When I started Dark Souls II, I had little hope of not falling into another lightless pool of fixation. I had no rhetorical defense for why I was going to do it. You cant be defiled twice, and already having been swept away into the digital miasma of numbers and growth charts built around killing what was already dead, there was no way to believe it would be better this time. On the contrary, it would be worse, horrible, stupid, mendacious complexity, maximally toxic in its newness, each torturously undiscovered secret and statistical twist energizing the swarm of play workers eager to find friendship and community in demonstrating their worth with game achievement and documentation.
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Its unsurprising that the sequel to the worst videogame ever made is also the worst videogame ever made.
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Its 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 arent 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 Rottens 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 thats 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.
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The longer I spend on these quests for achievement and advancement, the more I wish to have never begun them at all. I can think of no worse end to an undertaking than to regret its conception, and for me there can be no better measure for saying Dark Souls II the worst game Ive ever played.