Why is Dark Souls II usually regarded as the weakest entry of the Dark Souls trilogy?

>not using soul appease to kill all the soldiers before pulling the lever

deserved it for being dumb desu.

Apathy inspiring blandness is a much more egregious sin than it is for something to be ambitious but flawed. Despite what you may have been led to believe by the way people bitch online, most people enjoy things for their strengths, not despite their weaknesses.

3 is actually the worst by a long shot
but 2 had a troubled development and publisher meddling

Dark Souls should have ended at 1

It's a victim of trying to be its own thing only to have their publisher demand the game be dark souls 2 (what we got, not what we should have got)

much more linear. There's only one big intended skip you can do. There's a couple of forking paths but they're very short. World isn't as connected as previous games. Rehashed a lot of things from the first game that didn't really need to be redone, and in some cases didn't even really make sense. Took away the few good features that 2 introduced, and the only really innovative thing they bought in was Weapon Arts which could honestly be ignored for most weapons. Story was rehashed but with "This time things are like ten billion times more serious bro!!!" Most bosses were shit, honestly Pontiff, Dancer and Lord of Cinder were the only good main story bosses.
And they put in another fucking poison swamp, because everyone liked the first one so much.

It's the only Souls game that consistently makes me feel like my death was bullshit and not 100% my fault.

Dark Souls 2 IS ambitious but flawed.
Dark Souls 3 is the apathy inspiring blandness.

It's ugly, unoriginal, has worse game design, feels less fun to play.
I struggle to think why it wouldn't be the worst.

Follow the reply chain, this is what i was saying to someone who wondered why 3 is held in arguably lower esteem than 2.

>never understood the bitching over frozen outskirts and iron passage
It's fucking 10 minutes of scenario gameplay ffs get fucking good

It's easy to speak in vague platitudes but execution matters.
And DaS3 is way more competently executed than DaS2. DaS2 has "ideas" but the vast majority of them are poorly implemented. And no it's not the thought that counts. That's "video game analyst" bullshit. For people who actually play video games you want games that actually function properly.

That's great but 'competent' only goes so far, i played and enjoyed the game but if you're wondering why it isn't highly regarded in retrospect, there's your answer. Don't get me wrong, i'll bet on competent any day of the week, but when we're talking about a series as legendary as the souls games, mere competence becomes a dirty word.

DS2 has the best replay mechanics, great build options, start choices, in the most blandest areas in the series.
DS3 at least has a competent first playthrough but suffers the exact opposite issue: Terrible replayability and linear world + item progression.

"Replay mechanics"
Only a pair of new spells and shit you will likely never use

Pretty much every part of it besides the pvp (the least important/smallest part of souls games) were worse than other souls games, often in ways that just felt lazy.

Bad hitboxes
ADP
lazy enemy placement
"Quantity over Quality" in terms of bosses
Worst DLC of the series
No lore

What the fuck were they thinking with the DLC?
>optional area with tons of enemies both ranged and melee everywhere
>2 npc phantom before that area
>with a retarded bossfight that literally everybody hate at the end
>do this for 3 fucking times

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>lazy attempts to "outdo" DS1 in terms of difficulty

Examples:
- run up to the bosses are often more challenging than the bosses themselves; ie. Alonne, Smelters, Chariot, Lost Sinner, fucking Lud&Zallen
- no i-frames on fogwalls and doors
- super harsh hp cut on every death until you get the ring
- limited and pretty rare humanity to restore full hp
- weapon breaking so quickly its just silly
- enemies chasing you forever with their aggro range apparently being the entire area, ie. Heide
- repetitive use of MULTIPLE enemies to ramp up the difficulty of the encounter instead of making one/two enemies with interesting movesets; on top of that intentional using multiple enemies with long weapons that swing through each others models and hit the player as difficulty mechanics, ie. Lost Bastille Sentries, Belfry Gargoyles
- adaptability

>nonsensical level design

Examples:

-entire reason you have to go through the Shrine of Winter in the first place, and kill all those bosses to open it, is because theres a pile of rubble blocking your way to the castle. A pile of rubble, like 1.5 meter high.
- having to run through Belfry Sol because you jumped down 1 meter down to the bonfire and cant climb back up
- that room in Drangleic near the elevator with doors that drop you into the room, and you cant climb back up
- elevator into the sky from the windmill (though I guess it can be counted as eerie and dreamy atmosphere, so I could forgive that one if I didnt know its that way because they cut an area during production)
- reliance on teleporting via bonfires from the very start instead of exploring the game world; problem that carried into DS3 and BB

1/2

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>soul memory as attempted twinking countermeasure

It does the exact opposite, scrubs lose their souls all the time and their character stays the same, decent players use those souls to level up and upgrade, and both of these apparently are a fair match according to soul memory.

