Love the game, but I also love Dark Souls 2.

Was wondering why Dark Souls 2 Is loathed by some fans and Dark Souls 3 is venerated by the those same fans?

  • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I don't understand this take. How was DS2 any harder than DS1?

    • EldritchMayo [he/him,comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Horrible enemy placements, hollowing that reduces your health to half (ds1 doesn’t do this, ds3 has embers which just increase health by 30%), extremely low estus in the start meaning consumables are mandatory, enemies are just fast while the combat is slow so they can really surround you

      • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Seems to me that Dark Souls 2 just tested crowd control as a skill more than DS1 did. Which seems fair to me? That's a valid skill to have in this sort of game.

        • EldritchMayo [he/him,comrade/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I think combined with the agility mechanics especially early game fighting crowds is just not fun. They do lots of damage and stun you. Better to fight a few fewer enemies where tactics play more of a role as opposed to using cheesing as a strategy, imo, like in ds3 where you fight maybe two lothric knights at once who have varied and interesting moves

          • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
            ·
            edit-2
            4 years ago

            That's fair. And your point about Lothric Knights does make me realize something else- for the early game, they're a tough enemy that's also a lot of fun to fight, and I can't really think of any similar, particular enemy types in DS2 that I particularly like fighting. Like, there's very few enemies I can think of that I hate in particular, but a lot of the enemies just sort of merge together in my head. They're a bit samey, I guess.

            And fair point about the early game. In part because of the Agility stuff and in part because of the level design, I've often said that DS2 is a reverse DS1. That is, in DS1, the first half is phenomenal and the second half sucks, but in DS2 it's mostly the opposite- I don't think the bad parts of DS2 are as bad as the bad parts of DS1, though.

            • EldritchMayo [he/him,comrade/them]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Yeah, for me the early game of ds2 was just not fun especially because I started as deprived which was a mistake (I had beaten ds1 and ds3 before) because unlike the other souls games deprived gets literally nothing and I didn’t know about the hand axe so I had to do the whole area with a dagger. Besides that though just fighting enemies doesn’t feel that fun to me in ds2. I think ds2 had a lot of improvements over ds1 but in many ways it also got worse, so idk. I don’t hate the game, I just don’t like it as much as 1 and 3. Hopefully Elden ring will be a banger.