eot
Banned
Last week, for whatever reason, I started listening to the Majula theme in the background. It's a pretty good theme guys:
Even though I was firmly on the DkS2 hate train at the time of its release, I got in the mood to play it. When I thought back on it I realised there were actually quite a few neat things about it ('ll get to them eventually).
Now, I hadn't touched this game since finishing my gruelling SL1 run shortly after release, and I hadn't played a Souls game since DkS3 came out (which is over four years ago now, crazy). What I want to say is that my brain was a fairly blank slate, it's not like I just came off playing Sekiro. Despite that, it took all of 30 seconds for me to remember how off the inputs in this game feel. Dark Souls 2 feels, to me, like how I imagine people who can't stand animation priority experience the original Dark Souls. It's a combination of the number of wind up / recovery frames your attacks have, and how stiff the animations look. It's not ruinously bad, the game remains quite playable, but this frankly isn't a game that feels mechanically satisfying to play. The way this issue most commonly manifests for me is that I start an attack before an enemy does, and while I'm in my wind up they also start an attack, and we both hit each other because they have a super short wind up. Alternatively, I hit an enemy without taking a hit myself, but I'm now stuck in recovery frames for what feels like forever, and I end up getting clipped before I can move out of the way.
Before you tell me to git gud, I'll say that I just unlocked to Dranleic Castle and the only boss that's killed me is Excutioner's Chariot, so while I'm far from amazing at these games, I'm not garbage either. It's not a matter of difficulty, it's just that the enemies become less fun to fight. FWIW I always play without a shield, if you always block and then attack perhaps you notice this crap less. If anyone cares I'm using a Mace, which isn't exactly a dagger, but it's not that slow either. I'll also add that in the first Dark Souls I loved learning how to parry, whereas in this game it just frustrates me and I almost never do it. It feels like playing with input lag.
Something that doesn't help matters is the encounter design, to whatever extent that word even applies to this game. I'll have some nice things to say about it in a bit, but holy shit the people in charge of enemy placement clearly do not understand the combat in these games. The first really bad example is the ballista room in Forest of Fallen Giants:
I haven't played SotFS so I don't know in which ways it differs, but in vanilla there's like four fairly strong hollows that rush out (though you can get one for free with the trap), and you're fighting them in this quite small arena. The way these little shits attack is pretty typical of this game, which is a three hit combo that goes on for like ten seconds. So all three rush you, and at any given time one is probably in the middle of his fucking combo and you can't attack them without getting hit and staggered. Now sure, you can kite them forever, go up the ladder, use some ranged item or whatever - like I said, it's not about difficulty - it's just not interesting at all. This kind of thing repeats all throughout the game, another particularly bad example is in Lost Bastille when you go to the Ruin Sentinels, where five of these stupid Royal Swordsmen rush you at once. Yet another one is the pit with four or five of these guys in Harvest Valley:
The game consistently wants you to fight groups of enemies that are simply not designed to be fought in groups. Enemies with very long reach, a lot of poise and high damage output. It's so freaking insistent on this that they hard coded chain aggro, so that when you try to pull enemies they will all aggro (this doesn't always happen, but it happens enough). Also, a special "fuck you" to the red phantom in the Undead Purgatory, before the fog gate. Fighting this guy with no shield and no poise shines a spotlight on how bullshit he is. I've had him track me almost 180 degrees, while he was in the air doing a leap attack as I was rolling around him, just wtf were they thinking.
People often shit on the bosses in this game, and while there are few of them that would rank highly on my list of favourite bosses, I think they're much better designed than the rest of the encounters in the game. Most of them are real pushovers, but doing a challenge run brings more out of them (in a few cases "more" means "more bullshit", but the majority are good).
When it comes to things that don't have to do with the combat I think my appreciation for the game has grown over the years. Back in 2014 we all loved Dark Souls, and then this came out with no interconnected world or real shortcuts to speak of, the elevator to Iron Keep, Heineken garbage piles, an agility stat etc. - lots of low hanging fruit to pick. Removed from that context, and taking the game for what it is, that stuff doesn't bother me any more. I actually think that what endears me to this game is all the ways in which it is different. Dark Souls 3, despite feeling much nicer to play, largely bored me (I put it down a few bosses before the end). It tried to be a more faithful sequel to Dark Souls and in so doing came off like a boring rehash. It's a largely well executed game that has almost no original ideas.
The one thing you can't accuse Dark Souls 2 of though is a lack of ideas. It has a huge variety of environments, maybe more than the other two games combined, it greatly expands the RPG mechanics, the non-linear structure is awesome (I love how you can get to Lost Bastille two different ways), it lets you affect boss fights before they happen several times etc. I'm not saying everything works, for example Shaded Woods isn't that fun to play, but it's a cool concept. It all adds up though, you have the statues you can de-petrify, sconces to light (even though it's pointless), you can set tar pits on fire, there's a convenant that gives you access to a secret boss and on and on. Majula is a fantastic hub, while feeling nothing like Firelink Shrine. An area like No Man's Wharf is more memorable to me than basically anything in Dark Souls 3, you have enemies that are afraid of light and there's this enormous chandelier you can light up that casts light over the entire level, there's a freaking pirate ship that you call into port, there's a funny NPC who isn't simply a Dark Souls call back, the boss fight takes place in gradually rising water etc.
This game is just full of ideas, even though they don't come together and the game as a whole feels like something that was salvaged, rather than carefully crafted. Maybe it's just age, but nowadays I have a much bigger appreciation for things that are different, whereas in the past I often just wanted more of the same thing I already liked.
