so far have all been mediocre except for Flexile Sentry. The areas are all forgettable and do not fit together like DS1 does. The bosses have all been very easy. The hardest ones have been Smelter Demon and The Pursuer. The former is a little tricky and the latter is only hard because he has over 3,000 health and a move set so simple, you'll die from falling asleep. The random enemies are the hardest part of the game because they set up ganks every three feet. It's painfully mediocre, though I'm told the dlcs are great

Dark Souls 3 constantly sets up scale. The entire world is build to constantly show various locations. Elden Ring is just a realization of that ambition, surely not open world because some normalfag director jumped on the open world fad in early 2010s

It is mindless boss rush. Its the most linear game, the build variety sucks.

The lighting engine was all a bullshot and le lies

lmao, ok.

HOLY SHIT that's another thing that pissed me off about Dark Souls 2. Getting cracked red eye orbs to invade was such a hassle. I did like talking to that little edgy dwarf all the time though.

It's the most linear game

It's only slightly less linear than Bloodborne and you can fight the dancer and enter the Castle at any time.

Build variety sucks

Let me guess, you believe Matt's lies?

Its the most linear game

False

the build variety sucks.

False

muh bosses

opinion discarded

Slightly less

sorry, slightly more linear.

Wrong

fight the dancer and enter the Castle at any time.

Wow its nothing, at most you get to untended graves to get the dragon peak emote early

Let me guess, you believe Matt's lies?

Many weappns play like shit and the game is balanced around hyper armor

I guess you didn't see the image I posted. Look at it and then reassess your post

Shields work just fine though. The rule tends to be that the most fustrating bosses to dodge get cucked by shields, the hardest bosses to block get cucked by rolling.

Bet you didn't know Champion Gundyr is mechanically designed to wreck shield users with extremely high stamina damage.

It's better than nightreign. Ds2fags are no longer the lowest rung of the souls fanbase

I didn't hold Shart Souks 2 team at gunpoint and force them to put mediocre bosses in game.
The entire game is filled with mediocre trash

DS1 > DS2 > DS3
It really is that shrimple

They put an actual retard in the director's chair and tanimura had to wipe his ass. Dark souls 2 is the piece of shitty toilet paper he was left with

It's alright. It felt like it had a lot of meat on its bones and I liked the options / build variety it gave you.

You only put DaS1 first because of nostalgia

Bait used to be believable

I put it first because I like it the most.

I have by far the most playtime in it because it had the best PVP/covenants by a mile.

The base game had the worst bosses. The DLCs are peak though.

Who's this one DS3 faggot spamming in every DS thread? Is he the eric and barry spammer of DS threads?

Contrarianism

This is the average room temp IQ pseud that defends ds2

It's bad

Ok but I don't want to wait until I'm 80% into the game to start having fun, you fucking autist

Eric spammer can't help but post the "Dragonirian gets wreckt" webm. If you're talking about the guy who makes webms disproving lies about Dark Souls III that's not him either but he does in fact, piss off schizos for some reason.

Wonky as fuck. The combat felt so floaty and the movement felt off. Still a 7/10, just like Elden Ring. All the other Souls games are just superior to those two.

learned zero lessons from Artorias of the Abyss

Good, that DLC was shit, second worst after Ashes of Ariandel

hips lady likes it so i like it

Best pvp, best weapons, best abilities. Best in the trilogy.

Wow its nothing

It's the most direct early access to sunbro covenant and some of the lategame spells of any game of the trilogy.

Meanwhile you have to grind 50k souls to get past a knee-high pile of rubble and access Drangleic Castle

I dont like DS3 either, its well made and polished but the world and linearity makes it shallow and not interesting to replay

Neat game, but will never come back to it.
DS3 ruined the magic of the series for me, and ER killed any hope i had.

What is it about these souls games that makes you faggots absolutely insufferable, like holy FUCK.

shitposting using information that is a decade out of date

Anon Babble really doesn't play videogames

pic related

Just say you didn't play it.
You can roll like 4 times with base stamina on ds2 before running out. Actually I think you can roll more overall in ds1 than 2. But it's not exactly unknown that the only people that shit on ds2 are secondaries desperate for cred.

Because it felt the longest with most unique areas, also most spells/gear and playstyles with the addition of nice stuff like a pvp arena that wasn't even a thing on release with DS3
Magic went from magic missile x100 to aoe, lingering, different style of spells, dual wielding, more viable playstyles

The only game in the franchise where people will defend it's jank design because they liked it and not because it was well developed. Every argument in favor of the game consists of "thing I like makes game good objectively" but every argument against it criticising valid issues with the game is met with "lol skill issue" or the poster attacked ad hominem because there is no real argument against the criticisms.
I like Ds2, I have 1200 hours in it, 400 of which were pre-sotfs and obviously the rest post. However, the game suffers from what made every other souls game a souls game, and that is how the game treats the player. Dark Souls is about rewarding the curious with beautiful overview, lore items and other miscellaneous liabilities, and dark souls 2 explicity does the opposite. The entire game was developed around player antagonism, everywhere you go, every little nook or cranny, any little silly reward (sometimes literally garbage) is met with some sort of trap or guaranteed player death. It's not a skill issue when the (video game) trap kills you with very little counter play on your first run through, which for most players is the ONLY run through they'll commit to due to continued player antagonism. The game doesn't respect the player, and leans heavily on the "prepare to die" meme.
Finally, jewel in the shit pile, Ds2 has tons of great concepts, many of which were explored further in subsequent titles; power stance, limited consumable keys, darkened areas that reacted to light, enemies that come with neat interactions, some of the better npc's in the series as well. All of this however, is almost always outpaced by the sheer level of disrespect the game has for the player as a whole, and again this is mostly aimed at players who go in for the first time, as that is the most important experience for games like these.
If someone who started their FromSoft experience in elden ring tries Ds2, they will likely not enjoy it.

