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Gaf, why is Dark Souls 2 so bad?

RoadHazard

Gold Member
I also just went from BB to DkS2 the other day (after previously having also beaten DkS1 and DeS), and while I'm having fun so far (not very far in), it does feel... weird? To me it feels stiffer and less responsive than I remember DkS1 being, like it's in some odd way a regression to how DeS played (I love that game, but it controls more primitively than DkS1). The level design (so far, I'm only in the castle after the forest) also feels more simplistic and like a regression. Again, more like DeS in some way (and no, I'm not saying that game didn't have great level design). This also goes for the enemies, somehow. It's hard to put my finger on, but everything just feels like a step back. But maybe all of this is just because I'm coming right off the amazingly fluid and smooth BB. And before that I played DeS. DkS1 (which I played first) was quite a while ago for me.

And yeah, I've just started running into those rooms where you get locked in with a horde to kill. First time the game has been any difficult thus far. But I'm not angry or bored yet. As I said, I'm having fun, and fully plan on beating this before DkS3 arrives.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Lol yes. The Matthewmatosis video is literally "Let's nitpick about every fucking thing and some of those things are true for Dark Souls 1 but they're good in that game because reasons"

Agreed. Why that worthless video keeps getting referenced is beyond me. Its worthless.
 
Lol yes. The Matthewmatosis video is literally "Let's nitpick about every fucking thing and some of those things are true for Dark Souls 1 but they're good in that game because reasons"

Only if you want to be reductionist. The video is nearly an hour long and covers every single aspect of the game. Even if you disagree with some of his points there's little logic in trying to paint every single thing he says under a "nitpick!!!" brush unless you just want to handwave away the whole video without bothering to offer a sound rebuttal.

Agreed. Why that worthless video keeps getting referenced is beyond me. Its worthless.

No it isn't. As someone who played and finished SoftS last month and just watched the video right now (meaning I haven't been in the DSII conversation all that long enough at all to color my expectations), he raises a ton of good critique across the wide range of design aspects that he covers. Calling a 50-minute video "worthless" in its entirety isn't convincing in any way.
 

jimboton

Member
So much wrong and your Amelia point just gave away that you are bad at the game. You can stop the healing completely.

That was the point, he's making ridiculous claims about Bloodborne.. except the part about chalice dungeons and broken multiplayer are very close to being fair claims of course.

Also, didn't you read the OP? cause it's even worse... and it's probably serious :D
 

Wagram

Member
It's not bad, it's better than Bloodborne.

That's my opinion though :)

Soulsborne fans are really hypocritical. There's problems in each of the Soulsborne titles, but they're only extreme problems in Dark Souls II. Just because it's Dark Souls II.

I wish bad games were as good as Dark Souls II
 

Ferrio

Banned
It's a great game. It has a few shortcomings, but makes up for it in other ways. The online is by far the best in the series, and the collection of weapons is huge which somehow most people spin as being a bad thing.

For people who play only offline I could see it being a disappointment.
 

Listonosh

Member
It's not so bad, it's just hugely disappointing. If I had to give a quick answer I would say the changes to movement and the way the world and lore was handled. Both are worse than Dark Souls and Bloodborne by a significant margin.

The problem of course is intensified by the fact that the game attempts to follow in Dark Souls's footsteps, so the whole time you're thinking "why don't I just play Dark Souls instead?" Bloodborne has a lot of things that it doesn't do quite as well as Dark Souls I think, but the game as a whole seems different enough that it doesn't make me just want to play Dark Souls.

At the end of the day it's a game that's just not worth playing I think, but it's not bad.

I think this comment summarizes it best. Everyone simply replying "it's not bad" are probably in blissful ignorance of its vastly superior prequel and the "different" bloodborne. It's tolerable, but man did the devs miss the point in what makes those games great. ESPECIALLY in scholar of the first sin. Those remixed enemies make absolutely no sense, and are just placed randomly to make the game "harder" because that's what Souls to them is all about.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
I think this comment summarizes it best. Everyone simply replying "it's not bad" are probably in blissful ignorance of its vastly superior prequel and the "different" bloodborne. It's tolerable, but man did the devs miss the point in what makes those games great. ESPECIALLY in scholar of the first sin. Those remixed enemies make absolutely no sense, and are just placed randomly to make the game "harder" because that's what Souls to them is all about.

Yes, everyone who loves Dark Souls 2 is a blissfully unaware idiot. Well put. I also agree about Scholar. Whose fucking idea was it to put all the Heide Knights in Heide?
 

