gaming Dark Sauce 2: Prepare to "Meh" *WITH JAZZ*

[Dattebayo 2,850]

This is my review of Dark Souls 2.

There is very light spoilers.

Also, there is no jazz in this thread.

 

So.

This game has hard combat. The lore is interesting. The enemies are brutal. The designs are great.

 

 

So why am I so disappointed with this game?

 

 

From the get-go, as soon as I spawned for the first time inside the gazebo thing, I knew I was going to be disappointed.

There was something in the way the character and the camera moved. It seemed like a major back-peddle from the way they did in Dark Souls 1. It kind of reminded me of PS2 graphics.

 

It only got worse when I hit the character customization screen

Holy f*ck, that was watered down, but that's just a small gripe.

The lack of hair styles for both woms and dinks were foreboding to the entire game as a whole.

 

Made a woman with purple hair. Called her Swag. Knight, pls.

 

Flash forward many minutes, I get back into the grove of Dark Souls.

I bob and weave and block, as I specced towards being a tank, but I have no tanky equipment.

There's something off with the combat. I couldn't quite realize it at the time, but I shake my head and plodge along. The souls-sucking animation is drastically different from the fisrt one, and the sound design was that mosquito bite that I couldn't stop scratching, considering that it was the thing I would see most in this game.

 

I sigh and move on.

 

Hours later, I am Dark Souls 2 adept.

With Old Knight armor set in tow, a Tower Shield in hand, a Bastard Sword in the other, and a heart full of hope, I plunge into Wherever-The-Hell with righteous indignation.

 

But I couldn't shake that sinking feeling I kept feeling whenever I killed a guy or slayed a boss.

 

It was about the same time I beat the Ruin Sentinels (3 bosses at once? That's sh*t's f*cking fair) that it struck me: this game isn't rewarding. Not saying that boss fight was easy, of course. My cowardly a$$ just ran around distracting them while my NPC summon shot them with soul arrows.

 

No, no matter how many guys I killed, it never even came close to what it felt like when I loaded Dark Souls 1 for the final time just a few days before. All it is is a frustrating plod to the next level, with no feeling of "Yeah, f*ck that guy" after killing anything. It's not that I kept dying. Not meaning to brag or anything, but can kick a mean d*ck at Souls games.

Everything was just a chore, like cleaning the dishes when you really really don't want to.

Unfortunately, it seems like this game is a victim of Sequelitis.

 

I got as far as the boss fight with the Lost Sinner before I plain just gave up.

I went to Gamestop and returned that sh*t, and got Fallout New Vegas again, this time the GOTY version with all the DLC, and Red Dead Redemption GOTY addition, for the same of what DS2 cost me. I'm having more fun with those two than I did with this disappointing-a$$ game.

 

Maybe I'll give it another try in some months, when it's like 20 or some dollars. But until then, I give Dark Souls 2 a "meh" out of "Justin Beiber".

Edited May 29, 2014 by Dattebayo

[Clumsi Poni 43]

I see what your complaint is. You did find the game interesting at all because you did not feel good after completing boss/area.

But could elaborate why it did not feel rewarding and felt like a chore?

to me:

• The boss's difficulties were roughly the same, although I think dark souls 2 had just a little bit more difficult of enemies than in the original dark souls.
• The soul reward was fairly reasonable, although early on they seem to give quite a bit of souls. Enough to level a few times.
• The build-up to the bosses we're fairly the same. Although Dark souls 2 has less traps that kill you instantly, that's about it.

My only gripe is that they did not give enough lore on the enemies, HOWEVER they did give a bit more lore for the chosen undead.

 

What do you think the director should have done different? 

[Vae Victis 742]

I think the main problem was that Miyazaki, who directed dark souls 1, didn't direct dark souls 2 as he has been working on bloodbourne. After all, he is the reason why bosses like sif exist.

 

I was also disappointed with some of the boss fights, due to lack of emotion. We all know the lore behind sif and artorias, gwyn, the bed of chaos... Those fights made you feel emotion because of the backstories to the characters. I mean, did you at least feel somewhat sorry for gwyn? He lost everything he worked for. You realize that you kill quelaag, the fair lady's beloved sister.

 

 

Dark souls 2 never have that emotional stimulation. Maybe for velstadt and vendrick, but that's it. In dark souls one, it truly felt as if you were in a dying world against truly malevolent forces, while dark souls 2 felt somewhat like " meh. Go kill things. "

 

At least to me.

 

Of course, the gameplay was awesome. But sometimes the story is what makes the game truly memorable.

[Dattebayo 2,850]

I see what your complaint is. You did find the game interesting at all because you did not feel good after completing boss/area.

But could elaborate why it did not feel rewarding and felt like a chore?

to me:

• The boss's difficulties were roughly the same, although I think dark souls 2 had just a little bit more difficult of enemies than in the original dark souls.
• The soul reward was fairly reasonable, although early on they seem to give quite a bit of souls. Enough to level a few times.
• The build-up to the bosses we're fairly the same. Although Dark souls 2 has less traps that kill you instantly, that's about it.

My only gripe is that they did not give enough lore on the enemies, HOWEVER they did give a bit more lore for the chosen undead.

 

What do you think the director should have done different?

I'm not arguing that the difficulty was lower. It was a hard game.

It just lacked that sense of wonder and amazement, combined with terror and anxiety

 

Just, everything felt dumbed down. Streamlined. Linear. Not easier, just...identity-less. Generic. Like a game that was trying to rip off a Souls game.

A victim of cut-corners and sequelitis.

 

Sorry, friend, I wouldn't even begin to know how to explain it (the game not feeling rewarding).

Again, the combat was hard, the rewards were reasonable, and the bosses were always engaging.

I just never felt a sense of accomplishment, something I always felt even when killing a normal hollow in previous games.

This game just felt like "here's a dude. Kill him. Now shut up".

 

What would I change? Hmm...

-Whatever new engine they used isn't working. Even if they were trying to go for more realism in the graphics department, the graphics are somehow worse than Dark Souls 1. Hell, worse than Demon Souls.

So I'd scale them back, stylize them like they were before. Bring back that old soul sucking animation.

 

-I'd remove the fast travel, or at least change it's UI and make it an attainable feature later.

It was a good tool, but it spoiled the game for me by telling me how many more levels were left.

It also removed the feeling that the entire world was connected.

 

-I'd flesh out the lore more, not through people actually saying it, but through context clues (like before)

 

-I'd make character customization less dumbed-down.

 

-I'd fix that terrible inventory menu. Seriously. What's up with that?

 

-I'd add more loot. I seriously spent my first 6 hours with the same starting equipment due to nothing better showing up.

 

-I'd make pyromancies an all-class thing again

 

-I'd change up the environments. Give them variation.