The only thought I ever have about DS2 is

Majula comfy

DS2 is the last fromsoft game where exploration was challenging and mattered.

The reality is that its the best souls game and the amount of actual seething it caused for shitters was so bad it had to be patched over and over again. That ds1 bab came into the game talking bigshit and ate a lot of shit.

If someone who started their FromSoft experience in elden ring tries Ds2, they will likely not enjoy it.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy7lxFRhkv8w2xxpA0ggRORBX-eiCrrct

eceleb faggotry

irish faggot makes dark souls 2 is LE BAD video

english faggot makes dark souls 2 is LE GOOD video

welsh faggot makes dark souls 2 is LE REALLY REALLY REALLY BAD video (12 hours)

i hate that god forsaken island so much

Completely untrue.

It's easily the most interesting. DS3 is visually bland and boring. Compare how magical Magula is to the shitty grey world hub in DS3.

Biggest reason I dislike DS3: THE JANK. As you run over the terrain your character is moving up and down very unrealisticly. DS2 is smooth af

Except matosis BTFOs both of them (patented Irish W)

I know for a fact mauler has tried inviting him to efap and got brutally ghosted

Which part? The part about me liking the game, the part about it having great concepts? Or just you being angry at the first 2 sentences and not reading the entire argument, and rage posting out of emotion like a little girl?

Better than 3 by far

No argument

Figures, eat shit

Dark Souls 2 vegan can't even answer why he likes Dark Souls 2 without going into an unhinged rant against ds3

Dark Souls 2, alongside Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls, are the only proper souls games. Everything past that is sped-up boss rush nonsense that unironically plays like Dark Souls for the modern audience™.

I couldn't watch Mauler's response for more than 15 minutes because he starts with a straw man.
Who the fuck can take this idiot seriously?

thinks his decade-old shitpost merits an argument

You can't be serious lad

I'm playing this right now. It's honestly amazing. Using heavy attack just parrying for criticals feels so violent. You can hammer fuck enemies so hard that they glitch through the wall, which just gives the game such a DS1 feel.

Does this question need asking every single day?

Not as good as 1.
Some things are vastly better than 3.

Soul memory and memestancing are memes.

The part where you think DS1 doesn't have the same shitty traps as DS2.
DS2, like DS1, is a shinige, both don't respect the player since you are here to die.

Biggest reason I dislike DS3: THE JANK. As you run over the terrain your character is moving up and down very unrealisticly. DS2 is smooth af

I have a hard time telling ragebait and genuine DS2 fans apart

anon says "likely"

you reply with an acception to that likelihood

Shock horror, m8. It's almost like he didn't blanket term every possible answer with opinion and offered a middle ground solution

Dark Souls and Demon's Souls fans never gave a single fuck about Dark Souls 2.

Nice reading comprehension you got there.

Remember when you could react to a boss's swing itself and not have to just predict when they're finished the windup or survive their 30 hit combo?

Bonfire ascetics, sometimes I want to replay a level and boss but not the entire game, it's extremely generous with levels and resources and that lets you experiment more. I like the twisted Alice in Wonderland vibe of the world, it has its own retarded sense of humor and doesn't make sense but that's not a negative for me. Storywise it has its own identity and doesn't jangle Dark Souls in your face every 5 seconds but it still builds on the first, Drangleic being ruined ultimately because the king was in love with an objectively evil cunt is a really realistic human thing in a series that's centered on humanity being weird and fucked up. I like the alternate ending where the bearer of the curse gets what he came for and pisses off for eternity, one person getting a happy ending is nice. Powerstancing. The DLC is the best in the series. Majula is the best hub world and Emerald Herald is my wife. It's not a flawless game but I just like it.

Until very recently. Quite interesting innit. DaS2 can run on a potato PC and think helps explain the recent adoration. And Erics dumbass has to side with the thirdies

I told you why. It's the jank. DS3 is janky as fuck and it drives me nuts. It's also just boring. AAAHHHHH A GREY CRUMBLING BRICK STRUCTURE IM GOING CRAZY

DS1=DS2>DS3. It is what it is

That's just a blatant disregard for game design. You're just flat out lying. Dark Souls offered a plethora of observable scenarios to the watchful player. Whrrw Ds2 specifically inhibits that ability, having learned that's what ds1 does. That's straight up why there's a coat of paint on Ds2 that feels like jank. Ds1 traps aren't always guaranteed deaths for new players, especially since agility isn't a relavent stat and players can simply level their defenses, preventing alot of traps from just killing them, and allowing them the freedom to choose whether to be strong or to be defensive, player choice that isn't pigeon holed into a single stat (for new and inexperienced players) who may or may not even know the game's speed can be dictated by the amount of levels you have. Granted, to its defense, since sotfs, leveling is not a problem for decent combat players and rewards them accordingly, I'll admit levels aren't an issue. But it's not like a new player is going to fucking know that, brother.

Go play DS3. Walk over rough terrain. Looks like dog shit.

