I must now declare Dark Souls 2?a great game!

[Sniper Team 4]

I thought it was a great game too. I think a lot of the "this game is terrible" comes from people who have put Dark Souls so high up on a pillar of worship that nothing can ever come close to it in their minds. I actually played through Dark Souls II completely first before Dark Souls, and I found a lot of things in the second game that blow the first one out of the water.

Of course, Dark Souls does a lot of things that blows its sequel out of the water too, so it's even. I honestly think both games are great and are worth playing.

 

[Grintwist]

I love the game, even with all it's issues. It's just that it's a sequel to a game that, for the most part, was incredibly good. Normally it's expected for games to improve rather than have more mistakes within a sequel and that's just sort of the issue now. Though for the most part I like a lot of things that have been put in place like solo covenants and bonfire ascetics as that can add a lot to the game's lifespan.

I feel like most of the criticism that I've seen as of late comes from the player versus player part of the game, which has never been perfect. Though, no multiplayer game is that great when it's first released so I think after another month or two more people will start adjusting to the players using some of the more crazier styles and some of the unbearable aspects of multiplayer will be taken care of.

All it needs is a bit of work, that's all. I think for the most part it deserves to exist as a sequel when it comes to the overall gameplay of the games.

 

[Mahorfeus]

I have difficulty playing the first game after having beaten the second several times between the 360 and PC versions. I don't know, mechanically, it just plays so much more smoothly for me. Even when I actively played the first one, I had trouble bringing myself to do multiple playthroughs. Not because it was harder - it is, but for what I feel are the "wrong" reasons. It's just a pain in general.

I think it might be because of one of the original design goals for Dark Souls II - accessibility. What many have perceived as being "easy mode." Bonfire warping, the redone upgrade system... the things that made the game less of a headache, without necessarily making the game any easier. Making summoning and invading proceed more smoothly was a huge plus, though some things in those regards could still use some work.

As far as the PvP goes, I still think it is going far better than the original in terms of balance. At least From seems to be keeping up with the scene, adjusting the stats on the blatantly overpowered stuff. I expect that they will continue to do so. Dark Souls only ever had that happen once or twice, and even then it was not necessarily "balanced" by the end.

I'm fairly excited for what the DLC will bring in, as far as lore and game balance goes.

 

[The Towel Boy]

The people calling it bad or horrible are exaggerating quite a bit.

It improves on some areas and regresses in others. Personally, I'd say it's just as good as the first game, but it could have been a good bit better.

These people are definitely over-exaggerating on this one, this game is not at all bad with it being fair and fun. I place it within the same category as its predecessor, because the are both really good games. Also for those speaking of unfairness, remember Blightown and Sen's Fortress...enough said.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I'm playing Dark Souls 2 right now and really enjoying it.

I have to say, I see where some people are coming from with their complaints about Dark Souls 2, but I also think that a lot of those people are looking at Dark Souls 1 with rose colored glasses. Now I love, LOVE, Dark Souls 1, it's one of my favorite games from the last generation, but it was not without it's problems.

People keep saying that Dark Souls 2 has worse level design because all the areas don't connect like they do in Dark Souls 1, and I have to both agree and disagree in that regard. One the one hand, it was really cool what From Software did with Dark Souls 1 in how they connected the world and made the majority of the areas connect together, but at the same time it always bothered me how small it made Lordran. The areas in Dark Souls 1 are very dense, but they aren't very big, and the entirety of Dark Souls 1 fits into probably 2 square miles, with many of the areas layered onto one another. On the other hand in Dark Souls 2, Drangleic actually feels like a large kingdom that you're traversing. Sure the areas don't really connect together all that well, but that actually makes the world feel more large and sprawling, and helps make the transitions between areas feel less jarring in terms of tone and mood.

The fact that the areas aren't interconnected in the same way as Dark Souls 1 is also the reason that you can teleport between any bonfire now, and that just makes the game a lot more convenient to traverse. In Dark Souls 1 any time you wanted to visit the giant blacksmith or something you'd have to run all the way to him and all the way back to the bonfire and every visit took 15-20 minutes because the bonfires that you could teleport to weren't conveniently located. It was like that with most merchants, and Dark Souls 2 fixes that by allowing you to get to pretty much any merchant within 30 seconds of using a bonfire. It removes a lot of the tedium from the game.

As far as level design of the areas being worse I generally disagree. Yeah, some of the areas aren't great, but some of the areas in dark souls 1 were equally bad or worse. Blighttown, the depths, lost izalith, crystal cave, tomb of the giants, the great hollow, the first part of anor londo, all those places are BAD. So it's really hard for me to condemn Dark Souls 2 for bad level design when the first game had just as many bad areas. At least in Dark Souls 2 the From Software dev team seems to have given some consideration to how the player is supposed to traverse the environment, rather than making the environment and then figuring out along the way how the player is supposed to use it.

As far as bosses, yeah, I agree that a lot of the Dark Souls 2 bosses aren't very memorable, but at the same time there are about 3 times as many bosses in Dark Souls 2 as there were in Dark Souls 1, so I'd say that between the 2 games Dark Souls 2 has just as many interesting bosses are Dark Souls 1 did, it's just that there's a lot of really uninteresting ones thrown in there as well.

So yeah, I'd say that the people who are condemning Dark Souls 2 and saying that it's worse than Dark Souls 1 in every way are whitewashing all the problems that Dark Souls 1 had. It's totally fine to prefer Dark Souls 1 (I still do), but that's no reason to say that Dark Souls 2 is a horrible game, which is what I hear from some of the series' fans.

 

[default]

Man, I have so much to talk about when it comes to DS 1 vs DS 2...

I'm just going to say that I don't like DS2 anywhere near as much as I do DS1. Don't get me wrong, DS2 is fucking fantastic, but it's just not as good in my opinion. Not even close. PvP is my jam when it comes to Souls games, so let's talk about that. The best way I can describe the PvP now is that it's like comparing Melee to Brawl. I don't care about balance at this point. Yeah it's infuriating being killed by a single attack or stunlocked from full health to death, but that's not my gripe with DS2.

DS1's PvP is extremely fluid, fast-paced, precise and technical. It's teeth-grindingly intense and hypercharged with energy, angles, nuances and depth. Sure it has issues, but the core gameplay is extremely strong. DS2 in comparison is two guys walking back and forth taking turns to chop at each other. All the energy and flow is gone. The controls, movement and attacks feel stodgy, slow and bloated. It just fucking sucks. I went straight from 1 to 2 and back again to try and prove to myself I was just being silly and biased. I really wasn't...

Keep in mind that all I'm talking about is in comparison to the first game here. DS2 is still excellent. It just doesn't stand up to the first one at all.