>no full red eye orb

In order to invade you need to acquire a one-time consumable cracked red eye orb (since theres no full one), to get one you have to win a match in a secret hidden pvp arena that most people probably dont even find. On top of that theres a limit of how many you can hold at one time. If theres noone battling in said arena theres no way to invade either since you cant get orbs otherwise.

2/2

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Because it is the weakest entry and went purely for quantity over quality with absolutely no though put into world structure.

>with absolutely no though put into world structure.

case in point, the elevator that goes up from a Windmill directly into a volcano

broken hitbox.

>It's ugl-

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And Shrine of winter
And Dranglaic castle interior

I used to be tye one defending DS2 but i tried to replay it and it feels like a chore
>walk in a location
>get swarmed
>repeat

Git

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>nonsensical level design
I feel like the level designers tried way too hard to make every level a video game puzzle room and forgot to make it feels like an actual place in the world.
Drangleic castle has to be the worst castle in all gaming, every room has to have some enemies and traps with 0 furniture or decoration anywhere. From that one empty room with the cursed Nashandra painting to the reverse stairs room, there is just fucking nothing that make them feel like an actual room in a castle.

It really does feel like they snuck an enemy behind every other corner

Led to a habit of immediately checking behind me whenever I went through a door or passage

and have to run around and do 14 hours of shit because my character cant hurdle a fucking two foot high barrier

dark souls 2 fucking sucked so incredibly bad and all the good will it has is from people who loved the pvp.

the reality of it is most people don't give a _flying_ fuck about the pvp in souls. it's fucking 600 ping peer-to-peer japanese cheaters and shit. who the fuck cares

Or the elevator a few meters into a cliffside of a small remote island that you leave in the same direction you came from and are suddenly in a different section of the island.
Fuck, not even the ship you arrive on is consistent and has different details like the sails compared to the one in the Wharf.

The room with the masks and the single chest in the center was fucking hilarious. All that was missing was an anvil hanging above with ACME written on it.

>Why
Consoles.

Terrible level design, awful enemy placement, way too many boss fights against generic mooks, shit game design choices in general, awful hit detection/hit boxes, and it looks like ass
It's not the worst game I've ever played, in fact if you take it as just a game on its own, it's passable and still better than a lot of games out there, but if you compare it to the Souls games before and after it, it's such a busted up piece of shit

Don't forget how excited you were when you played through DaS2 for a few hours and got to the GREEN POISON GAS area!

holy shit, I couldn't wait for that! new and exciting!

/thread

I loathed it on my first playthrough but it grew on me, the game has great equipoment variety and I do think in this aspect it was better than DS3. Game has the most content of all the series though some of it is indeed bad. If there is one thing I did not like was that the enemy designs were bad. For example in DeS a scary enemy is the mancentipede. In Ds2 its just lol lets make arachnaphobes shit therir pants so its just a big spider

All Souls games are all 95% the same, hating one but loving another just shows how easily influenced you are by morons on the internet.

>It's easy to speak in vague platitudes
Is that why you decided to speak in vague platitudes in your post?

3 has the best bosses and combat. 1 has good level design and shit bosses and 2 doesn’t shine anywhere

Worst thing is that they couldn't keep their story straight.
First they say that the PC is the lead platform that all versions will be based on, then they say that their engine wasn't made wirh next-gen in mind and then luke a year later they said that it WAS made to be next-gen proof.

bad level design, group aggroing enemies, spinning top bosses, bosses having constant adds, soul memory, de-spawning enemies, the controller deadzones on release, no full eye orb, the graphical downgrade, the equipment durability

At least 2/3 of the DLC was good

>this whole thread
Captcha was the short bus.

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Wtf. Where is this?

>DeS is edgy garbage
>DaS2 is creative with skull spiders turning individuals into zombies with their venom

defend this shit:
>Dragon Rider
>Copypaste Dragon Riders
>Copypaste Ornstein
>Copypaste Gargoyles
>Copypaste Sentinels
>Copypaste Smelter Demon
>Copypaste Lud&Zullen
>Skelly Lords
>Covetous Demon
>Prowling Magnus
>Old Iron King
>Rat Vanguard
>Najka
>Defender & Watcher
>Nashandra
>Ancient Dragon
>Vendrick

>>Copypaste Ornstein

they thought that would be such a great moment and literally noooooobody fucking ever mentions it.

Dark Souls 2 is non-canon imo. 1 and 3 work perfectly fine without it, was it even referenced in 3 at all?

>ds2 hitbox

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do you really think the mancentipedes are less creative than fucking spiders though.