I told you why. It's the jank.

Yeah

Ignore that post, I'm a huge faggot please tape my face and that guy isn't me.

Really sucks when you realize ds2 will be the last decent fromsoft game

WTF NOOOO THE ENEMY CAN PUSH ME OFF THE LEDGE AHHHHH HELP ME NIGGERMAN

If this was a game you liked you'd be praising it for having collision
Absolute schizophrenic

Last decent souls game maybe, Sekiro still exists and is better than any souls game

The webm clearly displays the player antagonism argument. The player, exploring for secrets, punished for simply trying to clear a "simple" obstacle. Collision in ds2 was never it's strong suit.

Post a webm of DS3 running animation. It looks like ass and you know it.

Nigger faggot stop posting with my name, Ds2 sucks

It completely failed at everything it sets out to do
Dark Souls knew it has very unpolished combat so it tried to maie every boss as unique as possible.
Cutting tails, special arenas, fast and tanky bosses, unique movesets
And the level design was always the major focus, even when the bosses were involved
Dark Souls 2 added 70k bosses all being generic dudes in armor swinging a long weapon in a flat arena, without any of the necessary combat and mechanical improvements and even worse at times.
That's not interesting or fun.

Ds1 traps aren't always guaranteed deaths for new players

See that bridge? oops giant wyvern spitting fire on your ass
See those stairs? oops barrel on fire coming right at you
Anor londo archers, sen's fortress, toxic poison status killing you in 5sec from a ranged enemy hidden at the other side of the room... All of those not really new player friendly.
You're just used to ds1 traps because you know all of them.
And before you scream skill issue, yeah all of them can be avoided quite easily, but then it's the same for the traps in DS2...

First off, half of those traps don't kill you in one shot, or even at all.
Second off, the ones that do are entirely cherry picked, anyone can cherry pick from any game snd act like they have a point anon, but it doesn't mean you're point is valid.

Still hate it.

Dark Souls 2 is when difficulty flanderization started affecting the game design. You can tell the designers thought "wow people are really loving this git gud meme from Dark souls 1. Let's lean into that!".
We're still seeing the effects of this in Elden Ring. Players started getting good at reading telegraphed attacks, so From created animations with weird timings to mess with the player, just to increase difficulty.

They performed some ritual and accessed levels of competence in pc porting hitherto unachieved by japs so I've always liked SotFS because it ran well on my potato laptop whereas DaSPtD ran at like 15fps. Being able to play it well was enough for me. Also I'm a shieldchad every time so I never ran into the design choices to fuck over rollfags with i-frames. This one was basically designed for me.

Which ones doesn't kill you in one shot lmao?
Meanwhile you've never illustrated your argument with DS2 "impossible to not die for new players" traps.

webm

I like these bosses tho. They feel heavy and don't spam 8 hit combos where they do backflips and shit like DS3.

Brother I'm not a proponent of skill issue being an argument, it's a non argument for me. I'm arguing that first time players will enjoy Ds1 more than Ds2 especially if they play Ds1 before Ds2 and have context for expectation, and therefore an idea of contrast. The way you're framing it disregards any of the plethora of ways to play around traps in Ds1 where Ds2 almost always kills you or eats your resources as a punishment. And let's be real, the reason that kind of development had to be implemented was because Life Gems are an item that can be purchased infinitely. They can't punish a player with infinite life by damaging them, there's no stress involved because you just heal off that half hp damage trap, but they can kill you as punishment because that carries more weight, again due to infinite healing.

nta, i can't even explain why i hate the traps of ds2. They're just annoying.
In DS1 at least the cheap traps were kino, like the dragon bridge.

die to what is essentially unavoidable death after beating your first real boss with all your souls

kino

It's the worst "cheap trap" in the entire series you mongoloid lmao

The polarizing discourse around still baffles me. It's a fine game with some really neat ideas and some bad ones, but it's still a good experience through and through, not this messiah/steaming garbage duality people screech about.

Main reason I love DS1 so much is because the world was cool to explore. Especially the vertical aspect. DS2 was not interesting to explore. The areas felt more like video game levels. It didn't feel like a coherent world. It made me feel very disillusioned.

All of the shrine of Amana, all of it, every part of it is a looming death trap that punishes you for exploring with death falls being covered by water, the one eyed hippo dude hiding behind a wall, the mages all having map long range, the fact that Ds2 lock distance is based on light level, and carrying a torch alerts enemies further away creating gank squads, random mini-boss standing on a death fall bridge.
That's literally just one area.
The dragon aerie, aldia's mansion, dreingleic castle, all filled to the brim with traps that punish you with death or resource draining. And then, when your resources are drained, enemies stop spawning so you can't even catch up to where you were. Need I say more? I can.

it's not unavoidable if you listen carefully and walk slowly. I avoided that death.

You hate them because they are antagonistic. They are there to specifically annoy you, even if it means a meaningless death next to a bonfire.

You literally can't avoid being killed if you run through the bridge and turn around the millisecond you hear the dragon. What kind of fucking retard would defend this, especially in the context of not liking ds2 traps? Ds2 never does nothing anywhere near as bad

Life gems are a false problem, you can farm an infinity of humanity.
DS1 and DS2 have the same game design, you're just disregarding the tools the game gives you.
It's all in your head, I enjoyed DS2 more than DS1 as a new player and I played them both on release in their og versions.

based

Based

wow i sure would love to watch her give birth

It’s pretty good but some segments are just cancer. DS1 has this same problem though but it doesn’t get as much flak

holy reading comprehension

you can farm an infinity of humanity

Do you even understand the economic differences between farming a low drop rate item versus just outright buying a resource? Or are you intentionally misrepresenting them for the sake of your argument? 17% drop rate (that's with max discovery) versus 100k souls (easy to get in ds2) for 99 life gems? That's just a silly comparison anon.

