From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[Perkel]

Main difference in shrine of amana was that they removed most of tactical challange to rush those spellcasters as you can walk up to them freely without any issue while in original guys would rush you.

I don't remember enough if they removed some of those enemies there but it is noticeably easier than it used to. And yes Shrine of Amana was one of my favorite places in DS2.

Overall changes from DS2 to SOTF edition made it worse. SOTF is basically multiplayer edition of DS2 and should be seen as that.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

I've summoned a guy last night who dropped me two figurines. So cute. Don't give up, skeleton!

 

[toro]

Dark Souls II stat system is no doubt the best in series

FTFY

Almost correct, except everyone with taste knows that Demon's is the best.

Your e-penis is so tremendous it left your brain without blood.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

My problem with the shrine isn't so much the difficulty (its really easy to cheese, which in itself is bad design as it basically invalidates most builds. Just take a bow and tolerate the janky manual aim mechanic), but the fact that its a long, tedious corridor full of annoying enemies who exist to waste your time and cheat. The entire level feels like padding / filler.
Case in point - the corrosive mushrooms. Why are they even there? There is no reason to block off that corridor other than to annoy the player and stop him from running to the boss. That to me is bad design. That wasn't even in the original Dark Souls 2, that's something they added in SoFTS just to be cunts.
The boss at the end isn't even good either; much like the rest of amana there's an time-waster mechanic where you can only damage it if it shows its face and its not even that interesting in terms of movesets, it just lazily flails its arms around and somehow takes half your health despite having no impact behind the attacks. Just back off and hit with a lightning weapon in the brief time you can attack it and repeat, that's it.

 

[Caim]

The craftsman's hammer and the blacksmith's hammer are cool weapons. I have them lightning infused and they are doing work. I'm almost tempted to power stance them for the lols.

The Blacksmith's Hammer is amazing when infused for just about any caster build. Sure, 15/7 is not the lowest requirement but with damage well over 450 at either a 50 int/faith or 30/30 for pyro/dark it is one hell of a weapon. For a pure strength build and Fashion Souls I'd recommend twin Maces (I did a Mace Windu run last year, it was a ton of fun) instead, but if you're willing to commit the souls (reminder that you also need quite a bit of Stamina to wield them effectively) you're looking at a really fun build.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

The craftsman's hammer and the blacksmith's hammer are cool weapons. I have them lightning infused and they are doing work. I'm almost tempted to power stance them for the lols.

The Blacksmith's Hammer is amazing when infused for just about any caster build. Sure, 15/7 is not the lowest requirement but with damage well over 450 at either a 50 int/faith or 30/30 for pyro/dark it is one hell of a weapon. For a pure strength build and Fashion Souls I'd recommend twin Maces (I did a Mace Windu run last year, it was a ton of fun) instead, but if you're willing to commit the souls (reminder that you also need quite a bit of Stamina to wield them effectively) you're looking at a really fun build.

Yeah, my stats right now are something like Vig 20- End 20- Vit 8- Att 16- Str 30- Dex 10 - Int 4- Fth 45, and I use a tower shield with heavy armor keeping my equip load at around 85%, and I can still deal some decent damage with the lightning hammer. I only increased my dex so I could use the craftsman hammer instead of the blacksmith's hammer.
The only time I didn't use either was against the Looking Glass Knight. For him I used a morning star.
I think the most number of times I died against a boss was 7, against the Smelter Demon, and that was because I didn't have anything with good fire defense at the time so I had to work out how to side step his flaming sword swings.

Spoiler

Also I used a Sunbro.

 

[RoSoDude]

Oh that's right I forgot to talk about the Craftsmans's Hammer vs. the Blacksmith's Hammer. I have the former at +3 and am considering switching to the latter at +7 to save on Twinkling Titanite. Here are the differences.

Craftsman's Hammer:

• Requires STR 20 DEX 10
• Upgrades with Twinkling Titanite
• 166 base damage at +0
• 250 base damage at +5
• B STR scaling (77.8%)
• 30 poise damage per hit
• 30% counter damage bonus
• Slightly longer reach

Blacksmith's Hammer:

• Requires STR 15 DEX 7
• Upgrades with normal Titanite
• 145 base damage at +0
• 290 base damage at +10
• B STR scaling (55%)
• 40 poise damage per hit
• 0% counter damage bonus
• Slightly lower stamina drain

