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Gaf, why is Dark Souls 2 so bad?

neoemonk

Member
Quickhint: It's not Bloodborne.

Don't play it like Bloodborne. I've felt kinda similar when playing Bloodborne for the first time after multiple hundred hours in the souls game.

I was going to say this but you beat me to it. I finished Dark Souls 2 and the next day picked up and started playing Bloodborne and it felt incredibly jarring. It's just similar enough to make you think you are playing the same game but different enough that if you try to play it the same way you will lose.
 

AgentP

Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
Youre doing it wrong. Bloodborne has ruined this genre IMO - Souls games are God.

You mean raised the bar. Souls games are going to be better because of BB starting with DS3.
 

silva1991

Member
Souls games are on the decline since DS1.

DS2 is a like the reanimated corpse of DS1. Bad movement, bad hit boxes, and level design. At least it's a good PC port.

Bloodborne isn't even in the same genre as DS1. The only reason it receives so much praise is because of its exclusivity.

Just hope that DS3 saves us from this hell OP.

It's hard to take your post seriously considering pretty much all PS4 exclusives other than Bloodborne got bad/mediocre reviews.

it's not as good as DS1, but it's great..
 
It's hard to take your post seriously considering pretty much all PS4 exclusives other than Bloodborne got bad/mediocre reviews.

it's not as good as DS1, but it's great..

You can tell by the design that they were targeting a wider audience and the game suffers immensely from that.

Health mechanics alone make the game piss easy and combat focuses more on hitting your enemy as fast and as much as possible.

Contrast that with DS in which combat is methodical and mistakes (even in fights you win) can have dire consequences.

Blood vials and recovering health by mashing attack were poor choices. It has a nice aesthetic though.
 

Dresden

Member
Hahaha, I want to give it a shot, but everything I've heard about it turns me off. And it still looks noticeably uglier than the original Dark Souls anytime I see video of them side by side, but perhaps that would be different if I were playing it.

It's mostly the first half of the game that's gross. Really picks up after you visit a certain castle.

But when it's ugly it's really fucking ugly.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Dark Souls 3 will be the best game in the series, don't worry. Miyazaki will bring peace to the Souls fanbase once and for all.
I predict Dark Souls 3 will have more or less the same flaws as the past games in the series, but those flaws will be given a pass because Miyazaki.
 

MayMay

Banned
Bloodborne isn't even in the same genre as DS1. The only reason it receives so much praise is because of its exclusivity.

That's not even remotely true, the opposite is the case imo. I think if Bloodborne wasnt an exclusive it'd get even more praise than it's already getting.
 

ApharmdX

Banned
Souls games are on the decline since DS1.

DS2 is a like the reanimated corpse of DS1. Bad movement, bad hit boxes, and level design. At least it's a good PC port.

Bloodborne isn't even in the same genre as DS1. The only reason it receives so much praise is because of its exclusivity.

Just hope that DS3 saves us from this hell OP.

Saying that Souls games are on the decline since Dark Souls is silly. That's like saying that Kobe Bryant's NBA career was on the decline after scoring 81 points in 2006... DS1 is IMO one of the top 5 games ever made. No, DS2 wasn't as good. But it was still pretty solid, and better than most games released that year. And I actually think Bloodborne made the Souls series a bit fresh again with the unique setting and enemies, though the gameplay has flaws.
 

ike_

Member
I stood by when people said Dark Souls was better than Demon's Souls.

I was silent when people said Dark Souls was too hard.

I didn't say a word when there were those who thought Bloodborne was not GOTY.

But this, saying that Dark Souls 2 is the best in the series, is not something that I will watch happen!

Dark Souls 2 is better than oxygen.
 

Ferr986

Member
Honestly I feel like trying to rank the Soulsborne games is a waste of time for me, I love them equally and unreservedly.

Yep, they're all awesome and I just love that we have this amazing franchise to play.
EufGhuI.jpg

Sorry, no Demons cause I never had a PS3. Bring on the remaster!
 
I predict Dark Souls 3 will have more or less the same flaws as the past games in the series, but those flaws will be given a pass because Miyazaki.

something something "atmosphere" something something "the world is more connected tho" something something "the Miyazaki touch".

It'll probably have all the strengths and weaknesses every Souls game has had, and the DLC will be the best part once again.
 

Alo0oy

Banned
Dark Souls 2 isn't "bad", it's still better than 99% of the games out there, it just isn't a masterpiece like the other three games.
 
My second favorite souls game after Dark Souls. My only complaint is too many stats with adaptability being too important to not get, and how much they nerfed faith builds, and magic in general with the DLC bosses.
 

Breads

Banned
You mean raised the bar. Souls games are going to be better because of BB starting with DS3.