Life gems are a false problem, you can farm an infinity of humanity.

not even remotely comparable

I repeat, what kind of fucking retard would defend this, especially in the context of not liking ds2 traps? Ds2 never does nothing anywhere near as bad

Death falls are in DS1 too (e.g. the hydra fight), the mage spells from amana are easily avoidable if you know how to run or roll. I think you can hear the hyppo dude too?
Basically the game asks you to be skilled and aware of danger, just like DS1...

It's fun

Anon Babble hivemind moment

falls back to skill issue non argument

Anon, you have missed the forest for a tree.

nta
lifegems are nowhere near as powerful as humanity

slow over-time healing that can be knocked out of with a long animation

immediate full health that cannot be knocked out of

there's a reason PvPers had 99 humanity and humanity on their item bar. not saying ds2 lifegems are perfect, you do get too many of them. but if a player is willing to grind out 100k souls, which is not easy to get in ds2, then theyd be willing to grind out humanity which is much easier/quicker for an infinitely more effective item.

It's easy to avoid if the player is careful. Walk slowly, turn around when you hear something. Or commit to the safe spot. Don't run into the open like a retard.

ds2 bad because elden ring

Best DLCs in Souls. Introduced a lot of mainstay mechanics. A strange mix of bosses, enemies, levels, and music that range from awful to very satisfying and creative. Best replayability in my opinion from everything between Demon's through Elden Ring.

lifegems are nowhere near as powerful as humanity

They are more powerful because the average player can reliably acquire them.
Humanity is rare. Cheatengine faggots don't count.

This kind of fucking retard, apparently. At least you didn't go full schizo and insist the player should know having seen the dragon earlier and there being some vague black parts on the bridge
But still, this kind of autism is shameful

DS sucker-punches you but lets you retry it again, DS2 sucker-punches and takes away your max health on any death - thats a big fundamental design flaw excessively punishing new players like you say, yet its almost meaningless for repeat plays when you already know what to expect, so the game is too punishing for noobs at the same time its easy for experienced players who know how it works

Yeah but the humanity are also way more OP than lifegems. My point was that they have no influence on the difficulty of the gameplay anyway. I never run out of humanity when I play DS1 so idk what you are doing wrong...

names a single instance of a bad trap

compared to the list of bad traps anons have posted in the thread

after having the few other mentioned traps argument dismantled

The dragon bridge being a single instance of death (avoidable) is incomparable to the amount of examples listed against it

I liked almost no weapons in the game. The movesets were a step-down from DS1 and dual wielding is an ugly meme. I think I used a regular lance for most of my playthrough simply because the animation was serviceable.

nope, not what I said
didn't even say ds2 was bad, I just said I didn't like it. I have no issue with people liking the game.

what safe spot? how does a new player know about the safe spot? they would also have to know that when a dragon roars to immediately run behind them. even for a second is enough to get the player cooked. granted you arent likely to die if you have good armour or good health, but its still a trap you can die against
Demon's Souls had the dragon on the bridge and it was a part of the level with you having to time it, let the dragon kill the soldiers on the bridge, avoid the bolts coming at you, and also giving you time to run to his nest to pick up some items, which also brings the tail-swinging. An actual encounter. Typical DS1 fashion, they just took the idea and tossed it in without incorperating it beyond 'haha, gotchu!'

DS2 is fun and I'm happy it filters so many weebs out.

Humanity is rare

if you are bad

Concession accepted

This, this anon understand the economic difference between farming souls and farming items. How is that so hard for to understand? That's what I don't understand, this misguided attempt at false comparisons for the sake of non-arguments

I don't like thing. You do. Boo fucking hoo. I'm the autist for having a subjective preference? fuck off dude. You're the autist here trying to debate subjective opinions.

If anything DaS1 is the outlier of the trilogy+Demon's Souls. Demon's Souls does the hard halving of health in spirit form, II does it more gradually, and III gives bonus health if you're kindled which in effect does the same as taking away max HP in a way.

I agree, that is a valuable take away. Which kind of leads to the logical next step, the only real thing done right in ds2 is is expansive ng+, and how after the initial rape fest that was the first play through, all that accumulated knowledge now means something. This is the ONLY thing Ds2 has over the other games, and even then its not a huge lording over of advantage, since the same to a lesser degree is still applicable to the other games, but since they are less punishing and less expansive, mean less as a whole.

You don't even have to farm for humanities, they are everywhere, it's not a real argument for the difficulty of the game...

>Humanity is rare

if you are bad

well yeah if you're good then you don't need healing items in the first place

More common doesn't mean better-performing. Lifegems are more accessible, sure, but Humanity is flat-out more powerful. It's instant, full healing that can't be interrupted, and that alone makes it a superior item. Lifegems can be knocked out of mid-use, and they take time to work, meaning you're punished harder in real fights if you rely on them.
As for the idea that Humanity is 'rare'... no, not really. There are four very clear, high-yield farming spots: the rats in the Depths, the skeletons in the Catacombs, the baby skeletons near Nito, and the humanity phantoms in Oolacile. On top of that, co-op and PvP can earn you more passively. It’s not as easy as buying Lifegems, but it’s far from hard.

