Who gave Joseph coffee ? I've never seen him so energetic during a critic !

I think why Dark Souls 2 was criticized more then Dark Souls 1 was due to the problems for DkS2 being easier to generalize when compared to DkS1. DkS1 suffered from polish in certain areas and had a poor last half. You already made a 5 parter to show unpolished areas of the game so I don't really have to say more. However DkS2 problems lie more in mechanics and level design. The harder it is to categorize a problem, the easier it is to forget, that's why players will forget about moments of poor polish in the early game of DkS1 (like the slippery walkway in Blighttown), but remember the rushed end game areas because the quality of those areas were consistently poor. DkS1 wasn't perfect, but there was a lot more good to remember then bad, at least for me. It was easier to sum up what I didn't like in DkS2 vs what I did. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, I'm just trying to give a reason as to why DkS2 as a whole was ranked lower then the first. Btw you got great videos so far. 👍

"Framerate higher than my age" lel

I like how fast he speaks in these older videos, before he realized that he didn't need to rush and that long form content was something we really wanted.

Good vid, Joe.

Put it at .75 speed if you’re used to Joseph’s usual videos. Slows things down to a nice pace

Dks2 had a troubled developpement, the lead director of the team was changed and the new one (Tanimura) had to do with the content that had already been created. So this might explain the level design and some of the choices that were made.

I love finding a new channel with years of content to catch up on. Glad I found your vids man.

watching this again i realize that the"block parry dodge" part is really nicely done. I like how you started all examples with the same attack really cool idea(i hope its clear what i mean lol)

Welp just marathoned through all your vids in one night after finding one, great stuff, will look forward to more content!

11:00 I totally thought I lost control of my screen! Great video as usual, I'm a new but loyal fan of your work!

Nobody adresses the fact that your character just moves awkward.

The quality of your videos matches your taste in games. Marvelous.

Just as an aside, the Devil May Cry series (starting I think with 3 Special Edition) has a difficulty mode where both you and your enemies die in one hit. This is probably overkill, but it still drastically changed the game, making some hard enemies ridiculously easy and some easy enemies ridiculously hard.

Even after Elden Ring, Dark Souls 2 retains the greatest sense of adventure for me. Something about the disjointed crazy brokenness of it made the highs seems even higher.

Wow this was really in-depth. I esp liked the preventable damage analysis with older games and newer ones with cover mechanics and hp regen. Never really looked at it like that. I guess it's more complicated than just "the casualization of games".

4:30 I've tried out Skyrim with higher damage input from both you and the enemies thanks to mods. And it's DEFINITELY improved. Did you know you can parry attacks in Skyrim? Well, you can. And it becomes vital when fighting really strong enemies like Bandit Chiefs early game. Dragons become actually frightening. Though I do recommend also boosting the health of dragons. While it's not perfect, it makes Skyrim an actual action RPG experience.

Kingdom Hearts had the right idea with critical mode when it comes to difficulty. It gives you many more options from the get-go, makes you drastically less tanky, but also increases your overall damage output to have fights not drag on.

Thanks for your fantastic work Joseph. Look forward to your future work. Have a great Xmas and new year.

I started with ds3 and really loved it. Now i just finnished ds2 and i really liked it as well. The bosses in ds2 were really easy though. But idc, i think i enjoyed exploring the world more in ds2. Ds3 has a lot better combat though imo.

Compared to some other vids of yours, you seem to be trying to rush through, like you edited the audio to remove any breaks in speech. Hopefully the next two in this series aren't like this, nor other videos. Otherwise, great stuff on this channel, whether I agree with certain things or not.

Many times I have tried to explain what makes Dark Souls combat so great. You have put it into words very precisely. Thank you.

