No, seriously, Dark Souls 2 is the best Souls game

May 3, 2020 7:52 AM

In Defense of Dark Souls 2 [YouTube] “I know a lot of readers are already sharpening their pitchforks just from looking at that headline, so let me be super clear: I’m not just saying this to be controversial. I love this series. In fact, I’ve been on the Souls train from the very beginning. [...] his is in stark contrast to the general opinion of the wider Dark Souls community, which often considers Dark Souls 2 to be sort of a black sheep, the weakest entry in the series with tons of flaws. Notably, it’s also the only entry in the series not directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, though that famed head of the Souls franchise did have some hand in the game’s creation. So why do I love Dark Souls 2 so much when other hardcore Souls fans are more or less indifferent to it? The above video from YouTube essayist H. Bomberguy explains in far greater detail than I ever could.” [via: Polygon]

• Finding the humanity in Dark Souls 2 [Eurogamer]

“Dark Souls 2 is a strange game, though its weirdness emanates from just how conventional it is - especially given it's part of a series known for forging new boundaries. Over a year ago I wrote about revisiting Demon's Souls and being delighted to find it the freshest, riskiest and most experimental title in From's recent action-RPG line-up. Dark Souls, despite technically being set in a different universe, superficially does the whole sequel thing - it adds more levels, more monsters, more spells, and more varied environments to an already winning template, but joined the dots in one glorious interconnected world. It's hard to pinpoint what Dark Souls 2 added. The first "Souls" game not helmed by series director Hidetaka Miyazaki, Dark Souls 2 is a disappointingly conservative game. A majority of its environments feel like rehashes of prior "Souls" settings, so it's the third time we've seen From Software concoct a castle, a prison, and a dimly lit mire in this loosely defined series. This recycling of ideas is even truer of its bosses, which largely feel like remixes or modest adaptations of fiends we've fought before. More knights, more dragons, more cursed kings, etc. The rule of diminishing returns is in full effect.”

• Is Dark Souls II The Worst Game Ever Made? [Forbes]

“It's often argued the Dark Souls II teaches players, but one rarely hears about what is being taught. In its exploded plot we are told about love, guilt, greed, sex, war, chauvinism, hatred, and many other safely fictive themes, but we aren’t taught anything about them, nor are they presented in a way in which players could meaningful begin to experiment with them on their own. The game only teaches players about itself. The amount of time and effort spent in learning its lessons is dramatically outweighed by the significance of having that knowledge. What good does it do me to know that Intelligence scaling for magic users becomes half as effective after level 40? What have I learned by knowing that The Rotten's overhand smash attack can be dodged by rolling directly into it, or that his offhand sweep attack will automatically cause damage even when your character is several feet away. I learned all this and more, too much more. It took hours, and days, and weeks, and even now, after 150 hours of play, I have only just started to unravel the most arcane parts of the game. Why? This is less an education than a massive structure of enforced compliance, insisting on obedience to illogic by dressing it up as a fantasy diversion, and counterposing curiosity with swift and punishing traps that reset major progress, a kind of negative reinforcement that's long been established as the least effective form of instruction possible. This fusion of the worst possible teaching method with the least worthwhile knowledge become insidious when applied to a play structure designed for endless repetition, in which the next goal is always moving farther away.”

• Why I Think Dark Souls II Is Better Than The Original [Rock Paper Shotgun]

“There’s a popular notion that Dark Souls is a modern masterpiece, yet it’s sequel – though well received initially – isn’t even close to reaching the same soaring critical heights as its predecessor. If you’re examining the two games based on the cohesion of its assorted places, the way they’re connected and the wondrous sights along the way then that notion would be correct. Dark Souls feels like you’ve been dropped in a queasy, vicious nightmare, while Dark Souls 2 feels like you’re in a ‘gameworld’ – a collection of levels strung together in an altogether more linear fashion. Similarly, the Bell-ringing and ‘Four Grand Souls’ design of Dark Souls means that the boss fights are tied more deeply to the central goals of the game – there is a feeling of an event in one part of the world being attached to a grand design. In Dark Souls 2 you merely have to kill enough dudes to pass a gate, so you can go and kill some bigger dudes in a castle and the lands beyond it. But the secret of Dark Souls is that actually once that grand journey is over, a second begins – the path of mastery – and Dark Souls 2 is far far better at this. For many who play Souls games, that first adventure is enough, they play to exhaustion, dragging themselves over the finish line and reflect on what they’ve been through. For others, that’s merely the start, returning to new game plus, repeating the game with a new focus, forewarned and pre-armed with knowledge.”

