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IronicDongz posted:I never really felt like I was fighting to keep my sense of self in ds2. i feel like im fighting ambushes. lots and lots of ambushes. so many ambushes. still having fun though cause i can just blast them with my magic missiles.
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Dec 27, 2020 04:03
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Lucatiel's last encounter never fails to make me sad and worry about my mind as I get older.
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Dec 27, 2020 04:21
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To me DS2 is just an ugly looking game on a design aesthetic level. A big part of why I like the Soulsborne games is also the world design/lore aspects of it which are just really lacking in DS2. Gameplay wise it’s better in many respects than 1 and 3 but the gameplay itself isn’t really why I got into the games. It’s nowhere near a bad game but it’s certainly my least favorite of them all. If you disagree with me you are of course objectively wrong.
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Dec 27, 2020 05:11
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ASenileAnimal posted:i feel like im fighting ambushes. lots and lots of ambushes. so many ambushes. still having fun though cause i can just blast them with my magic missiles. as someone who has replayed DS 1 recently, that is the actual game of ambushes. even if you know they are there the levels are designed to make them punishing unless you know how to dispatch them although generally it's based on the environment rather than sending a ton of enemies at you constantly like some points of DS 2 I still love DS 2 though for it's atmosphere and DLC levels
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Dec 27, 2020 05:39
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oldpainless posted:To me DS2 is just an ugly looking game on a design aesthetic level. A big part of why I like the Soulsborne games is also the world design/lore aspects of it which are just really lacking in DS2. Gameplay wise it’s better in many respects than 1 and 3 but the gameplay itself isn’t really why I got into the games. It’s nowhere near a bad game but it’s certainly my least favorite of them all. If you disagree with me you are of course objectively wrong. More like oldtasteless.
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Dec 27, 2020 05:55
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oldpainless posted:To me DS2 is just an ugly looking game on a design aesthetic level. A big part of why I like the Soulsborne games is also the world design/lore aspects of it which are just really lacking in DS2. Gameplay wise it’s better in many respects than 1 and 3 but the gameplay itself isn’t really why I got into the games. It’s nowhere near a bad game but it’s certainly my least favorite of them all. If you disagree with me you are of course objectively wrong. Agreed, large parts of the game look like poo poo. There are exceptions but they serve mostly to highlight how ugly the stuff in between them is. At times the game almost manages to work with it and get the same kind of surreal, abstract, “gamey” vibe going on as From’s PS2 RPGs. But often not so much. Try going from Sekiro directly to SOTFS sometime. same platforms, four years difference, visually feels generations apart.
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Dec 27, 2020 06:12
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I think the game largely looks pretty good, designwise, outside of some real lovely textures but the level-ruining ones for me now are the castle texture for rooms in Drangleic and whatever the gently caress the metal patchwork texture in the Iron Keep is supposed to be.
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Dec 27, 2020 06:23
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the is this dark souls game good or not discourse is dumb imo because every game that's tried to do a dark souls thing that isn't fromsoft has sucked absolute poo poo. great dark souls 2 is the worst dark souls you know what's worse? remnant from the ashes
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Dec 27, 2020 06:32
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And lords of the fallen!
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Dec 27, 2020 06:32
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oldpainless posted:And lords of the fallen! It's even worse now they took the fun bugs out of it
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Dec 27, 2020 06:37
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I got both remnant and lords of the fallen for free and they weren't worth playing even at that price
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Dec 27, 2020 06:46
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Hades is probably my favorite soulslike
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Dec 27, 2020 07:20
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Salt and Sanctuary is pretty good.
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Dec 27, 2020 07:22
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remnant is a perfectly serviceable 3rd person shooter that is really barely anything like dark souls at all minus having a bonfire mechanic
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Dec 27, 2020 08:12
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Blasphemous is very souls-y and very fun. It's a Dark Metroidsoulsvania.
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Dec 27, 2020 08:13
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The Surge and its sequel get it imo. They ain’t perfect, but I enjoy them both almost as much as the soulsbourne games.