I guess this was meant to be focused on gameplay, but it's worth mentioning that the world, characters, and lore was a massive portion of the criticism directed at Dark Souls 2 as well. Anyways, I disagree with a few of your points. You said you were okay with enemy groups in Dark Souls 2 because small mistakes aren't as important and you like the strike and weave gameplay it provides. The bit about health is really no justification at all, even if it can negate cheap feeling damage loss, it doesn't actually change the gameplay. The second point, I have to completely disagree with, and bear with me, it will take a while to dispute this. So I comend you on being one of the first people ever I've heard to recommend not locking on, it baffles me how few people I've seen who naturally begin to aim manually after a while, as it is the next step in opening up your options and raising the mechanical potential of the games. However, this leads me to a point that I never see anybody make, is the mechanical change I most hate about Dark Souls 2, and I will continue to rant about in as many comments on the internet as I can until the day I die. Dark Souls 2 ruined the precision of manual aiming. It's simply not there. Your character will no longer jump to the exact angle of your analog stick after the windup frames on an attack, and instead do this sort of inconsistent half turn. It ruins most of the high level mechanics concerning precisely timing your attack, utilizing the extremities of the attack arc, maintaining spacing, and executing advanced techniques like reverse backstep. Because of this high level of aim control, weaving and striking through enemy groups was actually better in Dark Souls 1, DS 2 just forces you to do it. Furthermore, DS 2 reduces your ability to skillfully dodge through an enemy group by positioning alone because of the ridiculous enemy tracking; you are always forced to roll. Instead of just making more enemies and giving them tracking, which was the lazy option to reduce the first game's problems of circle strafing, they should have removed the broken mechanic that is backstabbing entirely and then designed enemies that can actually move and attack in a way that keeps the threat facing you (without it just sticking to your position of course, piece of shit tracking). The new design angle of Dark Souls 2 created more problems than it solved, and it solved them going in the wrong direction and not tackling the root of the issues. There, done. Sorry, but I hadn't filled my angry Dark Souls 2 comment quota in a while.

As someone who has beaten every single souls game multiple times (except sekiro and I’ve only beaten demons souls twice) and put at least 700 hours in total to the souls series, I’m always confused when people say not to lock on during gank fights. You can flick the joystick to target one at a time but target the middle one and still use a sweeping attack to hit both at the same time, if you unlock, you risk not hitting at all and in bloodborne especially it’s better to lock on because dashing is quicker.

Thanks for this series. I love the whole series, including 2. It's so popular to crap on this game when it did so many things right, and you know what? Ds3 was safe. Ds2 tried a lot of new things, not all of them worked. It took risks, and I appreciate that.

IDK if it was mentioned in a comment earlier, but the Metro series ramps damage up with difficulty, starting at easy mode where basic enemies can take 3-4 shotgun shells to the face and shrug it off but you're also a walking tank, to the highest difficulty, where a stray shot or two leaves everyone dead. I really like this in first person shooters, it makes you play a lot more cautiously and rely on stealth.

Thank you for this. This video essay really give me a new perspective on the combat. In your view, the combat was not worse per se, but different, and life gems is an intentional part of this difference.

Not only are your video essays better than the best of 'em on KZfaq, but Joe your soft buttery voice in the background is all I need to pass the fuck out sometimes. I've never contributed on Patreon or anything but I'd like to think I'm supporting you in my own way by just having your videos going constantly on my tv. Probably seen this Dark Souls 2 video 20 fucking times all things considered. Keep up the great work dude!

I like your videos man. Can’t say exactly why. I guess I just like your personality.

I have no clue how do you mange to put so much quality content in such short amounts of time. I enjoy your videos and i hope your fan base grows soon, you deserve it.

That was the best description of the Bed of Chaos I've ever heard.

Good video, but even acknowledging the fact that fighting groups of enemies unlocked was intentional, simply doing that is much, much less satisfying. The slower stamina regeneration, the high HP pools and the need to heal with life gems if you get hit means that the group fights are nearly always a test of patience; at least for me, and I think that this is what makes the PvE content in Dark Souls 2, which commonly has the group enemy placement less enjoyable for so many people, even people who know how to play around it. I also think that dodging out of the way of attacks in a group combat situation gets hamstrung by the agility system. Really great video, though. Really good to see someone delve into the playstyle differences, and the 'chicken-and-the-egg' situations with some of the design in the game.

27:24 That was a beautiful description of Lost Izalith/Bed of Chaos

you forgot the fourth pillar of the series, Praising the Sun \[T]/

Great stuff! You summed up the main mechanics of the first Dark Souls so well. The only other thing I'd mention would be the fact that blocking with a shield in Dark Souls is much more of a pro-active mechanic than defence in a lot of other action RPGS. The comparison of lifegem regen with health regen in recent shooters was interesting too. Are you looking forward to Dark Souls 3 yourself? I'd also suggest giving Bloodborne a go if you ever end up getting a PS4. The transition to a more aggressive combat system is dealt with extremely well in my opinion. And while the level design never quite reaches the best moments in DS1, its still extremely well done, with many shortcuts placed intelligently.

