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What did Dark Souls 2 do that makes it mediocre?

JohnnyFootball

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
I just finished Bloodborne and I was curious about Dark Souls 2 Scholars of the First Sin since I can play it on PS4.

My question is why is it less beloved than Demon or Dark? What did it do wrong? I've seen people complain that it's easier, but I've also seen people complain that it's hard. Which is it?

If it isn't obvious Bloodborne is my only experience with the Souls games.

Just curious for some honest thoughts.
 
Beginning is noticeably slower and more sluggish than Demon and Dark, difficulty spikes make it easy as pie one minute, then suddenly it's as rough as walking through a field of Legos barefooted, and the lore and atmosphere was less... well done I suppose.

It's not the bomba people want you to think but it certainly doesn't measure up to Demon or Dark 1.
 
It's not mediocre, still a great game. Some people don't think it's as good as the first one, that's all.
 
The two big gripes that I generally see are:

1.) Many humanoid bosses and enemies, fewer monsters and more interesting baddies.
2.) Most areas have one real path through them. There's a lot less "oh, I'm back here again" feeling. It feels like too many of the areas have 1 entrance and 1 exit.


Also, at least in the dlc, it feels like there are more ambushes and "gauntlets'. Where you have to first go through an area with a certain penalty (spoiler for one/two of the dlcs)
Like ghost enemies you can't easily hurt until a certain condition is met /past/ the ghost enemies, effectively making it a gauntlet
. But this was also a bit in the main game as well.

I still loved it a lot and got every achievement.
 
awful hitboxes, every boss outside of the DLC was a joke, online play is super laggy and not worth playing, awful hitboxes, devs kept nerfing areas and bosses for no reason other than complaining noobs, awful hitboxes, SOUL MEMORY IS THE WORST MEcHANIC IN THE SERIES and RUINS the idea of fair online play

that sums it up for me. I really don't like getting invaded by a lvl 999 with max spells while I can't even dodge them in the lag and then when I do dodge I get hit by them anyway cuz the hitboxes are fucking shit.

thankfully Bloodborne solved almost all these issues, while then creating more issues of it's own (for another thread) and Dark Souls 2 is not mediocre, it's still better than 99% of games that come out.
 
Keinu said:
It's not mediocre, still a great game. Some people don't think it's as good as the first one, that's all.
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This. You can argue is not as good as Dark 1, but is still a fantastic game on its own.

If you liked Bloodborne and want more, you should not miss Dark Souls 2.
 
It isn't mediocre. It is really good. It just isn't quite the game of the generation that Dark Souls is, and that is fine.

My biggest problems were that there weren't as many interesting bosses and the world design doesn't feel as holistic. The DLC (which is included with Scholar) actually does a lot to address these issues when you go to the three DLC zones.
 
I wouldn't call it mediocre.

But the level design and layout doesn't make it feel like a Dark Souls world. Dark Souls feels connected and the world feels like it follows logical paths for where areas are going to be, you can even see them from other parts of the game.

The level layout and design of Dark Souls II doesn't follow this, and everything feels horribly disjointed as every major new area is introduced with a tunnel of some sort that completely seperates the previous area from the new one. Worst offender was that Molten Castle with a fucking Volcano that apparently is right above the whole world. Came out of nowhere and was so out of place.

There are other things I can gripe about, like the story being truly hamfisted in it's "DO YOU SEE THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE FIRST GAME!?"
 
Soul Memory. That's about it, really.

I recently did a playthough of Dark Souls 1 and it feels like such a step back from the sequel. The complaints about 2 are overblown.
 
It's less consistent. Whereas DS1 took a quality dive halfway through DS2 peaks and dives all over the place.

The world made no sense to me either. I just seemed stumble from place to place with no real idea whether I was hitting a dead end or headed the right way. The final half hour took me days thanks to having to search high and low for things I had zero direction to. A lot of the end was basically me zig zagging around the world mindlessly.

It's far from mediocre though. It just has some frustrating parts that hinder an otherwise great game.
 
It's not easy to describe. It felt formulaic and safe. The difficulty is pretty similar to the other titles.

Dark Souls and Bloodborne are both creative and weird and mysterious, with a very believable and well-crafted world, while Dark Souls 2 is just lacking that special something. It's still a good action game and far from bad, but it feels like it was made without an integral vision behind it. Just being in the world of Dark Souls 2 is less exciting than in the other two games. You should still play it.
 
