From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[toro]

Updated. Maybe it works now. Otherwise go to: https://www.facebook.com/darksoulsEU/ and check the last video.

 

[Jigawatt]

go to: https://www.facebook.com/darksoulsEU/

No

 

[Circuit the Short]

Men, what would you rather recommend to a fellow weaboo with no souls-like games experience: DS2 or Nioh? Which is better and why

 

[Strange Fellow]

Men, what would you rather recommend to a fellow weaboo with no souls-like games experience: DS2 or Nioh? Which is better and why

Dark Souls 1.

 

[Circuit the Short]

Dark Souls 1.

Why tho?

 

[Jack Dandy]

It's a better game, and it's interconnected world is a very special charm point.

 

[praetor]

DS1 is the best 'cause it's greater than the sum of its parts. it truly is a special game

DS2 is the best Souls game from a gameplay PoV, as it has by far the most polished and varied and balanced combat system (and the DLCs are brilliant and arguably the best Souls has to offer, even though most of vanilla is quite meh), though it's inferior to DS1 as a package 'cause, imo, it's not as good as the sum of its parts (definitely get the SotFS version if you end up enjoying DS1)

DS3 is bad (good game, bad Souls game)

Nioh has a significantly better and deeper combat system than any Souls game (by a lot). level design and bestiary leave a lot to be desired, but definitely worth playing for the superfun combat

 

[Circuit the Short]

Thanks for the posts, men. I've watched some more gameplay vids and decided to postpone my weeaboofication for now.

 

[toro]

Thanks for the posts, men. I've watched some more gameplay vids and decided to postpone my weeaboofication for now.

Play DS2. Experiencing Majula, Sir Alonne and Fume Knight are integral parts of the weebo persona.

 

[RoSoDude]

Finally got around to playing Dark Souls 2 (Scholar of the First Sin) after playing Dark Souls at the end of 2017. I went into the game expecting to like it despite all of the negativity that surrounds it, based on the the recommendations of some people whose opinions I actually trust. Overall I was definitely not disappointed. I don't know which game I liked better, because they both have strengths and weaknesses and my overall enjoyment was pretty close. I think most of the complaints about DS2 are factually spurious (which I'll elaborate), but contain an underlying truth about the game -- it often fails to communicate effectively to the player, which likely is why so many people seem to have gotten the wrong idea about it.

My favorite change in the design philosophy of DS2 is the new focus on resource management and long-term consequences for your performance. At first, DS1 feels like it has major consequences for death, with you losing humanity and all of your souls (pending retrieval) when you die. However, I quickly realized that death was only a minor setback, souls were easy enough to grind out again, and the humanity system was essentially pointless as it basically just made it possible to get ganked. DS2's humanity system is a huge improvement, with every death chipping away at your maximum HP and encouraging you go human and keep it for as long as possible (for what it's worth, I also think human effigies are thematically cooler than the humanity sprites, but that's neither here nor there). Enemy despawning serves the dual purpose of alleviating tedium if an area's giving you too much trouble and also making souls a finite resource. This meant that every time I lost my souls, I'd actually give a damn about trying to get them back. In this context, lifegems are actually a good inclusion, as they enforce long-term decisionmaking about what you're willing to expend to get through an area, and turn the game away from a series of a discrete challenges where only your short-term performance matters and towards a more cohesive end-to-end experience. I get the complaint about farmable healing, but lifegems are initially limited and not too cheap, and reasonably well-balanced in terms of their use animation and slow heal over time. Moreover, you have to be deluded to argue that DS1 was elegantly and perfect with estus, because you could completely destroy the healing balance through kindling, or just spam one of your 99 humanity to heal between fights. The difference is, DS2 actively encourages resource use and makes it feel like a genuine part of the game, along with the humanity system and multiplayer (I still got invaded more than a dozen times in 2019). Renewable resources were a great inclusion in DS1, but ultimately made the game feel limiting at times. I really appreciate DS2's willingness to overhaul a lot of the systems to address this.

I started the game as a Swordsman and ended the game as a DEX+INT light armor rapier/curved sword/parrying dagger user with some spells, which is pretty much what I did in DS1 with some twists (I still have not blocked since my very first hours of DS1). My first impressions of the RPG systems were fairly positive. The classes in DS1 seem to promise a wide variety of playstyles, but most of them are flavors on the same basic combat approach. I chalk up the difference to how fully featured most of the classes are in DS1 -- every class starts with an effective right hand weapon, a shield, and something to them apart (e.g. some form of magic or a combination of stats and equipment that orients them towards a particular strength). It's clear in DS1 that blocking is intended to be a core mechanic for most players, and the starting class' stats suggest a direction for character development more than they really limit the player. By contrast, every class in DS2 has more distinct benefits and drawbacks in both equipment and stats. The swordsman starts with 2 upgraded swords and high Dexterity, but low Strength, health, equip load, and no shield. The Warrior starts with well-rounded physical stats and a shield, but a broken sword. The Sorcerer is adept with spells, but only has a dagger to defend themselves up close and lacks the stats to wield anything better. The Deprived has an even stat distribution and starts at level 1 with no equipment to give maximum flexibility in character development. The point is, each of these leads to a very distinct way of playing the game from the start, with entirely different ways of engaging enemies, dealing damage, and surviving encounters.