What? BB is Souls-lite. There is nothing BB is that Souls isn't... which is kind of why it's so great. It's like Souls arcade mode. But if you think the limited environments, lack of weapon variety and build options, easier bosses, blood vials, the awful dash that only moves in four directions which becomes a liability depending on the environment, and hiding 1/3 the content inside copy/paste dungeons doesn't weigh down the improvements BB made to the formula then I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding as to why these games work.

BB is great but it isn't a perfect game and giving credit to anything DS3 does right specifically to BB is kind of ridiculous because they are all in the same meta series.

Bloodborne isn't even in the same genre as DS1. The only reason it receives so much praise is because of its exclusivity.

I... bought a PS4 just to play Bloodborne. Was that pre-post-purchase-rationalization? At what point does my praise for Bloodborne become invalid? Because I looked forward to it and finally bought the PS4, enjoyed the game when it came out, bought the dlc, enjoyed it too, and considered it all money well spent.
 
something something "atmosphere" something something "the world is more connected tho" something something "the Miyazaki touch".

It'll probably have all the strengths and weaknesses every Souls game has had, and the DLC will be the best part once again.
Are you arguing that DS2 doesn't have poor level coherence?

That shit is like and M.C. Esher painting bruh.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
My second favorite souls game after Dark Souls. My only complaint is too many stats with adaptability being too important to not get, and how much they nerfed faith builds, and magic in general with the DLC bosses.

Good. Magic was broken as shit in Demon and Dark Souls (and early on in 2). And the DLC bosses have always had much better resistances than the main game bosses.
 
I absolutely love bloodborne, I love it so much, its probably one of my favourite games ever by now. But I started Dark Souls 2 on PS4 the other day after getting it cheap from gamestop, played about 10 hours, and man its not good, I think I'm gonna quit. I mean, I don't know if sucks is exactly the right word for it, but its so fucking obtuse, frustrating, the combat is so dull and bullshit, drives me mad. Am I a peasant who doesn't understand good mechanics or what?

Here's 10 enemies to try and dodge that you could kill in two hits but you can't get them all before they get you isn't fun. Horde enemies just aren't fun like this.

I wonder if you're referring to the silver knights in Heide's Tower of Flame. Those guys weren't even there originally until they did the Scholar of the First Sin, and honestly those guys are legit bullshit and they put them in the dumbest possible location. Aside from that, game is a masterpiece.
 
Another day another Dark Souls 2 thread..

On topic: it was pretty bad in a lot of areas on release, but it's also by far the Soul's game that has improve the most post release.
 
That would be a sweet idea for an area in a Souls game. They did do a bit of perspective fuckery in the Research Hall in Old Hunters.
I agree actually. A single area like that would be really cool. The Duke's Archives toys with the idea in DS1 but it would be neat to expand on it.

Let's not lay out the entire game world that way though.
 
Although I like the visuals of most of the levels I think one area that disappointed me was the low quality of the destructible objects in the world. Compared to Demon's And Dark Souls' bookshelves and various cool things to smash I found DS 2 to be kinda underwhelming. A few tables, some statues, small shelves, etc. Bloodbourne sure satisfied my smashing addiction though and was pretty amazing in that regard.

Not saying this brought the game down for me much though. It's just they didn't put as much effort into it compared to the other games. Even the level of aesthetic details seemed to be sparser overall.
 

Maxrunner

Member
I absolutely love bloodborne, I love it so much, its probably one of my favourite games ever by now. But I started Dark Souls 2 on PS4 the other day after getting it cheap from gamestop, played about 10 hours, and man its not good, I think I'm gonna quit. I mean, I don't know if sucks is exactly the right word for it, but its so fucking obtuse, frustrating, the combat is so dull and bullshit, drives me mad. Am I a peasant who doesn't understand good mechanics or what?

Here's 10 enemies to try and dodge that you could kill in two hits but you can't get them all before they get you isn't fun. Horde enemies just aren't fun like this.

The combat is way better than bloodborne.
 

Alo0oy

Banned
I'm fine with the poorly designed world actually, the worst part is not being able to change your attack direction or aim your roll attacks, shield-less dex builds sucked because of that.
 

silva1991

Member
You can tell by the design that they were targeting a wider audience and the game suffers immensely from that.

Health mechanics alone make the game piss easy and combat focuses more on hitting your enemy as fast and as much as possible.

Contrast that with DS in which combat is methodical and mistakes (even in fights you win) can have dire consequences.

Blood vials and recovering health by mashing attack were poor choices. It has a nice aesthetic though.

I like the health regain system and it felt good. your on minority that thinks it's a bad choice and I don't understand what does bloodbvials and health regain have anything to do with Dark souls 3?

