Ya know, after Lords of the Fallen, I was ready to dump this company in to the proverbial toilet but they obviously went back to the drawing board and released a brand new title in only a single month which improved on almost everything that was wrong with their game. Oddly, it is titled “Dark souls 2”, an homage to the famous series which never actually had a second installment.
The team has clearly decided that making a functional game is a much better way to spend money than simply making more polygons, shadows and textures. They’ve gone with a more cartoony approach but the silly looking graphics pair well with the kitchen sink style of gameplay that they’ve gone with here.
Say goodbye to slip’n’slide, low impact, farty battles because Dark Souls 2 has completely revamped the combat system that plagued Lords of The Fallen. Now you have hefty, satisfying strikes and good control of your position on the field. They’ve also given up the ludicrously lame lantern and dark world ripped off from the popular 90s adventure game classic “Dark Seed” which is a monumental improvement.
Balance has become a thing of the past now, Lords of the Fallen was plagued with haughty micromanagement by developers to keep their players from enjoying themselves. In Dark Souls 2, nothing is stopping you from breaking the game. You can carry 1000s of arrows, you’re drowning in upgrade materials, levelling up boosts your power quickly and noticeably, the AI is wacky and exploitable, instead of having to choose a single summon that does barely any damage and dies in 2 hits, you can bring multiple badass npcs with you and mercilessly bully the bosses.
Instead of directly copying Dark Souls like they used to, the team has changed the atmosphere to be more more dream-like and Silent Hillish. I’m glad they decided to do something original, let Dark Souls be Dark Souls and Lords of the Fallen can be Dark Souls 2.
The one blunder they’ve stuck with are the abundance of ambushes, which really start to become insulting within an hour. I’m not going to fall for more than one ambush, do game designers think we’re that stupid? They did at least cut down the amount of enemies and don’t grind your patience down to the nub with constantly respawning mooks.
So far I’ve explored the giants forest, tower of flame, the pirate den and killed the lost sinner. It’s no Dark Souls, but it’s definitely the best soulslike I’ve ever played.