Wagram

Member
I think this comment summarizes it best. Everyone simply replying "it's not bad" are probably in blissful ignorance of its vastly superior prequel and the "different" bloodborne. It's tolerable, but man did the devs miss the point in what makes those games great. ESPECIALLY in scholar of the first sin. Those remixed enemies make absolutely no sense, and are just placed randomly to make the game "harder" because that's what Souls to them is all about.

I like Dark Souls 1 as much as the next guy, but that comment is ignorant as fuck. Your opinion is not the only accepted one. Someone who likes PvP may vastly prefer DS2, because it takes a giant shit all over every other titles in the series.
 
We don't know if they're exclusive yet. We haven't had a Souls game since Bloodborne.

They already had the life gems in DS2. These carried over to Bloodborne.

Now DS3 footage looks fast (like Bloodborne) so it may have inherited some BB mechanics.

I'm still optimistic though.

You realize that demons souls had health consumables way before those two right?
 

MayMay

Banned
I like Dark Souls 1 as much as the next guy, but that comment is ignorant as fuck. Your opinion is not the only accepted one. Someone who likes PvP may vastly prefer DS2, because it takes a giant shit all over every other titles in the series.

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And the phantom range issue is by far the worst in DS2, it's not as bad in both DS1 and BB.
 
I predict Dark Souls 3 will have more or less the same flaws as the past games in the series, but those flaws will be given a pass because Miyazaki.

Oh please enough with this lame ass excuse for a reason people think BB Des and Ds1 are much better designed games on the whole than Dark Souls 2. As if we dont have people saying thing all the time like soul tendency sucked, blood vial farming was a bad idea, and that Ds1`s second half fell off.

The things people hammer Ds2 for are the very things the games have always excelled at.

- Interesting looping level and world design.
- Excellent environmental storytelling
- Combat that forces you to commit to your actions but not so much that it makes fighting enemies a slog
- Interesting and diverse and challenging boss design
- Challenging but fair encounter design

Dark Souls 2 throws much of the originals design philosophy to the wayside and adopts systems that make the game feel far too foreign from its predecessors. BB came along and reminded everyone that FROM Is still capable of delivering that design and Miyazaki happens to be the common denominator in all 3 games. That should tell you something. Not to mention the fact that Ds3 is also going back to what made the games such a joy to playthrough

For me Dark Souls 2 world design is bland. Far too many square rooms with nothing of note within them. Bosses are boring and rarely a challenge save for a few greats in the DLC. My biggest gripe is the combat and movement plus adp. Whoever thought it was a good idea to add ADP, slow down estus and item usage, and make it so your character faces away from your enemy when rolling while locked on need needs to be fired. Those changes completely dampen the excitement of combat and make encounters more of a struggle against the game's mechanics. The lore is forgettable, and course the level design is lacking.

Of course this is all said in comparison with the other games. On its own, Ds2 is a fine game. Just not one id bother putting 100s of hours into like the others, regardless of how much I enjoy PvP in these games.

Ds3 is bringing back enjoyable gameplay, interconnected world/level design, and hopefully interesting lore/story. If it can accomplish all of that and retain Ds2's online connectivity improvements, we're all in for a treat.
 

Mman235

Member
It's the The Dark Knight Rises of Souls games. Good movie with some problems, and not as much heart in it as the one before it.

If anything this is the opposite of how I feel about Dark Souls 2 and gets at the thing that makes it distinct for me when I think about it. DS2 is a bunch of less experienced (at least in Soul's case) designers having to follow up something like Dark Souls 1 and realising the impossibility of that, and a lot of the lore is a blatant allusion to the frustration of having to follow up a game like DS1.

To say that something feels like a "mod" is unfortunately a pejorative, when I don't really consider it as such (given that I've played many mods that have improved on their inspirations, including certain parts of DS2), but I would say that DS2 feels like that in some ways, a lot of the changes feel like "dream" ideas of how to fix issues with DS1 without quite executing them in a way that does (even if some of them do straight up fix stuff), and on the nuts & bolts level I feel the hand of the designers is more obvious than the other games, which is part of how it feels less cohesive, as there's a lot of "wouldn't it be cool if..." over everything else.

Even with their own major issues other Souls games feel more like a masterpiece of visionaries come to life, which is great and technically "better", but it's cold in a certain sense with how effortlessly seem to do it. Whereas DS2 is a bunch of people who know they don't really have a chance trying as hard as they can; it's pretty much all heart, and I love it for that.
 

Bootsy

Member
As someone who plays souls games exclusively wearing light armor and without shields I expected BB, which was tuned for that gameplay in mind, to grab me a lot more than it did. A lot of it probably comes down to BB's abysmal framerate as I wasn't even that into DS1 until the pc port but whenever I want a DS fix I generally fire up DS2 and fuck around in that sandbox.
 