posted by Fizz (11 comments total)

"on the Souls train"
posted by doctornemo at 8:12 AM on May 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

I completed my first run through of DS2 (The Scholar of the First Sin version) just a week ago, after completing Bloodborne and the first Dark Souls (The Remastered version) over the last few years. I went into the game knowing its reputation, worried about how much would be changed from the original Dark Souls. Like both of the other two games I'd played, the difficulty curve at the beginning is very, very steep, and made more so in DS2 by the (controversial!) mechanic that dying and hollowing reduces your maximum health by 5%, but a ring acquired in one of the early areas can mitigate this, and later in the game it doesn't really play much of a factor. I feel that way about a lot of the issues people raise with the game: early on, it makes the game a little harder, but at a certain point it doesn't matter much. For instance, I commonly read complaints about how, unlike any other entry in the series, in DS2 if you defeat an enemy in an area something like 12 times, they won't respawn again. This prevented a kind of farming players would do for key items and souls (the currency of the game). I am a pretty timid and methodical player in these games (you sort of have to be, early on), and I only ran into this happening once or twice, and it actually made it somewhat easier to maneuver through annoying areas since some enemies that I'd banged my head against four billion times weren't there.

So, if I step back and talk about the game outside of its common criticisms, I think it was really weird and wonderful. It's world was enormous and varied, and as hbomberguy points out, crafted to be tackled in a very specific way (not forwards and backwards as in DS1), which lead to some fantastic moments (in particular the journey through Aldia's Keep and up through the Dragon Shrine stands out). I loved how many different play styles the game presents as possibilities with the bounty of weapons and armor and spells and miracles and most importantly items that allow for changing how you've allotted your upgrade points if you wanted to try something entirely differently. I also think that the three DLCs for the game were great and very different from each other: explore a dark underground pyramid with a dragon at the bottom, explore a frozen castle that thaws for a second go-round, explore an ashen tower that you have to access via long enormous chain (!).

I loved the game. It wasn't perfect (the final boss wasn't super thrilling), but it stands up against the other two games I'd played. I personally liked it a little more than the first Dark Souls, although I could understand that people have the opposite view. (I think Bloodborne was better than both, it is a masterpiece) Dark Souls 2 is well worth playing, even the Scholar of the First Sin edition, which is not hbomberguy's advice. If you've never played a Souls game before, start with Dark Souls 1, but please don't skip the sequel.
posted by RubixsQube at 8:19 AM on May 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

It's often argued the Dark Souls II teaches players, but one rarely hears about what is being taught. In its exploded plot we are told about love, guilt, greed, sex, war, chauvinism, hatred, and many other safely fictive themes, but we aren’t taught anything about them, nor are they presented in a way in which players could meaningful begin to experiment with them on their own. The game only teaches players about itself. The amount of time and effort spent in learning its lessons is dramatically outweighed by the significance of having that knowledge. What good does it do me to know that Intelligence scaling for magic users becomes half as effective after level 40? What have I learned by knowing that The Rotten's overhand smash attack can be dodged by rolling directly into it, or that his offhand sweep attack will automatically cause damage even when your character is several feet away. I learned all this and more, too much more. It took hours, and days, and weeks, and even now, after 150 hours of play, I have only just started to unravel the most arcane parts of the game. Why? This is less an education than a massive structure of enforced compliance, insisting on obedience to illogic by dressing it up as a fantasy diversion, and counterposing curiosity with swift and punishing traps that reset major progress, a kind of negative reinforcement that's long been established as the least effective form of instruction possible. This fusion of the worst possible teaching method with the least worthwhile knowledge become insidious when applied to a play structure designed for endless repetition, in which the next goal is always moving farther away.