As someone who's going backwards through your channel, I'm really glad you slowed down in later videos. It's not that I can't keep up, but I'm getting a little stressed out at how quickly you're speaking. :3 Well, also I'm doing something else while listening so I'm not paying 100% attention so that is probably on me.

the main issue i have with ds2 is the hitbox oh lets just go for a backstab.... and it somehow hit me

I love how he managed to learn how to deal with the 2 ogres... I wonder what he would say about it now, given that the Pursuer joins the fight there in the scholar edition.

I would attempt to play further into Dark Souls 2 if the movement and dodge mechanics were tighter. I've tried several times, but just can't force myself to enjoy it. Feels so wrong. Glad I have Dark Souls 3 to look forward to.

Even though these videos are a few years old I'm just obsessed with hearing opinions on them even years later. Ds2 sotfs is my favourite souls game (super unpopular opinion) just ds2 in general imo did so much right and whilst I understand some criticisms other I don't. But I'm not here for that. I just watched your ds3 critique and I loved it so here I am watching this. You deserve a new sub so here ya go.

Honestly my biggest gripes with Dks2 are the animations (static, awkward) and the tone (or lack thereof) that are leagues behind those found in dks1. It feels like playing a knock off version of dark souls.

The metro games on the ranger difficulties make everyone die in 1 or a few shots including the player , whereas on lower difficulties the player can take a lot of damage but so can the enemies , it's probably the first example I've seen of proper difficulty scaling , where everyone plays by the same rules and therefore it doesn't feel unfair like other games that just reduce the players own damage to enemies and health whilst increasing that of the enemies

I am that one person that never thought about not locking on.

Can't say I agree that the game intends you to drop the lock on since many weapons have a move set that don't support that. If someone wanted to use something like a spear or rapier they are fucked because they don't have the sweeping attacks of any of the swords and need to use the lock on in order to reliably hit enemies.

Looking forward to the next bits!

he was quite correct in how I approached combat in ds2. I allows locked on, and made sure my estus was out before using lifegems, except when topping off my help.

I think the change that you missed talking about is the most important chicken-and-egg question of the game. Upon death, you lose maximum health down to half your maximum, which can only be regained with the use of a Human Effigy, effectively making the level that killed you progressively harder with each death, but you can't farm Effigies from enemies, because enemies stop respawning after being killed a certain number of times. This essentially makes each level beatable by attrition, meaning you never have to LEARN, just make enough trips back and forth to empty the level forever. Add that to the fact that you're more likely to be invaded the more hollow you go, and you have a game that gets harder each time it beats you, which I think is a frustrating departure from the rock-steady nature of the first Dark Souls game.

How is it possible that I didn't know you before today? I hope this video can reach even more people, I'm going to watch the next two videos about DS2 rn (i play souls since the original demon's souls, played all of them, and nowadays, the only soul i would play again is actually DS2, which i have more hours into ds2 than anything else)

I love ur videos.i swear the audio is faster by like 3%... i like it :)

The post-lordvessel maps being of lower quality was because Dark Souls 1 had extremely troubled development and those areas couldn't get the attention they needed. The Painted World is the best designed level in the game and, it turns out, was actually the first area they made for internal demonstration purposes (a 'vertical slice' that ended up in the main game because they liked it so much). This line of reasoning actually makes Dark Souls 2 look worse, as it implies that almost none of its areas got the attention they deserved.

great video dude! I really enjoyed it.