The stats also feel much more relevant and balanced, with early choices making a large difference in combat potency and available options. The stat curves are mostly well thought-out, often offering a greater benefit to as you invest more and featuring improvements to multiple derived stats along the upgrade path. There are a few things I'd change, though. I like the inclusion of the Agility stat, but I think Adaptability should have just been Agility (partially so its effect on invincibility frames could be made explicit), with resistance tied to Vitality to make it a more effective tanking stat. It made a lot of sense to decouple equip load from Endurance, which was simply too valuable in Dark Souls 1, but it seems pretty underwhelming on its own (I ended the game with 5 VIT). I'm not fond of the diminishing returns on Vigor, which offers a whopping 30HP until 30, 20HP until 50, and 5HP after 50. This makes Vigor an absurdly good stat early on when you have lower HP, and less good as you upgrade it. Ideally, it'd start at 20HP per level and go up to 30HP after a certain point to keep up the cost of investment. Perhaps this was intentional, but it seems backwards to me. I'd also have liked if Attunement had a greater impact on the number of casts at lower levels while you're working your way up to additional spell slots. All in all, though, I found myself making more interesting choices about what stats to level over the course of 190 levels than in DS1, which derived most of its choice from a steeper level curve, where I ended at around level 90.

It's hard to talk too much about the RPG systems and stats without also discussing weapons. I stuck with the scimitar for most of the game, following my affinity for curved swords in DS1, but found myself dissatisfied with it over time. The moveset is a lot more sluggish, and DS2's hitboxes make its short range pretty unforgiving. I must admit that DS2's combat gameplay isn't as snappy and responsive as DS1's, which I've read has to do with the fact that every animation is motion captured rather than partially keyframed. I eventually extended my arsenal with Ricard's Rapier, and finally upgraded to the Warped Sword and a magic-infused Ice Rapier for the DLC content. I definitely found the DEX options a bit underwhelming in DS2, largely due to their limited damage types (very few options for Strike) and the gimped nature of DEX scaling (S DEX scaling means that a minimum of 60% of your physical dexterity rating is added to damage, while S STR scaling guarantees at least 100% of your physical strength rating is added). Strength weapons have the benefit of higher base damage, better scaling, more versatile damage types, greater ability to stagger opponents, and frequently better attack coverage, with the downside of being slower and costing more stamina. While I found thrusting weapons to be quite potent, curved swords definitely felt undertuned for the aforementioned reasons, especially for how many enemies are strong against slashing damage in the game (of which I overall approve as striking weapons are frequently shafted in RPGs). When I got to the Ivory King DLC, I found myself barely able to lay a scratch the basic mobs even with my ~45 DEX/INT and S scaling weapons and sorceries, so I had to parry and riposte through the whole area.

Speaking of which, parrying offers a great segue for me to praise the actual combat mechanics. Though it feels a little jankier to play due to the hitboxes and animations, DS2's mechanics are massive incline in the abstract. One of the biggest problems with DS1 was how easily combat could be utterly cheesed into oblivion. People often mention ranged cheese with arrows and sorceries, but melee combat in DS1 can be just as degenerate with backstabs and parries. Black Knights and one-off enemies like Havel lose all menace when you realize that the easiest way to fight them is to circlestrafe them faster than they can turn to face you and chain backstab them to death. Parrying entails some risk, but with active parry frames that come out as soon as you press the button, it's fairly straightforward to cheese even groups of enemies with the excessive immunity period on riposte. DS2 makes great strides in crafting combat mechanics and enemy designs that limit or discourage this garbage and reward actual skill and tactics. I'll just say it here folks: ENEMY TRACKING IN DARK SOULS 2 IS INCLINE. Enemies actually stay locked onto the player and require movement to acquire a backstab, which only succeeds if the enemy stays in place for the grab rather than helpfully assuming the position a T-pose for you to ram a sword up their spine. Many enemies actively punish backstab fishing and circlestrafe cheese, such as the armored turtles with their shell slam attack or the Heide Knights with their swift 360 slash. Backstabs are something you earn with deft movement, timing, or stealth, and enemies and bosses alike require you to actually dodge, block, and exercise a greater degree of movement than holding right on the analog stick to flank. Parrying has seen similar improvements, requiring more skill to execute but ultimately being more natural to learn. Each type of parrying implement has different startup frames, active frames, and recovery frames which must be learned to be effective. However, the parry window actually aligns with the part of the animation that you'd expect this time, so they're pretty intuitive to learn even with the large variations in timings. I started out using a Buckler, which has a forgiving parry window but a long startup period, but later swapped to the parrying dagger for its faster startup to give me more flexibility in combat. It doesn't end there, though. There are two possible ripostes, one being if you attack early enough to get them with a standing riposte while they're falling down, and another if you wait long enough to let them fall to the ground. If you attack too early for either of these windows, you can lose your riposte altogether. This adds some actual nuance to parrying enemies in groups, since you have a skill-based opportunity to decide when to get your defense frames, which are also cut down considerably from DS1. As a plus, many bosses can be parried but not riposted, emphasizing parrying as a tool in your combat arsenal rather than a separate timing minigame that obviates all other mechanics.