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because nobody played demon's souls so shit like being able to warp from the start of the game is "TOO DIFFERENT" for them
also because the only reasoning anyone has for it being bad is nothing but name calling like this guy
Scholar is legitimately fucking abysmal horseshit though, I'm glad I played the game at launch

yeah the giant tree was in the starting area in 3 and earthen peak was in the dlc

The level design is incredibly slapdash and the approach to difficulty that it takes is a clusterfuck. It just looks and feels like an absolute mess.

say whaaaaaat?

i can't even remember what earthen peak was

still, the almost complete and total excision of the lore from 3 shows how miyazaki feels about 2

ds1:
>levels are designed with world building and lore in mind
>details like anor londo has multiple size doors and stairs because of the giant knights
>npc characters have unique armors and lore, finding dead bodies with their armor indicates that they might have died there
ds2:
>reverse stairs, rubbles, sky elevators
>every room has traps just because
>unique npc armors are just sold by vendor
>random phantom wear those unique npc armor and use their weapons just because lolxd

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you post like an absolute faggot

Bear
Seek
Seek
Lest

>3 is actually the worst by a long shot
B A S E D

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DS1 level design:
>Here's a swamp
>Drop down under the swamp to find a lake and giant trees as far as the eye can see
>Drop down under the swamp literally 100 meters further and you're in demon land with Lava everywhere

Sure makes a lot of sense

I mean earthen peak wasnt even important, it was just in 3 for the fuck of it because DUDE REMEMBER EARTHEN PEAK LOL

Maybe its just me but DS3 had too many nostalgia pandering

>yeah the giant tree was in the starting area in 3
?

well see dark souls 1 gives you the feeling that you're in a fantasy world

there's a giant lake and trees and shit because you are literally under the world, that's what holds the world up

dark souls 2 was just people not knowing what they were doing. nothing feels like it can be forgiven. stuff like the windmill is just outright stupid. it doesn't feel like fantasy, it feels like ineptitude

Well see, they're the exact same shit but one is acceptable to you while the other isn't because some youtuber told you that was the correct opinion to have.

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>dark souls 2 was just people not knowing what they were doing
Aktschually it was because:
Tanimura: Yes, this game actually went through quite a troubled development process. Due to a number of factors we were actually forced to re-think the entire game midway into development. We really had to go back to the drawing board and think once more about what a Dark Souls game should be. It was at that point that I took on my current role, overseeing the entirety of the game including the art direction. To ensure we created the game both we and the fans wanted it was completely necessary, but it did of course create a problem. We had to decide what to do with the designs and maps that had been created up to that point. Ideally we’d start again from scratch but of course we were under time constraints so instead we had to figure out how to repurpose the designs in our newly reimagined game. This meant everything from deciding new roles for characters to finding ways to slot locations into the world map. This unusual development cycle faced us with an entirely different set of problems and looking back on the project as a whole it was at times, arduous.
All the references are pretty tasteful except for the non-references to Drangleic. And instead of Earthen Peak, it definitely should've been Drangleic Castle with Syan Knights, Royal Soldiers, and Dragonriders strewn about.

yes user its youtubers. you got it. you won.

You'd have to had been around for everything leading up to it.

hahah so they just slapped the entire game together from random pieces and parts, EXACTLY THE WAY IT SEEMS.

oh boy i'll never forget the excitement of fighting the sentinels, 3 of the same dude in a box with 0 features like an old doom test map

I thought the storm ruler reference was stupid

>Game one's layout makes no sense
>Game two's layout makes no sense
>Somehow that makes game two shit but game one great
It's either youtubers or you're naturally dumb. Pick nigga.

the exchange with you is over, you're tiresome, thanks though

There's no hard evidence, but I'm convinced the Storm Rulers are late game additions considering Yhorm is in the absolute first trailer for Dark Souls III, and the first gameplay trailer for Dark Souls III has Wolnir in the Profaned Capital arena and completely omits a Yhorm appearance. DSIII went through a shitton of changes, probably more than II, before its release; Archdragon Peak has two enormous chunks ripped away from it, one of which where we would've fought the "Angel of Dragons" who eventually became Consumed King Oceiros.
youtube.com/watch?v=E89o_75Or2U

I just got done with that area and holy fuck, find me one person who didn't summon for it. The random unicorns are the fucking 2nd worst designed enemies in the game.
And if you randomly trudge through the zone for 20 minutes between shitty blizzards, then you get to fight broken hitbox Aava x2. I didn't even know how to find the boss without a guide.

I wonder who actually found out that you can use the torch on the windmill and what was their reaction to it. Like what the fuck did B-team expected use to do? The entire area was well lit and there were nothing that require the use of a torch, and you're just expected to walk near the metal part of the windmill and set it on fire??