I just wish it felt better to play.
Even though I was firmly on the DkS2 hate train at the time of its release, I got in the mood to play it. When I thought back on it I realised there were actually quite a few neat things about it ('ll get to them eventually).
Now, I hadn't touched this game since finishing my gruelling SL1 run shortly after release, and I hadn't played a Souls game since DkS3 came out (which is over four years ago now, crazy). What I want to say is that my brain was a fairly blank slate, it's not like I just came off playing Sekiro. Despite that, it took all of 30 seconds for me to remember how off the inputs in this game feel. Dark Souls 2 feels, to me, like how I imagine people who can't stand animation priority experience the original Dark Souls. It's a combination of the number of wind up / recovery frames your attacks have, and how stiff the animations look. It's not ruinously bad, the game remains quite playable, but this frankly isn't a game that feels mechanically satisfying to play. The way this issue most commonly manifests for me is that I start an attack before an enemy does, and while I'm in my wind up they also start an attack, and we both hit each other because they have a super short wind up. Alternatively, I hit an enemy without taking a hit myself, but I'm now stuck in recovery frames for what feels like forever, and I end up getting clipped before I can move out of the way.
Before you tell me to git gud, I'll say that I just unlocked to Dranleic Castle and the only boss that's killed me is Excutioner's Chariot, so while I'm far from amazing at these games, I'm not garbage either. It's not a matter of difficulty, it's just that the enemies become less fun to fight. FWIW I always play without a shield, if you always block and then attack perhaps you notice this crap less. If anyone cares I'm using a Mace, which isn't exactly a dagger, but it's not that slow either. I'll also add that in the first Dark Souls I loved learning how to parry, whereas in this game it just frustrates me and I almost never do it. It feels like playing with input lag.
Something that doesn't help matters is the encounter design, to whatever extent that word even applies to this game. I'll have some nice things to say about it in a bit, but holy shit the people in charge of enemy placement clearly do not understand the combat in these games. The first really bad example is the ballista room in Forest of Fallen Giants:
I haven't played SotFS so I don't know in which ways it differs, but in vanilla there's like four fairly strong hollows that rush out (though you can get one for free with the trap), and you're fighting them in this quite small arena. The way these little shits attack is pretty typical of this game, which is a three hit combo that goes on for like ten seconds. So all three rush you, and at any given time one is probably in the middle of his fucking combo and you can't attack them without getting hit and staggered. Now sure, you can kite them forever, go up the ladder, use some ranged item or whatever - like I said, it's not about difficulty - it's just not interesting at all. This kind of thing repeats all throughout the game, another particularly bad example is in Lost Bastille when you go to the Ruin Sentinels, where five of these stupid Royal Swordsmen rush you at once. Yet another one is the pit with four or five of these guys in Harvest Valley:
The game consistently wants you to fight groups of enemies that are simply not designed to be fought in groups. Enemies with very long reach, a lot of poise and high damage output. It's so freaking insistent on this that they hard coded chain aggro, so that when you try to pull enemies they will all aggro (this doesn't always happen, but it happens enough). Also, a special "fuck you" to the red phantom in the Undead Purgatory, before the fog gate. Fighting this guy with no shield and no poise shines a spotlight on how bullshit he is. I've had him track me almost 180 degrees, while he was in the air doing a leap attack as I was rolling around him, just wtf were they thinking.
People often shit on the bosses in this game, and while there are few of them that would rank highly on my list of favourite bosses, I think they're much better designed than the rest of the encounters in the game. Most of them are real pushovers, but doing a challenge run brings more out of them (in a few cases "more" means "more bullshit", but the majority are good).
When it comes to things that don't have to do with the combat I think my appreciation for the game has grown over the years. Back in 2014 we all loved Dark Souls, and then this came out with no interconnected world or real shortcuts to speak of, the elevator to Iron Keep, Heineken garbage piles, an agility stat etc. - lots of low hanging fruit to pick. Removed from that context, and taking the game for what it is, that stuff doesn't bother me any more. I actually think that what endears me to this game is all the ways in which it is different. Dark Souls 3, despite feeling much nicer to play, largely bored me (I put it down a few bosses before the end). It tried to be a more faithful sequel to Dark Souls and in so doing came off like a boring rehash. It's a largely well executed game that has almost no original ideas.
The one thing you can't accuse Dark Souls 2 of though is a lack of ideas. It has a huge variety of environments, maybe more than the other two games combined, it greatly expands the RPG mechanics, the non-linear structure is awesome (I love how you can get to Lost Bastille two different ways), it lets you affect boss fights before they happen several times etc. I'm not saying everything works, for example Shaded Woods isn't that fun to play, but it's a cool concept. It all adds up though, you have the statues you can de-petrify, sconces to light (even though it's pointless), you can set tar pits on fire, there's a convenant that gives you access to a secret boss and on and on. Majula is a fantastic hub, while feeling nothing like Firelink Shrine. An area like No Man's Wharf is more memorable to me than basically anything in Dark Souls 3, you have enemies that are afraid of light and there's this enormous chandelier you can light up that casts light over the entire level, there's a freaking pirate ship that you call into port, there's a funny NPC who isn't simply a Dark Souls call back, the boss fight takes place in gradually rising water etc.
This game is just full of ideas, even though they don't come together and the game as a whole feels like something that was salvaged, rather than carefully crafted. Maybe it's just age, but nowadays I have a much bigger appreciation for things that are different, whereas in the past I often just wanted more of the same thing I already liked.
I just wish it felt better to play.