As for encounter design itself, it's largely a strict improvement on DS1, and all of the whining about group combat is rubbish. First of all, DS1 had plenty of group combat, and it often was far more egregious. DS1 loved to put you up against groups of enemies in cramped corridors that would cause half of your weapons to just bounce off the walls (think the Channeler rave party segment in Undead Parish, or the entirety of upper New Londo Ruins). Enemy attacks would layer like crazy and sometimes you'd be screwed from the getgo if you made one false move. This, along with the abusable aggro rules and general cheese, encouraged me to constantly pull enemies with arrows or spells to fight them one on one as is commonly argued is true of DS2. DS2 actually nails group combat with a lot of subtle improvements. One big one is the arenas -- you usually have enough room to actually attack with your weapons, and the arenas will often have various terrain to provide cover from ranged attackers and slow down enemies joining the fight. Destructible terrain is also used rather extensively to provide strategic opportunities around pathing or to guide enemies to self-destruct with black powder barrels. The layering of attacks is much more manageable with more gaps in enemy movesets. It's viable to rush in and dispatch enemies decisively, as well as to lead enemies to chase you for hit and run tactics. From early on I relied on rush tactics for even the most populous of encounters, like the glut of Royal Swordsmen before the Ruin Sentinels, because it was frankly both effective and fun. Constantly backing up to try to get """fair""" one-on-one fights seemed futile with how often enemies aggro together and are capable of chasing you for long distances and trapping you in a corner (I'm thinking of the Lonely Weeaboo Knights in Iron Keep, for instance). It's possible some players took the message that they'd get swarmed if they didn't pull individual enemies and cheese the aggro ranges and they just never learned what I did about the available strategies. That is a fault of the game in communication rather than the actual balance of encounters, but I can't think what else they could have done to get players on board other than being even more punishing towards this playstyle.

Boss design is a bit of a wash. Following on with the game's focus on group encounters, the group bosses in the game are decidedly better executed than those in DS1, with the likes of the Ruin Sentinels. Double Dragonrider, and Throne Watcher and Defender emphasizing positional awareness and engagement tactics far better than the likes of Ornstein and Smough, whose interaction with each other and the terrain are simply too broken to offer as satisfying a fight (for the record, the Bell Gargoyles took me upwards of 20 tries because I neglected to upgrade my weapon and still sucked, while O&S took me only 3 tries). The Ruin Sentinels alone took me countless attempts due to my lackluster DEX slashing build, but each time I learned something new to apply to my next attempt. You get a good chance to learn the first Ruin Sentinel's moveset on the platform, after which you must decide the manner in which you engage the other 2 -- do you preempt the 2nd with a plunging attack before the 3rd catches up, or do you bait the 2nd onto the platform for some one-on-one fighting only to drop down when the 3rd leaps up to follow? I also liked some of the gimmicky bosses like Prowling Magus, the Royal Rat Vanguard, the Executioner Chariot, and the Skeleton Lords as they make up what they lack in difficulty with frenetic shock value while you try to get your bearings. The one on one fights with humanoid bosses are pretty good (Dragonrider, The Pursuer, Lost Sinner, Ornstein 2: Electric Boogaloo, Looking Glass Knight), but the monster bosses are hit or miss. To be fair, I felt mostly the same way about Dark Souls 1 after the Capra Demon, but overall I found a lot of the bosses overly simplistic and easy, which was a bit of a letdown. I'll get to the DLC later. EDIT: I forgot to mention, the inclusion of the Pursuer spawns in levels was one of my favorite parts of the game. I particularly love that he despawns if you run away like a coward.

I must say I don't know what the hell people are going on about with the level design supposedly being bad. There are some great levels in DS2, from a gameplay standpoint as well as a visual spectacle. Forest of the Fallen Giants is an excellent starting level, with tons of variety in locale and geometry, lots of places to explore, and good introductory fights. The Lost Bastille has multiple entry points with lots of interesting connected areas that have you wondering how to get up to those ramparts. Earthen Peak has excellent vertical design, with lots of traps, hazards, and surprise ambushes alongside secrets and hidden areas. My personal favorite level had to be Brightstone Cove Tseldora. I love the treacherous one-way platforming, the blocked off routes, the strategy around the spider-torch interaction, and the hectic engagement at the quicksand pit with the spamming mages, basilisks, spiders, and the Invader, on whom I spent one of my Seeds of a Giant Tree and gleefully watched get swarmed by the other enemies. I also thought Shrine of Amana was super fun, as I generally like when melee and ranged enemies are mixed together with lots of terrain to use as cover. I don't know in what universe that place is more frustrating than the Undead Crypt. The bell gimmick is fine, but it should have been 1 bell per 1 (unbreakable!) statue, rather than swarming you with 5 wraiths who trap you against a rock and spam huge AoE pyromancies at you if you allow a single hollow to ring a bell. Christ that place pissed me off. All in all though, there was a lot of fun variety in the level design, and I found most areas fairly unique and memorable. Blighttown is still undefeated as my favorite Souls level (The Gutter doesn't even come close), but there are some contenders here.