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Dec 27, 2020 17:55
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NicelyNice posted:Why do people dislike this game? I played Soulsborne in the order BB -> DS1 -> DS3 -> Sekiro and I kinda skipped over DS2 because I heard it was mediocre. I just realized I purchased it awhile ago and decided to give it a spin... and it's pretty good? It feels exactly like the game you would expect between DS1 and DS3. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, it seems like it has that weird, janky RPG feel of DS1 (this is a good thing) with better movement and controls that would ultimately move more into action game territory with BB and DS3. DS2 was in a development hell for a long while before the lead director was removed, a new one was brought on, and the final product was rushed out. So you get a mix of issues from that, some areas were obviously rushed in the base game, and either just unfinished and ugly or have enemies and even bosses that can feel pretty slapped together. Also, a lot of the changes in DS2 seemed to happen particularly to address nitpicks about various mechanical and pvp issues in DS1, and there's a few cases where they seemingly threw a few multiple changes at the wall when really only one change was necessary and the others either amounted to no worthwhile improvement or implementing feel-bad mechanics that are side-grades to how things worked in DS1 and the later games (soul memory as a player-to-player interaction anchor being the big one here.) There are some ingrained mechanical things people find offputting, like the way the controls were changed, and who find the base game's rushed nature disappointing after the heights that DS1's DLCs got to, both visually and mechanically. Some of DS2's badness also got kind of meme'd out of proportion by people who played it at release, where a lot of stuff was substantially worse and has been patched out, nerfed, or rearranged with the Scholar version since then. A bit of it was also the now-classic "Second Souls Game" feeling of people who got into the series with DS1, where once you clear one game, your second one is always going to feel easier anyway. Substantially fewer people did the DeS to DS1 jump, and didn't experience DS1 that way. DS2 is also very bad at teaching you multiple enemy management mechanics (like all the games) while being the first game to really rub your nose it in with a very "sink or swim" attitude. Tying dodge i-frames to a stat in an opaque way, plus the increase in goofy "I touched you, so you're grabbed!" attacks from enemies also made the game feel a lot worse for blind players. I think it's interesting in a development way, because you can most visibly see the seams and what they'd want from an idealized game, but they'd mapped out a game too large for them to properly finish by the time they really got working on it. That first primal bonfire loop with the Forest of the Fallen Giants, Heide's Tower, No Man's Wharf, and the Lost Bastille was clearly worked on a long time. They had time to give it a lot of varied heights, traps, shortcuts, and implement at lot of fun secrets and interesting Pharros Lockstone quirks. The Drangleic Castle and onward was also clearly worked on for a long while, but a lot of the middle game looks like it was where the heaviest cuts happened. Like the famous sky volcano: And Tyler Too! posted:This image will always be hilarious to me If you look up the original cinematic trailer reveal, you can see they planned some kind of walk-up volcano zone, and the Earthen Peak tower even seems to have cranes and a conveyor belt that dip down into some deep valley where they'd probably planned you to ride down to in order to reach the Iron Keep, but clearly none of that was finished so they just dropped it all to rush you to the volcano itself. RBA Starblade posted:"b team" Ironically, the DLCs demonstrated that once the final DS2 team was working at a scale and pace they could properly manage, they could put out some of the most excellent material in the Souls games. It makes you wonder how much of DS2 was cut just to get it out the door and how much larger they were originally planning to make it?
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Dec 27, 2020 18:29
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Happy Hedonist posted:The Surge and its sequel get it imo. They ain’t perfect, but I enjoy them both almost as much as the soulsbourne games.
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Dec 27, 2020 18:31
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I might just play those Surge games then since I can't play BB or the new DeS.
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Dec 27, 2020 19:26
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Nuns with Guns posted:It makes you wonder how much of DS2 was cut just to get it out the door and how much larger they were originally planning to make it? A whole drat lot, if some of the leftover stuff people have found is any indication. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmuHu-o-PKc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_YcEvpAafE
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Dec 27, 2020 19:31
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I got a few hours in on The Surge 2 and there was this intensely annoying guy on the loudspeakers looping on repeat about how he was going to beat up his brother or something, that was when I really appreciated the sombre sense of awe the From games create and how that elevates the experience beyond the level design and combat mechanics to create a transcendent experience, because The Surge 2 did the opposite of that
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Dec 27, 2020 19:44
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Happy Hedonist posted:The Surge and its sequel get it imo. They ain’t perfect, but I enjoy them both almost as much as the soulsbourne games. You can spot-dodge in The Surge 2 and the parries feel excellent, if overdone at times.
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Dec 27, 2020 20:43
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You can tell they got pissed off about ppl whining about Earthen Peak to Iron Keep because in Dark Souls 3 they just tell you literally in the game that parts of the world slide around and all ran into each other in this place called Lothric.
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Dec 28, 2020 04:16
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And even then they still busted their asses to keep most of the areas internally consistent. 
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Dec 28, 2020 10:37
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SHISHKABOB posted:You can tell they got pissed off about ppl whining about Earthen Peak to Iron Keep because in Dark Souls 3 they just tell you literally in the game that parts of the world slide around and all ran into each other in this place called Lothric. VVVV John Murdoch posted:And even then they still busted their asses to keep most of the areas internally consistent. Pretty much this. DS2 has no consistency at all. People keep mentioning the Earthen Peak to Iron Keep transition but Shaded Woods to Drangleic Castle is another awful one. Oh, and I liked Remnant. And is indeed more a 3rd person shooter than a souls game and more focused on co-op and replaying generated zones with random bosses. The closest to that system may be Bloodborne chalices.
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Dec 28, 2020 11:44
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Transitions aren't internal.