Is a great game, just have some considerable flaws, mostly enemy design and placement, which was partially fixed on Scholar of the First Sin.

Also bosses are shit, for the most part. The best ones are on the DLC.
 
Everyone got all mad about a visual downgrade and some areas that were not very detailed / intricate / finished feeling.

Don't let anyone tell you it's mediocre though, it's an incredible game, just a little less incredible than Dark Souls 1 or Bloodborne.

For whatever it did wrong though, it did a lot right. The PVP is the most fun of all the games, the weapon and armor variety are unparalleled, and the hub (Majula) is probably my favorite of all of them.
 
It's not mediocre, it's still a good game. But it was held to the standards and hype of Dark Souls so when it couldn't reach it fell higher.
 
Levyne said:
The two big gripes that I generally see are:

1.) Many humanoid bosses and enemies, fewer monsters and more interesting baddies.
2.) Most areas have one real path through them. There's a lot less "oh, I'm back here again" feeling. It feels like too many of the areas have 1 entrance and 1 exit.
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cant speak on the dlc but i agree with both of these, and especially #2. its nothing like bloodborne or ds1 in that sense.

however i still loved the game and would recommend it to anyone, even more so if you liked bloodborne/other souls games.
 
It isn't mediocre to begin with. It is a great addition to the series and the DLC is even better and worth the cost of admission. Excellent game and have sunk so many hours into it.
 
I played Demon's Souls and Dark Souls and loved them. They were great games.

Then I played Dark Souls 2 and loved it as well. I had just as much fun with it as the other games. It definitely wasn't mediocre to me at all.

Hoping for a Dark Souls 3 and looking forward to playing Bloodborne whenever I get around to buying a PS4.
 
Characters and and level design weren't nearly as memorable and Soul Memory was a terrible idea but to me it is far from mediocre and has surpassed Dark Souls in total hours played. I like a lot of the changes they made on a technical level(respecs etc).

I think for the majority of the negative people it didn't live up to the insane hype the first one created. If you get over that you realize it's still one of the best games ever made.
 
Its still a great game but not near good as the previous Souls games.

The lore of the game don't feel the same as Ds1, the world also don't feel like conected at all, just random zone conected through tunnel or elevators. The bosses don't look as cool as the other games. Like I said the game is not as good as the other souls but it is still a great games that is worth to play.
 
- Relatively easy, uninteresting bosses (in the base game)
- Constant simultaneous hits
- Bad hitboxes
- World wasn't as intertwined
- No consistent rolling speed throughout leveling up

Still a great game and probably gets more hate than it deserves, though.
 
- Disconnected world with a lack of scale and consistant geometry, unlike DS1.
- Themes, lore, and overall world doesn't feel as well designed or though out as DS1.
- Over-reliance on humanoid type bosses, overall boss variety isn't as good as DS1.
- Certain areas feel rushed and cobbled together (Black Gulch being the worst offender).
- Random difficulty spikes,difficulty scaling doesn't flow as well or feel as consistent as the original.
- Linear A to B style design, instead of the tightly woven and connected areas of the original.

DLC is way better than the on-disk areas. PvP and combat in general is a big improvement though in my opinion, still a great game, but nowhere near the pedigree of the original for me.
 
It's a great game under the shadow of it's much more successful older brother.

I think the biggest difference I felt was lack of polish. The world and map layout was blander, the additional mechanics were half baked, and the hitboxes were shit sometimes.

It's still heads and shoulders above most games. I'd still play DS1 first if I were you, but don't skip any in the series (not even Demons's!)
 
My complaints with the game are solely setting and story based. It just did not feel as inspired as Demons or Dark 1. Still a really good game though.
 
It's not mediocre at all. I've played both DS1 and 2 and got NG+ in both and don't summon for bosses and melee everything. I like 2 more than 1. Vast majority of dudes who don't like 2 are extremely nitpicky.

Only thing I genuinely dislike about DS2 is the ADP system.

But on the flipside there's the Resistance stat in DS1 which is something that can over beginners.
 
It's not as good because I believe it was made by the B team or something while the main team was doing Bloodborne which is why it's amazing
 
As others have been saying, it's definitely not mediocre or anywhere near that, it's just not nearly as good as the other souls games.
 