And that’s exactly the issue: Humanity is easy enough to get, and so much stronger, that it ends up being a bigger problem in balance terms. It’s the performance that matters, not how full your pockets are.

but its still a trap you can die against

I fucking know dude. I already said it's cheap. I just said I don't mind it because of the memorable shock factor, and apparently this triggered anons into debate mode.

And where do you farm humanity early on in the game? Oh, poison rats that require a 15 second ladder climb, and at a 3% chance.
But ya know, I guess compared to the merchant you meet in the first level that offers infinite life gems next to that start of the game at the hub zone makes your argument valid.
Honey, nobody here is saying humanity isn't stronger than life gems. We're saying they are harder to come by, factually. "I had a lot on my playthrough" is nothing more than anecdotal conjecture and isn't relevant to the conversation at hand.

Only retards have this criticism as shields have, and always will be, the better option.

Yeah, no difference between DS2 and DS1 on that point...

i didnt see you say that.
sorry if you did and i just missed it

has nothing more to present as an argument

accepting anything but my dick deep in your incorrect throat

I enjoyed it while it lasted, laughing at your inability to hold an intellectual conversation. And here I was arguing in good faith, too.

Yeah, okay. Humanity is still not as problematic since it’s harder to acquire. The drop rates are low and you have to farm a lot where as you can buy gems from the vendors. Such a dishonest comparison unsurprisingly coming from a fan of a dogshit game like DaS2

You're just getting mad because I'm showing how inconsistent you are being and how you don't care about the context of the trap but rather which game it is in

The difference is people who need extra healing in DS1, bad players, won't even know how to farm humanity. And it's a boring process.
Bad players in DS2 can more easily access extra healing.

Actually, since poise actually works in DS1, you will need to heal eventually, like the smough halberd vs Artorias webm.

You should say autistic hoarders are afraid to use solid humanities on their first playthrough whereas they see lifegems are a renewable resource and do use them

Skill issue detected

Anon, you can get a total of 7 (seven) from the undead burg, and statistically 3-5 more from enemy drops assuming you don't die very often and play methodically.
Now, take that information and compare it to buying 99 life gems after using a bonfire ascetic and killing the giant boss.
You are fundamentally conflating value and time with luck and effort

I started this conversation by admitting I'm inconsistent. And by arguing with you I realized why I like the cheap bridge trap in DS1. It's because of how memorable and shocking it is. It has wow factor. It's 100% in the context of the trap itself. It's not because I have a hateboner for DS2.

SotFS feels like a bad romhack. Random enemies scattered all over where they have no business being, just to serve as a gotcha to players who played the original.

Lords of the Fallen is the best souls game so we can stop arguing

Anyone familiar with DS2's development cycle issues already knows it was slapped together on the clock. It had some great ideas that extended from the first game, power stancing and ascetics for example, and some awful ideas, like soul memory and the way hollowing worked. The game was very hit and miss in what it attempted.

It's not irredeemable trash, and it isn't an underrated gem, it's just a mediocre B team product. Good for a run now and then.

Such a beautiful effeminate opinion coming from a DaS2fag. It’s all subjective what’s that you don’t understand?

you can get a total of 7 (seven) from the undead burg

many of which will be missed by new players
throughout the game it's quite rare compared to life gems. you can not deny this

Not nearly as bad as people make it out to be, but I didn't bother to finish it.
The hatred is more understandable since the hype was insane after DaS1, but going back to it now, it's just mediocre.

I mentioned earlier in the thread that Ds2 arguments boil down to "I like thing so game good" and it's hilarious that anon is doing that to you right now after I posted it. Ds2 players the most self-unaware mfs

it's all subjective bro please stop bro!!

Speaking of effeminate, how very gay of you

I got so filtered by the Royal Rat Authority in vanilla D2 that I sold the game to Gamestop and never played it again

Anon, I'm not the one supporting the humanity argument, me and you are agreeing. I'm pointing out the rarity of the humanities and contrasting them to the ease of purchasing life gems from a level 1 merchant. Your point is valid, thoughever

we all have our limits

ok, my bad. I need sleep. Good night.
You too ds2 fags.

We're saying they are harder to come by, factually

That's debatable since you can find more than enough by simply playing the game.
Also one is more powerful than the other, making DS1 the easier game, that's an important part of the argument. Yes you can buy a lot of lifegems but 20 humanities is more than enough for a DS1 playthrough...
Unless you think DS1 is harder than DS2, then you are simply retarded.

smough halberd

Artorias webm

words that play videos in my head

Get out of my head, GET OUT OF MY HEAD

Not a single From Soft game has lived up to the hype that DaS 2 had coming from one.

Again, I'm not saying Humanity is as easy to get as Lifegems, I'm saying it's far more powerful, and still easy enough to acquire in meaningful amounts if you're willing to put in the same effort you would for farming 100k souls to buy Lifegems. The real issue is that Humanity delivers instant, full, uninterruptible healing, while Lifegems are slow, take time to work, and get interrupted constantly in PvP or against fast bosses. So evne if it takes a bit more effort to farm, that doesn’t make it worse,it makes it more valuable per use.

That’s the whole point: Stronger item, stronger effect, same grind mindset.

