Dark Souls Remastered - The Original is Not the Best

[sXeth]

The main pitfalls of Ds2 (and I have no idea how many were altered in SoFS)

-A lot of ludicrous enemy spamming. I wouldn't necessarily say the other entries weren't without obnoxious simialr bits, but OG DS2 was way over the top with it in attempts to surpass the "LOL ITS SO HARD" rep the game has.

-Something of a blandly designed world in general. A ton of generic big armoured dudes, generic dragons, etc. None of the sort of continous design elements they had in DS1 and 3, instead you had the hub and linear branches out from it.


-Some generally nonsensical geography and layout. The gate you need the kings key (thus requiring you to go kill the 4 things, speaking of which, the mega-bosses lore being kind of pitiful deserves a mention) for literally has a hole next to it thats barely ankle height. And the also infamous voclano castle on top of a windmill thing.


-The bit where you have to kind of guess/wiki/rely on insane feats of memory to go back and find the giants tree because you need to inexplicably time travel through memories. DS1 was obtuse in a lot of bad ways, but not so much in the sense of actively hiding the main storyline progression.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Snip

You nailed it indeed.

Yeah we just don't agree and clearly we never will. I can't help but feel like it's just a syndrome of people hating on DS1 because they played and liked DS1 first.

Maybe it's like Final Fantasy games in which the first game you play tends to be your favorite. Even if you don't like other games that have the exact same shit as the one you like has. It's good in your game but bad in others for "reasons".

I?m assuming you meant to say ?syndrome of people hating on DS2 because they played and liked DS1 first.?? Well, I can assure you such is not the case; there are many a game with less-than-stellar sequels that aren?t nigh universally panned by the series? fans.

No one believes DS1 is devoid of flaws; any fan can probably list a dozen things that dislike about it. The problem tends to be DS2 took many of those flaws and did them worse, more often and added some new flaws of their own. It?s like the DS2 devs heard how much people liked bone-in chicken wings, so in attempt amplify and replicate that success, they just added more bones and made those bones bigger; they missed the point.

 

[CritialGaming]

Having read suffered through this thread, I?m happy to have played the SoulsBorne games in order of release; although still not done with 3. Looking back, there are things I really do like about each most.

Demon?s Souls - Bosses, individual level design and overall quality of execution

Dark Souls - Atmosphere, lore and connectedness, at least until Lost Izalith (though even that had a cool ?back door? loop on the bridge).

Dark Souls 2: SotFS - the most ambitious scale and amount of content, variety, risk taking to try new things with the formula (adaptation improved responsiveness, bonfire ascetics and memories made farming a lot more efficient and added a nice challenge, lockstones, etc.), plus the dlc is varied and pretty incredible. Fume Knight is still one of my all time favorites just because of the precision and discipline required to do well as a melee build.

Bloodborne - Ironically enough the other Sony exclusive entry also has the highest overall quality and level of execution, but this time even the presentation was outstanding. The combat also had a nice twist or two. Still one of the greatest combinations of thoughtful level design, locations which shine both thematically and artistically from their gothic, Lovecraftian lore inspirations, creature design, weapon design, and that music is so bloody good. A sequel would be my most wanted out of the upcoming generation.

Dark Souls 3 - Again, I?m barely even halfway through, but I can already tell it?s the best iteration of what?s come beforehand. Combining the general aggressiveness and responsiveness of Bloodborne with the traditional core Souls gameplay elements, plus adding weapon arts to spice things up, to me it?s possibly the most fun to play; at least pre-Sekiro. The locations may feel derivative and lack some of the charm and cleverness, but they are a pleasant familiarity with an overall exceptional level of detail. The bosses and even sub bosses so far have also been a challenging, often imaginative mix of foes that remind me of a big part of the reason I started playing these games.

Getting anxious to return to it after finishing RDR2?s massive story.

 

[CaitSeith]

-The bit where you have to kind of guess/wiki/rely on insane feats of memory to go back and find the giants tree because you need to inexplicably time travel through memories. DS1 was obtuse in a lot of bad ways, but not so much in the sense of actively hiding the main storyline progression.

Distinctly shaped tree.

Locked door.

What's the difference?

 

[Erttheking]

If there?s one critique in this thread that I can disputed as being objectively incorrect, it?s the idea that DS1 is obscure...what? No.