Its soulless. Way too multiplayer focused. The world doesn't feel real. Fast travel from the start sucks. Hitboxes on bosses suck. Too many bosses. Not enough memorable bosses. Feels like it was made for the yotuube generation.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
No it isn't. As someone who played and finished SoftS last month and just watched the video right now (meaning I haven't been in the DSII conversation all that long enough at all to color my expectations), he raises a ton of good critique across the wide range of design aspects that he covers. Calling a 50-minute video "worthless" in its entirety isn't convincing in any way.

I never made it to the end. However I don't need to listen to all 50 minutes of inane, pedantic, specious drivel in order to make an informed value judgement. :D

Worthless.
 

Bedlam

Member
I play all the Soulsborne games religiously, except for DS2. It never really clicked for me for reasons that are well known by now. One playthrough, then I tried the SOTFS edition a couple of weeks ago and aborted that attempt about half-way through. DS2 just feels bad and is not as addicting for me as the other games in the series.

Agreed. Why that worthless video keeps getting referenced is beyond me. Its worthless.
It's absolutely on point.
 
It's a great game, just nowhere near as great as DS1, and it has tons of issues, still enjoyed it more than what I've played of BB so far.

"Best PvP" right here.

Phantom range made pvp in the game objectively garbage, don't know why anybody would bother with it.
 
Nah, I have serious issues with it but it's not a bad game at all. The weakest of the Souls games for me by far but it's not a bad Souls game either, I certainly used to think it was a bad Souls game.....

....then I played Lords of The Fallen and boy did that ever re-calibrate how I look at the Souls series, GARBAGE game, the hottest garbage in fact, like, raging inferno at a waste treatment plant, garbage.
 

Cyrano

Member
Even with their own major issues other Souls games feel more like a masterpiece of visionaries come to life, which is great and technically "better", but it's cold in a certain sense with how effortlessly seem to do it. Whereas DS2 is a bunch of people who know they don't really have a chance trying as hard as they can; it's pretty much all heart, and I love it for that.
Its soulless. Way too multiplayer focused. The world doesn't feel real. Fast travel from the start sucks. Hitboxes on bosses suck. Too many bosses. Not enough memorable bosses. Feels like it was made for the yotuube generation.
Somehow Dark Souls 2 is the opinion pendulum of all videogames.
 

Tiops

Member
People really get mad when Dark Souls 2 is criticized, huh? But don't worry, we only complain about the game because it's not exclusive and it's not made by Miyazaki. It's not like anyone actually presented reasons to support their opinions.
 

reson8or

Member
I've platinumed Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne. Did not have the desire to try with DS2. DS2 is a gigantic game, but its lack of the Miazaki touches make it objectivley the worst in the series. Not a bad game at all, but the lesser of the souls style games.
 

Ferr986

Member
People really get mad when Dark Souls 2 is criticized, huh? But don't worry, we only complain about the game because it's not exclusive and it's not made by Miyazaki. It's not like anyone actually presented reasons to support their opinions.

Same as people get mad when they see someone saying the game is good, like the poster up there calling people ignorant for it.

And the phantom range issue is by far the worst in DS2, it's not as bad in both DS1 and BB.

You're right, but again, backstab lag was worse on DS1 than any other game. Both have their faults.
 

Havel

Member
The only real issue I have with the game is that melee combat feels like absolute garbage compared to all the other games in the series. It's so damn clunky.
 

Breads

Banned
And the phantom range issue is by far the worst in DS2, it's not as bad in both DS1 and BB.
Simply not true. Washing pole is a problem in both games. The running R1s hitboxes are mysterious as fuck which, along with being long, makes it one of the hardest weapon to consistently parry (well, besides the attacks in DS2 that are impossible to parry). It's just more abused in DS2 or at least was for a little while until scrub meta changed.

As for pvp in general BB does it better when it comes to netcode/ hitboxes but unfortunately they use the bell system which is objectively terrible and is why people who are active in Souls pvp tend to stick with DS2, which overall has the best PVP and I refuse to acknowledge the experiances of anyone who says otherwise.
 
I never made it to the end. However I don't need to listen to all 50 minutes of inane, pedantic, specious drivel in order to make an informed value judgement. :D

Worthless.

I mean, you aren't making an informed value judgement.

50 minutes is a long time, though, I'll give you that. This part is in the 20-minute mark, and it's something I vehemently 100% agree with. (Stop at 21:50) Even if you don't like how he talked about the story/lore, I'm struggling to find what stuff like the clip I'm linking is so "wrong" that elicits such a reaction as to call it worthless.
 