No, I’m correctly separating raw item power from ease of access.
Lifegems are a slow, trickle-heal with poor performance in real-time combat. They’re reliable only when you’re not under pressure, meaning they’re weakest in boss fights and PvP, where it actually matters. Humanity, even if you only have a handful, gives you instant full healing and can't be interrupted. That makes each use vastly more impactful. So even if you’ve only farmed 10 Humanity, it’ll carry you way further than 99 Lifegems ever will. And let’s not pretend Lifegems are free. Farming 100k souls to buy them, or using Bonfire Ascetics, is a grind. You’re just swapping one type of grind (soul farming) for another (item farming), and that’s not some magical argument in Lifegems’ favor. It’s the exact same player behavior.

Black sheep of the soul series. Has some good and LOTS of bads. Overall it's a mix bag that brings nothing new, just pass on it if you haven't played it yet

I don't even know where to start with your position buddy, you strawmanned virtually every piece of information you were given and then you misrepresented my position without even considering the nuance, you know that I've been repeatedly saying I like Ds2 and have 1200 hours in it?
Humanities are rare, you're claim of them being easy to obtain is simply anecdotal, and disregards new players not finding all of them. We've discussed the simplicity that is buying lifegems, which stack by the way and are in fact stronger than humanities since you can just use 6 of them and facetank Ds2.
And as for whether one is harder than the other? Moot point, one is more antogonistic to the player than the other, particularly new players, was the main argument from the beginning.

I'm a big boy! Why is the laughing at me?? Wahhh I need every trap and enemy to be telegraphed!!

bonfire ascetic giant boss in the first level twice, 145k souls in less than 10 minutes

farm poison rats, die several times gain 1 humanity every 10 minutes because no item discovery bonuses early on

Alright, give your argument entirely, that's fine too.

Who are you quoting?

Its the best souls game ever made, even after 11 years.

Once again, an entire post conflating value and time with luck and effort. The entire post is just an extended fundamental misunderatsning of game mechanics and developer intent

Am i the only that thinks people who put these shit games on pedestal are double digit IQ midwits? Like literally not a single Souls game initially resembles what they have put together in the end. They literally make shit up as they develop these games and keep reusing ideas, assets and tropes from the previous entries ad infinitum. It just makes me cringe how these retarded nerds keep arguing about the authenticity of each entry as if they were all designed to be that way from the start.

Why even post then?

You literally get humanities from all the mandatory bosses, that's not anecdotal, new players can't miss them...
You claim the difficulty of the game is a moot point but also claim DS2 is harder for new players...
I'm the one not knowing where to start with your position, buddy...

Shields

You didn't beat the game

why

Maybe it’s because i am tired of you retards polluting the catalog for over a decade now

They just a little shield bash to the side would've been enough to make it remotely a threat.

I don't fucking know what's with the hate. I enjoyed it when it came out, but wasn't able to finish it. I revisited it years later to "catch up" and play DaS3, and ended up beating it. If you like souls type of gameplay then what makes this so different from the others? You get new bosses to fight and locations to go to and enjoy the scenery. Even if the guy didn't want to make this or whatever the fucking story was, this game was a buffer or stepping stone to the next souls title.

Then again, I guess I'm one of those gamers that will play anything that's fun and not politically influenced. And I remember that most of Anon Babble sucks at games anyways and have severe contrarianism since its founding. You can trace any imperfection in every souls game and put it on full-screen display to say the IP sucks.

Ironically I think using 'midwit' as a serious insult is a definitive midwit thing to do, which you definitely come across as with a random sperg-out like this

take a giant

transfigure it into a dragon

refuse to elaborate further

leave

What did Aldia mean by this?

This game came out in 2014 dude I know you're like 18 or something but things weren't always as political

You are worthless

14 mandatory bosses that drop humanity, 12 of which exist after the first level

start first level of Ds2, merchant sells life gems, then moves to majula and sells infinite more

I'm not claiming that Ds2 is harder for new players, what is this fucking confused sexual preference you're forcing on me? Again, one more time in good faith, new players likely will not like Ds2 on their first run due to player antagonism, AND especially if they played ds1 first for comparable contrast.
And just because it's the position you hold, 14 humanities for beating the entire game is less than 99 soul gems for beating forest of giants a couple times with an early ascetic

the DLC levels (specially Sunken King) are still imo some of the best dungeon crawling experiences From ever designed

You are enlightened by your own intelligence

You don't have to memorize the bridges, you can see water drops falling on the pillars or use prismatic stones, or arrows, etc

second rat covenant area

bonfire ascetic it to +10

only open first pharros doors of the shortcuts and all the traps/enemies

poison build

silver talisman

yeah, it's gamer time
99% of people died to the first pack

Cry about it then? I dunno bro, seems like a you issue

I miss when calling someone midwit meant that you are saying you are one of the truly smart elite and the guy you're insulting is just a bit above average - the kind of guy that likes oscarbait for example. But 12 year old retards use it to just mean stupid in 2025

Poison was so fucking broken in that game, holy shit what were they thinking?

That’s cherry-picking, sweetie. You’re either purposely lying or completely confused. The Last Giant does not give you 145k souls in 10 minutes. You’re obviously talking about the Giant Lord, who is at the end of the game. So which is it?

If you're lying: you’d need to use a Bonfire Ascetic right at the beginning of the game—something a new player wouldn’t even have unless they looked it up online and understood both its use and farming potential in advance. That’s not game design, that’s metagaming. And you'd still have to fight an increasingly harder boss for a new player/character.