I don't see how mechanics that are exclusives to Bloodborne can harm Dark souls.

I agree that Bloodborn's base game was easy and I hope DS3 will be harder.

have you played the Old Hunters? most think it's the hardest DLC in the series.
 

IrishNinja

Member
I wouldn't say it's way better but I preferred it to DeS. The combat is just more interesting imo and you have more options.

honestly, i just got 2 as an xmas present and it's still on my shelf, but simply hearing people put it on the level of Demons gets me excited
 
I like the health regain system and it felt good. your on minority that thinks it's a bad choice and I don't understand what does bloodbvials and health regain have anything to do with Dark souls 3?

I don't see how mechanics that are exclusives to Bloodborne can harm Dark souls.

I agree that Bloodborn's base game was easy and I hope DS3 will be harder.

have you played the Old Hunters? most think it's the hardest DLC in the series.
We don't know if they're exclusive yet. We haven't had a Souls game since Bloodborne.

They already had the life gems in DS2. These carried over to Bloodborne.

Now DS3 footage looks fast (like Bloodborne) so it may have inherited some BB mechanics.

I'm still optimistic though.
 

jimboton

Member
I love Dark Souls 2. As time has passed I've come to apreciated its 'disjointed' world and levels a lot more: there are a LOT of memorable parts in that game, even if they don't fit into a memorable whole. Yeah, obviously not as good as Dark Souls, but right now I'd place it above DeS and Bloodborne.. and I love those 2 as well.

I think trying to paint Dark Souls 2 as a 'bad' or 'mediocre' game is just crazy talk.
 

VertPin

Member
Souls games are on the decline since DS1.

DS2 is a like the reanimated corpse of DS1. Bad movement, bad hit boxes, and level design. At least it's a good PC port.

Bloodborne isn't even in the same genre as DS1. The only reason it receives so much praise is because of its exclusivity.

Just hope that DS3 saves us from this hell OP.

wow.
 

Kysen

Member
The haters are so ridiculous.

DS2 hater style look at Bloodborne:
Camera is awful, fighting beast bosses is a mix of a screen full or fur, getting trapped in a corner and getting hit from attacks you can't even see. But enjoy it because Amelia's health bar goes on for days and she heals.
Then the rare times when the camera isn't a disaster you snore your way through some of the laziest most pathetic boss designs in the Witches of Hemwick and Celestial Emissary.
Don't worry you can always take a break from the main game and visit the Chalice Dungeons to see the worst level design ever in the SoulsBorne series.
The terrible decisions didn't stop at the CD though, they went and screwed up the multiplayer beyond all belief.
Arcane weapons are almost entirely pointless.
The stupid blood vial system brings back totally pointless farming for no reason whatsoever.
The DLC reused so many assets I felt like I just entered another NG cycle.
Of course good old artificial difficulty rears it's ugly head with the endless mobs of patients in the research hall, the 4 Living failures boss and of course the worst of all being stuck down a well with a double team of the cheapest enemies in the game with their insane tracking.

Bloodborne, what a colossal disaster.

So much wrong and your Amelia point just gave away that you are bad at the game. You can stop the healing completely.
 

Soodanim

Member
I'm pushing through to experience it once for myself, then I'll watch lore explanation videos to fill in the gaps. I'm not concerned with experiencing the rest of the little bits of the game like I did with 1, just the basic story and maybe the DLC to get what I paid for. It's definitely not something I find an absolute joy to play though.

They changed basic movement things and fucked it up. They tried to stop easy back stabs and fucked it up. They tried to make weapon durability worth noticing and fucked it up. The menu improvements were nice though. Not having to use souls one by one is great.
 

Frodo

Member
I can agree with a lot of the criticism towards DSII, but OP starts terribly with the thread title, which will not attract any good discussion.

Coming from BB, of course, it will be harder to adapt to DS combat and play style. The game is way less forgiving than BB (no regain mechanics whatsoever, less chances of heal as enemies will not refill your Estus flask), and also noticeably slower. You really need to be smart about mobs, but the game offers a lot more options to deal with those than BB does. You have ranged attack and you have magic/miracle/hexes. Equip a bow and start to use from time to time and you will have a better way of dealing with the them (although I'm not dismissing this argument completely, as the game could have been smarter about enemy placement and mobs, but there are alternatives, which everyone seems to ignore).

Also, BB has a more consistent and has a better connected world, DSII world never felt as one single world, but instead it felt like a loads of interconnected levels, possibly because of the fast travel (talking about fast travel, at least it is done right in DSII, instead of that loading screen mess that is BB), and it is also an older game, and even the port doesn't look that great, although 60fps are welcomed.