Returning with some brief feedback on my previous comments since I'm now a good bit into DS2 - I can't find myself entirely agreeing that the combat design is as deliberate as you arrived at. There are too many decisions and situations that I think fit poorly with it. Most notably: 1) The poor hitboxes - you would think this would have been a top priority to get right since the situations are already chaotic, hard to control and risky as-is in multiples fights, 2) The cramped spaces you often fight in; some areas are indeed more open but there are plenty of corridoresque ones which make it horrible to maneuever and pretty much just tells you you backtrack to a more open space, slowing the pace to an awful crawl 3) The general over-reliance on just pitting you against the same enemies over and over, which makes it seem like creativity was running low, which fits rather well with just more enemies being added, 4) The enemies generally seem to have more poise and stamina, being able to string together unpredictable long combos and being harder to stagger; elements which should both have been moving in the opposite direction if the focus was multiples combat, to increase reliability and predictability for the player in an otherwise chaotic situation 5) You still being at the mercy of RNG; enemies can still get desynchronized and be near impossible to attack, which is very tedious, 6) The game more often than before forces you to drop or walk into situations where you'll be immediately attacked by multiples with extremely little room to maneuever or reliably handle it. I'm also, to a lesser degree, doubtful about Lifegems. See, being able to buy an infinite amount of them isn't something the game hands you. You have to do the very Souls-like thing of exhausting the vendor's conversation options or it'll never happen (well, not as far as I've yet seen). For this reason I still had Lifegems as a limited and very precious quantity about 20 hours in. If this was so integral to the combat I feel pretty unsure that it would have been contingent upon such specific conditions. Lifegems without the infinite vendor source are a precious resource that can not really be expected to be spent on just trying to get through a level where you might die anyway causing everything you used to be wasted. In some fights I certainly see the intentionality, and even that it works pretty decently - Skeleton Lords for example (I think I got lucky with the Bonewheels though, they never charged me as fiercely as the DkS ones). Lots of space, pillars to maneuever around and take cover behind, enemies that are numerous but don't chase so relentlessly or with such wide attacks it starts treading on the absurd and uncontrollable. But then there are other places where it feels far more like an excess amount of enemies placed down in a vapid attempt at increasing difficulty and time it takes to get through the levels than deliberate and skillful design. The bordering on absurd knight gauntlet at the start of the Iron Keep or pretty much every multi encounter in No Man's Wharf with its constant narrow walkways and paths over lethal falls and water, for example. Or the large amount of enemies that kept chasing after you in The Gutter, the most narrow and lethal part I've been to yet. The fight you exemplified with, the two big guys, didn't work at all for me. They would hug each other nearly all the time, get desynchronized as they attacked, and they have (fast) 1HK attacks so there's no sense taking any chances. Possibly our builds make some difference here as I used a mace, which is a bit sluggish, but I don't think soft-forcing players to be fast, agile and use fastish weapons fits at all with anything the series should be going for. Now you're definitely also a more skilled player but spotting openings is something I believe myself reasonably capable of. So while the DS2 version might work well some of the time, I already feel the exceptions and caveats are too serious to make it work as well as the DS1 version. Speaking of execution, not theory, of course. I'm getting a worse and worse taste for the "enemy spam" approach to level and encounter design the more I play despite that the game is pretty enjoyable overall. The unbelievably tedious knight spam at the start of Iron Keep soured my morning earlier today. Not a very relevant comment at this stage, I know. But I really had your views in mind when starting to play the game and felt like giving some feedback.

Love your bookmarks

"framerate higher than my age" is such a perfect way to say that because the older you get the hight framerate is expected to be

There is one problem with the idea that the player is supposed to learn how to play with camera unlocked to handle multiple enemies - the unclocked cammera is incredibly finnicky and needs constant adjustments if unlocked. If I was a betting man I'd say that the higher ups decided that the winnig element of Dark Souls that made it so popular was it's difficulty (that was highly emphasised in the game's marketing) and made a big push on making the game even harder. And fights against multiple enemies were the hardest parts for Dark Souls (exacly BECAUSE your toolkit doesn't mesh well with them) so the dev team decided that it was the easiest way to make the game more challenging.

not sure if anyone has pointed this out yet, but you mention how it's annoying to drop into Nito's fight and lose HP; the game does that so you stop to use an estus, and get hit by Nito's super long range upward spike attack, teaching you what that attack does and how you can't stop to heal if you're far away from Nito.

So DS2's larger hitboxes and hitframes are to counter the circle-strafing?

Constantly switching your thumb between the right stick and the dodge button when fighting groups, unless you’re willing to opt for a claw grip, sounds more like a cumbersome oversight than a tight gameplay scheme. I even use the claw grip myself and I can’t say it feels intuitive. I think properly communicating what tactics are expected of the player calls for a rework of the camera system entirely in order to facilitate a convincing, appropriate control scheme. Wrestling with the camera while also practicing tightly-timed maneuvers seems like byproduct of unclear gameplay priorities. I’m still figuring out how I feel about Dark Souls 2. I think you present some good arguments, but I think the true merits of the series have yet to be identified even to this day. It’s tough to say what’s really a success or a missed mark in this game considering what a hellscape its development must have been; design priorities must have been constantly shifting due to time constraints and directorial changes. The Souls series is a tricky one to pinpoint for sure.

i can't help but think your new way of approaching the combat was unintentional. my thoughts are the devs, without miyazaki's influence and while being pressured by namco to make the game marketable, exaggerated the difficulty by forcing the player to deal with multiple high poise enemies at once. then i think they added in lifegems as a way to counter this, and the short development time gave them no choice but to make do with the monster they created. the DLCs are a good step up in quality but still suffer from empty rooms, a lack of detail, and reskinned basic enemies (and bosses).