>hahah so they just slapped the entire game together from random pieces and parts, EXACTLY THE WAY IT SEEMS.
Exactly. That's why user is dumb.
>find me one person who didn't summon for it
*raises paw*

>who eventually became Consumed King Oceiros.

that was the dark souls1/2 moment of das3

"where do we put this guy? i dunno, fuck it. don't bother making his area clip correctly either. just fuck it."

You know what really stands out in the random pieces and parts segment? The area with the lion guys. It just feels completely out of place like its from a different game

Hear, hear. They already HAD Consumed King Oceiros using the Iudex Gundyr fight. It's right fucking here. They had all this shit with angels, serpents with wings, a day night cycle, that one screenshot with serpents literally everywhere while the sun is bleeding, and then poof. They got rid of all of it and switched Oceiros and Gundyr.

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Will Sekiro finally be a game without any "fuck it" moments? They have vastly more money and resources now...

>Dedicated a few hundred hours over the course of several playthroughs and I've never experienced anything like those gifs people always post
That's because in the gifs its always 69% equip load 3ADP characters trying to dodge characters with long duration hitboxes, like Drakekeeper Golems or Fume Knight.

The only thing I'd say is actually broken about the game is the way grab attacks work. For whatever reason they have a million active frames and will catch people trying to dodge through them, often leading to the jarring snap backs.

I actually did because I went through thinking lighting the braziers might do something like it does in the tutorial area... What a waste of a mechanic

to be fair the day and night cycle probably wouldnt add anything to DS3.

11 bosses, and there was a big shitposting thread about that, leads me to believe they're trying for quality over quantity. We live in hope.
Yeah, but it would've been cool. Lighting was better, too.

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>The only thing I'd say is actually broken about the game is the way grab attacks work.

you really don't think dreidel tracking is broken? especially the fire salamander thing?

that one enemy ruined the immersion of the game so much

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It has waaaaay more than 11 bosses, obviously, from what's been shown so far. Think more like 30 probably. They're just optional/not story requisite

I didn't want the game at all until I watched a battle with a heavy plate knight who was a better "boss" than almost any souls boss, and he's not a "boss".

I fucking hope to god so. I really REALLY hope that From sticks to their original vision, because looking at cut content from DS3 feels really shitty. Still, it's important to keep in mind that every game ever created will always have some sort of cut-content, time constraints or not.

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>It's easy to speak in vague platitudes but execution matters.
>speaks in vague platitudes
???

>because looking at cut content from DS3 feels really shitty

you understand, you said it yourself, every game has this. but think of it this way. if they didn't cut some of that other shit, you wouldn't have gotten the brothers fight, etc...games are extremely fluid in development

I think it can be a little annoying especially when it comes to the Salamanders, but no other enemy even comes close to their retardation in tracking.
From can't into animal enemies surprise surprise. Thank god they only move in one location, at least From was smart enough to make them glorified turrets in Memory of the Old Iron King.

it's the one with the worst development cycle, but it's still better than 3. At least it's fun

it's funny that they made 1 type of enemy with completely busted broken tracking and while not fixing them in the dlcs, they gave enemy NPC in all the dlc perfect tracking as well. It's like a final fuck you to the players, here's maldron and his literally impossible to dodge multi hit attacks, I'm pretty sure most other NPCs have this bullshit as well but they're not as apparent because they don't use a lance.

Thing is Dark Souls III's cut content really rob it of the thematic weight Dark Souls 1, and even Dark Souls II (yes) have. I could write a whole essay about it, but ultimately it's a bunch of ranting on how the Deep doesn't go anywhere, the Abyss is nowhere, Pontiff not being fought in Dark Firelink being a HUGE loss in terms of thematic weight, the pilgrims are nearly entirely vestigial to the story, and a bunch of other shit: The notion of Kaathe winning his eons long battle against the gods (hollows growing serpents from their back, Oceiros birthing a serpent), was fucking incredible. As it stands, DSIII is a wonderful game that retreads themes done in Souls 1 (legacy and the end of the world), and II (wanting, living).

Maldron's fun though.

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>to be fair the day and night cycle probably wouldnt add anything to DS3.
Judging by how the original CGI trailers put an emphasis on bonfire rituals, I think it's unlikely that the day and night cycles would add nothing mechanically to the gameplay. Maybe randomized enemy placement? We may never know.

True.

They need to come back in like 10 years and give us a game that takes place in the age of gwyn. just total fuckign, shiny marble, golden shit everywhere.