One aspect in which DS1 obviously mops the floor with DS2 is in interconnected world design. The best thing that DS2's world design has going for it is its genuine nonlinearity, and the warpable bonfires allow you to switch between paths if you get stuck, but the sense of place and adventure that I had discovering Lordran is definitely not here. I like how much of Drangleic you get to see, and there is a lot of cool stuff there, but the simple branching just can't compare to the feeling of mentally mapping out the world and its connections in the first game. The game also really struggles in pointing you in the right direction at times, and I overall felt like I was just wandering around aimlessly for most of the game with no real sense of what I was supposed to be accomplishing. There's no real "aha" moment when you find the first Bell of Awakening, or see the gate to Sen's Fortress lift up after ringing both. When I obtained my first Great Soul my only thought was "uhhh okay what now?" This is one of the biggest flaws of DS2 for me, as it can be incredibly easy to forget what doors were locked or stumble upon the fork in the road to Huntsman's Copse when you're warping around trying to figure out where to go. I played the game blind without much guidance (which I'm glad about), and the game's own signposting left a lot to be desired. My experience with the beginning of the game best reflects this -- I went to Heide's Tower first because it was the most obvious exit out of Majula, and got steamrolled so many times by the mace-wielding Old Knight that the first Old Knight despawned. I doubled back and found Forest of the Giants, which I did entirely without any level ups because I didn't realize that I had to exhaust the Emerald Herald's dialogue to get them, and I thought the game was just withholding to to teach me the value of consumable items, so I blew all of my souls from the Last Giant on bunch of human effigies, Leningrast's Key, and firebombs.

The DLCs were a great capstone to my experience with the game. Overall, I thought Sunken King > Iron King > Ivory King (I played Ivory -> Sunken -> Iron). Sunken King had the best level design, with tons of verticality, traps, and hidden environmental interactivity. I thought Elana was a great boss, except I think it's super dumb that she can summon Velsdalt of all things. This is not a complaint about difficulty -- I actually thought it was easier to kite Velsdalt than the skeleton mobs -- I just think it's silly and dumb. She'd be one of my favorites if she stuck to skeleton summons. Sinh was good, but I preferred Kalameet from the first game's DLC. I blasted through the optional area with summons and had a grand old time. My only complaint was the back to back bosses -- I'd rather Elana have been at the top of the pyramid rather than the bottom. Iron King had some fun sequences and didn't overstay its welcome. I was shocked when Fume Knight took me only two tries after all of the hype I've heard for him. I just found his moveset super easy to read and I used a pretty low-commitment build, I guess. I actually died to Iron King more times than Fume Knight, of all things (hooray for rolling into lava). Sir Lonely Weeaboo kicked my teeth in about 15 times, though. Ivory King was not bad, but I found it rather tedious. Long gauntlets against sturdy mobs with few checkpoints, and not much available variety between attempts. Also, eternally fuck the Ice Rats, they're Wheel Skeletons but 10x worse because they damage you just by touching you and it's hard to even hit them with some weapons. Aava was a pretty good boss, and finding the Loyce Knights with everything unfrozen was a nice gimmick, but the Ivory King boss just encapsulated my feelings on the tedium of the DLC overall. The actual fight is great, but it's such a pain to fight through waves of Charred Loyce Knights every time just to try again. Frozen Reindeer Fuckland can also go to hell.

I can see why the game has acquired a poor reputation. While I think it makes some great strides on the first game, it does so by subverting player expectations and often without clearly communicating its intentions. I usually don't have too much trouble picking these things up and adapting, but I also see how the changes put the game in an awkward spot. It's likely a much more brutal game to Souls newcomers, but it also changes so much that many returning players may be put off. As someone who quite liked DS1 but thought there was a lot to improve upon, I'm quite satisfied with DS2 and will likely be returning to it in the near future. If I had to to sum up my feelings on the comparison, I'd say that DS1 was a more cohesive and thoughtfully designed experience, but DS2 can be more consistently fun and engaging to play on an immediate level. Also I dun care about story in Dark Souls lel, these are 90% pure gameplay games to me. But if I had to weigh in, I thought DS2's backstory and lore was mildly more interesting. The war with the giants and such held my interest more than the cyclical Age of Fire stuff, but neither are much more than a nice distraction to me anyway.

TL;DR Dark Souls 2 is a great follow-up to Dark Souls, but stumbles in a few areas which are exacerbated by the game's problems with communication.

 

[cvv]

Holy shit dude that's some serious graphomania.

Regardless, I agree almost completely with you.

DS2 does most things better than DS1. More builds, better itemization, more content, deeper systems, better PvP, tons of innovations. Levels are more consistent, no outright catastrophe like Izalith. I think objectively DS2 is a better game than DS1. I just love DS1 more bc of better feelz.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

DS2 is the best purely because you can be darth fucking maul

 

[Hyperion]

I also thought Shrine of Amana was super fun, as I generally like when melee and ranged enemies are mixed together with lots of terrain to use as cover. I don't know in what universe that place is more frustrating than the Undead Crypt.