If you're confused: then you're using a late-game farm to argue against early-to-mid game mechanics, which makes your point irrelevant.

And if you bring the internet into the conversation? Nothing matters anymore. You can justify anything with out-of-game knowledge and still call it “easy” while ignoring how artificial that advantage is. Funny how you also picked the worst Humanity farm you could think of for DS1. Almost like... you knew being honest would prove my point instead.
Thanks for confirming it.

If only the enemies weren't mindless stay checks while at the same time being damage sponges even for high level builds.

Batfog

Ring of thorns

pre-nerf GRS

pre-nerf spells in general

Binoc glitch

Breaking someone's gear with corrosive urns

Invading in Shrine of Amana

Hilarious game.

The Last Giant does not give you 145k souls in 10 minutes

Not that anon, but I'm gonna chip in here and say that you're completely right here. It drops 10k on NG and 20k on NG+. Nowhere near 145k.

player antagonism

So in short... Difficulty?
Both games have player antagonism of the same kind, they are both the same type of games, with the same traps, bosses and ambushes. That's not a real argument.
And if lifegems are so gamebreaking and easy to find according to you then DS2 is naturally less antagonizing for the first time player.
Once again you are tripping on your own arguments...

continually misrepresenting my argument

I'm gonna stop reading after the first paragraph because you clearly didn't read my post. The giant boss in the forest of giants, you can use a bonfire ascetic to fight him multiple times and gain ng+ soul count, and ng++ soul count if you really wanted to, all within the first hour of the game. Since it's so easy to find humanities for you, then getting the ascetic is equally a counter argument, unless you're willing to conceid that point, your argument remains invalid.
Why can't you just say "I like Ds2 and I don't like ds1"? At least you don't have to dance around this imaginary fire trying to look like your part of the pack. I won't argue an opinion, you're allowed to just have it, my man.

No coop no buy. Also not a soulslike.

I am actually a cinephile who has a well rounded library of films that i have been watching for years - from the French New Wave to Hong Kong flicks, i have had exposure to cinema from young age. Funnily enough, you have outted yourself as someone that suffers from the DK effect with that petty remark.

There are no farmable bonfire ascetics before The Last Giant, anon.

Also not a soulslike.

Yeah my post literally implied that, maybe read the post I'm replying to

More fun than 3, deeply flawed.

strawman, ellipses ellipses ellipses

You've seemingly forgotten my point about the game specifically punishing you with death because traps that only damage you mean nothing BECAUSE OF LIFE GEMS. What part of that is so difficult for you to even consider? If a trap didn't kill you and you have life gems, then there is no punishment, and even when that's true, you can burn through all your souls buying life gems, not know enemies stop respawning, run out of easy farm, and now you can't level up enough, and if you're new likely be unable to kill a boss. Leading to a new game, a fresh start, in hopes you use your resources better and have already learned some traps.
Being forced into this cycle is inherently antagonistic, as it specifically is designed to eat your time and spit in your face.
Once again, I like Ds2. It isn't free of criticism. Same goes for ds1, but one of these games actively deals psychic damage to players. It doesn't even seek to be anything more than a time consuming annoyance at the end of the day. That's all the antagonism ever comes down to. Anyway, I'm done arguing with you, you just want to say words at this point even in face of information. Good night anon, good luck thinking about what I said.

Kek. Classic.
You literally said

bonfire ascetic giant boss in the first level twice, 145k souls in less than 10 minutes

That is factually false. The Last Giant doesn’t give that many souls, even with ascetics. You still have to find ascetics, know how to use them, and even then you’d need to kill him 3, 4, maybe 5 times to even hit that number. A new player isn’t going to magically discover that strat unless they’re reading guides. I’m not misrepresenting anything. You just said something wrong, got called out, and now you’re trying to save face. You ran out of arguments, and it’s showing. It’s honestly better if you just don’t reply. Lucky for you the thread’s almost 404’d. Just admit you relied on exaggeration and didn’t think it through. That’s fine. Don't try to gaslight me, sweeetie.

Well, he meant to

design flaw

Consequences are not design flaws. DeS did the same thing, if anything 1 and 3 are way too lenient with how easy death is treated. Same with ER.

Play dark souls 2 without ever using life gems
With this one simple life hack it becomes a very enjoyable (and difficult) experience

Young zoomers who were lil'chillans at the time won't understand the Anon Babble culture regarding DaS II.

DaS was among one of the few ARPGs to be astounding in an era where everything on the market was peak casualized trashed.
The hype for a sequel was incredibly high, a height practically nothing has had on Anon Babble since.

It's hard to imagine it given Anon Babbles obsession with shilling and tribal war shit but at the time Dark Souls was a very clean topic free of shitpositng.
Anon Babble has always been a board exemplified as "Everything is fucking shit and I enjoy my anger" so it might seem unreal, but Dark Souls was in fact a very clean topic where you could tell most of the board who had played it was enthusiastic about it.
At most, there was a minor bickering between DeS fags trying to make themselves as the "original" fans and considering new DaS players to be faggots but this was uncommon.

DaS II was like the second coming of Christ for a good bit of Anon Babble, so when it showed up with all these flaws Anon Babble got rug pulled hard by its own hype and elevated faggots like Matt Matosis trying to rationalize what the fuck went wrong.