Dark Souls but the world isn't fucked up. Would be amazing. Get to meet NPCs who later turned into horrible monsters, stuff like that

>Dark Souls but the world isn't fucked up.
Light souls? Bright souls? Shining souls?

>I'm pretty sure most other NPCs have this bullshit as well
Oh they do. Havel in the dark diver dungeons and princess chamber will swivel on his ass mid air as he does jumping attacks to hit you. If you have high enough ADP its fine, but I weep for people who don't know how to build.

Light Race

DSII could have been good too had they not cut the OG story. A bit more involved than DSI or DSIII in what the player does, but can't help but feel that cutting it out threw everything out the window.

Radiant Souls

Burning Souls.

This. I don't think it was shitty, it was still a fine game, and in a way it had some special charms for trying some new things that DS3 didn't really have nearly as much of. It is however easily the weakest for just absolutely lacking polish and having so much nonsense moments that someone should have said no to.

>walk up an incline and drop down into a room
>oh, i can't get out of here
>6 huge fat guys come out at once

ha-ha! you got me! good one, guys!

all souls games are shit.
desu, i only played them because the worldbuilding and character designs.
gameplay is garbage
multiplayer is garbage
and enemies AI is a fucking joke, the whole difficulty is build around numbers and unresponsible controls, once you learn how stupid and predictable the enemies are the game gets boring as fuck.

Ehhh that's different. The final story of DSII is actually really good. Thematically sound, great dialogue from Vendrick and other characters, etc. The only ill part I can think of is the Watcher and Defender having no story to them unless you believe they are the prince and princess of Alken and Venn, which still doesn't mean much to DSII's story.

This still makes me mad.

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it's just concept art. none of that existed

I know. But it's so cool.

If it makes you feel worse, they cut out an absolutely enormous area we still don't know what its purpose was for. The only things we know for sure is that it starts out as a forest like the Crucifixion Woods, and that the gravestones at the very beginning of TRC proper are from this area.
youtube.com/watch?v=rd0A4xvIMLE

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this
it's a good game, but it's by far the worst of the souls games

Game development sounds fucking awful. You work your heart out making this area, probably thinking how proud you're gonna be that people will be entertained by your work, and then your boss comes in and goes
>Nah it's not what we're looking for.

Dark Souls 3 was, for me, the worst in the series by far. At least 2 had some areas with colour in them. I swear, every area in DS3 was some variation of muted grey or brown. It was so unengaging just to look at. I get that that was kind of the theme (because the world was ending, or turning into ash or some shit,) but some colour would have been nice.

Dark Souls II is nothing like Demon's Souls you nigger.

fucking moron. do you know what a creation myth is? no you don't, because you're too retarded to grasp basic fantasy worldbuilding. one makes sense and justifies itself, the other is clearly the result of rushed development and pasting levels together. you can tell because only one game has a surreal level transition, making it clearly special and deliberate, and the other exclusively has fucking stupid level transitions with no attempts to make them seem deliberate. the two might appear identical to you but that's because your head is an empty cavity atop a disgusting pile of flap.

It would be fine if it was not called Dark Souls II

-Lore feels too vague, even for souls

-The controls are weird, stiff but in a good way like 1

-animations are off, probably because of mocap

-a lot of VERY shitty looking areas, from a GRAFIX standpoint to an artistic standpoint (there are so many rooms that are just empy boxes, not to mention the nonsensical architecture, it doesnt feel like a real place)

-enemy placement is not great or feels cheap

These are my personal reasons why i like it the least, it has positives, but the negatives outweighs them.

>I just got done with that area and holy fuck, find me one person who didn't summon for it.
Yo.
>The random unicorns are the fucking 2nd worst designed enemies in the game.
They aren't random at all. They show up at regular intervals if you're standing in their spawn zone. They're only a problem if you take too much time and let more than one spawn.
>And if you randomly trudge through the zone for 20 minutes between shitty blizzards, then you get to fight broken hitbox Aava x2.
Really not that bad of a fight. Just keep one of the tigers between you and the second one, and the second one won't be able to touch you.
>I didn't even know how to find the boss without a guide.
...user, you just keep walking towards the next thing in your path that isn't a featureless white void. I'm not sure how it could be any more simple.

DS 3 felt boring to me. In DS I like to explore and discover new area, to push me farther to see what await me next.

DS2 area had a lot variance, yeah they aren't well connected, but at least I liked them. DS3 area is to similiar, 3/4 of the game feels like the texture of the first castle reashed in different manners and color.

>At no point did I ever think "this shit doesn't make any sense!"

>get on top of tower
>elevator up
>volcanic area

>see tower to the left of tiny tunnel
>go through said tunnel
>tower teleported to the right and it's now raining

And let's not even talk about the shitty bosses, the hitboxes, enemies with infinite combos, horribly downgraded graphics, soul memory etc or how they had the audacity of asking you to buy the game again merely a year after it came out, making the original version completely obsolete and useless with SotFS.