Aside from that it?s mainly opinion. Ones I disagree with (except Lost Izalith, even Miyazaki admitted he was disappointed with it) but opinion. I certainly disagree with the idea that DS2 is better but I do admit it would feel like a sluggish game if you played BB and DS3 first. BB took a much more fast paced approach and then its DNA got injected into DS3.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Git Gud.

 

[Dalisclock]

I don't have much more to add then I did in the sequel disappointment thread(and then what other people here have said). I played DS1 first and despite not thinking I would like it, ended up really enjoying it.

It has notable flaws, such as some some noticeably unfair bits in this "Tough but fair" game, janky hitboxs and clipping issues and the later areas(the demon ruins/lost izalith/The Bed of Chaos) were clearly unfinished. But it still feels like it just works in a way so many other games don't, especially in terms of world design.

I went into Dark Souls 2 with an open mind and aware of it's reputation and....liked it significantly less for many, many reasons. I appreciate they wanted to do something different but learning the game essentially had to be rebuilt about halfway through the dev process explains a lot about why so many things feel off about it(Areas that feel stitched together being the biggest one). That being said, I felt the SOTFS DLC areas were significantly better then a lot of the main game areas(The Brume Tower is one of my favorite areas in the entire game). I ended up doing pretty much everything I could stand, because I realized while playing that I was never going to play DS2 ever again due to how much it annoyed me in some ways.

I've started Demons Souls and...I made it to the big bridge before stopping and I've yet to get back to it(and I know that's really early in the game). I just can't bring myself to want to pick it back up again right now.

Bloodborne I fucking adored(baring a few annoyances, notably Micolash, who can fuck right off) and if I could only play one souls game again it would be BB.

Dark Souls 3 is also on my to do list in the next year. Hopefully I actually get around to playing it. Maybe if it ends up being a slow year so I can make more progress on my backlog.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Gotta wonder the amount of jank contained in a 9 hours long rebuttal.

Well, looking at his Twitter, a LOT. Seriously, someone making a video that is ten times the length of the one its rebutting needs to get their priorities straightened out.

 

[CritialGaming]

Just a little update. I just beat the game this morning. The game was fairly straightforward after Bed of Chaos. Though the Tomb of Giants can suck my ass too. It took me a guide to figure out where to get a light emiting item. (I didn't get any lanterns from the necros on the way down).

Outside of that, I had no problem going through the rest of the game. Oh I had to look up how to fight the Four Kings because I didn't realize i needed to wear a very specific ring to even start the fight which....I mean.....fucking why? Why fuck the player over? Just make you able to do the fight if you had the item or did a thing before hand. I had got that ring a dozen hours ago and completely forgot about it a long time ago. But fine more stupid things.

Gwen turned out to be really easy, which I liked.

One of the other things I never figured out was how to get boss weapons. I beat the game with a ton of boss souls and was saving them for when I found the guy to give me weapons for them. But that never happened. The Weapons in this game are boring, and there doesn't seem to be many of them. Once I got a Black Knight sword in the first hour or so of the game, that was basically it for the rest of the game. i heard the Halberd is also good but I hate them.

All in all. Never playing this again. But at least i beat it.

 

[Dansen]

Just a little update. I just beat the game this morning. The game was fairly straightforward after Bed of Chaos. Though the Tomb of Giants can suck my ass too. It took me a guide to figure out where to get a light emiting item. (I didn't get any lanterns from the necros on the way down).

Outside of that, I had no problem going through the rest of the game. Oh I had to look up how to fight the Four Kings because I didn't realize i needed to wear a very specific ring to even start the fight which....I mean.....fucking why? Why fuck the player over? Just make you able to do the fight if you had the item or did a thing before hand. I had got that ring a dozen hours ago and completely forgot about it a long time ago. But fine more stupid things.

Gwen turned out to be really easy, which I liked.

One of the other things I never figured out was how to get boss weapons. I beat the game with a ton of boss souls and was saving them for when I found the guy to give me weapons for them. But that never happened. The Weapons in this game are boring, and there doesn't seem to be many of them. Once I got a Black Knight sword in the first hour or so of the game, that was basically it for the rest of the game. i heard the Halberd is also good but I hate them.

All in all. Never playing this again. But at least i beat it.

-yeah Tomb of the Giants is notorious for the skelodogs and the mandatory light source(there are only 3 in the game).