I never used the lock on in DS2. I found it easier to dodge in the direction i actually wanted to, and it let me get more information about every enemy in each encounter.

What sums up every Miyazaki game from DS2 for me is when I see DS1, DS3, & BB clips I remember playing that and makes me want to replay them. I just beat DS2 and I swear I can't remember experiencing half of what you're showing.

No way Sinh even comes close to Kalameet. I beat Sinh my first try, I needed some 20 tries for Kalameet to learn how to perfectly dodge and avoid all his moves at all times.

Interesting video. I might just go over the Dark Souls critique. The change in level design philosophy probably stems from the troubled developpement the game went through. The Shibuya version was scrapped, leaving the new director with a lot of assets to re-arrange in a relatively short amount of time. I'd be willing to bet the game was scrapped and rebuilt again with the subsequent graphical downgrade. It certanly wasn't condusive to think the levels out properly and which is why they were kept relatively simple and straightforward, it would also explain some of the asinine design choice here and there. Then again, while a jump in quality, the DLC's also exhibits flaws from the base game. Namely, it's too obvious that the levels are not practical places where people would have lived and thrived at one point, the least egregious in that respect would be Eluem Loyce (I love that place). Shulva and the Brume tower's purpose are ill defined at best, and their layout only makes sense for a player, but not a citizen. It's not like Dark Souls didn't have its far fetched areas but it generally was camouflaged way better and made the atmsphere of it all much more potent. DLC's co-op areas are also all garbage, and much of the time spent in the DLC is spent fighting against crowds. Which as you said is deliberate, is playable, surmountable, but I would argue it's really not well implemented at all. Ignoring the lock on is definitely not encouraged by the game's control scheme as it would involve controlling the camera on your own to keep enemies on screen in order to find openings and avoid attacks. Problem is, the camera and the dodge both are controlled by the player's thumb. So fighting crowds simply doesn't feel right, in fact it feels often very wrong when it's coupled with enemies that have insane tracking such as the red phantoms who require invincibility frames in order to "dodge". Even if it is the best way to play the game (to the point where I wonder why you would even play with a shield), it's obvious it wasn't completely thought out. It doesn't completely mesh with the foundations established in the previous game that they decided to keep in this one. The change to the healing system makes sense in that regard but it doesn't make the game feel like anything but a haphazard mess. A fun haphazard mess, but still. I absolutely agree with the scoring thought process at the end tho. I might bitch about DS2 a lot but all things considered I played it a lot more than the previous game. The fact that the overall quality of DS2's levels stays consistent all throughout and backstabs are not so easy to abuse make the overall experience easier to pick up than Dark Souls for me.

DS2 was the first Dark Souls I played, and I honestly loved it. Although, I never used the life gems or really any items lol, there are just so many weapons and items in DS2 I forgot all about them.

great video and great points

Loving the bookmarks there Joseph

I'd just like to say I used the lock-on the whole way through my first DS2 run but I also 2-handed a shortsword and wore the Imported Robes start to finish as well so I guess I kinda combined the old and new styles and became a blackbelt in circle-strafe-dodge-weaving? That's a lot of hyphens.

Higher difficulties in skyrim DO make the enemies hit harder. The difficulty is actually a damage multiplier for the player and for npcs. Adept is x1, novice is 2x damage dealt by player and 0.5x damage dealt by npc, and legendary is 0.25x damage dealt by player and 3x damage dealt by npc. This is the way difficultly slider in skyrim works.

Ds2 is the only souls game I've only played once. I was really surprised to learn about the lifegems!

Worth subscribing too, not one video I don't want to watch unless it has spoilers for something I want to play.

I'm always happy to see your videos in my sub box. Even more so that it's more souls content. I'm definitely in the Dark Souls 1 camp as my favorite souls game (haven't played Bloodborne). So I'm interested to see your opinions, if they differ at all, to what many have said already on the internet (mainly the "Dark Souls 2 Critique" video, subreddits, other forums, etc.)

25 dollars for a revised special edition sounds reasonable when compared to a barely updated Skyward Sword HD at full price for Switch.

Great video

I've become a huge fan of your channel dude.

Watching you fight the Taurus demon makes it look so easy... I came from DS3 so im used to just all out aggression but that gets me murdered by the stomp attack as it moves around, maybe I should swap playstyles lol.

Why does nobody ever mention that in DS2 you can't string a heavy attack into light attacks? It bothered me the most about the game and I've yet to hear a justification of why that was removed from DS1 to DS2. It turns the entire attack string system into a very, very shallow one.