Oh fuck it's that zip Furio.

>DS2 area had a lot variance
I liked the boring featureless stone area that looked like shit. or maybe the featureless stone area that had some water. Oh, and I also like the featureless stone area with lava in it. Also Heide's Tower was good

You forgot
>be at sea level
>take a staircase down below sea level
>take an elevator down
>take another staircase down
>go through cave
>end up in a port town

Primarily due to Soul Memory and ADP

Because Reddit likes 3 and props it up even though it's clearly the worst

Too hard for the casual fanbase.
There is a reason why the only time they say its a bad game when its "too many enemies!! its too hard!!" and "i dont have infinite stamina with shitload of i-frames!"
Good thing from gave them a casual friendly version called dark souls 3 and they love it.

DS3 is definitely the weakest non-DS2 entry in the series just after DS1, but there's no metric by which DS2 isn't bad. DS3 at least is more enjoyable as a game due to the AI not being as dogshit.

>reliance on teleporting via bonfires from the very start instead of exploring the game world; problem that carried into DS3 and BB
This was worst in DS3 though. In DS2 you don't have to warp at all for quite a while.

No.

DS2 is enjoyable, DS3 has shit gameplay and everything else is a weak attempt to pander to nostalgia when the devs weren't wishing they were working on Bloodborne 2.

DS2 isn't really enjoyable. It literally has all the same flaws as 3, but is uglier and has worse enemy and level design, and dogshit AI that makes the game laughably easy.

Every soulsborne game that don't have the Dark Wood Grain Ring is a bad game.

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>rolls slowly five times
>gets hit
>gets shoulder caught on the architecture
>"waahhhh why didn't i make it in time???"
1. get a fucking life
2. move on from this webm already
3. loser

>and everything else is a weak attempt to pander to nostalgia
I am convinced the people who truly believe this are actual brainlets.

It's ironic coming from DS2 fans, who played the game years after it released without playing DS1 and don't realize it's guilty of the exact same shit with being chock full of meaningless references to the first game

>They aren't random at all. They show up at regular intervals if you're standing in their spawn zone.
They will charge you from a random angle in the middle of a blizzard. Their spawn zones are everywhere outdoors past the first building. I'd call that random.
>They're only a problem if you take too much time and let more than one spawn
Which happens often, especially around the 2nd/3rd building since most of their attacks bowl you over with obscene poise damage and they can fly.
>Really not that bad of a fight. Just keep one of the tigers between you and the second one, and the second one won't be able to touch you
It really is. Aava has insane damage with terrible hitboxes, this is just him twice. The only way to make the fight bearable is to burst the first tiger and deal with them back to back.
If the fight is prolonged at all, then because of your dodge patterns and the way the tigers like to bound away 100ft you will inevitably get pincered.
>...user, you just keep walking towards the next thing in your path that isn't a featureless white void. I'm not sure how it could be any more simple.
The "next thing in your path" is a white on white winding path hidden behind hills that dips below the mouth of a giant chasm. Kinda fuckin hard to see especially when being snowblinded every 30 seconds and fighting unicorns.

The singleplayer is the weakest but the PvP is arguably the best or second best

it reminds me more of an old metrovania NES game than the others, especially with the way they designed the levels but comparatively in the series, it's incoherent and all over the place.

>"DS2 is so easy bro just get ADP LOL"
>Dark spirit Forlorn has invaded!
>"fuck this shit broken game reused asses rehash 0/10"

>just switch your brain off and enjoy it, bro!

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>game punishes every type of build at different points so there is no easy mode
>really punishes retards who can't read
>DOOOD WHAT THE FUUUCK

adp is a noob trap

>>game punishes every type of build at different points so there is no easy mode
Nah hex builds are still easy mode
>dark orb was never nerfed unlike every other spell so it still does high damage, is incredibly safe, and has like 50 casts per slot. Also high poise damage and damages fatigue
>for anything that has high dark resistance you just slot in a bunch of pyromancy instead

ADP is needed, but only up to a certain threshold. It's much more powerful in PvE than PvP, since the only thing that's going to catch your rolls are ugs swings

>Implying they weren't bullshit

The ones with the scythe could stunlock you to death from full HP no amount of ADP would save you

That's because the NPC invaders in vanilla DS2 weren't hard due to the game's shit AI. So instead of fixing the AI, they just gave each invader a gimmick to make them memorable, then let them cheat to make them "difficult". Every NPC from jester thomas onward can roll out of any action at any time

It's practically soulless, pun semi intended

Hex builds suck in close quarters though, since they have to sacrifice health, stamina, and vitality for intelligence, faith, and attunement.
Some bosses/zones shit on them, while others are easy. That's just how the game is.