Shrine of Amana was nerfed in one of the game's first patches. Undead Crypt has been left untouched. It's also impossible to skip SoA because of the volume of enemies, sluggish movement, and painfully linear path. The Undead Crypt was really just that 1 room that sucked, and you could dash out and open a shortcut before the Ghosts cause any major havoc. You can also destroy the summoning statues to (permanently) prevent further Ghost spawns. Even if you beeline the statues and only break 1 per death, you can pretty much defang the area with only 4 deaths, while unnerfed Amana is probably the single nastiest area in the entire series. Even with a Magic Havel's shield in your left hand you'll likely get rocked because the enemies simply don't play by the same rules as you there, and move at full speed while you trudge. Would have been a lot nicer if the game had the Iron Ring from DS1, but for some reason it was the one item that didn't make it back.

P.S. -

finally upgraded to the Warped Sword and a magic-infused Ice Rapier

Fuck you.

 

[Average Manatee]

Enemy despawning serves the dual purpose of alleviating tedium if an area's giving you too much trouble and also making souls a finite resource. This meant that every time I lost my souls, I'd actually give a damn about trying to get them back.

Not really the case. You can just turn on the higher difficulty covenant and it forces respawn of everything forever. Or use the bonfire ascetics to respawn stuff. It's completely trivial to farm absurd amounts of souls very quickly with ascetics.

In this context, lifegems are actually a good inclusion, as they enforce long-term decisionmaking about what you're willing to expend to get through an area, and turn the game away from a series of a discrete challenges where only your short-term performance matters and towards a more cohesive end-to-end experience. I get the complaint about farmable healing, but lifegems are initially limited and not too cheap, and reasonably well-balanced in terms of their use animation and slow heal over time. Moreover, you have to be deluded to argue that DS1 was elegantly and perfect with estus, because you could completely destroy the healing balance through kindling, or just spam one of your 99 humanity to heal between fights. The difference is, DS2 actively encourages resource use and makes it feel like a genuine part of the game, along with the humanity system and multiplayer (I still got invaded more than a dozen times in 2019). Renewable resources were a great inclusion in DS1, but ultimately made the game feel limiting at times. I really appreciate DS2's willingness to overhaul a lot of the systems to address this.

I don't think anything that lets you run around with 99 healing items is fit for a souls game. DS2's is worse though since its trivial to buy life gems (5k souls will buy enough to last you until its trivial to cap them out) while DS1 at least requires you to go out of your way and farm a bunch of humanity from a fairly late game DLC area. Also Life Gems are just way too good, being too quick to use, allowing slow movement while using, and stacking the heal with multiple gems. If they were toned down just a little bit and made so that being hit interrupted the healing they'd be much better, but as it is you can basically face tank bosses endlessly by spamming them.

I definitely found the DEX options a bit underwhelming in DS2, largely due to their limited damage types (very few options for Strike) and the gimped nature of DEX scaling (S DEX scaling means that a minimum of 60% of your physical dexterity rating is added to damage, while S STR scaling guarantees at least 100% of your physical strength rating is added). Strength weapons have the benefit of higher base damage, better scaling, more versatile damage types, greater ability to stagger opponents, and frequently better attack coverage, with the downside of being slower and costing more stamina. While I found thrusting weapons to be quite potent, curved swords definitely felt undertuned for the aforementioned reasons, especially for how many enemies are strong against slashing damage in the game (of which I overall approve as striking weapons are frequently shafted in RPGs). When I got to the Ivory King DLC, I found myself barely able to lay a scratch the basic mobs even with my ~45 DEX/INT and S scaling weapons and sorceries, so I had to parry and riposte through the whole area.

What? Dex weapons are way OP. A big issue with DS2's damage formula is that physical damage types don't really matter (other than elemental) since you can just overpower the purely flat damage reduction. Strike vs. Slash vs. Thrust quickly becomes fairly irrelevant once you've leveled a bit, and Dex weapons attack faster and harder with more flat damage bonuses from doubled up elemental damage bonuses (elemental is % reduction so it actually matters which you choose but you can also pretty much just overpower 90% of enemies). Strength weapons on the other hand are fairly trash since the way stagger works is simply broken and past the early levels their DPS is just way, way lower than quicker DEX weapons. I expect if you played again with a strength build you'd simply find it even worse. DS2 enemies and especially bosses just have way, way more health relative to your damage than anything in DS1, which makes everything feel weak and sucky by the late game and in DLC areas. Even if you roll the best min-maxed high-DPS weapons and bonuses.

Sorceries and all spells in general are complete shit for DS2, don't even try to get through the DLC areas with them.

More builds, better itemization... deeper systems

I don't know how you can say any of these considering that the way armor/poise/stagger work are fundamentally broken, spellcasting is universally awful for damage, and the game heavily incentivizes just mastering everything with how it gives you way, way too many souls by the late game even if you aren't going out of your way to farm.

 

[Hyperion]

farm a bunch of humanity from a fairly late game DLC area

Rats drops Humanity at a decent clip in Undead Burg. There's a decent number of them in the area right past where you cut the Dragon's Tail. If you have the bridge bonfire it's a 30 second walk to and from.