Fans of the Souls series often severely downplay the flaws of Dark 1 while exaggerating the flaws of Dark 2. Really, both are excellent but far from perfect games with their own unique but substantial problems. Dark 1 was unfinished and felt unrefined at times while Dark 2 felt sloppy on numerous occasions, sometimes right in its fundamentals. Ultimately, I believe them both to be of roughly equal quality. That said, while I have played some of vanilla Dark 2 and seen a LP of it, the superior Scholar of the First Sin is the only version of the game I have experienced wholly firsthand. Also my opinions may be different if I cared about PvP, given balancing issues in both games.

I thought the DLCS felt like shit copies of each other except for the first one. And you didn't mention how good dark souls 1 DLC was. Well I thought it was superb.

Lol Duke's Dear Freja was probably my favourite boss encounter in the game, vary satisfying and tense)

the whole group combat argument is something i really can't get down with. like, sure it's POSSIBLE to deal with multiples by playing in the most clunky and unintuitive way imaginable, but it's blatantly obvious that's not what the controls were initially designed for. dark souls 2 changes the dynamic of combat, but the controls are exactly the same, the focus on group combat doesn't play to the series' strengths (1v1 engagements with very committed actions) at all. look at a game that actually IS designed around group combat like bayonetta: the controls are completely unrestricted and your freedom of movement is basically infinite. the focus on multiples in dark souls 2 feels grafted onto a game it wasn't intended for (yes, despite the changes to healing) and it just makes me want to play a real action game instead.

25:30 I'm years late to this discussion, but the if you don't light up the arena in the Lost Sinner battle, the lock on range is way lower and she always stops it too when she jumps behind you. Most people will probably just look up a guide and light up the arena anyways, though. Not that it's a problem with DS2, but the series in general, just look at how many people spent minutes shooting the drake's tail in Undead Burg, trivialising the early game. And at times it almost feels necessary, like using a divine weapon during Nito's fight or burning the windmill for Mytha's fight.

excellent video. it will be interesting to see how dark souls 3 reconciles healing and multiple enemies. Why do you think estus flask are so much slower in DSII? Do you think it was changed after lifegems were introduced for situational variety?

I actually didn't drain all of the maidens dialogue in my first playthrough. Cleric, forced to 2 handing my mace with no estus my way through Heide' tower of flames thinking how the hell do I level up??

watching all your videos again and i noticed that you talk way faster in these videos than in your recent ones. Edit: still really like all your videos though.

Hey, Nice to see you again! I was wondering when you'd get around to this one! :D I'll wait until the third video is released until I write a complete rant. Though I will say a few things, I enjoyed having Lifegems and honestly hope something similar is in Dark Souls 3, *if I get it!* Demon's Souls had grass that made the game broken at points, Dark Souls had souls and Humanity which was just as easy to get. Bloodborne had Blood-vials which actually made it harder for me to die toppled on with regaining health when you swing wildly after getting hit. I would have liked that after every major boss (i.e Old Iron King, Lost Sinner) Malentia would restock about 20 of them and you had to find more on corpses and enemies. Which would keep it balanced, in my opinion. It annoyed me getting clipped by an enemy through a wall that I would have to use an Estus Flask over cheapness and lose it in the coming boss battle. Lifegems made those moments bearable. I feel as if Dark Souls 2 was more similar to Demon's Souls than Dark Souls 1. "Infinite" healing items, multiple enemies, fast-paced, and linear paths that had open areas, yet still closed within this world. Might be why I prefer 2 over 1, but that's blasphemy. Another thing, I would not credit MatthewMatosis's Dark Souls video; It's nitpicking to the extreme and it's honestly more whining than it is critiquing. Hell, Three-Quarters of the stuff he said could be turned around on Dark Souls 1 itself. Also, there were times I was thinking you were talking a bit too fast at some points. I believe you talked a lot slower in your Anno 2205 video, so, as always, the Mrs. is right. Anyway, I patiently await the others! Congratulations on the baby! :D