>Hex builds suck in close quarters though
>*casts dark weapon*

>*enemy resists dark*
>*stuck using Chaos Rapier as my only lightweight fire weapon*
Trust me, I just finished a hex playthrough and holy fuck is it easy, especially once you get the Old Iron King's Crown. Fun, but easy.

Dark Souls 2 lacks intent.

In 1 and 3 you can tell certain things were done for a reason. Everything from the landscapes down to the items and enemy locations tell a story. Things have history. The art direction is world class, nuanced and detailed.. Animations have finesse and personality. Every enemy, every inhabitant feels like a living breathing part of it's own world.

Dark Souls 2 doesn't do this. Levels are haphazard, Kaizo-tier traps in boring gray corridors. The world is duct-taped together and nonsensical. Enemies and bosses are MMO-tier fodder, no gravity, no personality, no purpose. The game is ugly as sin with zero atmosphere. The game has no interest in inspiring wonder, fear, or adventure. It just crunches the numbers, and wants to kill you as often as possible. It feels like a Chinese mobile-game's take on what Dark Souls should be. The multiplayer may have longevity for many, but it is not even in the same league as the other Souls titles when it comes to artistic vision. It is an entirely careless product.

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>swaps to fire whip instead of dark whip
>casts fire weapon instead of dark weapon
wew lad that was so hard
as someone who played through the game with a STR build followed by a hex build, hexes are fucking easy mode because they're just as hard in close quarters, but significantly easier in the other 90% of the game due to enemy AI still being fucking retarded like in DS1 and unable to handle magic spam. I literally had to intentionally gimp my character into only using short range spells or utility magic and using my weapon primarily as to not trivialize the DLC.
Also scaling is shit in DS2 so if you whip out a raw weapon you're nly slightly lower in damage than a dedicated STR/DEX/quality buid is.

how the hell do you get past this?

Because Sekiro isn't out yet

you run and don't roll and pray you don't get hit, in OP webm they missed the timing because of that extra roll at the end. But yeah it's retarded

I hate that Scholar unfucked so much shit, while fucking up things that were perfectly fine.
>stopped the exploding hollows in straids room from being hostile
>added a bunch of fragrant branch statues which are necessary for progression
>made Aldia's Keep an actual interesting area
>changed the skeleton dragon jumpscare at the start
>lets you skip dragon shrine entirely
>placed even more weeaboos in Iron Keep to make it even worse

You ignore it because every DLC had one section that was designed by Fromsoft's janitor for co-op play and the ifnal boss is just cooler ranch smelter demon

It's an optional path that gives you items, it's not actually required to progress. Sprint the whole time and weave through the enemies. Only roll like once.

>not powerstancing chilli heatwave/cool ranch swords

DS2 have the best NG+ in every Soulborne game

The moment I thought DS2 was real schlocky trash was when I pulled into the Lost Bastille off the ship with double lizard and I looked up, thinking that this sheer cliff fort was kind of impressive, but then I could just see through the level above me, its floor transparent and the whole area just kind of floating above me.

The entire game is a special kind of ambitious jank. It has some high moments though.

shouldve put all the efforts on NG+ on the base game first

This is a good post

It feels like the development team just made a bunch of shit, realized their deadline was getting close, then just threw it all together into a game at the last minute. Nothing feels cohesive or like it was designed to go together with a few exceptions.

absolutely fucking this

there's Des where pretty much every room and its little details make sense and everything feels like an actual, purposeful place

and then there's Das2 and its rooms with doors too small for the very castle's inhabitants to go through and areas that are the fantasy equivalent of a Super Mario level (Iron Keep)

They totally rewrote the story from time travel stuff basically unrelated to 1 to reborn Lords from 1 and it also being connected to Manus.

So, it's why the world feels so cut and paste, as well as specific elements that don't lead anywhere.

I can't help but think that a lot of the stuff from NG+ like the spider encounter was just semi-finished content from NG that they cobbled together into a presentable state and put it there as bonus.

adaptability is completely awful mechanic, and it's not the only one in the game.

Garbage bait and switch graphics (trailers showed off a really good lighting system and the final product had basically all fancy lighting turned off, making it look like a PS2 game basically) and garbage level design.
I had fun with it but I was also very annoyed with it compared to DeS and DaS

And how is giving everyone free 99 adaptability from the start of the game better?

>no NG+ enemies
>no black phantom enemies
>no spices
>no weapon parries
>no bonfire ascetics
>no powerstancing
>no pumped-up

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>weakest entry of the Dark Souls trilogy?
Done in only 6 months because of previous hack director.

