Dark Souls 2 Was WORSE Than You Remember

no it wasn't, and it's not a matter of remembering since i've never stopped playing it. It has the least boring farming in the series, the best variety of cool weird weapons and the best progression system for them, the best magic, the best pvp, the highest amount of viable weird ass builds, weird obscure mechanics and most important for me, a guy who constantly starts new playthroughs, it has the most open early game apart from ds1 with master key. DS3 might be a better game critically but holy fuck I can't stand having to do the same shit every time until i get to Farron Keep. It's a very solid game, far above the industry standard for action RPGs. Yeah, the direction is not as inspired as BB or DS1, but that's not what makes a bad game.

DS2 was a great game. Not as great as DS1 (I think we can all agree with that) but still great.

GET GOOD

Dark souls 2 becomes way more fucking fun when you don't hoard items, when you use the resources given to you in the way you see fit, to lessen the burden of some of the bs enemy positioning made in SOFTS, every run can feel like a slow , tense resource drain, personally I play more like this and it is fun

I love DS3, but I love DS2 all the same. I can't fully understand the heavy misgivings people seem to love throwing at DS2.

Stupid critique, nothing here makes sense

The search continues... for a video about DS2 where they actually say "bonfire ascetic" instead of "bonfire aesthetic"

Biggest DS 2 problem for me is the boss
Their designs are just dogshit. Unlike DS1 and DS3 almost all of them are forgettable and i play DS2 first and then DS1 to 3, in theory the nostalgia should have been strong but sadly its not. There are other complain but this is basically my main issue with the game, double the boss yet less the fun. Combine with DS2 is not a direct sequel or prequel to DS1 is also a bad point for me
Overall score
DS1 9.3
DS2 8.0
DS3 9.5 i like DS3 a little bit because the armor design, boss design + fight are just too good.
But for NPCs i prefer DS1 more

DS2 is the only Dark Souls game I hated and had to admit I could not continue as I was not having fun at all

Disclaimer, i havent watch, and may not. dark souls 2 is the most machinically indricate souls game. it punishes your mistakes above all else, its not the games fault that most people are fast pace loving zoomers.
edit: it is heavily flawed, but the game its self is what other action rpgs should aspire to be, disregarding several flawed systems; like, soul memory, the gods forsaken server lag, and the nearly unfunctional blue convents, to name the worst of it. the gameplay and how stats effect the gameplay, are in my opinion what defines rpg in action rpg.

I'd like to say that Bloodborne is my favorite Souls'borne game period...and I started with dark souls 1 only 1 year after launch...I still love dark souls II and it holds a wonderful place in my gaming heart. You should play Dark Souls II SOTFS without overy saturating yourself with other gamer's opinions of it. DS2 is great and (you can do your own research) would have been badass if it had had adequate developement before launch. Also for the people like "wah wah they're are too many enemies!"...play Nioh I or II, they are outstanding "soulslikes" that don't give a shit about fairness and they are amazing. In homage to the golden days, GIT GUD!

Playing the whole game double handing a longsword then complaining about difficulty seems kinda dumb.

This game would have been astounding if it had any other name other than Dark Souls. it would have been considered the greatest souls clone ever. And that's the issue. It's a souls game, that somehow feels more like a souls clone.

"Elden ring, redefining of what it means to be an open world" - lol. Yes, just not in a good way. Big, dead and empty with copy and pasted dungeons that contain copy and pasted enemies and bosses. The open world is the weakest part of that already highly overrated game.

Not having i-frames when walking through a fog gate is the single worst thing in this game. I hate it so much that I have never replayed it because of that mechanic.

What's the point of having 41 bosses, if 90% are garbage?

It was the longest lived ads game for a reason. It’s pvp was cracked

I am a DS2 Enjoyer

I liked it more than Dark Souls 1 because I knew what I was getting into unlike the aforementioned. I enjoyed it waaaay more. Also Majula

I remember the weeks after DS2 was released and the people who defended it would say things like "You only complain about it because DS has set your standards too high. Had this been an original title it would be universally praised as Game of the Year." I never found that argument particularly compelling and felt rather that if DS2 hadn't come with the association to a far better game, no one would ever have cared about it. It would just have been a forgettable action RPG full of strange and incomprehensible decisions.

this video sucks

Not a big fan of DS2, but I've personally never understood why people complain so much about the total health loss system.

Functionally, what is the difference between DeS/DS2 taking a part of your health and DS3 buffing it? Realistically, in DeS, the health left over after a loss takes half away is your BASE health bar. In DS2, it takes a number of deaths until you're at your BASE health bar. In both games, you have a ring to keep more of your BOOSTED health. The BOOSTED version is a reward. DeS/DS2 just gives the boosted health to you up front and lets you lose it. In DS3, you're always at the lower health value and occasionally use an item to get to the boosted health value.

Effectively, it's the same thing, except that in DS2 you're in a boosted health state for longer (since it takes multiple deaths to fully whittle out the boosted health, but only 1 item to return the boost and whittle it down again). Taking something away after it's given to you may FEEL annoying, but that's more of a reasoning error than a design flaw. That extra health was never yours to begin with. The game loaned it to you.

CLICKBAIT

DS2 has the NG+ of all From Software-Games.
I wish they had something like that in DS3 or Elden Ring.