DS2 has it's fair share of flaws, some deep ones at that, but it's not a bad game. It's slower than Bloodborne because it's different from Bloodborne. The combat isn't obtuse. The story might be, but the combat is very much Souls combat.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Pretty spot on complaint though. Not sure why you giggle.

Its idiotically pedantic is why.

I'm actually kind of surprised he doesn't bemoan the fact that the intro fails to depict a specific class type, as like gender its something that is set minutes into the game during the character-creation segment at the witches' residence.

Not to mention the sex-change coffin mechanic making the fluidity of gender canonical.
 
The only real issue I have with the game is that melee combat feels like absolute garbage compared to all the other games in the series. It's so damn clunky.

This. This right here is enough for me to knock the game down 10 pegs from its siblings. I come for the excellent world design and combat. Stay for the endgame PvP and lore. When the combat is garbage there no way I'll continue playing.

I think an apt comparison combat wise for Ds2 is DMC2.
 

squidyj

Member
And the phantom range issue is by far the worst in DS2, it's not as bad in both DS1 and BB.

the problem with ds1 and BB is that you don't actually hit your target when you swing, you get to experience a half a second of permanent fucking lag while the game tries to decide who hits what, it's a completely unbearable piece of shit.
 

aeolist

Banned
the level, world, and boss designs are atrocious compared to ds1

other stuff is fine but those are the ones i care about most
 
the problem with ds1 and BB is that you don't actually hit your target when you swing, you get to experience a half a second of permanent fucking lag while the game tries to decide who hits what, it's a completely unbearable piece of shit.
LOL! Dark Souls 1 combat is a completely unbearable peice of shit?

Do you even read what you're typing?
 

Wagram

Member
I predict Dark Souls 3 will have more or less the same flaws as the past games in the series, but those flaws will be given a pass because Miyazaki.

Let's not forget the fact that Bloodborne had:


  • Insanely high i-frames (which was the opposite of Dark Souls II).
  • Had an art style that made certain areas look the same: Forbidden Woods and Hemwick Channel Lame are the same area outside of layout. Old Yharnam and Central Yharnam look damn near the same as well. This is also an extreme end on the other side compared to Dark Souls II.
  • Had a shortage of content compared to DS1 and 2.
  • Decided that repetitive chalice dungeons were a substitute for original content.
  • Made users farm for Blood vials, which was a regression of the Estus Flask system.
  • Shit PvP servers. It's terrible online.
  • Blood Gems/Rally/Visceral Attacks/Easy Parries made Bloodborne extremely unbalanced and downright easier by comparison to other entries. You can play through normally, never once grind, straight outlevel, and topple some bosses. Why?
  • Severe lack of weapon and build variety.
  • Twenty, yes, that's right, TWENTY blood vials to start off the game. What the fuck were they thinking here? Blood vials are the hidden shield of Bloodborne. You can run in hit, take damage, run out and turtle through almost every boss. By the time you’re out odds are the boss is dead.
  • Frame pacing issues. Dark Souls II is flawless on PC at 60fps, and trash tier on PS3 at like 25 fps.
  • Wonky as shit camera on big bosses.
I could continue, but the point is that Bloodborne isn’t perfect either (like all entries it's fantastically flawed). It's incredibly frustrating to read about how bad Dark Souls II is, but Bloodbornes flaws are rarely ever mentioned, and it has significant ones. The DLC of Bloodborne rectified many issues of the base game (ex. the fact that 20 Blood vials makes sense). I'm calling it now. Dark Souls III will be received more negatively than DS2 critically, and it will divide the fan-base somewhat. Bloodborne will unintentionally cause problems with some for DS3 due to the change in speed/strategy. DS3 is NOT Bloodborne 2, it's back to the slow paced nature of Dark Souls.
 

squidyj

Member
LOL! Dark Souls 1 combat is a completely unbearable peice of shit?

Do you even read what you're typing?

PvP, because everything has a half-second lag buffer on it I'm not playing the game and reacting to what I see my opponent doing but what I think they might do in the next half second, if I want to parry or roll through an attack, I have to practically initiate before my opponent acts on my screen, it's a complete guess and a garbage system.
 
You can come at it from any angle; level design, enemy placement, bosses, yadda, yadda and all those criticisms have merit BUT all other criticisms of the game come FAR, FAR below the problem with the core basic engine, how you control the character, how you move and react in the world, the basic combat, movement etc. I am NOT talking about something that can be solved by pumping the agility stat - it is the engine itself that has the character moving in an awkward way that, to me, is inferior to the previous two games and makes the whole game a lesser experience regardless of everything else in the game, good or bad.