 

[Average Manatee]

farm a bunch of humanity from a fairly late game DLC area

Rats drops Humanity at a decent clip in Undead Burg. There's a decent number of them in the area right past where you cut the Dragon's Tail. If you have the bridge bonfire it's a 30 second walk to and from.

That's fine if you want a dozen humanity (which is all you SHOULD need, granted), but if you want 99 it takes a long, long time, whereas in DS2 the amount of souls to get 99 life gems is a few minutes of work by the mid game.

 

[cvv]

More builds, better itemization... deeper systems

I don't know how you can say any of these considering that the way armor/poise/stagger work are fundamentally broken

Dude what. The DS2 armor-poise-stagger is by far the best/least bad in the series.

spellcasting is universally awful for damage

True, true......except spellcasting is ridiculously OP? Seriously Manatee, are you alright?

and the game heavily incentivizes just mastering everything with how it gives you way, way too many souls by the late game

Just like any Souls game ever? Plus it's got nothing to do with DS2 having more builds, better itemization, better systems etc. which was my main point.

 

[Hyperion]

Sorceries and all spells in general are complete shit for DS2, don't even try to get through the DLC areas with them.

Sorcery is terrible until you get the lategame spells, then you just have tons of MP replenishing items that carry you for when you run out of casts. Hexes are stupidly strong. Miracles were nerfed from ridiculous to worthlessness though. 17 casts of Lightning down to 2. Fucking From lmao.

What? Dex weapons are way OP. A big issue with DS2's damage formula is that physical damage types don't really matter (other than elemental) since you can just overpower the purely flat damage reduction. Strike vs. Slash vs. Thrust quickly becomes fairly irrelevant once you've leveled a bit, and Dex weapons attack faster and harder with more flat damage bonuses from doubled up elemental damage bonuses (elemental is % reduction so it actually matters which you choose but you can also pretty much just overpower 90% of enemies). Strength weapons on the other hand are fairly trash since the way stagger works is simply broken and past the early levels their DPS is just way, way lower than quicker DEX weapons.

You're mixing PvE and PvP here. Strength weapons pretty much wreck PvE content in every Souls game, and DS2 is no exception. There are a few bosses where having higher attack speed will help you out since they're quite aggressive and you don't have much time to get damage in. Fume Knight comes to mind, as does the buffed up Smelter Demon, with his variable attack speeds and such. But for the most part, Strength dominates. Especially against the bosses you can pancake and stagger, like the Skeleton Lords or Dragonriders.

Dexfags in PvP though? Fucking hell.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I get the complaint about farmable healing, but lifegems are initially limited and not too cheap,

you have to be deluded to argue that DS1 was elegantly and perfect with estus, because you could [...] just spam one of your 99 humanity to heal between fights

Don't you think this is a bit of a disingenious argument

 

[Average Manatee]

Dude what. The DS2 armor-poise-stagger is by far the best/least bad in the series.

For PvE: Bosses are basically impossible to stagger, at least anywhere near the degree of bosses in DS1. There are scripted "stagger moments" when bosses reach certain thresholds but those are unrelated to actual poise damage. If you want to stagger something the best weapons to do it with are quick DEX weapons w/ stone ring since it adds a flat 30 poise damage per hit which is just lols.

For PvP: Your poise doesn't regenerate which is just fucked up, and a two handed dagger can stagger almost anything (I think literally anything, even the heaviest armor available, if you use stone ring).

As for damage, strength weapons are great in early game but fall off quick compared to buffs which massively favor quicker weapons. It's not too bad, they are still at least playably decent unlike spells. But what's the real point if anything staggerable is better off staggered by a weapons that can attack twice as quickly and get off 4x as many hits before running out of stamina?

spellcasting is universally awful for damage

True, true......except spellcasting is ridiculously OP? Seriously Manatee, are you alright?

Spells are fucking awful. Those are early game enemies, using basically the strongest spells available, still only getting 800 damage a hit. Go in late game areas where enemies start having 50% resistance to your crystal spears and its a joke since unlike DS1 you have no real useful spell buffs from equipment. I can do a damage comparison if you want.

and the game heavily incentivizes just mastering everything with how it gives you way, way too many souls by the late game

Just like any Souls game ever? Plus it's got nothing to do with DS2 having more builds, better itemization, better systems etc. which was my main point.

Just pulling numbers out of my ass here, but in DS1 you finish the game around level 75 while in DS2 you finish the game around level 150. If you spend any amount of time farming in DS2 (which is ridiculously profitable and easy to do) you can push that to level 200-225. That's a massive difference in # of points and character versatility. In DS1 you finished the game with a build that was just barely reaching the soft cap for 1 or 2 stats. In DS2 you do this around the first 1/3rd of the game. By the end of DS2 you no longer have a build, you are always a master of almost everything. Builds simply don't exist by end game DS2, which is part of why DS2 is no where near as fun to replay, because by the end game its always the same. DS1 takes until deep in the NG+'s to do this.