It felt more like a Dark Souls mod made by a bunch of fans than a proper sequel. Areas, most bosses and the music felt uninspired. Level architecture was also ass compared to Dark Souls 1 and the atmosphere suffered from that.
 
So originally I bought it on PS3 at launch, and was incredibly dissatisfied with my experience about 3 or so hours in. Namely the framerate and terrible hitboxes which I just couldn't stand.

After finishing Bloodborne mid last month I decided to pick up Dark Souls 2: SoFS and I have to say I'm really, really enjoying it. 60fps is a big improvement, and the improved lighting/graphics definitely makes the art direction shine a lot more. Almost finished my first playthrough but I got Witcher 3 early which is distracting me lol

However, I do have the following complaints, which are partly why I can see why some people could see it as mediocre:

- Online is laggy as fuck. I'm getting hit by people with swords when I'm across the other side of the room from them in PvP.

- Level design is nowhere near as good as Dark Souls, Demon's Souls or Bloodborne. There's a too much of a reliance on bonfires, literally dotted all over the place in certain areas rather than clever level design that allows you as a player to learn shortcuts to get to places as opposed to just teleporting to them.

- Bosses are pushovers. I don't know whether its because I'm a seasoned Souls player now, or because I'd literally just spent 100 hours playing Bloodborne right before buying the game, but all of the bosses I've faced so far save for the Belfry Gargoyles and ones in the Ivory King DLC have felt way too easy.

- Boss Design: Hardly any variety. Quantity over quality - While the game does improve on this aspect towards the end and in the DLC, a lot of the bosses seem to have extremely repetitive designs and move sets. For the most part, the bosses are humanoid knight-types, with shields, lances and swords, more or less using a similar set of attacks, with few outliers. To the point that the only memorable bosses in the game for me so far are Freja and The Demon Song, just because they were a bit different compared to the others.

Those complaints aside I think the game is fantastic. There's a lot it does right for example. I can tell NG+ may even trump Dark Souls I since there is a TONNE of stuff you can miss out on. Just doesn't seem to have the overall level of intricate design and planning that the Miyazaki games do.
 
Overall design is not comparable to previous souls game, this fact is obvious throughout the whole game and in pretty much all areas, it's not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not a Souls game in terms of design neither though it's disguised as being one, and seems as such when looking shallow at it, it has fooled many it seems - people calling it better than Dark Souls 1 needs to get their heads examined or accept the fact that they don't know what the hell they're talking about and lack any complex understanding of the games.
 
In my opinion (and I've got a handful of friends I play with that agree) it's the best of the Souls games. Lots of bosses, iconic areas, and now this new version allows for more players. I've got 80 hours into the PS3 vanilla DS2 and now I've got almost 50 in this PS4 version with no end in sight. It's amazing, don't let the insane nitpick era tell you otherwise!
 
Juke Joint Jezebel said:
- Disconnected world with a lack of scale and consistant geometry, unlike DS1.
- Themes, lore, and overall world doesn't feel as well designed or though out as DS1.
- Over-reliance on humanoid type bosses, overall boss variety isn't as good as DS1.
- Certain areas feel rushed and cobbled together (Black Gulch being the worst offender).
- Random difficulty spikes,difficulty scaling doesn't flow as well or feel as consistent as the original.
- Linear A to B style design, instead of the tightly woven and connected areas of the original.

DLC is way better than the on-disk areas. PvP and combat in general is a big improvement though in my opinion, still a great game, but nowhere near the pedigree of the original for me.
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You summarized it almost exactly what I wanted to write.
 
I agree with most of the criticisms people have brought up...

That being said... Majula is the best location in any From game ever, and I could listen to that sad little tune that plays forever while staring out at the sea.
 
From most of the complaints I've seen, I think the game is criticized more for what it "Did not do" than what it did. The overall feeling of exploring a cohesive world and conquering epic bosses wasn't as strong for many.

I finally started it on PS4, having fun so far, though yeah its true warping from the start feels odd at times
 
Up to Iron Keep atm and Doing some farming there. My biggest issue so far is the poor level design. Iron Keep and Earthen Peak are really lazy areas and Baneful Queen Myrtha looked like a PS2 model.
 
It has no sense of pacing or diversity, unlike the other Souls games.

The animation work is terrible and further tanks the experience.
 
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