-The game very clearly goes out of its way to say you need the ring of Artorias, THE ABYSS WALKER to fight the four kings WHO ARE IN THE ABYSS. Seriously, multiple npcs talk about it, don't know how you could miss it unless you ignored all npcs and didn't read any flavor text. Its one of the few moments the game isn't deliberately obtuse, that one is on you man.

-Go to the giant black smith in Anor Londo for boss weapons. I don't know how you missed him unless you just bee lined straight to O&S and didn't explore. You need to have a base weapon upgraded to the right level to make them as well as the boss soul.

You seemed determined to dislike this game from the beginning so I'm not sure what you were planning to get from the experience.

 

[Nedoras]

Gotta wonder the amount of jank contained in a 9 hours long rebuttal.

Well, looking at his Twitter, a LOT. Seriously, someone making a video that is ten times the length of the one its rebutting needs to get their priorities straightened out.

Mauler is a bit of a joke of a person. He's one of those people who stress that they only do "objective" critiques and that he has a very big brain for doing so. Totally normal and not full of himself. And that nine hour response video series is a result of him definitely not being mad.

As for the topic itself, I'll keep it short and just say that DS1's early level/world design is honestly all that the game really did well....and even that falls off a cliff after you get the Lordvessel for a few reasons. I enjoyed DS1, but so many flaws I've seen attributed to other games in the series easily apply to 1 as well. They just get ignored because of the world design in the first "half" of the game. People look back at 1 in a very blinkered way. I love the series and have put a stupid amount of time into each of the games, but DS1 is just not all that great. Out of all of them, I've gone back to it the least.

 

[Kwak]

Gotta wonder the amount of jank contained in a 9 hours long rebuttal.

Well, looking at his Twitter, a LOT. Seriously, someone making a video that is ten times the length of the one its rebutting needs to get their priorities straightened out.

10 page totally objective rebuttal incoming.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Using the remaster as an example of the quality of Dark Souls isn't really fair. They changed a bunch of stuff for the worse. For example, if you had only played the remaster you wouldn't know that when you defeated a boss it would originally say "You Defeated" and not "Victory Achieved."

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Mauler is a bit of a joke of a person. He's one of those people who stress that they only do "objective" critiques and that he has a very big brain for doing so. Totally normal and not full of himself. And that nine hour response video series is a result of him definitely not being mad.

As for the topic itself, I'll keep it short and just say that DS1's early level/world design is honestly all that the game really did well....and even that falls off a cliff after you get the Lordvessel for a few reasons. I enjoyed DS1, but so many flaws I've seen attributed to other games in the series easily apply to 1 as well. They just get ignored because of the world design in the first "half" of the game. People look back at 1 in a very blinkered way. I love the series and have put a stupid amount of time into each of the games, but DS1 is just not all that great. Out of all of them, I've gone back to it the least.

My favorite is probably 2 because it was by far the most experimental and I found the most interesting from a narrative and thematic perspective. It's partly why I found DS3 to be a letdown; instead of doing an interesting shakeup, it just went back to pandering to DS1 and while also really wanting to be Bloodborne. Miyazaki had clearly run out of steam with the series by then

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

AsDemon soul chief problem was that you could brute force any encounter by just bringing thousands of healing item,

That and you can cheese a lot of bosses either by firing arrows from just outside the fog gate or tripping their shitty pathfinding.
There's also a duplication glitch that's very handy for maxing out weapons though I didn't find out about it until I'd beaten the game.

 

[Nedoras]

Mauler is a bit of a joke of a person. He's one of those people who stress that they only do "objective" critiques and that he has a very big brain for doing so. Totally normal and not full of himself. And that nine hour response video series is a result of him definitely not being mad.

As for the topic itself, I'll keep it short and just say that DS1's early level/world design is honestly all that the game really did well....and even that falls off a cliff after you get the Lordvessel for a few reasons. I enjoyed DS1, but so many flaws I've seen attributed to other games in the series easily apply to 1 as well. They just get ignored because of the world design in the first "half" of the game. People look back at 1 in a very blinkered way. I love the series and have put a stupid amount of time into each of the games, but DS1 is just not all that great. Out of all of them, I've gone back to it the least.