Me when I had to to calc homework even though I was never going to use it.
posted by Reyturner at 10:14 AM on May 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

Nah, the best one is Demon's Souls.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:17 AM on May 3, 2020

I've been watching a bunch of hbomberguy's video's, and they're consistently good. I especially recommend his video on the Transformers movie if you have vague memories of being traumatized by it as a kid.
posted by shponglespore at 11:34 AM on May 3, 2020

I disagree with hbomb on a lot of things, including this — he absolutely is motivated by contrarianism, in a deep way, don't believe it when he says otherwise — but even when I think his conclusions are bad it's always enjoyable to hear his point of view. He hasn't put out a new video in a long time tho, damn.
posted by fleacircus at 11:57 AM on May 3, 2020

Oh, and: DS2 is not the best Souls game, lol, of course not, ffs.
posted by fleacircus at 11:57 AM on May 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

Ds2 has by far the best PVP in the souls series but is hampered by the soul memory system. DS1 is a fucking nightmare where one of the main strategies of PVP was called dead angling and required you to use a weapon with a heavy backswing in it's attack animation and attack facing away from the person you were attacking, this would allow you to hit people who were hiding behind shields from because shield detection was based on the direction the attacking player was facing. DS3 had the awful mana potion system which allowed for multiple uses of high end spells which previously had been locked to single uses, while making bread and butter spell attacks far less effective. It also had a truly screwed poise (the stat that lets you withstand hits without being staggered) system that made basically every hit stagger unless you were in an attack with iframes at that moment.

Neither of these were problems in DS2, there was a slow but very effective shield break which would break any shield guard in a single hit and then give you a critical attack. In ds3, the nearly useless kick from DS1 returned which only drained more stamina than a normal attack on a guarding player. Poise in DS2 functioned similar to in one where it was essentially a hidden bar that refilled like stamina, getting hit would reduce that bar and if you got hit enough in a short enough period you would get stunned. It was a factor to balance in builds and allowed medium weapons that didn't have iframes baked into the attacks to work. In three you basically either went fast and light or with a heavy weapon that hopefully could use attack iframes to punish light attacks.

I'm ranting but ds2 had some of the best multiplayer in the souls games and three undid all the things that made two good and went back to a lot of the trash pvp that was in one.
posted by Ferreous at 2:50 PM on May 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

That said, a lot of the pve campaign was not great. Lots of bosses were "hit then dodge x 100" slogs. The dlc content improved on this a lot but also had a ton of its own bullshit (Hi frozen outskirts, I love to run through a slog of near instakill enemies to fight a boss I already fought but two at once).

The world felt far more disjointed and like series of wholly unconnected areas vs the really well thought out world of the original dark souls. In DS1 you can essentially see blighttown from the firelink shrine in the place it logically should be. In my mind DS2 had by far the best stats>mechanics base, but was hampered either laziness or crunch on the PVE side. Three was an overcorrection in the opposite direction when the franchise was returned to Miyazaki.
posted by Ferreous at 2:59 PM on May 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

One of the things that makes Dark Souls great is the cinematic introduction at the start. It's short, just a few minutes, but it does so much to put the player in the game's world and give them the context needed to start piecing together what's going on. Then, if you go back and watch it again after finishing, you might realise that it tells the game's story in reverse - that you just spent 40 or so hours undoing everything that was done before. It's really clever storytelling.

Demon's Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro all have their own ways of hinting at some deeper structure, hidden beneath the surface of the game, that gives it all some kind of meaning. I never got a sense of that from DS2; it just feels like a series of videogame levels with very little to tie them together. Oh well.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 4:39 PM on May 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

ds2 has some good hats
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 10:38 AM on May 4, 2020 [1 favorite]