Also soul memory fucks with PvP to a similar degree. By the time you reach level 150 you'll probably be uncapped in the soul memory tiers meaning you'll be matched up to level 800s, so you might as well just level everything at least to their soft caps through some quick farming. There's a good reason PvP in DS1 was generally around the level 100 range.

 

[praetor]

farm a bunch of humanity from a fairly late game DLC area

Rats drops Humanity at a decent clip in Undead Burg. There's a decent number of them in the area right past where you cut the Dragon's Tail. If you have the bridge bonfire it's a 30 second walk to and from.

That's fine if you want a dozen humanity (which is all you SHOULD need, granted), but if you want 99 it takes a long, long time, whereas in DS2 the amount of souls to get 99 life gems is a few minutes of work by the mid game.

no, it fucking doesn't. in DS1 it'd be difficult to not have a nice fat stack of humanity by the first third of the game as the depths are full of rats which drop them at more than a decent rate (and there's a very nice cluster near the first bonfire, coincidentally a very popular early farming spot for large shards for most players, considering it's right where you get the ember to use them in the first place...). not to mention, by mid-game when you acquire the lordvessel, you can just go to the Tomb and farm them forever from the small skellies much easiier than anything in the entire goddamned series. you'll have max humanity before you break your weapon.

not to mention, DS1 humanities are the single most OP farmable healing item in the DkS series (not counting DeS as that game had exclusively farmable healings, and coincidentally the worst healing system in the franchise), in that way much worse than anything in DkS2. the rest of your post(s) is also the usual garbage drivel disproven multiple times already in this very thread, like your idiotic "ds2 has the worst magic" when in fact it's the only Souls game with a decent magic system (still garbage compared to Dragon's Dogma, but at least they tried something [and most of it even works] in DkS2, unlike the rest in the series)

EDIT:

For PvE: Bosses are basically impossible to stagger, at least anywhere near the degree of bosses in DS1. There are scripted "stagger moments" when bosses reach certain thresholds but those are unrelated to actual poise damage. If you want to stagger something the best weapons to do it with are quick DEX weapons w/ stone ring since it adds a flat 30 poise damage per hit which is just lols.

dude. do you even comprehend how much you contradict yourself? "boss staggers are unrelated to poise damage, but if you want to stagger them quicker get yourself a quick weapon and the poise damage ring". are you literally retarded?

 

[Average Manatee]

dude. do you even comprehend how much you contradict yourself? "boss staggers are unrelated to poise damage, but if you want to stagger them quicker get yourself a quick weapon and the poise damage ring". are you literally retarded?

There is normal stagger then there's a forced boss stagger after they lose x% of health. These are entirely separate. For the latter it is literally irrelevant what you do, for the former (which is generally quite hard to trigger compared to DS1), you're better off using very quick, normally low-poise damage weapons with the stone ring rather than the weapons you'd think that would be best for staggering (like a great hammer or w/e). There is no contradiction here.

There are a few spells that can somewhat reliably stagger some bosses. I think fire whip was the best. Still awful damage though.

 

[cvv]

The stuff about life gems is the only thing I disagree on with RoSoDude. They're evil. I never liked healing with humanities either. The whole point of Estus, one of the most brilliant RPG systems ever created, is to give you limited, non-farmable amount of healing between bonfires. Any farmable healing items defeat that purpose.

That said I don't mind healing consumables that are kindda rare and aren't farmable like Divine Blessings or the rice balls in Sekiro.

 

[RoSoDude]

I also thought Shrine of Amana was super fun, as I generally like when melee and ranged enemies are mixed together with lots of terrain to use as cover. I don't know in what universe that place is more frustrating than the Undead Crypt.

Shrine of Amana was nerfed in one of the game's first patches. Undead Crypt has been left untouched. It's also impossible to skip SoA because of the volume of enemies, sluggish movement, and painfully linear path. The Undead Crypt was really just that 1 room that sucked, and you could dash out and open a shortcut before the Ghosts cause any major havoc. You can also destroy the summoning statues to (permanently) prevent further Ghost spawns. Even if you beeline the statues and only break 1 per death, you can pretty much defang the area with only 4 deaths, while unnerfed Amana is probably the single nastiest area in the entire series. Even with a Magic Havel's shield in your left hand you'll likely get rocked because the enemies simply don't play by the same rules as you there, and move at full speed while you trudge. Would have been a lot nicer if the game had the Iron Ring from DS1, but for some reason it was the one item that didn't make it back.

Yeah, I've heard Shrine of Amana was a lot worse on release. I still hear people bitching about the SotFS version, though, which I find baffling. It's a nicely balanced level now.

P.S. -

finally upgraded to the Warped Sword and a magic-infused Ice Rapier

Fuck you.

If it makes you feel any better, this was long past the point where I ever got invaded in PvP, it was simply necessary for me to keep up with the DLC content. I only ruined people's day with parry cheese much earlier on with worse gear

Not really the case. You can just turn on the higher difficulty covenant and it forces respawn of everything forever. Or use the bonfire ascetics to respawn stuff. It's completely trivial to farm absurd amounts of souls very quickly with ascetics.