My favorite is probably 2 because it was by far the most experimental and I found the most interesting from a narrative and thematic perspective. It's partly why I found DS3 to be a letdown; instead of doing an interesting shakeup, it just went back to pandering to DS1 and while also really wanting to be Bloodborne. Miyazaki had clearly run out of steam with the series by then

Honestly my favorite is 2 as well. It's a very flawed game that I wish they had more time to work on, but I feel like it's strengths make up for those flaws. The narrative, the themes, the NPCs, the build variety, and the pacing of the game are fantastic. Hell, I'm replaying it again right now and quite enjoying it.

DS3 definitely felt lazy when it came to the world itself. It was a whole lot of "remember DS1?" followed up by "pst, hey, this may be connected to Bloodborne". Most of the NPCs felt lifeless and dull too. The only highlight of the game for me was seeing the result of Yggdrasil being torn to bits by the linking of the flame happening over and over again. It was really fitting to fight the Soul of Cinder in the decayed stump of the World Tree, with all of the worlds that it's roots touched being mashed together into a dying clump surrounding it. Almost as if it couldn't take it anymore, and just wanted to die.

 

[Trunkage]

-Go to the giant black smith in Anor Londo for boss weapons. I don't know how you missed him unless you just bee lined straight to O&S and didn't explore. You need to have a base weapon upgraded to the right level to make them as well as the boss soul.

I missed Andre the Blacksmith before reaching Anor Londo. I also tend to search AFTER I defeated bosses back then, so missing the giant Blacksmith was an easy thing. This taught me to search first in Dark Souls games

 

[Silvanus]

It was a whole lot of "remember DS1?" followed up by "pst, hey, this may be connected to Bloodborne".

Where was this? There was no connection to BB in DS3. Miyazaki has stated they're unconnected. The supposed link is only ever posited by fans, not devs.

Most of the NPCs felt lifeless and dull too.

Shame you felt that way. I really liked Hawkwood, Yoel, Eygon and Lothric.

It had far more memorable and distinct characters than DS2 imo. Except Sweet Shalquoir, who is obviously the greatest Souls character.

I missed Andre the Blacksmith before reaching Anor Londo. I also tend to search AFTER I defeated bosses back then, so missing the giant Blacksmith was an easy thing. This taught me to search first in Dark Souls games

I'm pretty sure you have to pass directly in front of the Giant Blacksmith in order to progress in Anor Londo. You pass with him about 2 metres away, and he's making a racket smacking an anvil. He must be the hardest character to miss.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I missed Andre the Blacksmith before reaching Anor Londo. I also tend to search AFTER I defeated bosses back then, so missing the giant Blacksmith was an easy thing. This taught me to search first in Dark Souls games

I'm pretty sure you have to pass directly in front of the Giant Blacksmith in order to progress in Anor Londo. You pass with him about 2 metres away, and he's making a racket smacking an anvil. He must be the hardest character to miss.

Nope, the Giant Blacksmith in Anor Londo is completely miss-able. Once you pass the archers and work your way to the main hall, at the opposite end of the hall from the O&S fog wall is the main gate which, once opened, creates a straight run from the first bonfire to the boss. However, one would basically have to actively NOT explore to miss the entire ?left side? of the area with the blacksmith; I?d wager it?s highly unlikely someone who?s paying any level of attention or cared at all about the game they were playing would mis him.

 

[Nedoras]

It was a whole lot of "remember DS1?" followed up by "pst, hey, this may be connected to Bloodborne".

Where was this? There was no connection to BB in DS3. Miyazaki has stated they're unconnected. The supposed link is only ever posited by fans, not devs.

Most of the NPCs felt lifeless and dull too.

Shame you felt that way. I really liked Hawkwood, Yoel, Eygon and Lothric.

It had far more memorable and distinct characters than DS2 imo. Except Sweet Shalquoir, who is obviously the greatest Souls character.

I know they've stated that they're not, I didn't say that they officially were. But there are plenty of winks and nods to it in DS3, to where even though they say that, connections can be made. It was clearly intentional, even if the connections aren't official. Or it could be that they just share a few themes. But those shared themes are rather noticeable, as are the connections to DS1. I dunno. I suppose I just wanted them to go in a different direction. I still loved the game though, it was great.

There are NPCs that I did like in 3, it's just I didn't find many of them to be memorable. Maybe lifeless and dull were the wrong words. I talked to a friend about this the other day and I can't really put my finger on why I didn't care for so many of the NPCs in 3. And yes, Shalquoir is the best Souls character period.