If someone modded in the character movement and controls verbatim from DS1 or even DeS it would improve the experience hugely, the game would still have all the other things people note as problems, but it would be a lot more fun to play.

When people defend DS2 by saying it's bigger, there's more weapons, more fashion souls - I don't care, it's a sequel - I'd expect those things. What I don't expect is for them to take the main thing about the game that makes it so amazing (the basic gameplay) and ruin it. The game plays like another studio did a Souls-like game and got it wrong.

I can still enjoy the game and still play it (I just platinumed the PS4 version a few weeks back despite huge frustrations and swearing off it forever at one point), but the basic gameplay is the worst of the series because they fucked it up. Bloodborne plays beautifully, so attribute all that to whatever you want, B-team whatever I don't really care to get in to all that - All I know is DS2's gameplay, character controlling is inferior, frustrating and far less fun than the other 3 games in the series (and DS3 too from the network test, although I wasn't 100% sold on the gameplay there either, but it was better than DS2 at least, so I have hope).
 
I never saw anyone complain about this online, but I swear my character would not start to run until 4 seconds after I held the sprint button sometimes. Controls as a whole were not as tight the other games.
 
The things people hammer Ds2 for are the very things the games have always excelled at.

- Interesting looping level and world design.
- Excellent environmental storytelling
- Combat that forces you to commit to your actions but not so much that it makes fighting enemies a slog
- Interesting and diverse and challenging boss design
- Challenging but fair encounter design

1. I think the areas are beautiful and interesting too. I agree there are way less areas with interesting looping design but they came back in the DLC.
2. There's environmental storytelling in DSII too. Still, I've seen many people say the lore and story in DSII is uninteresting.
3. I think this is true for all the games in the series, including DSII.
4. Boss design is one of the few things I agree is better done in the other games. That being said, DS II has some of my favourite boss battles in the entire series: The fights against Sir Alonne, Fume Knight, Sinh, The Ivory King.
5. The things that I find pretty bad in DS II are some bad hitboxes that really stand out. In terms of encounter design, though, while many people find fighting mobs unfair I got used to it pretty fast. I just prefer fighting mobs in large spacious areas in DSII rather than in small places where your weapon hit the walls but enemies can punish you without restrictions as the ones in the first dark souls.

Dark Souls 2 throws much of the originals design philosophy to the wayside and adopts systems that make the game feel far too foreign from its predecessors. BB came along and reminded everyone that FROM Is still capable of delivering that design and Miyazaki happens to be the common denominator in all 3 games. That should tell you something. Not to mention the fact that Ds3 is also going back to what made the games such a joy to playthrough

I think the only two games that are very similar to each other in terms of combat are Demon's Souls and Dark Souls; DSII and Bloodborne twisted the formula to create something that feels different to those two games: I mean, BB is faster, has less builds, punishes you for playing defensively and rewards you for fast reactions, etc., DS II has ADP, soul memory, has tons of viable builds, armours are less important when it comes to defense, it has "power stance" (the best combat addition they've made), etc. So far, DSIII looks like a hybrid of things from BB, DS, DSII and Demon's. It is going to be played differently than how you play DS.

For me Dark Souls 2 world design is bland. Far too many square rooms with nothing of note within them. Bosses are boring and rarely a challenge save for a few greats in the DLC. My biggest gripe is the combat and movement plus adp. Whoever thought it was a good idea to add ADP, slow down estus and item usage, and make it so your character faces away from your enemy when rolling while locked on need needs to be fired. Those changes completely dampen the excitement of combat and make encounters more of a struggle against the game's mechanics. The lore is forgettable, and course the level design is lacking.

Of coura

I don't agree with most of the things you wrote here either, but I think I covered all those things previously. Except the lore, and I also think the lore is great too.
 

Reebot

Member
Its idiotically pedantic is why.

I'm actually kind of surprised he doesn't bemoan the fact that the intro fails to depict a specific class type, as like gender its something that is set minutes into the game during the character-creation segment at the witches' residence.

Not to mention the sex-change coffin mechanic making the fluidity of gender canonical.

Its used to show how the Dark Souls 2 team fails to understand the interplay between the game as experienced and the desired story. Works perfectly.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
I never saw anyone complain about this online, but I swear my character would not start to run until 4 seconds after I held the sprint button sometimes. Controls as a whole were not as tight the other games.

PS3/360 version right? I heard they had some major issues with input-lag, yeah.
 
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