>>no spices

and that's a good thing

because in 2 having low adaptability makes it so it feels like you're playing PvE online. there's also shit like soul memory and enemies despawning.

>waaah a black phantom catarina knight in NG+ isn't lore friendly!
>waaah the holders of the great souls also having souls referencing the lordsouls in DS1 isn't lore friendly!
>having literally three versions of havel's ring in different locations, none of which have to do with havel makes perfect sense
>same for ring of favor
>same for every other ring that has +1,+2 versions
>also +3 versions are in the Dreg Heap and the Ringed City because reasons

>enemy resists dark
doesn't exist in DS2 nigger

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It was designed to be as annoying and tedious to get through as possible, while not retaining anything that made exploration fun in the first game. Also the sound design is shit toer and the movement is a blatant dowbgrade from one. Oh and the bosses are snoozefests.

>switching your brain off to post instead

The one and only reason I dropped the game is because of the fucking weird animations. Especially the walking animations that make it feel like you're floating.

>Walk into room
>Enemy is standing near a wooden chest on the other side of the room
>For absolutely no reason at all, it decides to attack right when it's in front of the chest, breaking it and forever fucking you out of getting whatever item was inside
This alone made me so angry.

It's the epitome of a sequel made for the sake of making a sequel, much like Devil May Cry 2.

boards.fireden.net/v/search/filename/das2isagoodgame.webm/

Seek help OP.

It's the least casual one.
So shitters like will obviously not like it.
That would be DS3, 2 was far to innovatiive.

Reminder

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>complicated good!
DS2's level design sucks fucking ass. Woe to he who takes a break for a few days or just runs into a wall because it's so utterly shit.

not an argument shitter

DS2 is my favorite game, Frigid Outskirts just happens to be the worst designed area.

>complicated
Look again, brainlet, that is the game map. The image indicates that 3 is by far the most linear of then all, giving the player little freedom to go in the way he wants.

2's map is still not that great because there is little connection between places like the first, since the game was made from the start to have bonfire warping, but 3 manages to be even worse.

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I wish I could live there.

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fucking GARBAGE INTERNET connection.

Game was SO FUCKING DEAD when it came to online play.

One of the factions NEVER EVEN WORKED!

It's a mess.

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So do I, after seeing a particular lewd picture, that is.

What would you eat?

post it you fag

It's of the Ancient Dragon nutting on a bunch of dragonoids, I ain't sacrificing myself for you to have a cheeky wank.

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Chariot and the Frog were the only non-shit bosses in the game.
Also
>let's make shields garbage and force the player to rely on rolling far more than the previous game
>rolling is now worthless unless you dump souls into ADP
I'm convinced there was not one single minute's worth of playtesting done on this trash heap of a game

>Chariot and the Frog were the only non-shit bosses in the game

You either didn't play to Velstadt or just aren't a person of taste, honestly shocked that these were the bosses you thought were good.

I've powerstanced Longsword along with Blue Flame so I got double buffed straight swords. Took me 2 evenings to max out dickwraith rank in Arena. During duels on the bridge people would just jump to their death rather than fight me.
Good times.

>I don't get the vitriolic hate for it.

Entitlement and expectation.

DkS2 is the weakest of the franchise but it's still a good game, the only people claiming it's "garbage" let hype get to them and believed the devs somehow owed them more than they got.

crab.

Every single day the same tread jesus.

I loved the coventants and the PvP community. The DLC's were fun too, especially the first.

Its the souls game I played longest after finishing it. Rat covenant and Bell covenant were the most fun I had in any soulsborne.

Single player was meh but i felt that with all the soulsbornes except Demons / DS1

I find it more difficult to go back to DaS1 than DaS2 for two reasons. One because the PC port of DaS1 is utter shit. Two because DaS1 doesn't have omnidirectional dodging while locked-on, which was kinda baffling when going back after playing DaS2 and 3.

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>it even looks worse than demon's souls
how is that possible?

>3 has the best bosses and combat.

yeah, if you want a dumbed down action game instead of a action rpg.

I've finished it several times. They were the only ones that felt mechanically creative and uniquely interesting to fight in a game were 90% of the bosses are completely interchangeable Big Dudes or Big Beasts (or multiples thereof) you mindlessly dodge and poke the ankles of. Chariot could almost have been a DeS boss with some tweaking, and while the Frog was ultimately kinda boring at least they tried to switch it up.

Velstadt on the other hand (to use your example) was the exact same humanoid guy with a few melee combos and some magic gimmick that ultimately doesn't matter at all you've already fought god knows how many times.