While the upgraded Blacksmith's Hammer seems a bit better on paper, in practice that they're about even in my experience. The Craftsman's Hammer's secret strength is in its counter damage. If you start an attack on an enemy as they're about to strike you, the damage bonus you get might be enough to outright kill them if you aren't able to stagger. This was particularly relevant for Alonne Knights -- a single jumping attack would reliably kill them right before they got their attack off, while they'd be left with a sliver of health and still unstaggered with the same from my Blacksmith's Hammer, despite the latter's nominally higher damage. So it comes down to some nuances in playstyle and preference, and there's a good argument for either one being your main. The Craftsman's Hammer might allow you to be more aggressive with its reach and counter damage, but the Blacksmith's Hammer lets you stick to bigger enemies and beat them down faster with its higher poise damage and lower stamina drain. It's also worth noting that the Blacksmith's Hammer is better for infusions.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

the Craftman's Hammer uses 10 dex, not 12. Otherwise seems a bit right.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Man, i remember all the hype that i had watching the trailers when the game came out, i even remember getting all the plats of Dark Soul and Demon Souls before this game came out, i even remember skipping school to pick it up like 100km away from home. Enough to say that the game didn't lived up to expectations but i put some 400hs into it anyway, never played the dlc but heard they were okay. This game killed my love for the franchise so bad that until this day, i haven't played Dark Souls 3. Dual wielding was cool, made a few edgy characters with it.

 

[praetor]

that's such next level retardation not even Skyway...

the codex never disappoints i guess

 

[Multidirectional]

i even remember getting all the plats of Dark Soul and Demon Souls before this game came out, i even remember skipping school to pick it up like 100km away from home. Enough to say that the game didn't lived up to expectations but i put some 400hs into it anyway, never played the dlc but heard they were okay. This game killed my love for the franchise so bad

Repeatedly dropping children on their heads must be a long lived tradition in the village you come from. I fucking love DSII and still don't have 400 hours in it.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

This game killed my love for the franchise so bad that until this day, i haven't played Dark Souls 3.

But DS3 is a great game!

 

[Lutte]

the game didn't lived up to expectations but i put some 400hs into it anyway.

You put more time into the game you disliked most than I put in playing every single modern From game, DeS, DaS1-2-3, Bloodborne, Sekiro all combined and I finished all of them - except for Bloodborne DLC because that's not available on PSNow.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

I was poor in HS and didn't have anything else to play.

This game killed my love for the franchise so bad that until this day, i haven't played Dark Souls 3.

But DS3 is a great game!

It could be, i'll never know.

 

[Akratus II]

My problem with the shrine isn't so much the difficulty (its really easy to cheese, which in itself is bad design as it basically invalidates most builds. Just take a bow and tolerate the janky manual aim mechanic), but the fact that its a long, tedious corridor full of annoying enemies who exist to waste your time and cheat. The entire level feels like padding / filler.
Case in point - the corrosive mushrooms. Why are they even there? There is no reason to block off that corridor other than to annoy the player and stop him from running to the boss. That to me is bad design. That wasn't even in the original Dark Souls 2, that's something they added in SoFTS just to be cunts.
The boss at the end isn't even good either; much like the rest of amana there's an time-waster mechanic where you can only damage it if it shows its face and its not even that interesting in terms of movesets, it just lazily flails its arms around and somehow takes half your health despite having no impact behind the attacks. Just back off and hit with a lightning weapon in the brief time you can attack it and repeat, that's it.

I was playing the Dark Souls board game with some friends and was inspired to replay, and finally finish DS2. Never finished the DLC or the last three bosses in SotfS so am now replaying the game. Got a Demon Great Hammer from my petrified something starting gift and just beat the demon of song. I was reminiscing about how much trouble the Shrine gave me the last time. I'm still playing a strength build without a shield so I took it real careful this time around. I really think this area's difficulty is overblown in every aspect except one. If you take it one enemy at a time it is completely doable. For example early on there's an area where you can get one of those water creatures, a rusty giant and one of those sorceresses on your ass at the same time. But if you take it one step at a time you can easily aggro only one and take it out before the next one. That, and the projectiles from the sorceresses are actually really easy to dodge despite the tracking. Only when there is one out of sight do they give me any issues. Rolling under them works but I prefer to just walk towards the projectile and then go around it up close. It's hard to describe but I was actually surprised how naturally it came to me. Also, I obviously have the benefit of one-shotting all the enemies. I just realized that's a big advantage.