Not relevant for the majority of players. Covenants are just as poorly communicated as in the first game and I can't imagine many players will randomly join that covenant. You only start to get bonfire ascetics towards the end of the game, and I never used them anyway.

I don't think anything that lets you run around with 99 healing items is fit for a souls game. DS2's is worse though since its trivial to buy life gems (5k souls will buy enough to last you until its trivial to cap them out) while DS1 at least requires you to go out of your way and farm a bunch of humanity from a fairly late game DLC area. Also Life Gems are just way too good, being too quick to use, allowing slow movement while using, and stacking the heal with multiple gems. If they were toned down just a little bit and made so that being hit interrupted the healing they'd be much better, but as it is you can basically face tank bosses endlessly by spamming them.

See Hyperion's point about rats. I'm not arguing that lifegems are perfect (I'd have perhaps limited your carrying capacity to say, 10 at a time and put the rest into storage among other changes), but they fit the game's emphasis on resource management and testing the player on managing tougher individual encounters, for which a fixed healing system that sets the player back for making too many mistakes might have been a poor fit.

What? Dex weapons are way OP. A big issue with DS2's damage formula is that physical damage types don't really matter (other than elemental) since you can just overpower the purely flat damage reduction. Strike vs. Slash vs. Thrust quickly becomes fairly irrelevant once you've leveled a bit, and Dex weapons attack faster and harder with more flat damage bonuses from doubled up elemental damage bonuses (elemental is % reduction so it actually matters which you choose but you can also pretty much just overpower 90% of enemies). Strength weapons on the other hand are fairly trash since the way stagger works is simply broken and past the early levels their DPS is just way, way lower than quicker DEX weapons. I expect if you played again with a strength build you'd simply find it even worse. DS2 enemies and especially bosses just have way, way more health relative to your damage than anything in DS1, which makes everything feel weak and sucky by the late game and in DLC areas. Even if you roll the best min-maxed high-DPS weapons and bonuses.

In my experience, thrusting swords are the only truly great pure DEX weapons, but they also have the massive downside of being unable stagger enemies worth a damn (unless you use the Stone Ring I suppose). Everything else has mediocre damage (base + scaling) which drops too heavily with infusions to be worth it. I was frequently exhausting my entire stamina bar with my scimitar to kill individual mobs, without always staggering them. By contrast, I watched somebody steamroll the entire game's content with a quality build using the Mace, Grand Lance and a Great Club, and he was able to twoshot essentially every mob in the game all the way through the DLC while also having the benefits I mentioned (stagger, better damage types, attacks that hit multiple enemies). I accept that it may be a different story with bosses, but the game's difficulty seems more centered around the level encounters anyway. Also your analysis is totally backwards -- flat damage reduction hurts lower damage numbers much more than higher damage numbers, in that adding e.g. 100 attack to 300 attack effectively doubles your damage against an enemy with 200 protections (numbers drawn out of thin air, but you get my point). A scaling in DEX frequently means just over half of the added attack value of A scaling in STR (45% vs 80%), which amounts to much less damage overall due to flat damage reduction. The fact that split magic damage isn't godawful in this way due to being percentage based is actually a major mechanical improvement, if you ask me. Maybe I just wasn't minmaxing flat bonuses enough, even though I was constantly applying variants of Magic Weapon (I only ever found up to Ring of Blades +1 and I was most of the way through the game before I found Flynn's Ring).

Sorceries and all spells in general are complete shit for DS2, don't even try to get through the DLC areas with them.

Fake news, sorceries are just terrible in the Ivory King. My Great Soul Arrow twoshot (unbuffed) mobs in Iron King and did respectable damage in the Sunken King, for which judicious use of spells was invaluable.

I get the complaint about farmable healing, but lifegems are initially limited and not too cheap,

you have to be deluded to argue that DS1 was elegantly and perfect with estus, because you could [...] just spam one of your 99 humanity to heal between fights

Don't you think this is a bit of a disingenious argument

I think I was just a little imprecise. My point is not that DS2's healing is perfect while DS1's healing sucks, it's that DS1 had many of the same issues in practice, but DS2 actually seems designed with resource use in mind. 5 estus flasks is definitely a better system than 5 estus flasks + 30 lifegems, but 10 estus flasks + 30 humanity where estus can be used to facetank damage and the game's combat devolves into cheese anyway... I find it harder to say.

The stuff about life gems is the only thing I disagree on with RoSoDude. They're evil. I never liked healing with humanities either. The whole point of Estus, one of the most brilliant RPG systems ever created, is to give you limited, non-farmable amount of healing between bonfires. Any farmable healing items defeat that purpose.

That said I don't mind healing consumables that are kindda rare and aren't farmable like Divine Blessings or the rice balls in Sekiro.

DS1's system was theoretically most elegant design and perhaps they should have just stuck with it and refined it, but ultimately I thought DS2's healing system had some interesting consequences and didn't totally screw up gameplay. If it were up to me I'd make them much harder to come by (finite purchase from hag and found on corpses only), but I don't think From did such a bad job with them overall.


I'm glad I could incite another flame war about the quality of Dark Souls 2.

 

[sullynathan]

Someone seriously argued that instead tracking is a good thing?