reviewing dark souls II is really difficult. one the hand i hand to applaud from software, because they dared to make (drastic) changes to dark souls II instead of just releasing a carbon copy sequel. nothing kills a series faster than just releasing one and the same game over and over again every year. on the other hand i am torn about this decision, because i really don't enjoy the multiple enemy combat. to me it removes a great element of freedom in the way i want to fight. your video perfectly illustrates that. you could play defensive, go "berserk" or play somewhere in between. multiple enemy combat always leads to the "thirst for burst" combat style. burst down one enemy as quickly as you can, afterwards things will get significantly easier. this means that a defence playstyle will inherently be inferior to aggressive combat styles. to me this is a little bit sad, because literally every other game on the market (independent of the game genre) promotes offensive play. it removes a unique point from the game. i really wish they would have found different ways to implement fighting multiple enemies. maybe reworking parry in a way that opens up different forms of crowd control. a kick after parry to make an enemy collaps for a longer period of time, a weapon swing to disarm him, a backstab to wound him so that he flees/estus up.... maybe destrucable terrain could also be used for things like that. i don't even mind the healing changes, since you could use souls to heal in DS1 too. but somehow the combat is missing an element of grace and honor. in DS1 you i felt like the honorable knight fighting a duell against an oppoment. multiplayer invading then was the pinnacle of dueling and perfectly lined up with the game. DS-II combat just feels dirty in comparison. i know, this is a very subjective assesment, but i can't help it. that's how i feel. besides that i just want to say that from software definitly fucked up, and burned me as a customer with their DLC policy. after the release they stated that DS-II won't have DLCs. this obviously was a lie. i would rather have waited for another "all in one product" than this messy step by step release. i still don't own the DLCs, and won't get them. purposefully backstabbing customers is no way of treating your audience... for multiplayer games DLCs serve a purpose. the try to sustain an alive community so that the game won't die. people revisitng the game is important for this. DS-II doesn't really fall into this category. P.S: reusing some bosses from DS-I was lazy...

Feels to me like Dark Souls 2 just feels clunkier and slower for no good reason. I can play at 60 fps on a PS4 but it just feels so much slower than DS1 and found even healing with a life gem to be dangerous with enemies rushing you down. I disliked how the levels focused around drawing out one enemy at a time and killing them without aggroing others and that brought the pace to a crawl. Special shout out to the dragon in SotFS Heide's tower for giving you just a miniscule window to rush in and avoid his fire breath attack. Because otherwise you'd need a ranged weapon.

Never has there been a game that I wanted to love so much but was completely unable to... I've loved Souls since its inception with Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 is probably by favourite so far even though that took me a few tries before I properly got into it (strange considering I bummed Demon's Souls before it). I'm considering giving Dark Souls 2 another go because it's a Souls game and I want to give it a chance to grow on me even though I know it won't be as good as the other games.

To me Dark Souls 2 is Demon's Souls 2, because it shares the philosophies of that game more than Dark Souls 1. Majula is the hub that has 5 paths, which act like the levels in Demon's Souls, except you don't need to teleport to them, you can just walk, but realistically you will teleport once you get the bonfires. Now there are more bonfires per area of each level, usually 2-3 instead of just 1 like in Demon's Souls, but they are larger so it makes sense. The healing items in DS2 are straight up from Demon's Souls as in that game there are no estus flasks, just different tiers of healing items.

I just watched all your dark souls videos in a row , are you going to talk about the changes in scholar in the first sin verson of the game?

The whole lock-on thing is opposite for me to your theoretical person who didn't even consider lock-on, Joe. I started Dark Souls 1 right after Monster Hunter on the PSP, which had no lock-on, so I only used it once in the entire game. (The final boss was incredibly difficult without it, and the second I used it, he went down in 30 seconds, which made me think of lock-on as an easy mode that I definitely did not want to use.) So now I've beaten 3 Dark Souls games and watching videos is still so alien to me because locking on in such a basic mechanic for most people. I don't think I have any real point here, just thought I'd share.

I'm interested, have you played the Witcher 3 and it's DLCs? if you haven't - I strongly recommend it. And if you have, I would be interested in your thoughts about it.

Damn son, slow down. Just came out of your BOTW video and you've come a long way mate. Your speech in these early videos is so fkn quick, not really absorbing the info. Anyway, this is a pointless comment because your new videos are brilliant. ❤️

I enjoyed the video and analysis (even tho I don't agree with everything) but I think you went woefully short on the analysis on DS2 combat and forgot to talk about hitboxes, enforced deadzone, non chaining attack types (going from strong attacks to normal ones or viceversa), lack of poise and how it promotes spamming. You went fairly in depth about DS1 combat and how it feels rewarding and involved but never did for the DS2 side with the same depth (I was looking forward to that since I did not enjoy DS2 and was expecting the analysis on someone that did not hate it) which is the biggest failure of the game (in my opinion); how bland and repetitive the combat is since it lacks depth.