There is a lot to get used to, so I'm not surprised OP isn't really enjoying their time, but DSII is far from being a bad game, and it also has the best multiplayer of the whole series, hands down. There are endless build possibilities and those actually change the way the game feels and plays and how you will need to approach enemies differently with each build (one area BB is severely lacking). Both games have their ups and down in relation to certain areas and certain bosses, and this has been a constant throughout the series, so that will be down to player preference.

But most importantly, both are great games.
 
Where exactly does that happen? I've played DS2 a lot and I can't think of an area where this is the case. The only instance of linking I can think of is in Heide's tower and that links 3 mobs at most - which is easily manageable using a variety of strategies.

If you are getting swarmed, its most likely because you are approaching the area wrong. Either you are falling into an avoidable ambush or you're simply being careless and/or overaggressive. The trap rooms in Tower Of Flame are a great example of this, basically being environmental puzzles to solves.

Aggro rules are consistent, but DS2 (particularly SOFTS) adds a large number of ways to manage or mitigate it with environmental gimmicks. Fire/Light as a means of suppressing aggro for example.

In SofFS it happens in the infamous large room in Iron Keep. Enemies are designed to aggro and chase you at set points en masse when you step into a predetermined position.

If you are getting swarmed, its most likely because you are approaching the area wrong. Either you are falling into an avoidable ambush or you're simply being careless and/or overaggressive. The trap rooms in Tower Of Flame are a great example of this, basically being environmental puzzles to solves.

The game has been out for so long and the instances where the enemy behavior and placement being unfair and not the player's fault is so well known that I don't know how anyone could take the "git gud" attitude this far after the game's release.

Plenty of areas where the game has fair encounters, but there's a few key ones where they hard-coded gankfests in, both in vanilla and SOFTS.
 

Izcarielo

Banned
I loved and played every Souls game except DS2.
I first beat Demon Souls years ago, then Dark Souls, then when DS2 came out somehow i didnt play it (i was playing something else probably) and i finished Bloodborne within the first week after it came out.
Last week i bought DS2 on Steam because it was on sale. Played it for about 60 minutes and then I uninstalled it and asked for a refund.
I dont know what that game had but it felt off and i hated it.
 
It's not a bad game, it's just miles away from Bloodborne and Dark Souls 1. The level design is mostly shit narrow corridors "go from A to B", the world is way less connected than in any other Souls game, the enemy placement is super generic and there are a ton of straight up unfair passages and bosses. And especially the last point irked me lot. Souls games were always hard but once you got it you realized they were never unfair. Dark Souls 2 completely fucked up in that regard. The Ancient Dragon for example was the biggest bullshit ever. There was nothing challenging about that. It was straight up unfair and you could only do it by trial and error. Fuck that shit. That ain't why I love Souls games.
 
Quickhint: It's not Bloodborne.

Don't play it like Bloodborne.
I've felt kinda similar when playing Bloodborne for the first time after multiple hundred hours in the souls game.

Pretty much this.

I predict Dark Souls 3 will have more or less the same flaws as the past games in the series, but those flaws will be given a pass because Miyazaki.

This too. I mean, usually when talking about DS 2's flaws there's a high chance that someone may post the link to a 35+ minutes video about all that's wrong with it. When I watched for the first time I remember the guy more or less said: "DS story and lore is so great but in DS2 they tell you to go visit the king because reasons, and suddenly you have to fight the queen because reasons", which clearly shows that he didn't even try to comprehend the story, everything happened just because, therefore the game did everything wrong...

It's pretty difficult to get somewhere when you have to discuss with people with that mindset.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Lol yes. The Matthewmatosis video is literally "Let's nitpick about every fucking thing and some of those things are true for Dark Souls 1 but they're good in that game because reasons"
 
I think from looked at the hardcore souls community and saw how they were playing. 100% pvp focus or challenging boss rushes. They seemed to make the game for them.

For me the first priority in any RPG is the world. I want to see some sort of coherent and interesting world. Especially in a sequel you can't just seem to throw most things about the world out of the window and replace them with something less well realised. DS2 only had relatively rare flashes of creating good new characters or linking to the previous world.

it's not bad but it's less than it could be.
 

silva1991

Member
We don't know if they're exclusive yet. We haven't had a Souls game since Bloodborne.

They already had the life gems in DS2. These carried over to Bloodborne.

Now DS3 footage looks fast (like Bloodborne) so it may have inherited some BB mechanics.

I'm still optimistic though.

What is wrong with life gems? in DS1 you can stock 99 humanity and 99twin humanities for healing even in pvp, so healing items beside estus flask wasn't invented in DS2.

and from the beta we know for sure that health regain doesn't exist.

health worked in Bloodborne because it was a bit mashy, swings were fast and weapons consumes way less stamina.
 
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