I notice this whole video talks about the scholar version of the game that adds changes that make the game worse; like the movement snap points he mentions, those only exist in the scholar version of the game, also the enemy spam is also only in scholar, play the original, its not perfect, but doesn't have alllllll the bad things lol

This perfectly sums up a lot of the misgivings i have about DS2. Much like Skyward Sword is for Zelda, it isnt a BAD game, especially in isolation. But due to a number of factors i rate it as my least enjoyed Zelda game.

Dark Souls 2 though is a bit worse. Not only is the Map disjointed but the Lore is too. I didnt play through Scholar of the First version i played through the release version and by the time my hollowed-heiny was sitting on the "Throne of Want" i still had zero clue what the throne was, why my quest detoured to parking my withered keister on it. Why i needed something from a Giant Lord to access it, etc. Also, there were Giants in Dark Souls 1 but they do not resemble anything like the Giants in Dark Souls 2 and i hate the fact they didnt bother giving them different names. even calling the DS2 Giants "the Giants of the Foreign Forest" or SOMETHING would be immensely better.

Dark Souls 1, everywhere felt like a piece of a larger story. Dark Souls 2 everywhere felt like disconnected stories where the only commonality is "This place used to be cool but then DARK CURSE ruined it just like it ruins every kingdom!"

I like to use Heide's Tower of Flame in comparison to Sen's Fortress in DS1.
We never learn who exactly either of these people are, the main thing is the location is named for them. However we CAN infer LOADS of shit about Sen due to HOW Dark Souls 1 does world building.

Sen apparently:
Was close enough to the Lords of Anor Londo that his Fortress is basically defending one of the entry points to it.
Either made himself or commissioned many traps to deter people from reaching Anor Londo through his namesake fortress.
Had some sort of authority over the Man-Serpents as they dont seem to be sworn to defend the fortress rather than just inhabiting an abandoned building.
Was possibly a Silver Knight of Anor Londo due to the statues of them throughout the Fortress
If Sen was the master craftsman behind the Traps, then maybe he built the Iron Golem at the top of the Fortress as well

Yet what can we speculate about Heide?
His tower does indeed to be on fire, somehow in a game where Fire/Flames are important we dont get to investigate the conflagrated construction.
In the release version Heide's knights were... absolutely ANYWHERE BUT the tower.
What are the ancient warriors that inhabit the tower currently? Invaders who drove the Heide knights out? who knows!
And why is a Drangleic Dragon Rider guarding the path leading away from the tower? Was he assigned to sit his butt here and kill any who would try to get to the Castle from there? Or are the Dragonriders Heide's but Drangleic employed them after whatever befell the Tower?

In the cohesive worldbuilding of DemonSouls, and Dark Souls 1, we can inter things BECAUSE of how connected everything is. by Disconnecting everything, it is all a confusing mess like they were trying to fit whatever levels they thought were cool into the mix.

Is it wrong that SOTFS is my favourite fromsoft game, equaling that of bloodbourne.

I don't have enough time to counter all the points here, but I feel a lot of of this is personal feelings, which is okay.

By far the worst souls game or even souls like, I'll take lords of the fallen or lies of P over DS2 any day.

I disagree with most of your negative points.

FROM had their chance to fix the game with SotFS but no, add even more enemies because that's what people asked for right. The game was still good to me but only because it played mechanically like a souls game, everything else was out of place, item placement and enemy placement wasn't good, boss fights, area design... such a shame. First few areas were my favorite and a couple of the latter ones like Amana and the crypt. Too bad there's so much filler garbage connected by loooong corridors.

dont care, still my fav

Just imagine a ds2 remake/remaster...the potential is insane.

Did Scholar of the First Sin fix anything?

Just finished it last month, it was dogshit.

Original DS2 is a significantly better and different experience compared to SotFS. If you haven't played the original, go play it and then you'll realize how good of a game DS2 ACTUALLY is. Gone is the non-sensical enemy placement, no horrible ganks around every corner. Item placement is arguably more balanced. It's completely different.

Ds2 is my favorite one idk why but i spent countless hours in this one.
Power stance smelter swords is the coolest build man.

dark souls 2 is diarrhea coming out my ass

Man how much I have hated DS2 whas a disappointment so big terrible level design, annoing enemy, a ton of artificial difficoulty and worst of all terrible boss figth, interesting detail, at least in the early version of the game, maybe have been changed, you can cheese a good part of them just walking lef and the attak will not hit your caracter, it work also in Lies of P by the way.

cod babby has shit taste in games, not surprising lmao

Goddamn chopper you shredded the burnt ivory king I was not as fortunate to have 1 last night left he died earlier so i had the full 1v1 experience with the ivory king it was pretty cool but a lot harder his move set is pretty aggresive.

Dark Souls 3 could have been a great game, unfortunately they had to simplify it to suit the whiny tweens who circle jerked hate about Dark Souls 2.

People who complain about DS2 are the same people who complain about MGS2. Yes, it was a different game. Yes, it changed some things, some of them big. But, if you wanna play Dark Souls 1, just play DS1! I guess they got what they wanted in DS3, since it was the same thing all over again.

furthermore, the boss runbacks on ds1 are far worse. dont you dare make an argument on me on that. there are many bonfires on ds2 thats way to close to the boss. sadly this kid didn't address obviously because thats that point of this video. invalidating you for liking ds2.