Board Thread:Dark Souls II/@comment-16047389-20140430214818

Let me start off by saying that I don't hate Dark Souls 2. But I think we can all agree that it had some pretty bad changes that were made between it and Dark Souls 1. The disappointing thing is that most of the changes for the worse were done extremely well in Dark Souls 1, so it doesn't really make any sense for these problems to even exist. Anyway, let's talk about the main problems with Dark Souls 2, and what could easily be done about them.


 * The Boss Fights - Let's start off with the biggest disappointment. The majority of bosses in Dark Souls 2 are the same fight: Oversized humanoid enemy with large weapon that is easily avoidable by walking to the right/left. The Pursuer, individual Ruin Sentinels, Flexible Sentry, Vendrick, Throne Watcher & Defender, Lost Sinner, and Smelter Demon (although he is still hard) pretty much make us this entire category. The Rotten is only discluded, because he has the mechanic that if you try and strafe around him like the others, he'll use an AoE attack to force you to back off (and even that isn't that hard to avoid). But everyone of these fights could have easily been made more challenging/exciting simply by adding more moves or faster/harder to predict attacks. Take Artorias for example. He was an oversized dude with a large weapon. But he wasn't always easy to avoid. If you strafed around him, he could do a 360 horizontal strike, leap half way across the arena, or do a series of backflip strikes. He was also much faster than any of the above bosses. The bosses in Dark Souls 1 were more challenging, and also more visually stunning. They felt more impressive and epic.


 * PvP - Now, I do like the PvP in Dark Souls 2. I feel it has made some good changes. But for every good change, there was also a bad one made. The worst problems with PvP in DS2 can be found in how invasions and summonings are handled. The addition of soul memory is a good way to prevent new players from having to go up against twinked players, but it should only apply to lower levels. Between 1 - 100, you should probably be facing people with similar level AND soul memory. But once you start reaching 150 - 200, the most active pvp bracket, soul memory shouldn't even apply anymore. The second problem is that the covenant invasion systems are critically flawed. For starters, the fact that both the Blue and Red phantoms are required to use Cracked Orbs instead of full ones, harshly cuts back on PvP. It requires that the player farms for cracked eye orbs (which only adds to the soul memory problem further by the way), from mobs that will stop spawning after a certain amount of deaths. If you are farming Cracked Blue Eye Orbs from the Old Knights, and theys top spawning after 10 kills, you may end up with anywhere between 1-12 orbs before you've farmed them all. The drop rates are even lower for Cracked Red Eye Orbs in Huntsman's Copse. You can always use a bonfire aesthetic, but it seems incredibly unfair to make a player have to increase the difficulty of an area, push their soul memory even higher, and refarm the same enemies, just so they can PvP. This problem could easily be solved by adding a full Red/Blue Eye Orb to the game.


 * Environments - The Dark Souls 2 environments look pretty good on their own, but when you compare them to what was shown in the demos/trailers and to Dark Souls 1, it feels like an enormous step backwards. One of the biggest things that was promised, were traps and how you would have to carefully look for and disarm them. There are more traps in Sen's Fortress alone than in Dark Souls 2 at all. Another promise was the increase of darkness in the game. The only time you even need to light your torch is when you want to burn stuff. Even the Dark Chasm of Old, a realm of pure Dark, is lit up just fine. Nothing even comes close to the Tomb of the Giants. Aside from that, the geography in the game is just poorly done. The locations in the game hardly make any sense at all either geographically or logically. So you go up through Huntsman's Copse, to the highest point of Earthen Peak, to take a lift up even further, only to end up at a castle so far underground that it is touching lava. And what is up with all the random cliffs to oblivion? It's one thing to have a fall high enough that it would kill you, such as how Heide's and the Lost Bastille are suspended above high above sea level. Or how Dragon's Aerie is supposedly on top of giant peaks. But Huntsman's Copse, Undead Crypt, Shaded Woods, and the Forest of Fallen Giants are littered with bottomless chasms that have no rhyme or reason.


 * Lore/Story - In short, it's not good. The lore of Dark Souls 1 was mostly speculatory, but it still had that feeling that it was all somehow connected. Every location had a history, every enemy had a purpose, every item told a little bit more about faraway lands or lost history. Dark Souls 2 feels like they just made every environment and story seperately, then had to figure out how to work them in together at the last minute. None of the NPC's really had a personality or history that I actually cared about, and except for maybe Lucatiel.

These are just some of my grievences about this game. It's still a good game, but it could certainly be better. It had the potential to be better than its predecessor, but blew it. 