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Dec 28, 2020 17:53
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Shaded Woods to Drangleic's one of the coolest parts of the game and makes what DS2 is doing very obvious (even if what it's doing is largely coincidental due to reworks).
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Dec 28, 2020 17:59
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Defending DS2 by saying "yes the game is bad but have you considered that the game being bad incidentally happens to fit its themes?"
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Dec 28, 2020 18:09
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feelix posted:Defending DS2 by saying "yes the game is bad but have you considered that the game being bad incidentally happens to fit its themes?" It's not bad though.
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Dec 28, 2020 18:12
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feelix posted:Defending DS2 by saying "yes the game is bad but have you considered that the game being bad incidentally happens to fit its themes?" Read closer next time you try to get a burn in
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Dec 28, 2020 18:16
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RBA Starblade posted:Shaded Woods to Drangleic's one of the coolest parts of the game and makes what DS2 is doing very obvious (even if what it's doing is largely coincidental due to reworks).  Not sure what you mean by "what DS2 is doing" but I've always assumed that the transitions between areas are just videogame shorthand for your character travelling an extremely long distance. Hell maybe it's how your character experiences the passage of time, maybe in the "real world" they walked a week between the Shaded Woods and Drangleic but to your character it felt like a short jog
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Dec 28, 2020 18:17
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Son of Thunderbeast posted:
Yeah, I mean that along with your character not remembering the trip because of their brain scramblies The map in the manor also does a good job reinforcing that these are not contiguous places you're going and aren't intended to be (look where the bonfire lights actually are!), but no one ever really looks down there
RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Dec 28, 2020 |
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Dec 28, 2020 18:23
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I loved that house and that map. Discovering that map was so loving cool. I spent a good amount of time looking as closely as I could at it and trying to work out the locations and distances e: The way they make the sound "bounce" in the house was cool as gently caress too. The first time I explored the house I was moving at a crawl, ready to roll or attack at anything that moved, especially when in certain rooms and halls I could hear some kind of shuffling and grunting noises. It sounded like some kind of monster was waiting to jump out and try to eat me. I  ed hard when, after finding everything in the house, I went hunting for the source of the noise and discovered it was the piglets just outside.\/\/\/
Son of Thunderbeast fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Dec 28, 2020 |
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Dec 28, 2020 18:28
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Son of Thunderbeast posted:I loved that house and that map. Discovering that map was so loving cool. I spent a good amount of time looking as closely as I could at it and trying to work out the locations and distances The way that map would update as you progress through the game was a neat little detail that I really appreciated. It wasn't much, just some flames, but it was still cool.
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Dec 28, 2020 18:29
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Dark Souls 2 has a ton of "wasn't much, but is cool" Also don't even bother with feelix's white noise posting they will just sort of lob a dunk in the direction of whatever the thread's talking about and then wander off for the next couple of days. It's a tradition
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Dec 29, 2020 00:22
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Djeser posted:Dark Souls 2 has a ton of "wasn't much, but is cool" And then the Dark Souls 2 defenders will reply to my dunks instead of the actual in-depth accurate criticisms of their game being posted, because they don't have any substantive retort to the latter
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Dec 29, 2020 00:31
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My actual effortpost about DS2's commentary on the nature of sequels in games is that it is explicitly doing that, but it is not doing that to justify the weaker parts of it--it's doing it to justify why things are different. Some of the different stuff is shittier. Some of it is better. It's not "bad things are actually good" it's "it's impossible to make a sequel that lives up to the original'. But since nuance gets lost on the internet a lot, it becomes "actually mistakes are good because ~the flow of time is twisted~". There are mistakes in DS2. There are deliberate choices in DS2. There are things which were meant to be other things but they didn't have time to do it out completely so it's just kind of vestigial. The commentary that Dark Souls 2 makes on the nature of sequels does not excuse the game being rushed or having goofs, because the aspects of the game which are directly commenting on sequels as cycles that degrade the meanings of things until they're forgotten are deliberate choices, not mistakes or unfinished areas. The Gutter is a weird area that went through several massive reworks. Its problems are not secretly good because the game has themes. But, on the other hand, the game does not stop having themes because they had to cut out Oolacile and put it back in as DLC, or because the archstone that led to the Northern Lands is broken, or because Smoldering Lake is an empty pit with several giant crabs, a worm, and giant arrows that keep you from waiting around long enough to realize that the area sucks.
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Dec 29, 2020 00:32
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Djeser posted:"it's impossible to make a sequel that lives up to the original'.
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Dec 29, 2020 00:34
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the edit you made to your post so you didn't break the bbcode is a sequel that lives up to the original
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Dec 29, 2020 00:36
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feelix posted:Dark Souls 1 is a sequel that lives up and exceeds the original Extremely incorrect.
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Dec 29, 2020 00:37
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