Either way, I'd say the only thing that really ground my gears was the area after the mushrooms. There already is water slowing you down all over the place but here it really slows you down to a crawl. A small reduction in speed is alright for an added challenge. Being reduced to a crawl is just maddening. But there are pillars you can easily block projectiles with as you take out the sorceresses one at a time while the enemies in the centre stay out of aggro range. That fucking NPC invader took me out cheaply though, twice. I'm not sure if it was mostly the mad damage I'm doing that helped but I really didn't have any major trouble here, after pancaking the NPC invader and utilizing cover there I could get to the boss reliably and that was it. I do agree that guy isn't very interesting and a total pushover though.

I am very far from a great Souls player so I was actually surprised how swiftly I got through the area. Oh and the mushrooms, eh they were kind of pointless but didn't bother me as much. I could rush the big one easily, take out the smaller ones and move on.

 

[Multidirectional]

Guys, did you know that Ruin Sentinels can destroy chests behind illusory walls? Well, I just found out couple hours ago.

 

[toro]

Spoiler

i like big bird

 

[Verylittlefishes]

45 hours in, finally came to the Drangleic Castle. What an utter generic lazy stupid shit this game is! Unbelievable.

 

[Lyric Suite]

One of the worst areas in the game. Looking Glass boss was neat though.

 

[Silverfish]

Man, I actually liked Drangleic Castle. The atmosphere during the approach / rooftop sections is killer, there's a unique gimmick with the statues that open doors by absorbing the souls of downed enemies, bosses get repurposed in forms that are actually fun to fight, and there's cool small touches like the painting of Nashandra inflicting curse buildup. DS2 has more than its fair share of shit areas, but this one gets it right.

 

[Caim]

The statue room in DS2 becomes bullshit if you want to move through the room more than once. Sure, you can pick the two doors that actually lead somewhere, but if you try to open up all the doors and then go through it again you'll get mobbed. This is especially bad if you've never played the area before and have to guess which door to take, even if you fully understand how the statues open the doors. And if you're not prepared and get your ass beat, restock at the bonfire and try again... well, have fun.

 

[fork]

Yeah, you have to git gud first.

 

[RoSoDude]

I only played SotFS, but it looks like it butchered Drangleic Castle (I quite like Scholar overall but there are some bad changes). Changes I observed by checking a few videos:

Entrance: Moved the Mastodons earlier which is fine, more enemies including two Drangleic Knights, I'm fine with this
Back room first floor: Enemy group (knights + footsoldiers) replaced by knight statues waking up, this is fine
Ruin Sentinel room seems same
Mask trap room has an item in the corner instead of a chest in the center, guess it's fine
Only other difference on the way to double Dragonrider is that the knights are petrified, which I actually like
After the first boss is where the decline starts. The golem room no longer has a cool fight against multiple statue enemies that can wake up all at once if you're not careful, instead you have to pull some manikins from the next room. Just dumb.
Big room has the chariot executioner boss again instead of a Mastodon and two knights, and greatsword old knights instead of Alonne Captains. New fights are just 1v1 big enemy, all dynamics gone
No Mastodon outside
Gargoyle shows up on the roof which is okay, but I liked having 2 Alonne Captain archers instead of 1 here
Empty room now has 2 desert sorceresses which sucks in close quarters depending on what spells they do, wall ghost guy is funny tho
No more knight on the stairs down, which makes killing the roof archer pointless
Basically, I like the petrified knight idea, dislike most other changes
The new fights are just dumb and don't feel like they have much going on

To be fair, the castle levels of every Dark Souls are total snorefests. If I had to rank them, I'd say Drangleic Castle > Anor Londo > Lothric Castle, but they're all C tier or below.

 

[Lutte]

I only played SotFS

It needs to be said: SOTFS does more wrong than right and the only reason people praise it is because they played DS2 at launch, hated a few areas like Shrine of Amana prepatch, then replayed through DS2 through SOTFS and thought SOTFS is what made the positive changes to the game : it did not, patches fixed areas like amana, SOTFS has nothing to do with it.

SOTFS completely botched the Iron Keep and added random changes like trying very hard to make the worse areas of the game like Heide more interesting but rather than interesting the changes just make the areas a slog. Heide was uninteresting before but you quickly ran through and forgot about it. Now there's a gauntlet of idiocy added on top of the groups of giant armor dudes that aggro when you defeat the main area boss and there's a drake guarding not-ornstein which has no interesting moves but a ton of hp.

It's supposedly a little of a graphic upgrade but I barely notice it too.

 

[d1r]

Dark Souls 2 SOFTS is the epitome of Quantity > Quality.

I still love it though because of the gameplay and multiplayer (if you do low-lvl invasions).