4:30 Funny you say that, one of my favourite mods has an option to up damage 5x on you and enemies on hard mode. It's fun and fair.

DS2 is my first and maybe only time playing a Soulsbourne. The combat was fun but deaths come often and often seemingly out of nowhere - even when played with the carefulness I reserve for stealth games - that in the end I've found that it's most efficient and least tedious to just run past all the enemies until I get to the next point where I die out of nowhere. Not really a fun time. I heard DS1 is better in this regard due to how it's structured, but DS2 really soured it for me.

This game sure takes a lot of criticism.. I've never had more fun with a Souls game than I did with this one. It's gameplay was truly outstanding and its level of difficulty puts DS3 to shame. It had its own unique lore which I enjoyed. FromSoftware obviously wanted a new approach in the series which backfired greatly. I find that very disappointing.

26:24 took me my 3rd time with the ascetic to read that with a torch the spiders become irrelevant

Sadly, I can not agree in regards to the enemy encounters at all - less about location, more about numbers... You get spammed with multi-enemy encounters _constantly_ in this game. Yet, the design choices done in regards to controls (except for using snap points in movement instead of full analog controls) are still near identical. As you mentioned, fighting enemies in Dark Souls 1 can be more often than not a test of patience, waiting to either exhaust their attack combos to attack them, or to knuckle up, dive in and risk taking hits. However, in Dark Souls 2 this has been cranked up a notch or twelve. More often than not you find yourself in encounters with all around 5 enemies or upwards in numbers, ranging from weak to wrecking in terms of their respective power levels. Yes, the areas are more open to avoid getting backed into a corner - when attacks are stacked upon themselves to a point where taking damage is near inevitable though, it makes the addition of life gems a necessity, which is why they seem to be so easily available, not the other way around. Hacking away at a blob of death that you have to either take damage from, use weapons that just outrange them or abusing their terrible AI that more often than not fails to keep the aggro on you and forgets about you is fine once, maybe twice to actually test your skills when it comes to multi enemy encounters. This however holds not true when all around half the encounters are like this and the game does nothing to change controls to provide you a better toolkit. You stated yourself that the works out best in it's 1v1 encounters due to its uninterruptable actions that have ramp-up times while being finnicky when it comes to multi-enemy encounters. Being bad in one game doesn't make it good in the next one because you now have basically unlimited health as stated before - the core controls and mechanics have not changed to accomodate for such a change in playstyle. Dark Souls 2 is not "built around" fighting multiple enemies, it is "designed to put you up against multiple enemies". A small change in wording for sure, but far more important to understand In essence: Your offensive and defensive toolkit work best in a 1 on 1 encounter in Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2 takes on this toolkit and changes basically nothing, leaving you with the same possible solutions from the first game, while giving you the most frustrating encounter from it as your regular enemy. This all seems to stem from the weird misconception that difficulty = challenge. Dark Souls has always been praised for being challenging - not for being difficult. The tools provided allowed you to overcome an obstacle by employing wits, learning, exploring and your own preseverance. While this can be no doubt difficult in its own right, it is never unfair - It is punishing. The reason you died were because you overextended yourself in one way or another. Yet here we have a game which is artificially raised in difficulty to the point of being unfair for all the wrong reasons. The inclusion of life gems in their availability and obtainability at that point seems to be a simple, yet fitting solution to adress that problem - balance out one unfairness with another one so both sides have an absurd advantage. Giving the player infinite health to adress for an issue which seems to be placed in deliberately for the reason of inflating difficulty is no befitting solution for any game which tries to be challenging. You said the DS1 core pillars are held together by estus management - This has been basically thrown out the window entirely since health and the resulting survivability have _always_ been paramount before it back to the start. At that point it's nothing but a sub-par hack and slash game more akin to the old God of War series while wearing the skin of Dark Souls as a disguise. Dark Souls 1 also taught you how to deal with groups of enemies, but accounted for that by generally placing a strong enemy alongside a bunch of weak trash that you'll easily deal with and that barely deals damage or putting up a small group of enemies at different ranges that need time to engage you to make up for their increase in power, yet punishes you for not taking the situation seriously. In Dark Souls 2 however you encounter many big groups of enemies that not only chunk your health, but have far ranging or sweeping attacks to give you as little attack windows as possible. To sum this all up: The game (DS2 that is) was not just frustrating "in places", but rather frustrating "throughout" because of this.

Weird. This video seems sped up compared to others; I don't recall that ever being an issue. I had to play this one on 0.75 speed to make it resemble the other videos.