Not a
bad game but it's easily the worst in the Souls series. My biggest complaints:
1. An embarrassing proportion of enemies follow the cookie-cutter "tall humanoid with huge weapon they swing from side to side". This goes for bosses as well. The amount of non-humanoid enemies that don't go down easily by circle strafing is tiny. Circle strafing in this game seems less like a legitimate strategy and more an easy workaround for the clunky AI not built all that well to handle it.
2. Thematically and aesthetically inconsistent. Some places look gorgeous, while others look
ass ugly. Art style is all over the place. Some places have fantastic lighting and texture work, others look like amateur hour with flat shading and repeating textures everywhere. Some places look super inspired, others are insipid retreads of existing Souls environments offering nothing new.
3. Level design takes a huge step down. By far the least "lived-in" world in the game, and not just because its distances were deliberately obfuscated. I'm talking about buildings with hallways, rooms, and alcoves that make no sense, square and large empty rooms in way more places than there should've been, tons of invisible walls of areas you can't get to that were "cordoned off" by rubble that your character could easily jump over, etc. There were inspired ideas but were half-assed and were marred by ideas that just shouldn't have made it into the final game.
4. Combat is...there. This is largely the fault of the uninspired enemies leading to generic encounters, but the combat didn't feel fresh or inventive in any way. I can attest to the fact that I was screwed over by plenty of shitty hitboxes, and while it wasn't something that happened literally every time I played, it was still something that happened too often.
5. Bonfire placement is screwed up. I understand they wanted a "snappier" gameplay loop where it felt like you were progressing more easily, but it just made the world design a mess. Bonfires were less "milestones" in your progression and more like mere checkpoints. They reduced the cap on your HP on death precisely because otherwise you lose practically nothing by dying. I never once felt the dread of being smack dab in the middle of an oppressive environment, not knowing when the next bonfire is and desperately wanting to get to it, and feeling a rush of relief once I see one. The frequency of DS2's bonfire placement killed that feeling, and it's one of the best things Souls games do.
6. World design is the worst of the series. Not terrible, but nowhere near the genius of the world design in other Souls games. It doesn't have the thematic consistency of Bloodborne, the intricate interconnected-ness of Dark Souls 1, or the elaborate semi-linear level-based structure of Demon's Souls. You basically picked a singular direction to go to and went further and further until you beat a major boss, then you watch as the game developers run out of ideas, shrug their shoulders, and just plop in a "Primal Bonfire" in a big empty room to clunkily dump you back into Majula. There was also a big case of quantity over quality. So many different environments in the game, but very, very few were memorable and quite a lot of them were tiny and underdeveloped. It felt they were more interested in rushing you into the next environment so you wouldn't realize how undercooked your current environment is.
7. Encounter design is poor. I only played SotFS and even though I did think the "enemies rush you" complaint is a bit overblown, they do overdo it in spots. Iron Keep is the worst at this. The Ivory King DLC's gankfest before the final battle there is easily the stupidest and worst designed encounter I've ever played in Souls series. Besides ganking, though, is the fact that enemies in several places just feel like they're sprinkled on empty rooms. The amount of times where they weaved enemy behavior into unique architecture to create interesting encounters is very few. Sometimes they just plop in enemies in rooms/hallways and call it a day.
I can't comment on the story because I wasn't anywhere near interested enough to actually dig up clues.
I beat the game and was thoroughly entertained by it, but yeah, easily the worst Souls game. I think there's a lot of great ideas in there but the execution was marred by designers who simply didn't know the nuances of what makes a good Souls game, and that kind of issue permeates in every aspect of the game, from level to world to encounter to enemy design. I think it's valuable in that it goes to show just how easy it is to screw up a Souls game, because without a doubt it's difficult to design these games and make them interesting and hard without being cheap.
Eh. Different design philosophy. It's Demons Souls level design (Hub with spokes, that is) without shortcuts because you can warp from the start. I agree that exploring and finding your own shortcuts is much more rewarding though.
That's not Demon's Souls level design, though. DeS level design is...well...levels. There's a definitive beginning, middle, and end, and at the end of each level is a boss followed by an Archstone that discretely separates the levels. If you lose in the middle of a level or at the boss encounter you're sent back to the beginning of the level. The levels are self-contained areas with shortcuts that loop backward or forward within the level, so if you're having a hard time with a boss you're given tons of opportunities to explore other alcoves in the levels and are encouraged to find checkpoints to make your run to the boss easier.
Dark Souls 2's design philosophy is just DS1-style areas with more bonfires haphazardly thrown around. There's no rhyme or reason or any sort of attention to pacing in between the areas. To call it the "Demon's Souls" philosophy is to overlook practically everything about Demon's Souls actual level design philosophy.