They could not see that there was still a decent game with good ideas weaved in, they were too busy having autistic hemorrhaging over shit like soul memory killing their meta build and comfy co-op culture (in theory, the pvp ended up being good despite), or adp fucking up their entire understanding of how a souls game should play, or shit like Shaded Woods having bad graphics.

Then of course, Project Beast reveal and Bloodborne being a sony exclusive for the upcoming Next Gen Console basically mind broke Anon Babble so badly basically every single From game since has had the same shitposting and From Software stopped being a shitpost free topic forever.

Never understood the hate. Always thought it was a great sequel. Didn't even play scholar of the sin or whatever the dlc is called either.

farms 20 humanities from rays for several hours

unwilling to admit people can look up guides on how to obtain things like ascetics, what they do and how to get them in a fraction of the time

The souls games have always been about communal information passing. Saying that you should play as blind purist is just silly, because with the amount of media coverage these games have had, and the notoriety they have, surely you wouldn't expect people to just simply be unaware of how to research, or even watch one of the tens of thousands of slop tubers and streamers who play the games specifically to farm viewers right? Right?

God, Fromdrones are a bunch of histrionic autists that don’t know when to shut up. Nobody cares about your gay games. Take the HRT pills and off yourselves asap so we can have a more well rounded catalog free from your cancerous tumour.

I hate these games

I'm going to go into their thread and tell them how angry they make me

Alright fag/

I'm a different anon, I'm just latching onto this idea of yours that The Last Giant is remotely farmable, let alone for 145k souls in "10 minutes". You can get like one ascetic if you take it as a starting gift, that's it. You're sure you didn't mean the Giant Lord? That's the one that people typically farm because it includes an ascetic on its run and three more in another memory that reloads with it.

darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Bonfire Ascetic

people can't exaggerate because doing the quikmaffs on NG boss kill soul count is clearly the most obvious and effective answer to very blatant hyperbole on Anon Babble

Alright, weird hang up but yea you can have it.

It’s because there is nothing but Fromslop and gay moefaggotry in the catalog. It’s so tiresome. Can’t wait for Trump to declare war on Iran so we can send millions of low IQ troglodytes like you into the meat grinder.

see, if you are retarded, you will use all your souls to buy lifegems and then you can't lvl up and kill the boss, and then you need to start a new game

So, that was your whole argument? That you can't beat the game if you are a retard? No wonder you are running from the thread like a coward.
Ta-ta, buddy.

I guess we all just missing the forest for a tree. No what I'm saying is, even if you ascetic 1 time, you can gain enough souls from the forest of giants giant boss to by more life gems and raw hp recovery than you could in the same time farming humanities. That's it. That's all there is to it. It's not about hyper specific soul value, I cannot for the life of me figure out what your guys' hangup on that is. It's like the meme "typo found argument dismantled".

Hyperbole is fine, just don't use it as the linchpin of your fucking arguments, anon.

Irrecoverably punishing new players who simply dont know anything is a design flaw.
DS1: learn, go back, recover your souls and progress, if you fall into the same trap twice - its on you
DS2: lol you are crippled more each time no matter what

In Anon Babble the Chainsawman manga had this golden period in like 2019 where the threads were completely pure enthusiasm and humor for maybe 5-6 months. When that happens and everyone realizes it's happening on Anon Babble it always creates its own massive backlash event at some point, and now there's just this shitposted to death discord tranny general that's 99% horny fanart reposts left of it.

If you were confident in what you were saying, you wouldn’t have to exaggerate in the first place.

Nta but I don't think that's what he was saying at all dude, you're coming off as a know it all, but then you sound like a driveline retard. I think he's right, you're just misrepresenting what he said for some cheap internet win on this malaysian cursed gypsy moving picture forum

i mean, you probably shouldnt be using hyperbole if someone is arguing nuance

never exaggerate ever even if you're right

Nice.

I already hit you with the ta-ta, there is no need for you to come back now, retard.

We have successfully moved the goalpost

Sure dude, I'm in your walls too, if that helps your schizophrenia at all.

nta but that's exactly paraphrasing what he was saying in his previous post:

If a trap didn't kill you and you have life gems, then there is no punishment, and even when that's true, you can burn through all your souls buying life gems, not know enemies stop respawning, run out of easy farm, and now you can't level up enough, and if you're new likely be unable to kill a boss. Leading to a new game, a fresh start, in hopes you use your resources better and have already learned some traps.

i didnt say that. if you are right , then why not just be honest with undeniable facts?

what goalpost? the argument was over? one retard said lifegems and humanity are just as bad, the other said lifegems are worse because youg et more.
Im just saying unless youre shitposting then theres no point in hyperbole

You didn't have to exaggerate, using an ascetic on the The Last giant nets you 30k souls (10k NG, 20k NG+, 12k from boss souls). I think the life gems sell for, what, 300 a pop? You spend every one of the souls you get on gems, that nets you 140.

In reference to new players? Who are essentially the retards in question? Them being retarded isnt really relevant here. Them being antagnoized and not enjoying their experience, something I agree with, is valid.

I want to tack onto this that the basic bitch life gem will heal for 500hp each, while humanities will take you up to whatever your current max is. So there IS a difference in maximum healing capability here.

i love watching arguments and you can pinpoint exactly where it goes off the rails

140 life gems in 10 to 15 minutes

1 to 3 humanities in the same amount of time played

Which one seems easier to obtain?

unironically humanity
you need to get a bonfire ascetic which isnt easy to get and the person already knows what theyre doing. humanity is just some rats youre going to come across